Religion Quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The cross is suffering with Christ.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Discipleship is not an offer that man makes to Christ.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The church is her true self only when she exists for humanity.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“a false faith is capable of terrible and monstrous things.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Politics are not the task of a Christian.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The deep meaning of the cross of Christ is that there is no suffering on earth that is not borne by God.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Discipleship is commitment to Christ. Because Christ exists, he must be followed.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The church ... is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure is lost to the Christian church. With its recovery will come unexpected power.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Christian life is participation in the encounter of Christ with the world.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events,”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Faith without works is not faith at all, but a simple lack of obedience to God.

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The future and the hope for the middle class church lies in the renewal of its lifeblood, which is only possible if…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Nevertheless, it is the free grace of the resurrected One that now also goes after the individual, overcomes the doubter, and creates…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“There is only one church, the church of faith ruled by the word of Jesus Christ alone. This is the true catholic…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Church is the Church only when it exists for others...not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“It is solely the form of Christ that matters, not any form besides Christ’s own. The church is the human being who…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jesus says that every Christian has his own cross waiting for him, a cross destined and appointed by God. Each must endure…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The cross is not the suffering tied to natural existence, but the suffering tied to being Christians. The cross is never simply…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“For the rest of mankind to be with Christ means death, but for Christians it is a means of grace. Baptism is…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The cross always simultaneously means rejection, and that the disgrace of suffering is part of the cross. Being expelled, despised, and abandoned…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The cross is not the suffering tied to being natural existence, but the suffering tied to being Christians. The cross is never…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The undiscerning observer may think that this mixture of ideal and reality, of the human and spiritual, is most likely to be…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Discipleship means adherence to Christ and, because Christ is the object of that adherence, it must take the form of discipleship. An…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion...but he set in its place the positivist doctrine of revelation which…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“...do we realize that this cheap grace has turned back upon us like a boomerang? The price we are having to pay…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The earthly form of Christ is the form that died on the cross. The image of God is the image of Christ…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We are separated from one another by an unbridgeable gulf of otherness and strangeness which resists all our attempts to overcome it…

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer