Bonhoeffer on "Reading the Bible"
Posted on February 18, 2012 by Pastor Tom
Here’s what Dietrich Bonhoeffor wrote to his brother-in-law in 1936 about reading the Bible.
“First of all, I confess quite simply – I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only 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, on has to enquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us.
Of course it is possible to read the Bible like any other books, that is to say from the point of view of textual criticism etc. Only that 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 words from 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 her heart’ so it will be with the words of the Bible. Only if we will venture to enter into the words of the Bible, as though in them this God were speaking to us who loves and does not will to leave us along with our questions, only so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible.”
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