Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxis

I received this book from our daughter for Christmas this year. Its a captivating biography about a German theologian and pastor who struggled with what it meant to be a German Christian during World War II. He witness the unfolding injustices to the Jewish persons, and the silence of the Christians. There are many great quotations in this book, most of them taken directly from Bonhoeffer’s writings. The quotations become more profound we know that his ideas and convictions cost him his life.

“Has it [the church] not perhaps become an obstruction blocking the path to God instead of a road sign on the path to God? Has it not blocked the only path to salvation? Yet no one can ever obstruct the way to God. The church still has the Bible, and as long as she has it we can still believe in the holy Christian church. God’s word will never be denied whether it be preached by us or our sister church” *

“God does not desire reluctant service and God has given everyone a conscience.” *

“In order to know anything at all about God, one had to rely on revelation from God. In other words, God could speak into this world, but man could not reach out of this world to examine God. It was a one-way street, and of course this was directly related to the especially Lutheran doctrine of grace. Man could not earn his way up to heaven, but God could reach down and graciously lift man toward him.”

One of Bonhoeffers favorite subjects was the “the difference between a faith based on our moral efforts and one based on grace.”

“Every day I am getting to know people, at any rate their circumstances, and sometimes one is able to see through their stories into themselves – and at the same time one thing continues to impress me: here I meet people as they are, far from the masquerade of the Christian world, people with passions, criminal types, small people with small aims, small wages and small sins – all in all they are the people who feel homeless in both senses, and who begin to thaw when one speaks to them with kindness – real people. I can ony say that I have gained the impression that it is just these people who are much more under grace than under wrath, and that it is the Christian world which is more under wrath than grace.” *

“Recently I have noticed again and again that all the decisions I had to make were not really my own decisions. Whenever there was a dilemma, I just left it in abeyance and without really consciously dealing with it intensively – let it grow toward the clarity of a decision. But this clarity is not so much intellectual as it is instinctive. The decision is made, whether one can adequately justify it retrospectively is another question.”  *

“Where a people prays, there is the church, and where the church is, there is never loneliness.” *

“God wants to see human beings, not ghosts who shun the world. He said that in the whole world of human history there is always only one really signficant reality – the present. If you want to find eternity, you must serve the times.”

“One admires Christ according to aesthetic categories as an aesthetic genius, calls him the greatest ethicist, one admires his going to his death as a heroic sacrifice for his ideas. Only one thing one doesn’t do: one doesn’t take him seriously. This is, one doesn’t bring the center of his or her own life into contact with the claim of Christ to speak the revelation of God and to be that revelation. One maintains a distance between himself or herself and the word of Christ, and allows no serious encounter to take place…should there be something in Christ that claims my life entirely with the full seriousness that here God himself speaks and if the word of God once became present only in Christ, then Christ has not only relative, but absolute, urgent significance for me…understanding Christ means taking Christ seriously. Understanding this claim means taking seriously his absolute claim on our commitment. And it is now of importance for us to clarify the seriousness of this matter and to extricate Christ from the secularization process in which he has been incorporated since the Enlightenment.” *

“It is far too easy for us to base our claims to God on our own Christian religiousity and our church commitment, and in doing utterly to misunderstand and distort the Christian idea.” *

“In revelation, it is not so much a question of the freedom of God – eternally remaining with the divine self, aseity – on the other side of revelation, as it is of God’s coming out of God’s own self in revelation. It is a matter of God’s given word, the covenant in which God is bound by God’s own action. It is a question of the freedom of God, which finds its strongest evidence precisely in that God freely chose to be bound to historical human beings and to be placed at the disposal of human beings. God is free not from human beings, but for them. Chirst is the word of God’s freedom.” *

“Nowadays we often ask ourselves whether we still need the Church, whether we still need God. But his question, he said is wrong. We are the ones who are questioned. The Church exists and God exists, and we are asked whether we are willing to be of service, for God needs us.” *

“Today you are not to be given fear of life but courage, and so today in the Church we shall speak more than ever of hope, the hope that we have and which no one can take from you.”  *

“One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible, God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to inquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us….Only if we venture into the words of the Bible, as though in them this God were speaking to us who loves us adn does not will to leave us along with our questions, on so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible” *

“but if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it.” *

“this path will lead right down into the deepest situation of human powerlessness. The follower becomes a laughingstock, scorned and taken for a fool, but a fool who is extremely dangerous to people’s peace and comfort, so that he or she must be beaten, locked up, tortured, if not put to death right away. That is exactly what became of this man Jeremiah (prophet in old testament), because he could not get away from God” *

“there is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect one-self. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.” *

“the restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old, but a life of uncomprising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount… Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.” *

“Bonhoeffer knew that one could see some things only with the eyes of faith, but they were no less real and true than the things one saw with one’s physical eyes. But the eyes of faith had a moral component. To see that it was against God’s wil to persecute the Jews, mone must choose to open one’s eyes. An then one would face another uncomfortable choice: whether to act as God required… Bonhoeffer strove to see what God wanted to show and then to do what God asked in response. That was the obedient Christian life, the call of the disciple. And it came with a cost, which explained why so many were afraid to open their eyes in the first place. It was the antithesis of the “cheap grace” that required nothing more than an easy mental assent.”

