Posted on 04/10/2015 1:15:16 PM PDT by 11th Commandment
As a Christian, he never ceased to stand by those who suffered, even when it cost him his life.
The too-brief life of the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been the subject of much film and literary interest in recent years, and Eric Metaxas’s insightful biography of this heroic figure helps us understand why. Bonhoeffer’s life vividly demonstrated the natural and indeed inevitable tensions between the individual and the modern state, and it pointed toward a response based firmly in Christian thought.
There are two powerful presences throughout the book: Bonhoeffer himself and Adolf Hitler, as the two head for the great confrontation in which the theologian engaged in an ambitious conspiracy to kill the Führer and topple his regime. Metaxas’s book makes the reader acutely aware that the same nation that produced Hitler engendered this heroic opponent and many others of similar integrity.
Other snip
In 1930 and 1931, Bonhoeffer studied in New York City at Union Theological Seminary, America’s bastion of theological liberalism. In New York, he wrote at the time, “they preach about virtually everything,” except one subject: “the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life.” Only in the South and in black churches did Bonhoeffer find real Christianity in the United States. He began attending the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where he found both sound doctrine and true Christian conduct. He also witnessed racial segregation firsthand and found it fascinating and appalling.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Luckily he wandered to other churches that helped keep him from wallowing in that mire.
IIRC, Metaxas mentions that he had pretty significant disagreements with Fosdick, but it’s been a while since I read the book (which is really excellent).
When my fellow Christians start whining about the persecution and oppression they face at the hands of the gummint and gaystapo, I always think of Bonhoeffer. Especially when I think of just how little we are doing to fight them at personal cost to ourselves.
He may have attended......according to you......
.....but his heart and conscience wouldn’t let him stay safe in America...
...and he returned to Germany, where he was executed....
he is safe with Jesus now.
>>Luckily he wandered to other churches that helped keep him from wallowing in that mire.
He didn’t “wander” away from Fosdick. He saw the rot even then and got out. He went south to find people who preach the gospel.
**He may have attended......according to you......**
?
Not according to me, but to his biography, which is discussed above..
Same here, but I think you are right.
Fosdicks’s theology couldn’t withstand the weight of the times then, nor can it do so now.
Thanks for the post. I think I will get the book. I have read many articles and attended a seminar on Bonhoeffer but never read a book on him.
2 Kings 5:26b Elisha: “Is it a time to receive money and to receive clothes and olive groves and vineyards and sheep and oxen and male and female servants?”
Fosdick exemplified that “cheap grace,” that Bonhoeffer wrote about.
There’s a Bonhoeffer play, “Bonhoeffer: The Last Encounter”(bunburytheatre.org) playing here in Louisville from April 9-26, I’m hoping to see.
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