Bonhoeffer: On Life and Death

Here are some more thoughts along the theme of "Life and Death" that struck me during my Bonhoeffer reading of the past week.

Understanding Christ means taking Christ seriously. Understanding this claim means taking seriously his absolute claim on our commitment. And it is now of importance for us to clarify the seriousness of this matter and to extricate Christ from the secularization process in which he has been incorporated since the Enlightenment (83).

There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God's commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross (241).

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be seduced only by success.... The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for it standard (361).

Death reveals that the world is not as it should be but that is stands in need of redemption. Christ alone is the conquering of death.... Only in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ has death been drawn into God's power, and it must now serve God's own aims (384).

Time belongs to death, or, still more so, to the devil. We must buy it from him and return it to God, to whom it must really belong (411).

And then, after a lifetime of intense devotion and focused faith, it is no wonder that Bonhoeffer's life ended with these words. When informed that it was his time to go to the scaffold, he replied, "This is the end. For me, the beginning of life."

Bonhoeffer: On Scripture

A few days of vacation in the Palm Springs sun has afforded me the luxury of powering through a book I have wanted to read for a while- Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. While it is a pretty thick read, this book has really hit me at several different levels all at the same time: as a follower of Christ, as a lover of history, as a pastor, and as a husband.

Over the next few days, I want to share some of the quotes that captured me the most. Here are a few thoughts on the Bible that rekindled a passion to pursue Christ through His Word with deeper devotion.

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 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 to will to leave us with our questions, only so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible (136).

The Psalter filled the life of early Christianity. But more important than all of this is that Jesus died on the cross with words from the Psalms on his lips. Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure is lost to the Christian church. With its recovery will come unexpected power (368-369).

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 weakness 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 (467-468).

All throughout his life, Bonhoeffer daily saturated himself in the Word of God and it produced in him a heart that was submissive to the will of God. I admire his devotion to Scripture as the actual Word of God. I admire his discipline to find room for the Bible in his daily schedule. And I admire his obedience to live it out with fierce determination in the midst of a chaotic world of evil. May we all come to know God's Word in this way.