Bonhoeffer on the Bible

Bonhoeffer on reading the Bible

First of all I will confess quite simply – I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we only need to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer. One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible God speaks to us, and one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to enquire of him. Only if we seek him will he answer us. Of course, it is also possible to read the Bible like any other book, that is to say from the point of view of textual criticism etc, there is nothing to be said against that. Only that is not the method which will reveal to us the heart of the Bible, but only the surface, just as we do not grasp the words of someone we love by taking them to bits, but by simply receiving them, so that for days they go on lingering in our minds, simply because they are the words of a person we love, and just as these words reveal more and more of the person who said them as we go on, like Mary, ‘pondering them in our heart’, so it will be with the words of the Bible. Only in them we will venture to enter into the words of the Bible, as though in them God were speaking to us who loves us and does not will to leave us alone with our questions, only so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible. …

If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, indeed it is entirely contrary to it. But this is also the message of the Bible, not only in the New but also in the Old Testament.

And I would now like to tell you quite personally: since I have learnt to read the Bible in this way – and this has not been so for very long – it becomes every day more wonderful to me. I read it in the morning and in the evening, often during the day as well, and every day I consider it a text which I have chosen for the whole week, and try to sink deeply into it, so as to really hear what it is saying. I know that without this I could not properly live any longer.

(From: Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Eric Metaxas, Thomas Nelson, 2010. pp136-7)