Harnack’s theology was something like Archilochus’s proverbial fox, knowing many little things, while Barth’s theology was like a hedgehog, knowing one big thing. Bonhoeffer would side with the hedgehog, but he was in the fox’s seminar, and through his family and the Grunewald community, he had many ties with the fox. As a result of his intellectual openness, Bonhoeffer learned how to think like a fox and respect the way foxes thought, even though he was in the camp of the hedgehogs. — 61: 1385-1389
On September 23 the parents heard their son preach on a theme central to him throughout his life, supporting the accurately earthly, incarnational aspect of the Christian faith against the Gnostic or dualistic idea that the body is inferior to the soul or spirit. “God wants to see human beings,” he said, “not ghosts who shun the world.” He said that in “the whole of world history there is always only one really significant hour—the present. . . . [I]f you want to find eternity, you must serve the times.” — 80: 1739-1742
“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.” In another letter to her he wrote that “human beings were taken from the earth and don’t just consist of thin air and thoughts.” — 80: 1743-1746
have long thought that sermons had a center that, if you hit it, would move anyone or confront them with a decision. I no longer believe that. First of all, a sermon can never grasp the center, but can only itself be grasped by it, by Christ. And then Christ becomes flesh as much in the word of the pietists as in that of the clerics or of the religious socialists, and these empirical connections actually pose difficulties for preaching that are absolute, not merely relative. This was a very radical and dramatic thing to say, but it is the perfectly logical conclusion to the idea that apart from God’s grace, one can do nothing worthwhile. Anything good must come from God, so even in a sermon that was poorly written and delivered, God might manifest himself and touch the congregation. Conversely in a sermon wonderfully written and delivered, God might refuse to manifest himself. The “success” of the sermon is utterly dependent on the God who breaks through and “grasps” us, or we cannot be “grasped.” There was a foreshadowing of Bonhoeffer’s famous “Jeremiah” sermon a few years hence, and of his attitude toward his fate under the Nazis. What did it mean to be “grasped” by God? And why did Bonhoeffer already begin to have a deep sense that God had “grasped him,” had chosen him for something? — 81: 1750-1761
It was as if he’d thrown a bucket of water on the congregation and had then thrown his shoes at them. — 122: 2471-2472
Bonhoeffer then famously enumerated “three possible ways in which the church can act towards the state.” The first, already mentioned, was for the church to question the state regarding its actions and their legitimacy—to help the state be the state as God has ordained. The second way—and here he took a bold leap—was “to aid the victims of state action.” He said that the church “has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society.” And before that sentence was over, he took another leap, far bolder than the first—in fact, some ministers walked out—by declaring that the church “has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.” — 153: 3051-3056
He was far ahead of the curve, as usual. Some wondered whether he was just kicking against the goads, but when someone asked Bonhoeffer whether he shouldn’t join the German Christians in order to work against them from within, he answered that he couldn’t. “If you board the wrong train,” he said, “it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.” — 187: 3658-3661
As Bonhoeffer took great pains to make clear, the Barmen Declaration did not constitute a secession from the “official” German church because calling it a secession would give an appearance of legitimacy to that “official” German church. It was not the Confessing Church that had broken away, but the Reichskirche. — 226: 4374-4376
Their methods were “not so much aimed at banning the Confessing Church directly,” Bethge said, “but gradually liquidating it through intimidation and the suppression of individual activities.” — 294: 5604-5606
And 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. — 317: 6062-6064
The Americans speak so much about freedom in their sermons. Freedom as a possession is a doubtful thing for a church; freedom must be won under the compulsion of a necessity. Freedom for the church comes from the necessity of the Word of God. Otherwise it becomes arbitrariness and ends in a great many new ties. — 342: 6517-6519
He wrote of that in his Ethics too: It is only the cynic who claims “to speak the truth” at all times and in all places to all men in the same way, but who, in fact, displays nothing but a lifeless image of the truth. . . . He dons the halo of the fanatical devotee of truth who can make no allowance for human weaknesses; but, in fact, he is destroying the living truth between men. He wounds shame, desecrates mystery, breaks confidence, betrays the community in which he lives, and laughs arrogantly at the devastation he has wrought and at the human weakness which “cannot bear the truth.” — 366: 6933-6938
His role in the conspiracy was between him and God alone; that much he knew. And he knew that being chosen by God, as the Jews were chosen, and as the prophets were chosen, was something unfathomable. It was the highest honor, but a terrible one, one that none would ever seek. — 388: 7344-7346
This was how Bonhoeffer saw what he was doing. He had theologically redefined the Christian life as something active, not reactive. It had nothing to do with avoiding sin or with merely talking or teaching or believing theological notions or principles or rules or tenets. It had everything to do with living one’s whole life in obedience to God’s call through action. It did not merely require a mind, but a body too. It was God’s call to be fully human, to live as human beings obedient to the one who had made us, which was the fulfillment of our destiny. — 446: 8430-8434
Here was the rub: one must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin. One must sacrifice oneself utterly to God’s purposes, even to the point of possibly making moral mistakes. — 446: 8440-8442
“I can’t read a book or write a paragraph,” he said to Bethge, “without talking to you about it or at least asking myself what you would say about it.” — 461: 8724-8725
It always seems to me that we are trying anxiously in this way to reserve some space for God; I should like to speak of God not on the boundaries but at the centre, not in weaknesses but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man’s life and goodness. . . . The church stands not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village. That is how it is in the Old Testament, and in this sense we still read the New Testament far too little in the light of the Old. How this religionless Christianity looks, what form it takes is something that I’m thinking about a great deal and I shall be writing to you again about it soon. — 467: 8834-8839
it can be seen, along with his Discipleship and Life Together, as essentially complete,* and as indisputably important in forming a full understanding of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The book opens with these lines: “Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand—from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: ‘How can I be good?’ and ‘How can I do something good?’ Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: ‘What is the will of God?’” — 468: 8850-8856
the guilt may often lie rather with the community than with the individual. — 472: 8925-8925
I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. . . . One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. 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—watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia;* and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian (cf. Jer. 45!). How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind? I think you see what I mean, even though I put it so briefly, I’m glad to have been able to learn this, and I know I’ve been able to do so only along the road that I’ve travelled. So I’m grateful for the past and present, and content with them. . . . 485 — 484: 9169-9180
“The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one’s life towards a goal. Without such a goal, chastity is bound to become ridiculous. Chastity is the sine qua non of lucidity and concentration.” — 486: 9209-9210
He always cheered me up and comforted me, he never tired of repeating that the only fight which is lost is that which we give up. — 498: 9462-9463
To probe the problem of ethics was not to indulge in the game of “dialectical” theology. The search had to lead to the goal, the quest demanded an answer. — 539: 10226-10228