Victoria J. Barnett > Quotes

“The bottom line, as Raul Hilberg put it, was that most people thought that, even if Jews shouldn't be killed, they weren't worth saving.”
― Victoria J. Barnett, Bystanders: Conscience and Complicity During the Holocaust

“Not our outstretched beggars’ hands, but rather that with which God fills them is what matters; and that means precisely not us and our actions, but rather first of all God and God’s actions.”
― Victoria J. Barnett, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Volume 2

“Without that holy night, there is no theology.”
― Victoria J. Barnett, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Volume 2

“No priest, no theologian stood at the cradle of Bethlehem. And yet all Christian theology finds its origin in the miracle of miracles, that God became human.”
― Victoria J. Barnett, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Volume 2

“Theologia sacra—it originates in prayerful kneeling before the mystery of the divine child in the stable.”
― Victoria J. Barnett, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Volume 2

“If you lament: my nature, my entire being is without salvation, and I must be lost forever, then the message of Christmas answers: your nature, your entire being has been accepted; Jesus bears it, so he has become your Savior.”
― Victoria J. Barnett, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Volume 2

“Our own ways always circle around back to ourselves. But when God leads our way, then it leads to him. God’s ways lead to God. God leads us through happiness or unhappiness—always only to God. By this we recognize God’s ways.”
― Victoria J. Barnett, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Volume 2

“God revealed in the flesh,” the God-human Jesus Christ, that is the holy mystery, which theology was instituted to preserve and protect. What foolishness, as if it were the task of theology to decode God’s mystery, pulling it down to the commonplace, miracle-less words of wisdom based on human experience and reason! Whereas this alone is its charge—to keep the miracle of God a miracle, to comprehend, defend, and exalt the mystery of God, precisely as mystery.”
― Victoria J. Barnett, The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Volume 2