Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

“God travels wonderful ways with human beings, but he does not comply with the views and opinions of people. God does not go the way that people want to prescribe for him; rather, his way is beyond all comprehension, free and self-determined beyond all proof. Where reason is indignant, where our nature rebels, where our piety anxiously keeps us away: that is precisely where God loves to be. There he confounds the reason of the reasonable; there he aggravates our nature, our piety—that is where he wants to be, and no one can keep him from it. Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

“...And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

“The lack of mystery in our modern life is our downfall and our poverty. A human life is worth as much as the respect it holds for the mystery. We retain the child in us to the extent that we honor the mystery. Therefore, children have open, wide-awake eyes, because they know that they are surrounded by the mystery. They are not yet finished with this world; they still don’t know how to struggle along and avoid the mystery, as we do. We destroy the mystery because we sense that here we reach the boundary of our being, because we want to be lord over everything and have it at our disposal, and that’s just what we cannot do with the mystery…. Living without mystery means knowing nothing of the mystery of our own life, nothing of the mystery of another person, nothing of the mystery of the world; it means passing over our own hidden qualities and those of others and the world. It means remaining on the surface, taking the world seriously only to the extent that it can be calculated and exploited, and not going beyond the world of calculation and exploitation. Living without mystery means not seeing the crucial processes of life at all and even denying them.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

“The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation is going to live.”
― John Hendrix, The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler

“l can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitheno 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. This is a happy discovery for the Christian who begins to pray for others. There is no dislike, no personal tension, no estrangement that cannot be overcome by intercession as far as our side of it is concerned. Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day. The struggle we undergo with our brother in intercession may be a hard one, but that struggle has the promise that it will gain its goal.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. What worries thoughtful theologians such as Bonhoeffer is that gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide.”
― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

“The Church does not need brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and the brethren. Not in the former but in the latter is the lack.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded together to do this.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“First of all I will confess quite simply—I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer. 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 enquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us. Of course it is also possible to read the Bible like any other book, that is to say from the point of view of textual criticism, etc.; there is nothing to be said against that. Only that that is not the method which will reveal to us the heart of the Bible, but only the surface, just as we do not grasp the words of someone we love by taking them to bits, but by simply receiving them, so that for days they go on lingering in our minds, simply because they are the words of a person we love; and just as these words reveal more and more of the person who said them as we go on, like Mary, “pondering them in our heart,” so it will be with the words of the Bible. Only if we will venture to enter into the words of the Bible, as though in them this God were speaking to us who loves us and does not will to leave us along with our questions, only so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible. . . .”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The family trees of Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer are everywhere so laden with figures of accomplishment that one might expect future generations to be burdened by it all. But the welter of wonderfulness that was their heritage seemed to have been a boon, one that buoyed them up so that each child seems not only to have stood on the shoulders of giants but also to have danced on them.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“If we would answer the question of the existence of the Evil then we would not be sinners, we could make something else responsible.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Looking back, all he could see was a swirling pillar of ash and bones behind him. But ahead, there was someone standing on the surface of the water! Suddenly, a strong hand plunged through the watery roiling veil and held his arm fast. It jerked, and Dietrich shuddered. The hand lifted him straight up--into the warmth, into the light. "This is the end--for me the beginning of life.”
― John Hendrix, The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler

“We recognize, then, that only as we are within the fellowship can we be· alone, and only he that is alone can live in the fellowship. Only in the fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in the fellowship. It is not as though the one preceded the other; both begin at the same time, namely, with the call of Jesus Christ.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“Blessed are those who are alone in the strength of the community. Blessed are those who preserve community in the strength of solitude. But the strength of solitude and the strength of community is the strength of the Word of God alone, which is meant for the individual in the community.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“Non è l'atto religioso che fa il cristiano, ma la sua partecipazione al dolore di Dio nella vita del mondo.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Theology is not merely another branch of philosophy, but something else entirely. For him, philosophy was man's search for truth apart from God... But theology begins and ends with faith in Christ, who reveals himself to man; apart from such revelation, there could be no such thing as truth. Thus the philosopher-- and the theologian who operates on a philosopher's assumptions-- chases his own tail and gazes at his own navel. He cannot break out of that cycle, but God, via revelation, can break in.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will only do harm to himself and to the community. ... But the reverse is also true: Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“Instead, choose decaf for your second cup of the day, engage in good sleeping habits, moderate insulin production in your diet, exercise Primally and boost energy naturally with cold water plunges, deep breathing sequences, napping or quick exercise breaks after long periods of inactivity.”
― Mark Sisson, The Primal Blueprint 21-Day Total Body Transformation: A complete, step-by-step, gene reprogramming action plan