Dear readers,

In this post I will quote a letter by Bonhoeffer to a friend, translated in the book I mentioned in the last post. It has helped me tremendously, his revelation of God’s Word, which though certainly is not new, but has been repeated and revealed to many people of God, is very refreshing in the way he writes it, how we need to understand the Bible. I hope this is not illegal, I just want to share with others part of a writing that has blessed me.

However, because this was originally written in German, I think you cannot take a sentence out of it and make an individual conclusion. You have to read the whole paragraph to get the feel of what Bonhoeffer is saying, you have to read it in its context to get the whole “picture”.

Letter to Rudiger Scheleicher, written on April 8^th, 1936, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Dear Rudiger,

… I will first of all quite simply make a confession: I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions and that we need only to ask insistently and with some humility for us to receive the answer from it. One cannot simply read the Bible like other bookd. We must be prepared really to question it. Only in this way is it revealed to us. Only if we await the final answer from it does it give that Word to us. The reason for this is that in the Bible God speaks to us. And we cannot simply reflect upon God from ourselves; rather, we must ask God. Only when we seek God does God answer. Naturally one can also read the Bible like any other book, as for example from the viewpoint of textual criticism, etc. There is certainly nothing to be said against this. Only that it is not the way that reveals the essence of Bible, only its superficial surface. Just as we do not grasp the word of a person whom we love, in order to dissect it, but just as such a word is simply accepted and it then lingers with us all day long, simply as the word of this one who has spoken to us in this word that moves us ever more deeply in our hearts like Mary, so should we treat the Word of God. Only if we dare for once to enter into relationship with the Bible as the place where God who loves us really speaks to us and will not leave us along with our questions will we be happy with the Bible….

If I am one who says where God shall be, so I will always find a God there who corresponds in some way to me, is pleasing to me, who belongs to my nature. If it is, however, God who speaks where God chooses to be, then that will probably be a place which does not at all correspond to my nature, which is not at all pleasing to me. But this place is the cross of Christ. And the one who will find him there must be with him under the cross, just as the Sermon on the Mount demands. This doesn’t suit our nature at all but is completely counter to it. This, however, is the message of the Bible, not only in the New but also in the Old Testament (Isa 53!). In any event, Jesus and Paul intended this: with the cross of Jesus is the Scripture, that is, the Old testament fulfilled. The whole Bible will, therefore, be the Word in which God will allow the divine self to be discovered by us. This is no place which is pleasing or a priori sensible to us, but a place strange to us in every way and which is entirely contrary to us.

So now I read the Bible in this way, I ask in every place: What is God saying to us here? I ask God to show us what God wants to say. Thus we are not at all permitted to seek after the general, eternal truth which would correspond to our own “everlasting” nature and as such would be made evident. Rather, we seek the will of God who is entirely strange and contrary to us, who ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts, who hides under the sign of the cross at which all our ways and thoughts come to an end. God is wholly other than the so-called eternal truth. That is always still our own thoughts of self and our wished-for life everlasting. God’s Word, however, begins where God points us to the cross of Jesus at which all our ways and thoughts, also the so-called “everlasting” converge, namely in death and God’s judgment.

This paragraph ends with stating that he is ready to sacrifice his own personal intellect and that everything outside the Bible is too uncertain. He goes on to say in the final paragraph,

I also want to say to you quite personally that since I have learned to read the Bible in this way – and that is not so very long ago – it becomes more wonderful to me every day. I read it every morning and evening, often also during the day. And every day I take for myself a text that I will have for the entire week and immerse myself entirely in it, in order to be able to really listen to it. I know that without this I would no longer be able to live properly. Or, every before that, to believe in the right way.

I hope you will find this letter helpful, and if not, these Passages.

Joshua 1: ⁸ This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

Psalm 1

¹ Blessed is the man

Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
² But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
³ He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper.

⁴ The ungodly are not so,
But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.
⁵ Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

⁶ For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the ungodly shall perish.