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Frasi di Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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25 citazioni potenti per ispirare e abbracciare l'esperienza umana

Scoprite la profonda saggezza delle potenti citazioni di Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Trovate comprensione e ispirazione nei suoi pensieri sulla gratitudine, l'empatia, l'azione, l'amore e l'abbracciare l'esperienza umana. Lasciatevi illuminare e motivare dalle sue parole.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer è stato un teologo luterano tedesco che ha svolto un ruolo importante nella resistenza al nazismo. Nato nel 1906 da una famiglia di alta borghesia, ha scelto fin da giovane di diventare pastore evangelico nonostante l'iniziale disapprovazione dei suoi parenti laici. Ha studiato teologia a Tubinga e Berlino e ha avuto opportunità di formazione all'estero, compreso il periodo trascorso negli Stati Uniti dove ha frequentato chiese afroamericane.

Tornato in Germania nel 1931 per insegnare all'Università di Berlino, è diventato attivamente contrario al regime nazista appena due giorni dopo la presa del potere di Hitler. Ha sostenuto la Chiesa confessante e si è opposto all'antisemitismo nazista. Nel 1943, è stato arrestato per il suo coinvolgimento nella congiura per assassinare Hitler e nel 1945 è stato impiccato nel campo di concentramento di Flossenbürg.

Bonhoeffer è ricordato come un eroe della resistenza tedesca al nazismo e uno dei più importanti pensatori cristiani del XX secolo. Le sue opere, tra cui "Nachfolge" (Discipolato) e "Widerstand und Ergebung" (Resistenza e resa), riflettono sul rapporto tra fede e azione, religione e mondo, ed evidenziano la sua profonda fede in Dio e il suo impegno a lottare contro l'ingiustizia.

✵ 4. Febbraio 1906 – 9. Aprile 1945   •   Altri nomi Дитрих Бонхеффер
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: 186   frasi 75   Mi piace

Dietrich Bonhoeffer frasi celebri

“Dio è vicino a ciò che è piccolo, ama ciò che è spezzato. Quando gli uomini dicono: «perduto», egli dice: «trovato»; quando dicono «condannato», egli dice: «salvato»; quando dicono: «abietto», Dio esclama: «beato!»”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Citato in Ermes Ronchi, Sciogliere le vele. Commento ai vangeli festivi. Anno A, Edizioni San Paolo, 2004, p. 92.

“L'essenza dell'ottimismo non è soltanto guardare al di là della situazione presente, ma è una forza vitale, la forza di sperare quando gli altri si rassegnano, la forza di tenere alta la testa quando sembra che tutto fallisca, la forza di sopportare gli insuccessi, una forza che non lascia mai il futuro agli avversari, il futuro lo rivendica a sé.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

libro Oltre la rottamazione: Nessun giorno è sbagliato per provare a cambiare

“Per il bene la stupidità è un nemico più pericoloso della malvagità. Contro il male è possibile protestare, ci si può compromettere, in caso di necessità è possibile opporsi con la forza; il male porta sempre con sé il germe dell'autodissoluzione, perché dietro di sé nell'uomo lascia almeno un senso di malessere. Ma contro la stupidità non abbiamo difese.
[…] osservando meglio, si nota che qualsiasi ostentazione esteriore di potenza, politica o religiosa che sia, provoca l'istupidimento di una gran parte degli uomini. Sembra anzi che si tratti di una legge socio-psicologica.
La potenza dell'uno richiede la stupidità degli altri. Il processo secondo cui ciò avviene, non è tanto quello dell'atrofia o della perdita improvvisa di determinate facoltà umane – ad esempio quelle intellettuali – ma piuttosto quello per cui, sotto la schiacciante impressione prodotta dall'ostentazione di potenza, l'uomo viene derubato della sua indipendenza interiore e rinuncia così, più o meno consapevolmente, ad assumere un atteggiamento personale davanti alle situazioni che gli si presentano.
Il fatto che lo stupido sia spesso testardo non deve ingannare sulla sua mancanza di indipendenza. Parlandogli ci si accorge addirittura che non si ha a che fare direttamente con lui, con lui personalmente ma con slogan, motti ecc. da cui egli è dominato. È ammaliato, accecato, vittima di un abuso e di un trattamento pervertito che coinvolge la sua stessa persona. Trasformatosi in uno strumento senza volontà, lo stupido sarà capace di qualsiasi malvagità, essendo contemporaneamente incapace di riconoscerla come tale. Questo è il pericolo che una profanazione diabolica porta con sé. Ci sono uomini che potranno essere rovinati per sempre.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Da Della stupidità.

