[JJ]

From page 129 of"Bonhoeffer Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy" by Eric Metaxis,
A wonderful gift I received for Christmas:

"Bonhoeffer was not interested in intellectual abstractions. Theology must lead to the practical aspects of how to live as a Christian. Karding (one of his students at Berlin University) was surprised when Bonhoeffer asked his students whether they sang Christmas carols. Their answer was noncomittal, so he said, 'you must sing Christmas carols.' For him, music was not an optional part of Christian ministry, but de rigeur (translation: befitting, correct, decent, decorous, genteel, nice, polite, proper, respectable, seemly). He decided to tackle this deficiency head on. On the first day of Advent, he said to her, 'we will meet each other at noon... and we will sing Christmas carols.' She remembered that he played the flute wonderfully' and that he 'sang magnificently.'

Joachim Kanitz remembered that once Bonhoeffer told them that they should not forget that 'every word of Holy Scripture was a quite personal message of God's love for us.' Bonhoeffer then 'asked us if we love Jesus'.

Taking students on weekend trips into the country for retreats was another element of his practical instruction method... On one hiking trip, Bonhoeffer had them meditate on a Bible verse after breakfast... He taught us that the Bible goes directly into your life, [to] where your problems are.'

Bonhoeffer was working out the ideas that would find their way into the illegal seminaries of the Confessing Church in a few years (during the Nazi’s so called Third Reich). For him, such things as meditating on Bible verses and the singing formed integral parts in a theological education. Bonhoeffer's recurring theme of incarnation -- that God did not create us to be disembodied spirits, but flesh-and-blood human beings -- led him to the idea that Christian life must be modeled. Jesus did not only communicate ideas and concepts and rules and principals for living. He lived. And by living with His disciples, he showed them what life was supposed to look like, what God had intended it to look like. It was not merely intellectual or merely spiritual. It was all these things together, it was something more. Bonhoeffer aimed to model the Christian life for his students. This led him to the idea that, to be a Christian, one must live with Christians.

One student said he learned about the concepts of guilt and grace from the way Bonhoeffer treated them. On one retreat in 1933, Bonhoeffer and a group of students were hiking in some woods when they came upon a hungry family looking for food. Bonhoeffer approached them warmly and asked if the children were getting any hot food. When they replied 'Not much,' Bonhoeffer asked if he could take two of them along. 'We're going home now to eat,' he said 'and they can get something to eat with us, and then we will bring them right back.'"

I'm interested in your thoughts on this quote and how it compares to the "Watchman Wednesday" quote I commented on before this post. I note they (Watchman Nee and Deitrich Bonhoeffer) were from the same generation.