“the proclamation of grace has its limits. Grace may not be proclaimed to anyone who does not recognize or distinguish or desire it. ..The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it, and it will not only trample on the Holy, but also will tear apart those who force it on them. For its own sake, for the sake of the sinner, and for the sake of the community, the Holy is to be protected from cheap surrender. The preaching of grace can only be protected by the preaching of repentance.” *

“we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God’s cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be “unsuccessful” and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm.” *

On Bonhoeffer’s inner turmoil over whether to leave the US and return to Germany.

“It is remarkable how I am never quite clear about the motives for any of my decisions. Is that a sign of confusion, of inner dishonesty, or is it a sign that we are guided without knowing, or its it both?…I don’t know where I am. But he [God] knows, and in the end all doings and actions will be pure and clear.” *

Back in Germany, Bonhoeffer struggled regarding how Christians should respond to what they saw happening.

“Thus we were approaching the borderline between confession and resistance; and if we did not cross this border, our confession was going to be no better than cooperation with the criminals. And so it became clear where the problem lay for the Confessing Church: we were resisting by way of confession, but we were not confessing by way of resistance.” *

“In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things, the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done….history appeals its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means… the figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for a standard.” *

“God was interested not in success, but in obedience. If one obeyed God and was willing to suffer defeat and whatever else came one’s way, God would show a kind of success that the world couldn’t imagine. But this was the narrow path, and few would take it.”

“For Bohoeffer, the relationship with God ordered everything else around it….To be true to God in the deepest way meant having such a relationship with him that one did not live legalistically by rules or principles. One could never separate one’s actions from one’s relationship with God. It was a more demanding and more mature level of obedience, and Bonhoeffer had come to see that the evit of Hitler was forcing Christians to go deeper in their obedience, to think harder about what God was asking them. Legalistic religion was being shown to be utterly inadequate.”

“we must not confuse what we do naturally, such as wishing, hoping, sighing, lamenting, rejoicing, with prayer, which is unnatural to us, and which must be intiated from outside us, by God. If we confuse these two things.”

“who can comprehend how those whom God takes so early are chosen? Does not the early death of young Christians always appear to us as if God were plundering his own best instruments in a time in which they are most needed? Yet the Lord makes no mistakes. Might God need our brothers for some hidden service on our behalf in the heavenly world? We should put an end to our human thoughts, which always wish to know more than they can, and cling to that which is certain. Whomever God calls home is someone God has loved.” *

“God and the devil are engaged in battle in the world and that the devil also has a say in death. In the face of death we cannot simply speak in some fatalistic way, “God wills it”, but we must juxtapose it with the other reality, “God does not will it”. Death reveals that the world is not as it should be but that it stands in need of redemption. Christ alone is the conquering of death. Here the sharp antithesis between “God wills it” and “God does not will it” comes to a head and also finds its resolution. God acedes to that which God does not will, and form now on death itself must therefore serve God. From now on, the “God wills it” encompasses even the “God does not will it.” God wills the conquering of death through the death of Jesus Christ. Only in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ has death been drawn into God’s power, and it must now serve God’s own aims. It is not some fatalistic surrender, but rather a living faith in Jesus Christ, who died and rose for use, that is able to cope profoundly with death.” *

“let us know dwell now on the bad that lurks and has power in every person, but let us encounter each other in great, free forgiveness and love, let us take each other as we are – with thanks and boundless trust in God, who has led us to this point and now loves us.” *

“who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegience to God – the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God.” *

“the great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.” *

“if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ was called.” *

“to renounce a full life and its real joys in order to avoid pain is neither Christian nor human” *

“as long as Christ and the world are conceived as two realms bumping against and repelling each other, we are left with only the following options. Giving up on reality as a whole, either we place ourselves in one of the two realms, wanting Christ without the world or the world without Christ – and in both cases we deceive ourselves…there are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God’s reality reveale in Christ in the reality of this world.” *

“those who retreat to a private virtuousness neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But…they must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest…” *

In the last weeks of Bonhoeffers life in prison before he was executed:

“death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible, if only we can be still and hold fast to God’s Word. Death is not bitter, if we have not become bitter ourselves. Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild, death is sweet and gentle, it beckons to us with heavenly power, if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the everlasting kingdom of peace….Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelouse, that we can transform death.” *

* indicates actual quotations from Bonhoeffers writings