Dissertation to monograph: Some lessons

I’m pretty happy to be able to report that today I submitted the indices and final corrections on the galley proofs of my book entitled, Karl Barth on the Filioque. The book is part of a larger series simply called “Barth Studies.” If all goes well, the book should be rolling off the press in the next month or two!  For a description of the book from the Ashgate site, go here.

So here are five things (three a bit more serious, two less so) I learned about transforming a dissertation into a published monograph:

1)  Start thinking about and planning for the Index from day one of the process if you are required to supply it on your own.  I wish I had kept track of how many hours I spent completing this laborious task! I just know it adds lots and lots of hours at a point in the project when you think that you are nearly done! In other words, you really shouldn’t say, “Oh, I’m done the book. All I have to do is create an index.” That’s like saying, “Oh, I have the wood for the house. All I have to do is nail it together!”

Oh, and don’t assume that indexing software will necessarily make the job go likety-split. I did use a demo version of a program called Textract that helped get me going, but even after the software has done its initial magic, there is still a lot of work to do.

2) Even if you are only going to be doing minimal editing (rather than extensive revising or adding of sections), be prepared for some surprises that will take a lot longer than you expect. My own project was actually on the “minimal editing” end of the spectrum, but I still ended up doing significant revision of a couple sections, and adding a new six or seven page section that I felt simply couldn’t not be included. Again, this meant a significant number of hours.

3) Between the time that you finish the dissertation and the time that you begin working on the monograph, keep a separate bibliography of new sources that come up that may need to be incorporated. Even though the gap between completion of the dissertation and the publication of the monograph for me was only three years, I still ended up having to do some significant searching through my own files and additional research to ensure I wasn’t missing something significant that had come up in the meantime. Even though I didn’t add too many more sources, I still did end up appending some. Had I kept an ongoing bibliography in the intervening time, this would have saved me a lot of work.

As for a couple less serious things I learned and recommend to you:

4) Take at least some time to marvel at how it is possible for a manuscript to have been read dozens of times by several different sets of eyes (including professional editors), and yet still end up with over 50 corrections needed in the final galley proofs! Nevertheless, despite the marvel of this impossible possibility, I won’t be surprised if there are still a few errors in the final copy!

5) Try not to cry too much when you find out that Amazon.ca is listing your book to retail at $117.31! (But here’s the good news, folks: If you pre-order a copy of my book today, you can get it for $68.61! What a steal of a deal! So you might as well  buy an extra copy the kids and grandkids, too!)

Christ the Mediator and Christian Community

In preparation for a faculty retreat tomorrow, we are all reading the first chapter of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic Life Together. The chapter is called “Community.” One of the key elements of Bonhoeffer’s theology of life together is his understanding of the complete and eternal mediation of Christ, not only as the mediator between God and humans, but also as the mediatior between humans themselves. There is no unmediated Christian community, Bonhoeffer says; only a spiritual fellowship of men and women mediated in and through Jesus Christ.

But it was his description of the nature of how it is that Christ stands between us that really struck me.

Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others, too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ’s; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ’s eyes. This is the meaning of the proposition that we can meet others only through the mediation of Christ. Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. It takes the life of the other person into its own hands. Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ; the image that Jesus Christ himself embodied and would stamp upon all men. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together [Harper, 1954], 35-6)

Geoffrey Bromiley (1915-2009)

I learned this evening of the passing of Dr. Geoffrey Bromiley, one of the chief translators of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology, and translator and editor of many other major works by European scholars such as Jacques Ellul, Helmut Thielicke, Gerhard Kittel, and Ernst Kasemann.

Most of us barely find time to read these multi-tome works, but Bromiley became famous for translating systematically and authoritatively through these works in order to bring them to an English speaking audience. Indeed, Bromiley functioned somewhat as a bridge between Continental and North American theological contexts. It was, no doubt, a labour of love for Bromiley to serve in this way, especially since Bromiley’s own theological contributions (such as his book on infant baptism and his introductory historical theology text) are often overshadowed by the theological giants whose work he was constantly translating. (To prove the point of Bromiley’s standing in the shadows of these giants, I actually searched for an image of Bromiley via Google images, but failed to find a single image! Indeed, I don’t know that I have ever seen a photo of him!) But perhaps Bromiley’s most well known work is his classic Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth, which is essentially a “little Church Dogmatics” in which Bromiley essentially summarizes the contents of Barth’s 13 volume work. Though nothing replaces reading Barth, if you simply don’t have time or desire, but need a good summary, Bromiley’s your man.

Bromiley served on the Fuller Theological Seminary faculty for many years, retiring in 1987, but continuing his editing and translation works right up to his death. A brief obituary can be found at the Fuller Seminary site.