For Christmas, my brother gifted me Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who took daily discipleship seriously, as well as a conscientious objector to the Holocaust and reign of Adolf Hitler … to the point that he joined and participated in a conspiratorial movement plotting to assassinate Hitler. I’d say he’s someone who Pounded the Rock and honored his family story, while also writing his own.

I loved it. And it s t r e t c h e d my vocabulary.

Circled stretch words as I went thru. Reviewing again now.

Always amazed at the depth of the English language. So many words that drill into concepts with extraordinary specificity.

aesthete

noun – a person who has or affects to have a special appreciation of art and beauty

“Though an aesthete and an intellectual, Bonhoeffer was neither effete nor squeamish” p75.

alacrity

noun – brisk and cheerful readiness

“With an alacrity that nobody would have believed him capable of, Dietrich Bonhoeffer suddenly diced into the open cell of his brother-in-law.” p499.

avuncular

adj – relating to an uncle

“In the avuncular tone of an iconic chain-restaurant pitchman, the Reibi addressed his constituency in the foreward…” p290.

beggared

verb – past tense of beggar – reduce (someone) to poverty

“Dohnanyi told him that now, under the dark cover of war, Hitler had unleashed horrors that beggared description, that made the usual horrors of war quaint things of the past” p351.

bemedaled

adj – wearing or decorated with medals

“It was quite an assemblage: bemedaled and aristocratic army generals, a naval commander, a diplomat and his wife …” p518.

bestial

adj – of or like an animal or animals

“Canaris and the others in the German military leadership thought that Hitler’s bestial nature was unfortunate, but they had no idea it was something that he cultivated and celebrated, that it was part of an idealogy that had been waiting for this opportunity to leap at the throats of every Jew and Pole, priest and aristocrat, and tear them to pieces.” p351.

canard

noun – an unfounded rumor or story

“In 1933, when they came to power, the Nazis burned copies of Remarque’s book and spread the canard that Remarque was a Jew whose real surname was Kramer” p112.

cashier

verb – dismiss (someone) from the armed forces in disgrace because of a serious misdemeanor

“First, he would cashier the generals whom he blamed for the shameful disaster” p391.

demurred

verb – past tense of demur – raise doubts or objections or show reluctance

“When Bethge asked whether he could share the letters with some of the brethren from Finkenwalde — ‘Would you, I wonder, allow these sections to be given to people like Albrecht Schönherr, Winfried Maechler and Dieter Zimmerman?’ — Bonhoeffer demurred. ‘I would not do it myself as yet,’ he wrote, ‘because you are the only person with whom I venture to think aloud, as it were, in the hope of clarifying my thoughts'” p465.

doughty

adjective – brave and persistent

“He knew that the the disturbingly doughty Bonhoeffer would not get discouraged by a little bad news …” p212.

effete

adj – affected and overly refined

“Though an aesthete and an intellectual, Bonhoeffer was neither effete nor squeamish” p75.

epistolary

adj – (of a literary work) in the form of letters

“Then the Janus-faced Heckel sent an epistolary olive brand to the German congregations in England, effectively saying there was nothing to fight about any longer, and mayn’t we all get along?” p206.

eschatological

adj – relating to death, judgment and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind

“One sign of a deepening seriousness in him was his penchant for eschatological themes and a palpable longing for the ‘kingdom of heaven’ which he communicated in his sermons” p203.

facile

adj – (especially of a theory or argument) appearing neat and comprehensive only by ignoring the true complexities of an issue; superficial

“Their chief goal in writing the Bethel Confession was to spell out the basics of the true and historic Christian faith, which contrasted with Ludwig Müller’s facile and inchoate ‘theology'” p185.

fealty

noun – a feudal tenant’s or vassal’s sworn loyalty to a lord; formal acknowledgement of loyalty to a lord

“Naturally, everyone present vowed fealty to Hitler and his Third Reich” p211.

