Sublime

To love our neighbors is to love God. To love God requires that we love our neighbors. Good grief. I’m convicted.

Christian theology, when done right, proceeds from Christian practice and belief rather than preceding or prescribing Christian practice.

The generally invertebrate and even subservient response of many of the churches in Germany to the rise of the Nazis, however, was in part the result of centuries of European anti-Semitism, and in even larger part the result of cowardice.

And for me that meant, whatever can stand before the face of the crucified Christ is true Christian theology. What cannot stand there must disappear. This is especially true of what we say about God. Christ died on the cross with a loud cry, which Mark interprets with the words of the twenty-second psalm: ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ This c

But such a statement, as Bonhoeffer would point out, sees the future of the church not in Jesus Christ but in the young themselves.

GUIDELINES, NOT RULEBOOKS Christianity has not, and does not profess to have, a detailed political programme for applying “Do as you would be done by” to a particular society at a particular moment. It could not have. It is meant for all men at all times and the particular programme which suited one place or time would not suit another. And, anyhow

A church which cannot change in order to exist for the humanity of man in changed circumstances becomes ossified and dies.

Since the perfection of humanity is an essential part of God’s purpose, divine demands are made in accordance with human capacity to respond.

“I declare that neither pope nor bishop nor any other person has the right to impose a syllable of law upon a Christian man without his own consent.”