Voices and influences
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (February 4, 1906 – April 9, 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, ecumenist, and resistance member, executed by the SS at the Flossenbürg concentration camp two weeks before its liberation.
Summary
This site quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer 11 times across 4 books, and lists 7 works.
- Lived 1906 to 1945, German.
- Quoted here most in Matthew: 7 of 11.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- Lived
- 1906 to 1945
- Nation
- German
- Tradition
- German Confessing Church
- Body
- Lutheran
5 of 11 quotations
Own words
Quoted at 50 words or fewer, because Dietrich Bonhoeffer's works are in copyright.
Sorrow cannot tire them or wear them down, it cannot embitter them or cause them to break down under the strain; far from it, for they bear their sorrow in the strength of him who bears them up.
Matthew 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. BSB
As if their own needs and their own distress were not enough, they take upon themselves the distress and humiliation and sin of others.
Matthew 5:7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. BSB
Only those whose hearts are undefiled by their own evil - and by their own virtues too.
Matthew 5:8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. BSB
The call of Jesus Christ means either that we are the salt of the earth, or else we are annihilated; either we follow the call or we are crushed beneath it. There is no question of a second chance.
Matthew 5:13 You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. BSB
A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.
Matthew 5:14–16 You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they set it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer 11 times across 4 books, and 1 study draws on this voice.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (February 4, 1906 – April 9, 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, ecumenist, and resistance member, executed by the SS at the Flossenbürg concentration camp two weeks before its liberation. Born in Breslau into a non-religious academic family, he completed his doctoral dissertation (Sanctorum Communio) at age 21 under Reinhold Seeberg in Berlin. He pastored German-speaking congregations in Barcelona and London, taught at Berlin's Friedrich-Wilhelms University, directed the underground Confessing Church seminary at Finkenwalde, and served as a double agent inside German military intelligence (the Abwehr) while participating in plots to assassinate Hitler. Arrested April 1943, he wrote his final theological letters from Tegel prison. He left no completed magnum opus — Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison are reconstructions from posthumous fragments — yet became one of the 20th century's most influential theological voices.
7 works
How to read this voice
The Cost of Discipleship
German Nachfolge, 1937; English 1948
The anchor work for the ★★★ cost-of-following taxonomy node. Eric Metaxas's biography (2010) calls it "the bone-deep counter-text to cheap-grace evangelicalism."
10 quotations on this site
Life Together
Gemeinsames Leben, 1939
The Finkenwalde seminary's rule of life made portable. The most influential evangelical primer on Christian community in the 20th century.
1 quotation on this site
Ethics
Ethik, posthumous reconstruction 1949; critical edition 2005
The unfinished but indispensable text for Bonhoeffer's moral theology. The argument that there is no ethics in the abstract — only obedience to God in the concrete.
Not quoted on this site yet
Letters and Papers from Prison
Widerstand und Ergebung, posthumous 1951
The "religionless Christianity" letters; the most contested texts in his catalog. The "world come of age" diagnostic for post-Christendom mission.
Not quoted on this site yet
Sanctorum Communio
1927 dissertation; published 1930
"Christ existing as community" — the foundational claim of his ecclesiology, written when he was 21.
Not quoted on this site yet
Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible
1940
Bonhoeffer's defense of Christocentric Psalm reading; written and published under Confessing Church authorization, for which the Reich attempted to ban him from publishing.
Not quoted on this site yet
Christ the Center / Christology lectures
1933 lectures; published posthumously
Bonhoeffer's most direct christological articulation; the lectures from his Berlin teaching period.
Not quoted on this site yet
11 quotations across 4 books
Where this voice is quoted
Choose a book to read every quotation the site holds from this voice in it. Each one opens on the verse it was chosen for.