“But the traditional values and fealty to high standards of culture were strikingly similar” p274.

folderol

noun – trivial or nonsensical fuss

“To them, all that business about doctrine was folderol that didn’t matter to the man in the street” p263.

frippery

noun – showy or unnecessary ornament in architecture, dress or language

“For Bonhoeffer, the challenge was to deliver the Word of God as purely as possible … Any frippery would only dilute the power of the thing itself” p291.

hokum

noun – nonsense

“‘Happy is he who always observed good comradeship. He will get on well in the world.’ Müller obviously meant this self-lampooning hokum as evangelistic” p291.

hue and cry

noun – a loud clamor or public outcry

“Bodelschwingh’s short tenure as Reich bishop was made increasingly miserable by the hue and cry of the German Christians” p177.

huggermuggery

adverb form of huggermugger – secret; of a confused or disorderly nature

“In the tangled huggermuggery of secret intelligence missions, one hand often didn’t know what the other was doing” p398.

importunate

adj – persistent, especially to the point of annoyance or intrusion

“But not with Dietrich: the waitress, the way she served the meal, the importunate animals, like a cat, a dog, an old duck, a half-naked turkey, begging for food and pestering the customers — all this offended his sense of beauty and dignity, and we soon left” p397.

imprimatur

noun – a person’s acceptance or guarantee that something is of a good standard

“In one slim book, Bonhoeffer was claiming that Jesus had given his imprimatur to the Psalms and to the Old Testament; that Christianity was unavoidably Jewish; that the Old Testament is not superseded by the New Testament, but is inextricably linked with it; and that Jesus was unavoidably Jewish.” p185.

inchoate

adj – just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary

“Their chief goal in writing the Bethel Confession was to spell out the basics of the true and historic Christian faith, which contrasted with Ludwig Müller’s facile and inchoate ‘theology'” p185.

ineluctably

adverb form of ineluctable – unable to be resisted or avoided; inescapable

“He was moving ineluctably toward deeper involvement in the conspiracy, but exactly what this would mean was still unclear” p360.

Janus-faced

adj – having two sharply contrasting aspects or characteristics

In Roman religion, Janus was the deity who presided over doors, gates, archways, and all beginnings, structural and temporal (the month of January is named for him). He is represented as having a single head with two faces looking in opposite directions.

Merriam-Webster

“Then the Janus-faced Heckel sent an epistolary olive brand to the German congregations in England, effectively saying there was nothing to fight about any longer, and mayn’t we all get along?” p206.

kites

noun – plural of kite – fraudulent check, bill, or receipt; an illicit or surreptitious letter or note; (archaic) a person who exploits or preys on others.

“The strange theological climate after World War II and the interest in the martyred Bonhoeffer were such that the few bone fragments in these private letters were set upon as by famished kites and less noble birds, many of whose descendants gnaw them still” p466.

laconic

adj – (of a person, speech, or style of writing) using very few words

“When I asked what his reply had been to the Bishop’s order, he said with a grim smile: ‘Negative.’ Amplifying that laconic remark …” p208.

lupine

adj – of, like, or relating to a wolf or wolves

“And with typical lupine ruthlessness, he would order a savage bloodbath that came to be known as the Nacht der Langen Messer (Night of the Long Knives)” p208.

mien

noun – a person’s look or manner, especially one of a particular kind indicating their character or mood

“One of the most sinister figures in the evil pantheon of the Third Reich, Heydrich had an icy mien that suggested something one might encounter in the lightless world of the Marianas Trench” p315.

nonplussed

adj – (of a person) surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react

“But all the generals were nonplussed by Hitler’s naked and blind aggression.” p304.

obdurate

adj – stubbornly refusing to change one’s opinion or course of action

“Hitler is not in a position to listen to us; he is obdurate, and as such he must compel us to listen — it’s that way round” p208.

oeuvre

noun – the works of a painter, composer or author regarded collectively

“Many outre theological fashions have subsequently tired to claim Bonhoeffer as their own and have ignored much of his ouevre [sic] to do so” p466.

outré

adj – unusual and startling

“Many outre theological fashions have subsequently tired to claim Bonhoeffer as their own and have ignored much of his ouevre [sic] to do so” p466.

paladins

noun – plural form of paladin – any of the twelve peers of Charlemagne’s court, of whom the Count Palatine was the chief; a knight renowned for heroism and chivalry

“Blowing up Hitler — along with any two or three of his scaly paladins — was still the ideal” p477.

parried

verb – past participle of parry – ward off (a weapon or attack) with a countermove

“The fawning Heckel passed along Hitler’s gloomy impressions to them as a not-so-veiled threat, which they parried by calling it a threat” p208.

peripatetic

adj – traveling from place to place, in particular working or based in various places for relatively short periods

also – noun – a person who travels from place to place

“They were like the troupe of actors from Begman’s Seventh Seal, cheerful and peripatetic, but shadowed as they went by the hooded, dark figure of Death” p521.

philos

noun – Greek – to love, like, regard with affection

“It seems likely someone will eventually claim that Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Bethge partook of mroe than philos and storge” p466.

