Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoefferwas a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential, and his book The Cost of Discipleship became a modern classic...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth4 February 1906
CountryGermany
seriousness absolutes
Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.
prayer heart important
If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.
jesus unconditional-love judgement
Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love. I am not forbidden to have my own thoughts about the other person, to realize his shortcomings, but only to the extent that it offers to me an occasion for forgiveness and unconditional love, as Jesus proves to me.
jesus children fall
Who is pure in heart? Only those who have surrendered their hearts completely to Jesus that he may reign in them alone. Only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil--and by their own virtues too. The pure in heart have a child-like simplicity like Adam before the fall, innocent alike of good and evil: their hearts are not ruled by their conscience, but by the will of Jesus.
prayer father heart
The right way to pray is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.
sacrifice enemy lovers
No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy.
love christian dream
Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.
crush men hands
The fearful danger of the present time is that above the cry for authority, we forget that man stands alone before the ultimate authority, and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here, is infringing eternal laws, and taking upon himself superhuman authority, which will eventually crush him.
law grace cost
grace at a low cost, is in the last resort simply a new law, which brings neither help nor freedom.
hero worship christ
Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.
mean thinking suffering
I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.
struggle done flesh
When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.
journey traveler
There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.
trying tears gaps
Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.