A biography about the german Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Luther writes about the way people get saved

“We are saved by faith alone, but not by faith which is alone.”

Bonhoeffer writing about a true leader

If he understands his function in any other way than as it is rooted in fact, if he does not continually tell his followers quite clearly of the limited nature of his task and of their own responsibility, if he allows himself to surrender to the wishes of his followers, who would always make him their idol—then the image of the Leader will pass over into the image of the mis-leader, […]

Bonhoeffer had his ordinands to confess to each other, as it was Luther's plan. Metaxas writes,

It had been Luther’s idea that Christians should confess to one another instead of to a priest.

Bonhoeffer states the collision between God allowing death and God not wanting death. Death showing the problem that the world still faces.

In the face of death we cannot simply speak in some fatalistic way, “God wills it”; but we must juxtapose it with the other reality, “God does not will it.” Death reveals that the world is not as it should be but that it stands in need of redemption.

Bonhoeffer decided to get engaged shortly before his arrests. Metaxas summarizes this attitude

He saw it as an act of faith in God to step out in freedom and not to cringe from future possibilities.

In his Ethics Bonhoeffer describes how it is possible to do something that is perhaps morally unjust, in an account by a church colleague Oskar Hammelsbeck.

Bonhoeffer confided to me that he was actively and responsibly involved in the German resistance against Hitler, following his moral conviction that “the structure of responsible action includes both readiness to accept guilt and freedom” (Ethics, p. 209). “If any man tries to escape guilt in responsibility he detaches himself from the ultimate reality of human existence, and what is more he cuts himself off from the redeeming mystery of Christ’s bearing guilt without sin, and he has no share in the divine justification which lies upon this event” (Ethics, p. 210).

On a visit Bonhoeffer is asked by Werner von Haeften if it is allowed to shoot Hitler.

Shall I shoot? […] Bonhoeffer answered that he could not decide this for him. The risk had to be taken by him, him alone. If he even spoke of guilt in not making use of a chance, there was certainly as much guilt in light-hearted treatment of the situation. No one could ever emerge without guilt from the situation he was in. But then that guilt was always a guilt borne in suffering.

In his essay "Nach zehn Jahren", Bonhoeffer describes the necessity to sometimes sacrifice a lot e.g. principles to take an action in faith.

Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God—the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God.

Metaxas interprets this essay as,

It was not a cramped, compromised, circumspect life, but a life lived in a kind of wild, joyful, full-throated freedom—that was what it was to obey God.

Bonhoeffer writing to his fiance about his idea of their marriage.

Our marriage must be a “yes” to God’s earth. It must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth. I fear that Christians who venture to stand on earth on only one leg will stand in heaven on only one leg too.

In a sermon for the wedding of his best friend Eberhard Bethge, he writes about Gods consent on our decision who to marry.

It is obvious, and it should not be ignored, that it is your own very human wills that are at work here, celebrating their triumph; the course that you are taking at the outset is one that you have chosen for yourselves; what you have done and are doing is not, in the first place, something religious, but something quite secular… Unless you can boldly say today: “This is our resolve, our love, our way,” you are taking refuge in a false piety. […] As God today adds his “Yes” to your “Yes,” as he confirms your will with his will, and as he allows you, and approves of, your triumph and rejoicing and pride, […] “It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”

Bonhoeffer, in his big work Ethics, writes about the way we should approach our lifestyle.

“Those who wish even to focus on the problem of a Christian ethic are faced with an outrageous demand—from the outset they must give up, as inappropriate to this topic, the very two questions that led them to deal with the ethical problem: ‘How can I be good?’ and ‘How can I do something good?’ Instead they must ask the wholly other, completely different question: ‘What is the will of God?’”

Talking about death, he dreams about heaven.

No one has yet believed in God and the kingdom of God, no one has yet heard about the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting and looking forward joyfully to being released from bodily existence.

The book is written by an american evangelical with a lot of work put into fitting Bonhoeffer into the american evanglical community. A lot has been written about that.

• Hijacking Bonhoeffer - Christian Century by Clifford Green (In my opinion a little bit to harsh (an insulted liberal), but good points.)(8.August 2013)