In spite of the plethora of Bonhoeffer studies there is a large lacuna regarding studies that have addressed Bonhoeffer's intellectual grounding in a thorough, comprehensive and methodical manner. Scholarly attention to this important subject matter has indeed been scarce. However, without an attempt to examine, trace, and weigh these influences in Bonhoeffer's theological formation it is hardly possible to gain a comprehensive and complete understanding of his thought. In the studies, the different authors seek to address the decisive questions and issues in this regard.

As such, the essays collected in this volume have the one focal point and common scope in the thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In each of the essays, the authors discuss one or two philosophers or theologians and demonstrate how specific ideas penetrated and shaped Bonhoeffer's intellectual formation. These various studies converge on the thought of Bonhoeffer as a whole in such a way as to illuminate the growth and maturation of his own intellect vis-à-vis the philosophical and theological ideas articulated in the thinkers discussed in the essays. Put differently, the objective of the essays is to open up the intellectual window of Bonhoeffer's thought, as it were, and thereby allow more light to fall on the structure, extension and formation of that thought.