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putsch.
knavery
precocity
To think of the church as something universal would change everything and would set in motion the entire course of Bonhoeffer’s remaining life, because if the church was something that actually existed, then it existed not just in Germany or Rome, but beyond both.
anathema
regnant
Theological liberals like Harnack felt it was “unscientific” to speculate on who God was; the theologian must simply study what is here, which is to say the texts and the history of those texts. But the Barthians said no: the God on the other side of the fence had revealed himself through these texts, and the only reason for these texts was to know him.
Bonhoeffer would identify the church as neither a historical entity nor an institution, but as “Christ existing as church-community.” It was a stunning debut.
Christianity conceals within itself a germ hostile to the church.
abeyance
staid
languorous
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.”
he proceeded to explain the similarity of the Christian religion to other religions. Then he came to his main point: the essence of Christianity is not about religion at all, but about the person of Christ.
“Factually speaking,” he said, “Christ has given scarcely any ethical prescriptions that were not to be found already with the contemporary Jewish rabbis or in pagan literature.”
Christianity conceals within itself a germ hostile to the church.
God is free not from human beings but for them. Christ is the word of God’s freedom.
febrile
Community is therefore founded less on truth than on the spirit of “fairness.” One says nothing against another member of the dormitory as long as he is a “good fellow.”
rostrum
Once one saw clearly what the Word of God said, one would have to act on it and its implications, such as they were.
as it was directed at us, as the word of God directly to us. Not something general, not something generally applicable, but rather with a personal relationship to us.
Bonhoeffer’s recurring theme of incarnation—that God did not create us to be disembodied spirits, but flesh-and-blood human beings—led him to the idea that the Christian life must be modeled. Jesus did not only communicate ideas and concepts and rules and principles for living. He lived. And by living with his disciples, he showed them what life was supposed to look like, what God had intended it to look like. It was not merely intellectual or merely spiritual. It was all these things together; it was something more.
catechizing,
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.
corpulent
senescent
With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made “legal.” Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.
inimical
In other words, it is the church’s role to help the state be the state. If the state is not creating an atmosphere of law and order, as Scripture says it must, then it is the job of the church to draw the state’s attention to this failing.
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.”
The third way the church can act toward the state, he said, “is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.”
The translation is awkward, but he meant that a stick must be jammed into the spokes of the wheel to stop the vehicle.
It is sometimes not enough to help those crushed by the evil actions of a state; at some point the church must directly take action against the state to stop it from perpetrating evil. This, he said, is permitted only when the church sees its very existence threatened by...
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It is simply incomprehensible how anybody can consider the Christian doctrine of redemption as a guide for the difficult life of today.
he called Jesus “our greatest Aryan hero.” Reconciling the idea of the Jewish Jesus as an Aryan hero is no less preposterous than trying to reconcile Hitler’s ideal of the ruthless, immoral Nietzchean Übermensch with the humble, self-sacrificing Christ.
Hans Gisevius,
Like the famous Jefferson Bible that omitted anything not to Jefferson’s liking, this institute took a cut-and-paste attitude toward the Bible, excising anything that seemed Jewish or un-German.
After four hundred years of taking for granted that all Germans were Lutheran Christians, no one really knew what Christianity was anymore.
Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse
synod
As would happen so often in the future, he was deeply disappointed in the inability of his fellow Christians to take a definite stand. They always erred on the side of conceding too much, of trying too hard to ingratiate themselves with their opponents. The Bethel Confession had become a magnificent waste of words. The final draft even contained a fawning line about “joyful collaboration” between church and state.
He had become convinced that a church that was not willing to stand up for the Jews in its midst was not the real church of Jesus Christ.
“If you board the wrong train,” he said, “it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.”
plebiscite
He was thinking about the deep call of Christ, which was not about winning, but about submission to God, wherever that might lead.
Thereafter Bonhoeffer took it upon himself to teach Hildebrandt English and always sent him shopping, believing that “shopping will always teach the essentials.”
Rieger was the pastor of St. George’s Church in London’s East End, which soon became the center for refugees from Germany. Bishop Bell became so involved in working with German refugees that he came to be thought of as the “bishop to refugees.”
