GroshLink

At dawn on April 9, 1945, the prison doctor found him [Dietrich Bonhoeffer] kneeling in prayer in his cell.  Bonhoeffer was taken outside and down a short flight of steps to the execution area, where he went calmly to be hanged.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer's voice was silenced at age thrity-nine, but through his writing and the example of his life he has spoken and will contiue to speak to generations of believers.  Contemporary Christians can gain much from studying Bonhoeffer. . . .  -- from the introduction of Dale & Sandy Larsen's Deitrich Bonhoeffer: Costly Grace (Downers Grove, IL:  IVP, 2002, p.11). 

On September 9, 2007, the Elizabethtown Brethren-in-Christ small group of which we are part began Deitrich Bonhoeffer: Costly Grace. What a well crafted study of the writings of a complex, pastor and applied academician willing to depend upon the Spirit of God and the power of the cross to face friends, colleagues, and nation filled with the spirit of the evil one!  AND the texts which not only inform, but also critique his theology and life. 

On Monday, I had the opportunity to attend the first in a 4 part conversation on Bonhoeffer, sponsored by Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. The purpose of the first gathering was to share personal testimonies of the impact of Bonhoeffer's life/writings and touch upon the question of his resistance (and modified pacifism). Would love to read the quotes which you find of greatest impact/interest. Here's a few to get you started from The Cost of Discipleship (Note: As you probably already know, they're so hard to extract from their larger contexts which many times are full of rich paradoxes and black-n-white contrasts):

Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. ... Discipleship without Jesus Christ is a way of our own choosing. It may be the ideal way, it may lead to martyrdom, but it is devoid of all promise. Jesus will certainly reject it.

The idea of a situation in which faith is possible is only a way of stating the facts of a case in which the following two propositions hold good and are equally true: only he who believes is obedient, and onlhy he who is obedient believes.

Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. ... Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

More quotes and conversation to come as the series continues.  Note:  Previous references to Bonhoeffer include

Author Review: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
If Christ had done what you are doing who would have been spared?
On eloquence