Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

They believe that a good intention already means a new beginning; they believe that on their own they can make a new start whenever they want. But that is an evil illusion: only God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God.

Through the life and death of Jesus Christ, history becomes not the transient bearer of eternal values but, for the first time, thoroughly temporal.

But because Jesus is the Christ, it has to be made clear from the beginning that his word is not a doctrine . Instead, it creates existence anew.

To bear the burden of the other person means involvement with the created reality of the other, to accept and affirm it, and, in bearing with it, to break through to the point where we take joy ink.

God's word to me—new every day—in the infinite riches of interpretation.

Not enslaved to principles but bound by love for God, they have become free from the problems and conflicts of ethical decision. They are no longer weighed down by them. They belong completely and solely to God and God's will.

The proper relation of the Church to the world cannot be deduced from natural law or rational law or from universal human rights, but only from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And we can pray only when we realize that we cannot do anything, that we have reached our limit, that someone else must make that new beginning.

The gospel is not to take the form of hole-in-the-corner sectarianism, it must be set forth by public preaching.

At the same time, however, for antiquity the holiest sign of the presence of God, the cross, is the symbol of utter disgrace and remoteness from God. Antiquity becomes our historical heritage in this twofold relationship to Christ, in its nearness and its opposition to Christ.

The word of the justifying grace of God never departs from its position as the final word; it never yields itself simply as a result that has been achieved... The word remains irreversibly the last; for otherwise it would be reduced to the quality of what is calculable, a merchandise, and would thereby be robbed of its divine character. Grace would be venal and cheap. It would not be a gift.

It is the wonderful theme of the Bible, so frightening for many people, that the only visible sign of God in the world is the cross.