Quotes from Eric Metaxas

German culture was inescapably Christian. This was a result of the legacy of Martin Luther, the Catholic monk who invented Protestantism. Looming over the German culture and nation like both a father and a mother, Luther was to Germany something like what Moses was to Israel;

The rich world of his ancestors set the standards for Dietrich Bonhoeffer's own life. It gave him a certainty of judgment and manner that cannot be acquired in a single generation. He grew up in a family that believed the essence of learning lay not in a formal education but in the deeply rooted obligation to be guardians of a great historical heritage and intellectual tradition. —EBERHARD BETHGE

Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic . . . Do not defend God's Word, but testify to it . . . Trust to the Word. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

nowadays we often ask ourselves whether we still need the Church, whether we still need God. But this question, he said, is wrong. We are the ones who are questioned. The Church exists and God exists, and we are asked whether we are willing to be of service, for God needs us.

When we come to see the superlatively extreme precariousness of our existence, and begin to understand how by any accounting, we ought not to exist, what are we to think or feel? Our existence seems to be not merely a virtually impossible miracle but the most outrageous miracle conceivable, one that makes previously amazing miracles seem like almost nothing. It's

I believe our situation in present-day America is grave, but this book is not meant to be discouraging. In fact, by way of encouragement before we consider what we have forgotten and what we must do, let's first acknowledge that despite our difficulties and considerable failings, much of America's promise has already been fulfilled, and spectacularly so, far beyond what anyone might have imagined.

Unless we are hopelessly bound by cynicism, we have to acknowledge that the United States has been remarkably and consistently generous in sharing what it has, whether material things or ideas.

The Luther Bible was to the modern German language what the works of Shakespeare and the King James Bible were to the modern English language. Before Luther's Bible, there was no unified German language.

many atheistic scientists insist there is never any reason to speculate beyond the universe of matter and energy, because there is nothing beyond that. They insist that the universe is all that is. The problem is that they cannot by any means prove this scientifically, so for them to make this claim at all is itself "unscientific." Ironically, in doing so, such scientists are themselves reaching beyond the world of science.

what it was that made one virtuous, whether religion or simple cultural habit, or a

our people could only see all this, they would stop grumbling about their own misfortunes and offer thanks to God for blessing them with such abundance."6

That is what religious liberty was and is. The government essentially said, Yes, be religious. We will not only tolerate it; we will respect it and we will encourage it. But we cannot take sides or put our thumbs on the scales. But the understanding of this has been lost to many in modern America.

Wilberforce said that he revered Newton "as a parent when I was a child." The weak-eyed, sickly, extremely nimble-minded boy must have been utterly captivated by the former slaver who at age eleven—William's age when they met—had gone off to sea for a picaresque adventure unimaginable to the wealthy and pampered merchant's son.

corporal discipline was de rigueur

Although I know full well and hear every day that many people think little of me and say that I only write little pamphlets and sermons in German for the uneducated laity, I do not let that stop me. Would to God that in my lifetime I had, to my fullest ability, helped one layman to be better!

America in the twenty-first century has generally returned to the worldview of the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment rationalists, who were so appalled at the religious wars of the previous century that they recoiled from all religion, unable to fathom a world in which religion and freedom could be mutually supporting.

one must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin. One must sacrifice oneself utterly to God's purposes, even to the point of possibly making moral mistakes. One's obedience to God must be forward-oriented and zealous and free, and to be a mere moralist or pietist would make such a life impossible:

When Wilberforce's mother and grandfather sent him to live with his aunt and uncle, they hadn't the slightest idea that they were sending the boy into a glowing hotbed of Methodism.

In the years 1889 and 1890, at the Ratsschul Library in Zwickau, about seventy-five miles east of Erfurt, someone came upon what turned out to be early fifteenth-century volumes that Luther had held and studied as a young monk. It was a spectacular find. Several of these books were works by Augustine. The marginal notes and other writing were confirmed as Luther's own handwriting, so suddenly historians could know what he had underlined as he was reading.

If we can accept a single singularity of the Big Bang, on what basis can we reasonably claim no other such singularities are possible?

The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. So

They would brilliantly co-opt the conservatives and the Christian churches, and when they had the power to do so, they would turn on them too.

Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.

Theological work and real pastoral fellowship can only grow in a life which is governed by gathering round the Word morning and evening and by fixed times of prayer.