Piltdown man

noun – a supposedly very early hominid erroneously reconstructed in the early 1900s from what was later determined to be human skull fragments and an orangutan lower jaw planted by a hoaxer

“Generally speaking, some theologians have made of these few skeletal fragments something like a theological Piltdown man, a jerry-built but sincerely believed hoax” p466.

pogroms

noun – plural of pogrom – an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

“Niemöller met with Hitler privately in 1932, and Hitler had given him his personal assurance that he would keep his hands off the churches and would never institute pogroms against the Jews” p177.

poniard

noun – a small, slim dagger

“Here, as far as he was concerned, was the thing itself — the blood-stained poniard that has been plunged into the back of the Third Reich, that had sabotaged it from the beginning” p529.

prevaricate

verb – speak or act in an evasive way

“But to procrastinate and prevaricate simply because you’re afraid of erring, when others — I mean our brethren in Germany — must make infinitely more difficult decisions every day, seems to me almost to run counter to love” p218.

reticent

adj – not revealing one’s thoughts or feelings readily

“But the reason is probably that you are by nature open and modest, whereas I am reticent and rather demanding” p274.

scaly

adj – slang – shabby; despicable

“Blowing up Hitler — along with any two or three of his scaly paladins — was still the ideal” p477.

senescent

adj – adjectival form of senescence – the condition or process of deterioration with age

“The senescent Hindenburg’s signature in a stroke turned Germany from a democratic republic with a would-be dictator into a dictatorship with the hollow shell of a democratic government” p149.

solipsistic

adj – very self-centered or selfish

“Then he took a page from his dormitory experiences at Union and adopted an open-door policy, such that his new charges could visit him unannounced at any time. It was a bold and decisive about-face for the once solipsistic Bonhoeffer” p132.

stanch

verb – stop or restrict (a flow of blood) from a wound

“The principal reason for Heckel’s visit was to stanch the bleeding of damaging information from Bonhoeffer and his ecumenical contacts” p212.

storge

noun – Greek – natural or instinctual affection , as of a parent for a child

“It seems likely someone will eventually claim that Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Bethge partook of mroe than philos and storge” p466.

taciturn

adj – (of a person) reserved or uncommunicative in speech; saying little

“He was a celebrated linguist, but famously taciturn, and therefore said ‘to be silent is seven languages.'” p393.

talisman

noun – an object, typically an inscribed ring or stone, that is thought to have magic powers and to bring good luck

“Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered …” p163.

vituperative

adj – bitter and abusive

“On August 7 and 8 the first of the conspirators were subjected to the Volksgerichtshof (People’s Court), presided over by Ronald Freisler, whom William Shirer has called a ‘vile and vituperative maniac’ and ‘perhaps the most sinister and bloodthirsty Nazi in the Third Reich after Heydrich'” p487.

Ziggurats

noun – plural form of Ziggurat – (in ancient Mesopotamia) a rectangular stepped tower, sometimes surmounted by a temple; Ziggurats are first attested in the late 3rd millennium BC and probably inspired the biblical story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9).

“But overeager theologians have built diminutive Ziggurats from these few scattered bricks” p467.

Other quotables

“Embodiment is the end of God’s path.”

Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, qtd p66

Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.

Bonhoeffer, p85

“You could not be a friend of Dietrich’s if you did not argue with him.”

Franz Hildebrandt, qtd p91

If you really try to experience New York completely, it almost does you in.

Bonhoeffer, p113

We do not grasp the words of someone we love by taking them to bits, but by simply receiving them.

Bonhoeffer, p136

If you board the wrong train it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.