“Grazia e azione devono restare unite. Non c'è fede senza opera buona, come non c'è opera buona senza fede.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

§ 273
Sequela
Origine: Citato in Gibellini, p. 115.

“Sono effettivamente ciò che gli altri dicono di me? | Oppure sono solamente ciò che io conosco di me stesso?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Da Chi sono io?, in Chi sono io? Meditazioni dal carcere, traduzione di Manuel Kromer, Claudiana, Torino, 2005, p. 9. ISBN 88-7016-514-0

“La chiesa deve uscire dalla sua stagnazione. Dobbiamo tornare all'aria aperta del confronto spirituale con il mondo. Dobbiamo rischiare di dire anche delle cose contestabili, se ciò permette di sollevare questioni di importanza vitale. Come teologo "moderno", che tuttavia porta ancora in sé l'eredità liberale, io sono tenuto a mettere sul tappeto tali questioni. Tra i giovani ce ne saranno molti che connettono in sé le due cose.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Da una delle ultime lettere dal carcere, 3 agosto 1944; citato in Gibellini, p. 126.

Frasi su Dio di Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Chi cerca di sfuggire alla terra non trova Dio, trova solo un altro mondo, il suo mondo, più buono, più bello, più tranquillo, un mondo ai margini, ma non il Regno di Dio, che comincia in questo mondo.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Venga il tuo regno

“Dio non esaudisce i nostri desideri, ma realizza le sue promesse.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Citato in Messaggero di San'Antonio, dicembre 2009, p. 10.

“Dobbiamo amare e trovare Dio precisamente nella nostra vita e nel bene che ci dà. Trovarlo e ringraziarlo nella nostra felicità terrena.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Citato da Ermes Ronchi in Le ragioni della speranza, Rai Uno, 17 gennaio 2010.

“Noi non possiamo essere onesti senza riconoscere che ci occorre vivere nel mondo etsi Deus non daretur… Davanti a Dio e con Dio noi viviamo senza l'ipotesi di Dio… Si tratta cioè di vivere davanti a Dio l'assenza di Dio.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Citato in Enzo Bianchi, La differenza cristiana, Einaudi, 2006, I, 4.

“Chi fugge la terra per trovare Dio, trova solo se stesso. Chi fugge Dio per trovare la terra, non trova la terra – come terra di Dio –, ma trova l'allegro teatro di una guerra tra buoni e malvagi, pii ed empi, guerra che lui stesso scatena, trova se stesso.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Venga il tuo regno

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Frasi e Citazioni

“Portare il peso dell'altro significa sopportare la realtà creaturale dell'altro, consentire ad essa e arrivare attraverso la sopportazione a trarne motivo di gioia.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Da Vita comune.

Gioia , Realtà

“La grazia a buon prezzo è il nemico mortale della nostra Chiesa.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Sequela

“I pellegrini, che amano la terra che li porta – e ciò per il solo fatto che essa li porta incontro a quel paese straniero che amano più di ogni altra cosa – altrimenti non sarebbero in cammino.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Venga il tuo regno

“Ai pensatori idealistici potrà sembrare fuori luogo per un'etica Cristiana parlare prima di diritti e solo più tardi di doveri. Ma la nostra autorità non è Kant; è la Sacra Scrittura, ed è proprio per questa ragione che noi dobbiamo parlare per prima cosa dei diritti della vita naturale, cioè di ciò che è dato alla vita, e solo dopo di ciò che è richiesto alla vita.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Da Etica; citato in Andrew Linzey, Teologia animale, traduzione di Alessandro Arrigoni, Cosmopolis, Torino, 1998, p. 22. ISBN 978-88-87947-01-4

Sulla vita

“Il miracolo e l'ordine sono le due forme nelle quali si presenta il Regno di Dio in terra, nelle quali esso si scinde : il miracolo come la forza che infrange ogni ordine, e l'ordine come conservazione in vista del miracolo.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Venga il tuo regno

Su Dio

“Il Regno di Dio è il regno della risurrezione in terra.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Venga il tuo regno

Su Dio

“[…] il problema cristologico è per sua natura di tipo ontologico. Il suo scopo consiste nell'elaborare la struttura ontologica del chi [è Gesù Cristo], senza incorrere nello Scilla della domanda sul come o nella Cariddi della domanda sul che.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Da Cristologia, § 12; citato in Gibellini, p. 113.

