Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Holy theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine child in the stable. Without the holy night, there is no theology.

Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words. They should remain open. Our only comfort is the God of the resurrection, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ...

And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly…. God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.

Jesus will not accept the common distinction between righteous indignation and unjustifiable anger. The disciple must be entirely innocent of anger, because anger is an offence against both God and his neighbour.

The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the distress of the cross; therefore it is invincible and irrefutable.

But I'm afraid I'm bad at comforting; I can listen all right, but I can hardly ever find anything to say.

Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God.

Contrary to all my own opinions and convictions, Jesus Christ will tell me what love toward the brethren really is.

Those who are still afraid of men have no fear of God, and those who have fear of God have ceased to be afraid of men. All preachers of the gospel will do well to recollect this saying daily.

No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.

Discipleship means adherence to Christ, and, because Christ is the object of that adherence, it must take the form of discipleship. An abstract Christology, a doctrinal system, a general religious knowledge on the subject of grace or on the forgiveness of sins, render discipleship superfluous, and in fact they positively exclude any idea of discipleship whatever, and are essentially inimical to the whole conception of following Christ.

One who will not learn to handle the Bible for himself is not an evangelical Christian.