Bonhoeffer, p176

Many years later, after Niemöller had been imprisoned for eight years in concentration camps as the personal prisoner of Adolf Hitler, he penned these infamous words:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
because I was not a Jew.
And then they came for me —
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller, German theologian, qtd p192

He had begun to see that the overemphasis on the cerebral and intellectual side of theological training had produced pastors who didn’t know how to live as Christians, but knew only how to think theologically. Integrating the two was increasingly important to him.

p195

We must shake off our fear of this world — the cause of Christ is at stake…

Bonhoeffer, p219

My calling is quite clear to me. What God will make of it I do not know … I must follow the path.

Bonhoeffer, p234

Only the complete truth and complete truthfulness can help us now.

Bonhoeffer, p236

Actions must follow what one believed, else one could not claim to believe it.

p240

There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe.

Bonhoeffer, p241

Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise …

I recently came across the fairy tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” which is really relevant for our time. All we are lacking today is the child who speaks up at the end.

Bonhoeffer, p260

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.

Bonhoeffer, p261

The teaching and the living must be two parts of the same thing.

p272

The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it, and it will not only trample upon the Holy, but also will tear apart those who force it on them.

Bonhoeffer, p278

Bonhoeffer bought the tickets for all of us at the station. When I wanted to repay him, he just answered: “Money is dirt.”

Hans-Werner Jensen, qtd p284

The holy is to be protected from cheap surrender. The Gospel is protected by the preaching of repentance which calls sin sin and declares the sinner guilty.

Bonhoeffer, p293

Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization.

Bonhoeffer, p321

That, in a nutshell, was Bonhoeffer’s difficulty, and it illustrates his thinking that Christians cannot be governed by mere principles. Principles could carry one only so far. At some point every person must hear from God, must know what God was calling him to do, apart from others.

p323

One can give a reason for everything. In the last resort one acts from a level which remains hidden from us. So one can only ask God to judge us and forgive us.

Bonhoeffer, p336

“He will sit as a refiner of gold and silver” (Mal 3:3). And it is necessary. I don’t know where I am. But he knows; and in the end all doings and actions will be pure and clear.

Bonhoeffer, p337

We realized that mere confession, no matter how courageous, inescapably meant complicity with the murderers.

Eberhard Bethge, qtd p358

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.

Bonhoeffer, p358

The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success.

Bonhoeffer, p363

It is not war that first brings death, not war that first invents the pains and torments of human bodies and souls, not war that first unleashes lies, injustice, and violence. It is not war that first makes our existence so utterly precarious and renders human beings powerless, forcing them to watch their desires and plans being thwarted and destroyed by more “exalted powers.” But war makes all of this, which existed already apart from it and before it, vast and unavoidable to us who would gladly prefer to overlook it all.

Bonhoeffer, p373

This was one of the casualties of the war, that trust itself seemed to die a thousand deaths.

p376

Who can comprehend how those whom God takes so early are chosen? Does not the early death of young Christians always appear to us as if God were plundering his own best instruments in a time in which they are most needed? Yet the Lord makes no mistakes. Might God need our brothers for some hidden service on our behalf in the heavenly world? We should put an end to our human thoughts, which always wish to know more than they can, and cling to that which is certain. Whomever God calls home is someone God has loved. “For their souls were pleasing to the Lord, therefore he took them quickly from the midst of wickedness” (Wisdom of Solomon 4).

Bonhoeffer, p383

One has to live with the texts, and then they unfold.

Bonhoeffer, p384

We need not despise happiness simply because there is so much unhappiness.

Bonhoeffer, p408

Over the years I have written many a letter for the wedding of one of the brothers and preached many a wedding sermon. The chief characteristic of such occasions essentially rested in the fact that, in the face of the “last” times (I do not mean this to sound quite so apocalyptic), someone dares to take a step of such affirmation of the earth and its future. It was then always clear to me that a person could take this step as a Christian truly only from within a very strong faith and on the basis of grace. For here in the midst of the final destruction of all things, one desires to build; in the midst of a life lived from hour to hour and from day to day, one desires a future; in the midst of being driven out from the earth, one desires a bit of space; in the midst of widespread misery, one desires some happiness. And the overwhelming thing is thta God says yes to this strange longing, that here God consents to our will, whereas it is usually meant to be just the opposite.

Bonhoeffer, p408

Everything we cannot thank God for, we reproach him for.

