Quotes from Eric Metaxas

Bonhoeffer was not interested in intellectual abstraction. Theology must lead to the practical aspects of how to live as a Christian.

Luther used this as an illustration of how even when God reached out to us in love and grace, we are often so suffused with the idea of him as a stern judge bent on punishing us that we tragically shrink from his loving grasp, thus to our own sad detriment denying ourselves the very thing for which we long.

the Golden Triangle of Freedom is, when reduced to its most basic form, that freedom requires virtue; virtue requires faith; and faith requires freedom.

He had theologically redefined the Christian life as something active, not reactive. It had nothing to do with avoiding sin or with merely talking or teaching or believing theological notions or principles or rules or tenets. It had everything to do with living one's whole life in obedience to God's call through action.

We pretend we would have spoken out for the Jews in Bonhoeffer's day, or that we would have spoken against the slave trade in Wilberforce's day, but are we speaking out today on the issues that are no less important to God in our time? If not, we are deceiving ourselves.

But making the greater mistake of being paralyzed to inaction—for fear of making a mistake—for fear of stepping outside some false religious boundary, is something else. For that kind of inaction reveals what we really think of God, that he is a legalistic moral policeman waiting for us to slip up just so that he can make his arrest quota for the day.

he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.*

As nations become corrupt and vicious," he says, "they have more need of masters." The root of the word "vicious" is "vice"—the word simply means "full of vice." So Franklin, without feeling the need to explain himself much, is bluntly saying that "freedom requires virtue." And that less virtue inevitably begets less freedom. In

When he said they needed to humble themselves and listen to God's commands and obey them, he was not posturing. He wanted to impart this vision of God and was saying that one must utterly trust God now and must know that hearing him is indeed all that matters.

But for reasons history will never understand, Cajetan and the church could not perceive the situation along these lines at all. They were oddly stubborn, and for this reason the Reformation, which might well have been averted, went forward.

And if any of these forces were in the slightest degree different, our universe would not exist. But how were the values of these four fundamental forces determined, and how is it that they just happened to be precisely right for our universe to come into being?

The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue.

In all these scenes he was constantly accompanied by Milner, whose vivacity and sense, in union with most unpolished manners, continually amused his friends.

Several times Bonhoeffer used Barth's image of the Tower of Babel as a picture of "religion," of man trying to reach heaven through his own efforts, which always failed.

evidently sown while the bishops slept (Mt 13:25).

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.

A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it. —Martin Luther

Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great. Though

We must be able to speak about our faith so that hands will be stretched out toward us faster than we can fill them.

Though a clergyman, he never thought of reading prayers during their whole stay at Nice. He appeared in all respects like an ordinary man of the world, mixing, like myself, in all companies, and joining, as readily as others, in the prevalent Sunday parties. Indeed, when I engaged him as a companion in my tour, I knew not that he had any deeper principles.

From the beginning of his time until the end, Bonhoeffer maintained the daily discipline of scriptural meditation and prayer he had been practicing for more than a decade. Each morning he meditated for at least half an hour on a verse of Scripture. And he interceded for his friends and relatives, and for his brothers in the Confessing Church who were on the front lines or in concentration camps.

To postulate a trillion-trillion other universes, rather than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality.

God wants to see human beings, not ghosts who shun the world. In the whole of world history there is only one real significant hour ... the present ... if you want to find eternity, you must serve the times.

There hardly ever seem to be "encounters" in this great country, in which the one can always avoid the other. But where there is no encounter, where liberty is the only unifying factor, one naturally knows nothing of the community which is created through encounter. The whole life together is completely different as a result. Community in our sense, whether cultural or ecclesiastical, cannot develop there. Is