Who was Dietrich Bonhoeffer?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an anti-Nazi theologian and pastor during World War II. Best remembered for authoring the Christian classics The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in Germany and commenced his journey in church leadership through the rise of the Nazi regime.
Although Bonhoeffer didn’t grow up in a very religious home, he announced his plans to hitch the church when he was just fourteen. After obtaining his doctorate in theology and dealing in churches abroad, Bonhoeffer became a pastor and lecturer in Berlin on the age of twenty-five.
Hitler’s rise to power just two years later marked a turning point in Bonhoeffer’s profession. Despite the mounting cost, Bonhoeffer spoke out against the Führer’s influence. Frustrated by the unwillingness of church leaders to oppose Hitler’s anti-Semitism, Bonhoeffer created the Confessing Church, alongside Martin Niemoller and Karl Barth. Eventually forbidden to show publicly and compelled underground, Bonhoeffer taught seminary students for several years until even the Confessing Church grew reluctant to contradict Nazi leadership. Having lost this chance, Bonhoeffer briefly sought asylum within the United States but, after concluding that it was flawed to desert his friends, returned to Nazi Germany.
Formerly a pacifist, Dietrich Bonhoeffer became persuaded of the necessity for violence against the Nazi regime and joined a bunch called the Abwehr, whose primary mission was to assassinate Hitler. Ultimately, Bonhoeffer was arrested for his involvement in helping Jews flee the country. Still, he continued to show with the assistance of guards who smuggled out his writing, until he was transferred to a concentration camp. When his association with other Abwehr agents was discovered, Bonhoeffer was sentenced to death. He was hanged in April 1945, only one month before Germany surrendered.
More than seventy years after his death, his life and writings function a touchstone for all of us who seek to know a Christian’s responsibility within the face of injustice — and as an encouragement to serve regardless of how great the fee.
15 Inspiring Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes
- “There is meaning in every journey that’s unknown to the traveler.”
- “Christianity preaches the infinite price of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.”
- “May we be enabled to say ‘No’ to sin and ‘Yes’ to the sinner.”
- “Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are only as entitled to as we’re.”
- “Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to treat people less in the sunshine of what they do or don’t do, and more in light of what they suffer.”
- “In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified stays a stranger and is at best the article of pity. . . . The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought that takes success for its standard.”
- “The ultimate test of an ethical society is the form of world that it leaves to its children.”
- “One act of obedience is price 100 sermons.”
- “We aren’t to easily bandage the injuries of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we’re to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
- “The awareness of a spiritual tradition that reaches through the centuries gives one a certain feeling of security within the face of all transitory difficulties.”
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“Your life as a Christian should make nonbelievers query their disbelief in God.”
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“Time is the most useful thing that we now have, since it is probably the most irrevocable.”
- “Human love has little regard for the reality. It makes the reality relative, since nothing, not even the reality, must come between it and the beloved person.”
- “Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.”
- “Only the obedient consider, and only those that consider obey.”
5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes about Community
- “The blessedness of waiting is lost on those that cannot wait, and the success of promise isn’t theirs. They want quick answers to the deepest questions of life and miss the worth of those times of anxious waiting, in search of with patient uncertainties until the answers come. They lose the moment when the answers are revealed in dazzling clarity.”
- “It is grace, nothing but grace, that we’re allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.”
- “The community of the saints will not be an ‘ideal’ community consisting of perfect and sinless men and girls, where there isn’t any need of further repentance. No, it’s a community which proves that it’s worthy of the gospel of forgiveness by consistently and sincerely proclaiming God’s forgiveness. ”
- “The first service one owes to others in a community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s Word, the start of affection for others is learning to take heed to them. God’s love for us is shown by the indisputable fact that God not only gives God’s Word but in addition lends us God’s ear. . . . We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters after we learn to take heed to them.”
- “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others . . . not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of each calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.”
5 Quotes about God by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- “God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not a super human, but human beings as they’re; not a super world, but the actual world. What we discover repulsive of their opposition to God, what we turn away from with pain and hostility… that is for God the bottom of unfathomable love.”
- “Seek God, not happiness – that is the elemental rule of all meditation. If you seek God alone, you’ll gain happiness: that’s its promise.”
- “Silence within the face of evil is itself evil: God won’t hold us guiltless. Not to talk is to talk. Not to act is to act.”
- “We should be able to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”
- “We pray for the massive things and forget to present thanks for the extraordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts. How can God entrust great things to 1 who won’t thankfully receive from Him the little things?”
5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes about Love
- “Human love is directed to the opposite person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake.”
- “God doesn’t love some ideal person, but quite human beings just as we’re, not some ideal world, but quite the actual world.”
- “It will not be the love of God that’s the problem, however the disbelief of men within the love of God.”
- “Love, in its essence, means making room for the opposite.”
- “The essence of affection is to bring others closer to God.”
Books By Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Life Together (Dietrich Bonhoeffer-Reader’s Edition)“>: In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, renowned Christian minister, professor, and writer of The Cost of Discipleship recounts his unique fellowship in an underground seminary through the Nazi years in Germany. Giving practical advice on how life together in Christ may be sustained in families and groups, Life Together is bread for all who’re hungry for the actual lifetime of Christian fellowship.
The Cost of Discipleship: One of an important theologians of the 20 th century illuminates the connection between ourselves and the teachings of Jesus. The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of sacrifice and ethical consistency from a person whose life and thought were exemplary articulations of a recent kind of leadership inspired by the Gospel, and imbued with the spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty.
Emily Maust Wood is a contract editor and fitness coach. She lives along with her husband and shelter dog, collects old books and broken things, and worries about where her trainers come from. Charmed by the concept of restoring an old home, she chronicles the journey at lacorbeille.wordpress.com.
Photo credit: Wikipedia archives
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