Hans Wilhelm Frei

1922-1988

An Annotated Bibliography

§4(b): Undated Material

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• Bibliography
  • Undated

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Undated Material

• U1 Notes on Clifford Geertz (YDS 19-279).
  A rather midrashic running commentary on Geertz's 'Thick Description: Towards an Interpretation of Cultures'. It seems unlikely that these date to Frei's first encounter with Geertz: at one point he suggests to himself that he should 're-read' another of Geertz's essays.



• U2 'Report on Modern Theology' (my title) (YDS 18-273).
  Frei sketches some general features of modern theology, and then goes into more detail on developments between Locke and Schleiermacher. 'I shall try to give a kind of report, an overview, mixing together all sorts of things as will be evident to you. By modern theology I chiefly refer to a vague kind of consensus that began to emerge about 1700 among a group of rather academic, middle class theologians, chiefly Protestant ...' Some time in the 'eighties?



• U3 'Beardslee and Hermeneutics' (YDS 12-189).
  This is clearly a transcript made by someone else: there are even footnotes to bits of text which Frei had scratched out. 'There is a tenacious sense that all of us have that our descriptive concepts refer'; 'at the risk of looking utterly relativist to some and utterly reactionary to Professors Beardslee and Kermode, I want to do hermeneutics in the tradition of Christian theology as reflection on the use of Christian communal language and that as a language that has an irreducible integrity of its own, is not systematically grounded by reference to a systematic pre-understanding or pre-linguistic experience (or expression) of reality in general.' Some time in the 'eighties?
  Transcript available.



• U4 'Theology is a Modest Task' (my title) (YDS 18-278).
  Frei stresses against apologists and mediating theologians that 'The business of theology is to stress the logic of the Christian story, i.e., that it hangs together as a cumulative narrative.' Again, some time in the eighties?



• U5 'Reflections Upon the Retirement of Julian Hartt' (YDS 11-177).
  A conversational and anecdotal, and quite personal piece, which provides insights into Frei's views on providence and grace and the like.

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