Peter Frick captures well from Bonhoeffer’s (and Barth’s) posture towards academic theology how DB felt about so-called academic theology indeed. Bonhoeffer’s “unease” with academic (or university) theology resonates with me deeply. I often, as you’ve noticed, rail against academic theology, and the academic theological subculture (of glory) that funds it. It is for the very same reasons that Bonhoeffer (and Barth) were not ultimately for it. Frick writes:

From his early teen years to the end of his life Bonhoeffer was shaped by theology and, posthumously, became known as a shaper of theology himself. Academic theology in an encyclopedic sense (drawing on philosophy, social philosophy, sociology) constituted for Bonhoeffer the backbone of his academic teaching in the university and the underground seminary. Indeed, with ease he moved from the university to the seminary. From London he wrote to his friend Erwin Sutz: ‘I no longer believe in the university; in fact I never really have believed in it—to your chagrin’ (DBWE 13: 217). The reason he no longer believed in the university is not that all of a sudden he rejected academic theology; what he rejected was a form of academic theology that in his view left a deep vacuum in the students’ own spiritual life and proved useless for the work of the pastor and preacher. Here he comes close to Barth once more; Barth wrote his Letter to the Romans out of his own uneasiness with academic theology. It was of his years at Finkenwalde, not surprisingly, that he said in retrospect that they were perhaps the most fulfilling time of his life. It was a time when he could teach theology unhindered and preach often.[1]

I think this exemplifies well what my issue has been. I am not, nor have I ever been against the ‘hand that feeds me,’ theologically. What I am against is the stultifying gamesmanship of academic theology wherein a person’s identity is given being by how many original ideas they have developed in papers and various manuscripts with their names on them one way or the other. I am against the culture of CV-building, even if that’s how the ‘game’ works (for career advancement etc.). The game needs to go ‘underground’ if that is what it takes for it to loose itself from the shackles of self-promotion. This is what I see in the ‘theological walk’ of someone like Bonhoeffer. For him theology was clearly a lifestyle, and not a job. I think this is ‘difficult teaching’ for many; too difficult. They might say a false dilemma; I beg to differ.

[1] Peter Frick, “Bonhoeffer The Academic Theologian,” edited by Matthew Mawson and Philip G. Ziegler, The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), 51.