Quotes from Eric Metaxas

Every once in a great while, the hand of God is easy to see, and for a brief moment, fairy tales and history are the same thing. This story is about one of those times.

We will have to move through a very deep valley, I believe much deeper than we can sense now, before we will be able to ascend the other side again. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Montesquieu, who wrote that "bad examples can be worse than crimes." He continued: "More states have perished because of a violation of their mores than because of a violation of their Laws." What

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, who also was and is his God. In him we know our brothers and in him is the biding fellowship of those who have overcome and those who still await their hour. God be praised for our dead brother and be merciful to us all at our end.

Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God—the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behaviour. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered.

There was one activity that Bonhoeffer would enjoy in Barcelona, but could never enjoy in Berlin. That was the arte taurina (bull fighting). Though an aesthete and an intellectual, Bonhoeffer was neither effete nor squeamish. His brother Klaus arrived for a visit on Easter Saturday, and on Easter afternoon—Bonhoeffer preached that morning—they were "dragged" by a German teacher, presumably Thumm, to the "great Easter corrida." He

The religion of Christ is not a tidbit after one's bread; on the contrary, it is the bread or it is nothing. People should at least understand and concede this if they call themselves Christian.

First of all, a sermon can never grasp the center, but can only itself be grasped by it, by Christ. And then Christ becomes flesh as much in the word of the pietists as in that of the clerics or of the religious socialists, and these empirical connections actually pose difficulties for preaching that are absolute, not merely relative.

Wilberforce wrote some years later that it was as if he'd been all those years in a dream from which at last now he had been awakened.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."11

Bonhoeffer's theology had always leaned toward the incarnational view that did not eschew "the world," but that saw it as God's good creation to be enjoyed and celebrated, not merely transcended.

Surely this sabbath, of all others, calls forth these feelings in a supreme degree; a frame of united love and triumph well becomes it, and holy confidence and unrestrained affection.

In October Bonhoeffer sent a novelty postcard to Rüdiger Schleicher. It pictured him behind a life-sized cardboard picture of a matador and a bull so that his head was on the matador's body: "The quiet hours in which I cultivated the Arte taurina, have, as you can see, led to tremendous success in the arena. . . . Greetings from the matador. Dietrich.

May God make his Word find a hearing in all the world.

we build him a temple, but we live in our own houses." Religion

Peace is the opposite of security.

Ideas have far-reaching consequences, and one must be ever so careful about what one allows to lodge in one's brain.

sometimes the curses of the godless sound better than the hallelujahs of the pious." Barth

Since the time of the Puritans and the religious wars of the previous century, England had decidedly turned its back on any expressions of what we might call serious Christian belief. Having led to so much division and violence, religion was now in full-scale retreat.

the whole of world history there is always only one really significant hour—the present. . .

Since the Pilgrims came to our shores in 1620, religious freedom and religious tolerance have been the single most important principle of American life. This

True faith is not a leap in the dark; it's a leap into the light.*

He saw that the Bible didn't teach that we must work harder at becoming perfect and holy, but that we must instead throw ourselves on God's mercy. Moral perfection wasn't the answer: Jesus was the answer. Jesus had been morally perfect and we weren't supposed to save ourselves—we were supposed to ask him to save us.