Cristo , Domanda , Natura , Problema

“È capace di credere al Regno di Dio solamente chi è così in cammino, chi ama la terra e Dio insieme.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Venga il tuo regno

Su Dio , Sulla pace

“Il suo compito [dello Stato] non è di creare nuova vita, ma di conservare la vita data.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Venga il tuo regno

Sulla vita

“In questo sta la vera maledizione che pesa sulla terra: non che essa deve portare spine e cardi, ma che nasconde il volto di Dio, che nemmeno i solchi più profondi della terra ci rivelano il Dio nascosto.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Venga il tuo regno

Su Dio

“Se la Bibbia contiene un libro di preghiere [i Salmi], dobbiamo dedurre che la parola di Dio non è solo quella che egli vuole rivolgere a noi, ma è anche quella che egli vuole sentirsi rivolgere da noi.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Da Pregare i Salmi con Cristo; citato in Gianfranco Ravasi, L'incontro: ritrovarsi nella preghiera, Oscar Mondadori, Milano, 2014, p. 10. ISBN 978-88-04-63591-8

Su Dio

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Frasi in inglese

“Man seeks, in his manhood,
not orders, not laws and peremptory dogmas,
but counsel from one who is earnest in goodness
and faithful in friendship,
making man free.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend

“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. Where are these responsible people?”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Who Stands Fast?, p. 5.

“At the end of a life spent in the pursuit of knowledge Faust has to confess: "I now see that we can nothing know." That is the answer to a sum, it is the outcome of a long experience. But as Kierkegaard observed, it is quite a different thing when a freshman comes up to the university and uses the same sentiment to justify his indolence. As the answer to a sum it is perfectly true, but as the initial data it is a piece of self-deception.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

translated as The Cost of Discipleship (1959), p. 51.
Discipleship (1937), Costly Grace

“The truthfulness which Jesus demands from his followers is the self-abnegation which does not hide sin. Nothing is then hidden, everything is brought forth to the light of day. In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man’s whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. But sinful men do not like this sort of truthfulness.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), Truthfulness, p. 138.

“A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him. “Neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on the stand.” … The bushel may be the fear of men, or perhaps deliberate conformity to the world for some ulterior motive.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

exegesis of Matthew 5:13, p. 118.
Discipleship (1937), The Visible Community

“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Attributed to Bonhoeffer on the internet, but this is from a remark about him, not by him, in Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy http://books.google.com/books?id=aG0q3X8TVpsC&pg=PA486#v=onepage (2010), p. 486.
Misattributed

““Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” With each beatitude the gulf is widened between the disciples and the people, their call to come forth from the people becomes increasingly manifest. By “mourning” Jesus, of course, means doing without what the world calls peace and prosperity: He means refusing to be in tune with the world or to accommodate oneself to its standards. Such men mourn for the world, for its guilt, its fate, and its fortune.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), The Beatitudes, p. 108.

“It was the error of Israel to put the law in God’s place, to make the law their God and their God a law.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), The Righteousness of Christ, p. 122.

“From whom are we to hide the visibility of our discipleship? Certainly not from other men, for we are told to let them see our light. No. We are to hide it from ourselves. Our task is simply to keep on following, looking only to our Leader who goes on before, taking no notice of ourselves or of what we are doing.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), The Hidden Righteousness, p. 158.

“The disciples realized that they too were his enemies, and that he had overcome them by his love. It is this that opens the disciple’s eyes, and enables him to see his enemy as a brother.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), The Enemy, the "Extraordinary", p. 150.

