# Bonhoeffer

## Metadata
- Author: [[Eric Metaxas and Timothy J. Keller]]
- Full Title: Bonhoeffer
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- The rich world of his ancestors set the standards for Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s own life. It gave him a certainty of judgment and manner that cannot be acquired in a single generation. He grew up in a family that believed the essence of learning lay not in a formal education but in the deeply rooted obligation to be guardians of a great historical heritage and intellectual tradition. —EBERHARD BETHGE ([Location 265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003GY0K48&location=265))
- Founded by Count Zinzendorf in the eighteenth century, Herrnhut continued in the pietist tradition of the Moravian Brethren. As a girl, Paula Bonhoeffer had attended Herrnhut for a time. Count Zinzendorf advocated the idea of a personal relationship with God, rather than the formal churchgoing Lutheranism of the day. Zinzendorf used the term living faith, which he contrasted unfavorably with the prevailing nominalism of dull Protestant orthodoxy. For him, faith was less about an intellectual assent to doctrines than about a personal, transforming encounter with God, so the Herrnhüter emphasized Bible reading and home devotions. His ideas influenced John Wesley, who visited Hernnhut in 1738, the year of his famous conversion. ([Location 388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003GY0K48&location=388))
- The New Testament must be revised, too, and must present a Jesus “corresponding entirely with the demands of National Socialism.” And it must no longer present an “exaggerated emphasis on the crucified Christ.” ([Location 3644](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003GY0K48&location=3644))
- From that moment, the German Christian movement was effectively doomed to Barth’s abyss. Mainstream Protestants saw them as beyond the pale, as openly heretical and fanatically Nazi. And most of the Nazis, who were not Christians, simply thought of them as laughable. ([Location 3653](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003GY0K48&location=3653))