Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German: [ˈdiːtʁɪç ˈbɔn.høː.fɐ]; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was 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 has been described as a modern classic.\n\nApart from his theological writings, Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to the Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Hitler's euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of the Jews. He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel prison for one and a half years. Later, he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp.
After being accused of being associated with the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was quickly tried along with other accused plotters, including former members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office), and then hanged on 9 April 1945 as the Nazi regime was collapsing.
Christian marriage is marked by discipline and self-denial. Christianity does not therefore depreciate marriage, it sanctifies it.
God does not give us everything we want, but He does fulfill His promises, leading us along the best and straightest paths to Himself.
In Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.
The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ.
The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.
After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.
As long as we let the Word of God be our only armor, we can look confidently into the future.
Being free means being free for the other, because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free.
The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.
The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry.
God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while other are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case it is one cross.
Wherever it pleases God to put man in this world, the Christian must be ready for martyrdom and death. It is only in this way that man learns faith.
The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential.
How would you expect to find community while you intentionally withdraw from it at some point? The disobedient cannot believe; only the obedient believe.
We should find God in what we do know, not in what we don't; not in outstanding problems, but in those we have already solved.
The preaching of grace can only be protected by the preaching of repentance.
To be sure, God shall call you, and us, only at the hour that God has chosen. Until that hour, which lies in God's hand alone, we shall be protected even in the greatest danger; and from our gratitude for such protection ever new readiness surely arises for the final call.
God wants to see human beings, not ghosts who shun the world... Our marriage must be a 'yes' to God's earth. It must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth. I fear that Christians who venture to stand on earth on only one leg will stand in heaven on only one leg too.
The future and the hope for the middle class church lies in the renewal of its lifeblood, which is only possible if the church succeeds in winning the working class.
So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self- satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. A fool must therefore be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel.
In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves.
Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.
It seems to me more important actually to share someones distress than to use smooth words about it.
There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is the reality of God, which has become manifest in the Christ event redemption and creation.
Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.
Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.
Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?
They wander on earth and live in heaven, and although they are weak, they protect the world; they taste of peace in the midst of turmoil; they are poor, and yet they have all they want. They stand in suffering and remain in joy, they appear dead to all outward sense and lead a life of faith within.
Before Jesus leads His disciples into suffering, humiliation, disgrace, and disdain, He summons them and shows Himself to them as the Lord in God's glory.
It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.
He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community.
Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life.
Longer Version:
Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.
Consecutive reading of biblical books forces everyone who wants to hear to put himself, or to allow himself to be found, where God has acted once and for all for the salvation of men.
As Christ bore and received us as sinners so we in his fellowship may bear and receive sinners into the fellowship of Christ through the forgiving of sins.
Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community; indeed, it poisons the Christianity community.
It is the fellowship of the Cross to experience the burden of the other. If one does not experience it, the fellowship he belongs to is not Christian. If any member refuses to bear that burden, he denies the law of Christ.
If religion is onlya garment of Christianityand even this garment has looked very different at different timesthen what is religionless Christianity?
In the gospels the very first step a man must take is an act which radically affects his whole existence.
And after death something new begins, over which all the powers of the world of death can have no more control.
The church ... is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.
The temple of God is the holy people in Jesus Christ. The Body of Christ is the living temple of God and of the new humanity.
The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.
Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of fellowship.
Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this.
Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian conception of God.
The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works.
Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love.
Longer Version:
Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. In such love there is not inner discord between the private person and official capacity. In both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not Christians at all.
The child asks of the Father whom he knows. Thus, the essence of Christian prayer is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition. The right way to approach God is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.
That it is Peter, the rock of the church, who incurs guilt here immediately after his own confession to Jesus Christ and after his appointment by Jesus, means that from its very inception the church itself has taken offense at the suffering Christ.
Longer Version:
That it is Peter, the rock of the church, who incurs guilt here immediately after his own confession to Jesus Christ and after his appointment by Jesus, means that from its very inception the church itself has taken offense at the suffering Christ. It neither wants such a Lord nor does it, as the Church of Christ, want its Lord to force upon it the law of suffering.
Self-denial means knowing only Christ, and no longer oneself. It means seeing only Christ, who goes ahead of us, and no longer the path that is too difficult for us....
Self-denial is saying only: He goes ahead of us, hold fast to him.
How shall we ever help a Christian brother and set him straight in his difficulty and doubt, if not with God's own Word? All our own words quickly fail.
The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all he has. It is the pearl of great price to by which the merchant will sell all his goods.
Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
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.
The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events.
God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.
The gift of Christ is not the Christian religion, but the grace and love of God which culminate in the cross.
Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.
If you believe, take the first step, it leads to Jesus Christ. If you don't believe, take the first step all the same, for you are bidden to take it.
A day without morning and evening prayers and personal intercessions is actually a day without meaning or importance.
A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.
Longer Version:
A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.
While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.
Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is the more attractive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.
Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one's community back from the path of sin.
I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me.
Just as our love for God begins with listening to God's Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them.
The wars of Israel were the only 'holy wars' in history... there can be no more wars of faith. The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him.
If the heart is devoted to the mirage of the world, to the creature instead of the Creator, the disciple is lost... However urgently Jesus may call us, His call fails to find access to our hearts... for they have already been given to another.
What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straghtforward men.
From now on there can be no more wars of faith. The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him.
The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.