“Not from the heavy soil
where blood and sex and oath
rule in their hallowed might,
where the earth itself,
guarding the primal consecrated order,
avenges wantonness and madness —
not from the heavy soil of the earth,
but from the spirit's choice and free desire, needing no oath of legal bond,
is friend bestowed on friend.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend

“In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility. For Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), The Enemy, the "Extraordinary", pp. 147-148.

“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

With each beatitude the gulf is widened between the disciples and the people, their call to come forth from the people becomes increasingly manifest. By “mourning” Jesus, of course, means doing without what the world calls peace and prosperity: He means refusing to be in tune with the world or to accommodate oneself to its standards. Such men mourn for the world, for its guilt, its fate, and its fortune.
Origine: Discipleship (1937), The Beatitudes, p. 108.

“When the spirit touches
man's heart and brow
with thoughts that are lofty, bold, serene,
so that with clear eyes he will face the world
as a free man may;
when the spirit gives birth to action
by which alone we stand or fall;
when from the sane and resolute action
rises the workd that gives a a man's life
content and meaning — then would that many,
lonely and actively working,
know of the spirit that grasps and befriends him...”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remoreseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Are we still of any use?, p. 16

“What lies behind the complaint about the dearth of civil courage? In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves. To attribute this simply to personal cowardice would be too facile a psychology; its background is quite different. In a long history, we Germans have had to learn the need for and the strength of obedience. In the subordination of all personal wishes and ideas to the tasks to which we have been called, we have seen the meaning and greatness of our lives. We have looked upwards, not in servile fear, but in free trust, seeing in our tasks a call, and in our call a vocation. This readiness to follow a command from "above" rather than our own private opinions and wishes was a sign of legitimate self-distrust. Who would deny that in obedience, in their task and calling, the Germans have again and again shown the utmost bravery and self-sacrifice? But the German has kept his freedom — and what nation has talked more passionately of freedom than the Germans, from Luther to the idealist philosophers?”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

by seeking deliverance from self-will through service to the community. Calling and freedom were to him two sides of the same thing. But in this he misjudged the world; he did not realize that his submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends. When that happened, the exercise of the calling itself became questionable, and all the moral principles of the German were bound to totter. The fact could not be escaped that the Germans still lacked something fundamental: he could not see the need for free and responsible action, even in opposition to the task and his calling; in its place there appeared on the one hand an irresponsible lack of scruple, and on the other a self-tormenting punctiliousness that never led to action. Civil courage, in fact, can grow only out of the free responsibility of free men. Only now are the Germans beginning to discover the meaning of free responsibility. It depends on a God who demands responsible action in a bold venture of faith, and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the man who becomes a sinner in that venture.
Origine: Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), Civil Courage, p. 5

“Before Jesus leads His disciples into suffering, humiliation, disgrace, and disdain, He summons them and shows Himself to them as the Lord in God's glory. Before the disciples must descend with Jesus into the abyss of human guilt, malice, and hatred, Jesus leads them to a high mountain from which they are to receive help. Before Jesus' face is beaten and spat upon, before his cloak is torn and splattered with blood, the disciples are to see Him in his divine glory. His face shines like the face of God and light is the garment he wears.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Meditations on the Cross (1996), Back to the Cross, p. 3

“Jesus' call to bear the cross places all who follow him in the community of the forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all Christians.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 88

“By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142

“By willing endurance we cause suffering to pass. Evil becomes a spent force when we put up no resistance. By refusing to pay back the enemy with his own coin, and preferring to suffer without resistance, the Christian exhibits the sinfulness of contumely and insult. Violence stands condemned by its failure to evoke counter-violence.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 142

“The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law. The Church is not to be a national community like the old Israel, but a community of believers without political or national ties. The old Israel had been both — the chosen people of God and a national community, and it was therefore his will that they should meet force with force. But with the Church it is different: it has abandoned political and national status, and therefore it must patiently endure aggression. Otherwise evil will be heaped upon evil. Only thus can fellowship be established and maintained.
At this point it becomes evident that when a Christian meets with injustice, he no longer clings to his rights and defends them at all costs. He is absolutely free from possessions and bound to Christ alone. Again, his witness to this exclusive adherence to Jesus creates the only workable basis for fellowship, and leaves the aggressor for him to deal with.
The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a stand-still because it does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames. But when evil meets no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than its match. Of course this can only happen when the last ounce of resistance is abandoned, and the renunciation of revenge is complete. Then evil cannot find its mark, it can breed no further evil, and is left barren.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), Revenge, p. 141

