Karl Donfried

1940 - 2022

Karl Donfried

Washington, D.C. — Karl Donfried of Washington, DC, formerly of Pelham, died February 23, 2022, at the age of 81. An internationally recognized New Testament scholar, Donfried was first appointed to the Smith College faculty in 1968, and served as the Elizabeth A. Woodson Professor of Religion and Biblical Literature until his retirement in 2005. One of the classes he most relished teaching during his tenure at Smith was "The Bible as Art," which he conceived and taught together with renowned illustrator and printmaker, Barry Moser.

Central to his life was his faith. An ordained Lutheran minister, Donfried was deeply committed to the ecumenical movement. He developed and led the Ecumenical School of Theology at Christ Church Cathedral in Springfield, Massachusetts; the Episcopal Bishop of Western Massachusetts elected him to serve as Ecumenical Canon of the Cathedral in 1977, a position he held until his death. He had chaired the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Committee of New England and had also been appointed co-chair of the New Testament Panel of the National Lutheran Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue, which produced the influential volumes Peter In The New Testament and Mary In the New Testament. He was an official delegate of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to the signing of The Joint Declaration on The Doctrine of Justification in Augsburg, Germany, in October 1999.

A prolific scholar, his many books include Who Owns the Bible? Toward the Recovery of a Christian Hermeneutic; The Dynamic Word: New Testament Insights for Contemporary Christians; The Romans Debate; The Theology of the Shorter Pauline Letters; Judaism and Christianity in First-Century Rome, The Thessalonians Debate; and Paul, Thessalonica And Early Christianity. He served as visiting professor at Amherst and Mount Holyoke Colleges, Brown University, Yale Divinity School, Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, as well as universities in Berlin and Hamburg.

A graduate of Columbia College, Harvard Divinity School, and Union Theological Seminary, he earned his doctoral degree at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Born in 1940 to German immigrants, Donfried became the first person in his family to attend college. He is survived by his wife of six decades, Katharine; his three children, Paul, Karen, and Mark; their spouses, Lisa, Alan, and Teresa; and seven grandchildren, Helen, Emma, Hannah, Michael, Rayan, Jabril, and Amina.

Family welcomes donations to Karl Donfried Ecumenism Fund at ELCA's Lutheran New England Synod, 20 Upland Street, Worcester, MA 01607 with fund noted on memo line or online (www.nelutherans.org/donate).