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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Eric Metaxas
Read between
December 29, 2022 - February 23, 2023
as it endlessly must be—did
How profound
There are times when our faith may look like a lack of faith to some people. But what does it look like to God? That is the question.
Great point
effulgent human life, of a life that sought by living fully in the moment of the here and now—and
He was present in the now of his life
“We are saved by faith alone, but not by faith which is alone.”
Great turn of a phrase
In January 1919 an election was held, but no one gained a majority and there was no consensus. These forces would keep fighting for years, and Germany would remain divided and confused until 1933, when a wild-eyed vagabond from Austria would end the confusion by outlawing all dissent, and then the real troubles would begin. But
14 years of division and uncertainty is hard.
it gave way to certainty.
Alas, an awful one.
Are we in similar times? We are divided in: US, Brazil, Italy, Sweden?, others?
Will this be resolved with politically? War?
If war, among countries or will it start with a civil war in a country?
A year earlier, when the Germans still expected overall victory in the war and had just defeated Russia, hadn’t they forced the Russians to sign a treaty that was almost certainly worse than what they were being forced to sign now?
I didn't know G had beat R.
Nor that G had imposed a harsh treaty.
He served as primus inter pares (first among equals)
First among equals
The Bonhoeffers were far too secure to fall for such highfalutin buffoonery; they were neither ultranationalists nor monarchists. But they were generally patriotic, so
Moderate patriots
A new member3 of the Igels was a Fuchs (Fox), alluding to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, who famously declared that “the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
I thought Isaiah Berlin had said it.
Wiki affirmed the Greek source.
That winter while Dietrich9 was living with his grandmother, they discussed the idea of his visiting Gandhi in India.
Wow!!
What her interest in Gandhi was we cannot know for sure. During
Maybe she saw a positive religious force in Gandhi and wanted Dietrich to see it too?
Grandmas are "foxes", I suspect, and less "hedgehogs"
“The universality of the church was illustrated in a marvelously effective manner. White, black, yellow members of religious orders—everyone was in clerical robes united under the church. It truly seems ideal.”
Experiencing diversity helped him embrace it later.
The important thing is God’s word. Conversely, we will never violate anyone else’s faith. God does not desire reluctant service, and God has given everyone a conscience.
Open-minded regarding other religions?
He attended Harnack’s prestigious seminar for three semesters and esteemed the venerable scholar greatly, though he rarely agreed with his theological conclusions.
To hold someone in high esteem yet to disagree with them on important matters.
like amritya sen
Barth stressed the transcendence of God, describing him as “wholly other,” and therefore completely unknowable by man, except via revelation.
Via revelation.
similar belief espoused in the Upanishads.
He could appreciate the value in something, even if he ultimately rejected that something—and could see the errors and flaws in something, even if he ultimately accepted that something.
Complex thinking
Out of this Sunday school class grew something else: the Thursday Circle, a weekly reading and discussion group of young men he personally selected, which met at his home and which he taught. He issued invitations to this group, which began in April 1927. The invitations stated that the group would meet “Every Thursday 5:25–7:00 p.m.” Bonhoeffer did it of his own accord; it had no connection to his church obligations.
Helping young people
Christianity conceals within itself a germ hostile to the church.
So astute
Recently I have noticed again and again that all the decisions I had to make were not really my own decisions.
Less ego
that God was leading him, and sometimes where he preferred not to go.
Like Christ expressed at the Garden of Gethsemane
Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is; there is never loneliness.
Where A people prays, there is a church
It’s much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.
Vanity the opposite of praying
For Bonhoeffer it must have seemed a bit like leaving the intellectual and social ferment of Greenwich Village for a community of prosperous, self-satisfied, and intellectually incurious Connecticut suburbanites.
Intellectually incurious
I have never seen the swing12 from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify!” more graphically evoked than in the virtually insane way the crowd goes berserk when the toreador makes an adroit turn, and they immediately follow this with an equally insane howling and whistling when some mishap occurs.
From Hosanna to Crucify!
He told her he would use the money toward his trip to India to visit Gandhi, which he still planned to do.
Gandhi again!!
This summer18, in which I am on my own for three months, I have to preach every fortnight . . . and I am thankful that I have success in it. It is a mixture of subjective pleasure, let us call it self-satisfaction, and objective gratitude—but that is the judgement upon all religion, this mixture of the subjective and the objective, which one may possibly ennoble, but which one can never fundamentally uproot, and the theologian suffers doubly from this—but again, should one not rejoice at a full church, or that people are coming who had not come for years, and on the other hand, who dare
...more
Renounce and enjoy?
It gives the work value and the worker an objectivity, a recognition of his own limitations,
We all have limitations
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.”
Karma yogi and focus on present
apart from God’s grace, one can do nothing worthwhile.
So true
“You could not be a friend of Dietrich’s if you did not argue with him.”
Argumentative in a way
That these “non-Aryans” had publicly converted to the Christian faith meant nothing, since the lens through which the Nazis saw the world was purely racial.
Interesting.
Nazis focused exclusively on race, it appears.
There are some today who fashion themselves as anti-fascists who, like Nazis ironically, focus only on race.
So it is in this larger context that one has to take his attitude toward the Jews, which, like everything else in his life, unraveled along with his health.
Health declined. So did his ability to discern, it appears.
The hundreds of thousands of sane words he had written were of little interest to the men in brown.
Wow...
How incredibly sad.
Buffett was right to say:
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."
Anyone on the side of truth, wherever it led, was a compatriot to be lauded. This virtue had come to Bonhoeffer, in part, from Harnack and the liberal Grunewald tradition in which he had flourished, and Bonhoeffer was generous enough to see it and state it publicly.
Lover of truth
Philalethia
his respect for truth and for other human beings of different opinions formed the foundation of a civil society in which one might disagree graciously and might reason together civilly and productively.
Wonderful!
It cripples any radical, pertinent criticism. It is more a friendly exchange of opinion than a study in comprehension.
More a friendly exchange of opinions versus study in comprehension
the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life.
The keys to Bonhoeffer
The joyous and transformative power of this music solidified his thinking on the importance of music to worship.
Music important to worship
the only real piety and power that he had seen in the American church seemed to be in the churches where there were a present reality and a past history of suffering.
There is power in suffering?
One can’t be a Christian and a nationalist at the same time.”
I wonder what is meant by nationalist in this sentence
The prophet’s role was simply and obediently to speak what God wished to say. Whether or not the message was received was between God and his people. And yet to preach such a burning message, and to know that it was God’s Word for the faithful, who rejected it, was painful. But this was the pain of the prophetic office, and to be chosen by God as his prophet always meant, in part, that the prophet would share in God’s sufferings.
Wow.
This led him to the idea that, to be a Christian, one must live with Christians.
Interesting
