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.
Works on this site: 1927 to 1951.
6 of 11 quotations
In their own words
He hears the confession of our sins in Christ's stead, and he forgives our sins in Christ's name. He keeps the secret of our confessions as God keeps it. When I go to my brother to confess, I am going to God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer· Life Together, 1939German Confessing Church
James 5:16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail.
At this critical moment nothing on earth, however sacred, must be allowed to come between Jesus and the man he has called-not even the law itself.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer· The Cost of Discipleship, 1937German Confessing Church
Luke 9:59–60 Then He said to another man, “Follow Me.” The man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
The call to follow at once produces a new situation. To stay in the old situation makes discipleship impossible.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer· The Cost of Discipleship, 1937German Confessing Church
Mark 2:14 As He was walking along, He saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth. “Follow Me,” He told him, and Levi got up and followed Him.
When people complain that they find it hard to believe, it is a sign of deliberate or unconscious disobedience.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer· The Cost of Discipleship, 1937German Confessing Church
Mark 2:14 As He was walking along, He saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax booth. “Follow Me,” He told him, and Levi got up and followed Him.
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer· The Cost of Discipleship, 1937German Confessing Church
Matthew 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
As if their own needs and their own distress were not enough, they take upon themselves the distress and humiliation and sin of others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer· The Cost of Discipleship, 1937German Confessing Church
Matthew 5:7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
About this voice
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
What this site reads them for
| The work | Year | Quoted here |
|---|---|---|
| The Cost of DiscipleshipThe 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." | 1937 | 10 quotations |
| Life TogetherThe Finkenwalde seminary's rule of life made portable. The most influential evangelical primer on Christian community in the 20th century. | 1939 | 1 quotation |
| EthicsThe 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. | 1949 | Not quoted here yet |
| Letters and Papers from PrisonThe "religionless Christianity" letters; the most contested texts in his catalog. The "world come of age" diagnostic for post-Christendom mission. | 1951 | Not quoted here yet |
| Sanctorum Communio"Christ existing as community" — the foundational claim of his ecclesiology, written when he was 21. | 1927 | Not quoted here yet |
| Psalms: The Prayer Book of the BibleBonhoeffer's defense of Christocentric Psalm reading; written and published under Confessing Church authorization, for which the Reich attempted to ban him from publishing. | 1940 | Not quoted here yet |
| Christ the Center / Christology lecturesBonhoeffer's most direct christological articulation; the lectures from his Berlin teaching period. | 1933 | Not quoted here yet |
Where to find them
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.