Bonhoeffer, p413

But let us not dwell on the bad that lurks and has power in every person, but let us encounter each other in great, free forgiveness and love, let us take each other as we are — with thanks and boundless trust in God, who has led us to this point and now loves us.

Bonhoeffer, p421

God wanted his beloved children to operate out of freedom and joy to do what was right and good, not our of fear of making a mistake.

p424

If we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer.

Bonhoeffer, p447

When Jeremiah said, in his people’s hour of direst need, that “houses and fields [and vineyards] shall again be bought in this land” (Jer 32:15), it was a token of confidence in the future. That requires faith, and may God grant it to us daily. I don’t mean the faith that flees the world, but the faith that endures in the world and loves and remains true to that world in spite of all the hardships it brings us. Our marriage must be a “yes” to God’s earth. It must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth. I fear that Christians who venture to stand on earth on only one leg will stand in heaven on only one leg too.

Bonhoeffer, p456

The freedom to chose a mate is a gift from God, who created us in his image. And the “desire for earthly bliss” is not something we steal from behind God’s back, but is something he has desired that we should desire … Earthly bliss and humanity belong to God, not in any cramped “religious” sense, but in the fully human sense. Bonhoeffer was a champion of God’s idea of humanity, a humanity that he invented and, by participating in it through the incarnation, that he redeemed.

p457

It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

Bonhoeffer, p458

If we survive during these coming weeks or months, we shall be able to see quite clearly that all has turned out for the best. The idea that we could have avoided many of life’s difficulties if we had taken things more cautiously is too foolish be entertained for a moment. As I look back on your past I am so convinced that what has happened hitherto has been right, that I feel that what is happening now is right too. To renounce a full life and its real joys in order to avoid pain is neither Christian nor human.

Bonhoeffer, p463

I believe that nothing that happens to me is meaningless, and that it is good for us all that it should be so, even if it runs counter to our wishes. As I see it, I’m here for some purpose, and I only hope I may fulfil it. In the light of the great purpose all our privations and disappointments are trivial. Nothing would be more unworthy and wrongheaded than to turn one of those rare occasions of joy, such as you’re now experiencing, into a calamity because of my present situation.

Bonhoeffer, p464

It always seems to me that we are trying anxiously in this way to reserve some space for God; I should like to speak of God not on the boundaries but at the centre, not in weaknesses but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man’s life and goodness. . . . The church stands not at the boundaries where human powers give out, but in the middle of the village.

Bonhoeffer, pp467-468

Giving up on reality as a whole, either we place ourselves in one of the two realms, wanting Christ without the world or the world without Christ — and in both cases we deceive ourselves. . . . There are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is God’s reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world. Partaking in Christ, we stand at the same time in the reality of God and in the reality of the world.

Bonhoeffer, p469

The solution is to do the will of God, to do it radically and courageously and joyfully. To try to explain “right” and “wrong” — to talk about ethics — outside of God and obedience to his will is impossible: “Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.” We must look only at God, and in him we are reconciled to our situation in the world.

p471

There are times when I am content to live the life of faith without worrying about its problems.

Bonhoeffer, p483

The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one’s life towards a goal. Without such a goal, chastity is bound to become ridiculous.

Bonhoeffer, p486

A human being’s moral integrity begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his convictions.

Henning von Tresckow, qtd p487

I’m untroubled by all that has gone before, but we alone are responsible for the future, and in that respect everything must be clear, straight-forward and unconstrained, mustn’t it? Above all, we must submit our lives to a single consideration — that we belong together — and act accordingly.

Bonhoeffer, p490

Anyway, what do happiness and unhappiness mean? They depend so little on circumstances and so much more on what goes on inside us.

Bonhoeffer, p496

“The only fight which is lost is that which we give up.”

Bonhoeffer, qtd by Fabian von Schlabrendorff, p499

He was on of the very few men that I have ever met to whom his God was real and ever close to him.

Captain S. Payne Best, qtd p514

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.

Bonhoeffer, p517

I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer.

H. Fischer-Hüllstrung, qtd p532

Neither know we what to do; but our eyes are upon Thee.

2 Chron. 20:12, qtd p538

Only the believer is obedient, and only he who obeys believes.

Bonhoeffer, p540