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Hans Frei Resources: Unpublished Pieces – Transcripts from the Yale Divinity School archive

Hans Frei Resources: Unpublished Pieces – Transcripts from the Yale Divinity School archive

Edited by Mike Higton
with assistance from Mark Alan Bowald
and Hester Higton
1998–2004

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These Frei transcripts were originally made available on the Yale Divinity School library website. The whole main collection can be downloaded as a unified book (PDF: 1.24MB) – but note that there are also some extras not included in the main collection.

An overlapping range of transcripts has now been published in Hans Frei, Reading Faithfully: Writings from the Archives, ed. Mike Higton and Mark Alan Bowald (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2015), vol. 1: Theology and Heremeneutics and vol. 2: Frei’s Theological Background.

See also my annotated bibliography of Frei’s works, and a brief biography, also on this site.

Introduction

In the winter of 1998, I spent some time working through the papers collected in the Hans W. Frei archive at Yale Divinity School, while working towards a book on Frei’s theology (Christ, Providence and History: Hans W. Frei’s Public Theology, London: T&T Clark, 2004). This collection of transcripts makes available a few of the most interesting pieces from the archive, and a couple from elsewhere, all of them previously unpublished – and all of them, I think pieces which clarify and extend Frei’s published works, or which cast interesting sidelights on his theology.

Several of the pieces are transcribed from messy manuscripts, two from audio-tapes of lectures; I have taken the liberty of tidying up punctuation and grammar in places, of expanding abbreviations, and from time to time turning notes or stumbling live speech into prose. I have also tried to complete (though not normally to supplement) Frei’s sporadic and uneven references, to identify some quotations for which he provided no reference, and to add information about the availability of English translations for some of the German sources he quotes.

This project would not have been possible without the assistance of Martha Smalley, Research Services Librarian at YDS; the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, who funded my trip to Yale; Charles Campbell, who provided me with a copy of one of the pieces not in the archive; Mark Alan Bowald, who transcribed the tape recordings of another piece missing from the archive; Angela Morris at Louisville Seminary Library who helped me get tape recordings of Frei’s Greenhoe Lectures – and most of all my wife Hester, who endured my absence in Yale, and typed the ‘Analogy and the Spirit’ piece.

A guide to the Hans W. Frei papers in the Yale Divinity School archive is available on their site.

Contents

You can download the whole collection (PDF: 1.24MB).

Individual transcripts are also available, either as HTML files (i.e., ordinary web pages) or as PDF files (i.e., far clearer layout; suitable for printing). The PDF version has page numbers, which can be used when providing references to this material.

I Theological Reflections

1. Analogy and the Spirit in the Theology of Karl Barth (CPH 1960a)HTML
72KB		PDF
205KB
2. Scripture as Realistic Narrative (CPH 1974d)HTML
44KB		PDF
145KB
3. On Interpreting the Christian Story (CPH 1976h)HTML
73KB		PDF
204KB
4. Historical Reference and the Gospels (YDS 13-199; CPH ?1981c)HTML
21KB		PDF
93KB
5. The Specificity of Reference (YDS 12-189; CPH U3)HTML
16KB		PDF
89KB
6. History, Salvation-History, and Typology (YDS 19-278; CPH 1981f) (YDS 2-36; CPH 1981i)HTML
44KB		PDF
139KB
7. God’s Patience and Our Work (YDS 18-268; CPH 1986c)HTML
61KB		PDF
178KB
8. On the Thirty-Nine Articles (YDS 12-186; CPH 1987d, 1987f)HTML
15KB		PDF
83KB
9. Theological Hermeneutics (YDS 14-205; CPH 1976l)HTML
6KB		PDF
59KB

II Historical Investigations

10. Religious Transformation in the later Eighteenth Century (YDS 10-168/9; YDS 13-198; CPH 1974c)HTML
181KB		PDF
400KB
11. Herder (YDS 18-271; CPH 1973b, 1974l)HTML
21KB		PDF
93KB
12. The Formation of German Religious Thought in the Passage from Enlightenment to Romanticism (YDS 13-199; CPH 1981a)HTML
34KB		PDF
133KB
13. Contemporary Christian Thought (YDS 13-197; CPH 1972a)HTML
14KB		PDF
78KB

III Reviews and Book Notes

14. Review of Wendelgard von Staden’s Darkness over the Valley (YDS 10-166; CPH ?1981d)HTML 17KBPDF
84KB
15. Notes on Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis (YDS 13-199; CPH ?1981b)HTML 3KBPDF
51KB

Abbreviations

CD Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark 1955–1977)

CPH ‘Primary Sources: Annotated Bibliography’ in Mike Higton, Christ, Providence and History: Hans W. Frei’s Public Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2004) – followed by the reference number which the transcribed piece has in that bibliography.

EBN Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven: Yale, 1974)

IJC Hans Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975)

KD Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik (Zürich: Evangelischer Verlag/Zollikon, 1932­–1967)

TN Hans Frei, Theology and Narrative, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New York: Oxford, 1993)

YDS Hans Wilhelm Frei Papers, Manuscript Group No.76, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library. (YDS 13–199 = box 13, folder 199, etc.)

Extras