“God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while other are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case it is one cross.
It is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering that everyone has to experience is the call which summons us away from our attachments to this world. It is the death of the old self in the encounter with Jesus Christ. Those who enter into discipleship enter into Jesus' death.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 87

“The cross is not random suffering, but necessary suffering. The cross is not suffering that stems from natural existence; it is the suffering that comes from being Christian. … A Christianity that no longer took discipleship seriously remade the gospel into only the solace of cheap grace. Moreover, it drew no line between natural and Christian existence. Such a Christianity had to understand the cross as one's daily misfortune, as the predicament and anxiety of our daily life. Here it has been forgotten that the cross also means being rejected, that the cross includes the shame of suffering. Being shunned, despised, and deserted by people, as in the psalmists unending lament, is an essential feature of the suffering of the cross, which cannot be comprehended by a Christianity that is unable to differentiate between a citizen's ordinary existence and a Christian existence. The cross is suffering with Christ.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 86

“If any want to become my followers," Jesus says. Following him is not something that is self-evident, even among the disciples. No one can be forced, no one can be expected to follow him. … "If any want to follow me, they must deny themselves … and take up their cross.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 85

“Jesus Christ has to suffer and be rejected. … Suffering and being rejected are not the same. Even in his suffering Jesus could have been the celebrated Christ. Indeed, the entire compassion and admiration of the world could focus on the suffering. Looked upon as something tragic, the suffering could in itself convey its own value, its own honor and dignity. But Jesus is the Christ who was rejected in his suffering. Rejection removed all dignity and honor from his suffering. It had to be dishonorable suffering. Suffering and rejection express in summary form the cross of Jesus. Death on the cross means to suffer and to die as one rejected and cast out. It was by divine necessity that Jesus had to suffer and be rejected. Any attempt to hinder what is necessary is satanic. Even, or especially, if such an attempt comes from the circle of disciples, because it intends to prevent Christ from being Christ. The fact that it is Peter, the rock of the church, who makes himself guilty doing this just after he has confessed Jesus to be the Christ and has been commissioned by Christ, shows that from its very beginning the church has taken offense at the suffering of Christ. It does not want that kind of Lord, and as Christ's church it does not want to be forced to accept the law of suffering from its Lord.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 84

“The antithesis between the Christian life and the life of bourgeois respectability is at an end. The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

translated as The Cost of Discipleship (1959), p. 51
Discipleship (1937), Costly Grace

“Should the church be trying to erect a spiritual reign of terror over people by threatening earthly and eternal punishment on its own authority and commanding everything a person must believe and do to be saved? Should the church's word bring new tyranny and violent abuse to human souls? It may be that some people yearn for such servitude. But could the church ever serve such a longing?
When holy scripture speaks of following Jesus, it proclaims that people are free from all human rules, from everything which presumes, burdens, or causes worry and torment of conscience. In following Jesus, people are released from the hard yoke of their own laws to be under the gentle yoke of Jesus Christ. … Jesus' commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Preface", as translated by Barbara Green and Reihhard Krauss (2001)
Discipleship (1937)

“God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.
Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore the living word, the Word of God, which he speaks as it pleases him. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Costly Grace (1937), p. 49

“Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.
Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Origine: Costly Grace (1937), p. 45

“Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. The church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part of that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.
Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.”

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

p 43
Costly Grace (1937)

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presbitero e teologo svizzero
Ermes Ronchi photo
Ermes Ronchi 72
presbitero e teologo italiano
Luigi Giussani photo
Luigi Giussani 90
sacerdote e teologo italiano
Hélder Pessoa Câmara photo
Hélder Pessoa Câmara 4
arcivescovo cattolico e teologo brasiliano
Erich Maria Remarque photo
Erich Maria Remarque 26
scrittore tedesco
Werner Karl Heisenberg photo
Werner Karl Heisenberg 4
fisico tedesco
Martin Heidegger photo
Martin Heidegger 39
filosofo tedesco
Max Planck photo
Max Planck 11
fisico tedesco
Walter Benjamin photo
Walter Benjamin 33
filosofo e scrittore tedesco