Sublime

We are justified through faith in Christ, not through our own efforts.

A few years ago, I came across a collective of thousands of Christians who pool their money each month in order to cover one another’s medical bills. This feels much more in harmony with the spirit of the early church, the sense of being a big family with a parent with a big wallet. So I am now a part of that community, and each month I get a

the fulfilment of worldly duties is under all circumstances the only way to live acceptably to God. It and it alone is the will of God, and hence every legitimate calling has exactly the same worth in the sight of God.8

The intellectual underpinnings of Bonhoeffer’s convictions on life in a Christian faith community can be traced to his early works Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being, which undergirded his interpretation of the church as a primary form of God’s self-revelation.

love God, love people, and follow Jesus. And

First, Christian community is not an ideal, but a divine reality; second, Christian community is a spiritual [pneumatisch] and not an emotional [psychisch] reality.

Did you get the one with the two poems? It was just sent off that evening, and it also contained a few introductory remarks on our theological theme. The poem about Christians and pagans contains an idea that you will recognize: ‘Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving’; that is what distinguishes Christians from pagans. Jesus asked in

Jeder Mensch aber ist nicht nur er selber, er ist auch der einmalige, ganz besondere, in jedem Fall wichtige und merkwürdige Punkt, wo die Erscheinungen der Welt sich kreuzen, nur einmal so und nie wieder. Darum ist jedes Menschen Geschichte wichtig, ewig, göttlich, darum ist jeder Mensch, solange er irgend lebt und den Willen der Natur erfüllt,