“The call to the cloister demanded of Luther the complete surrender of his life. But God shattered all his hopes. He showed him through the Scriptures that the following of Christ is not the achievement or merit of a select few, but the divine command to all Christians without distinction. Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the "religious."”

—  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

translated as The Cost of Discipleship (1959), p. 47.
Discipleship (1937), Costly Grace

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer 161
German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi 1906–1945

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from Collected Works of The Mother, Volume 2, Words of Long Ago, p.166 (February, 1920, Japan) http://www.sriaurobindoashram.org/ashram/mother/on_herself.php Also quoted by Debbie Magee, in "Auroville — The City Of Dawn in South India" (27 February 2009) http://serreal.ning.com/group/greencommunities/forum/topics/auroville-the-city-of-dawn-in, also in Beyond the Mask: The Rising Sign — Part I: Aries — Virgo, Part 1 by Kathleen Burt (1 January 2010) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Q4kbBqVe0RIC&pg=PA46, p. 46
Sayings

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther).”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“I believe passionately that Christianity is a way of life, not a theological system with which one must be in intellectual agreement. I feel that Christ would admit into discipleship anyone who sincerely desired to follow him, and allow that disciple to make his creed out of his experience; to listen, to consider, to pray, to follow, and ultimately to believe only those convictions about which the experience of fellowship made him sure.”

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