“As a teacher of future preachers, Bonhoeffer devoted time to making written comments on students’ manuscripts, but he did not allow negative criticism in class when a student had just presented an early effort at a sermon. The future preacher too must feel accepted, must receive Christ’s hope and love, in order to go forward and take them to others. Wherever that person’s ministry might lead in the future, Christ’s church-community must surround with prayer, sustain and uphold his servant, beginning in the seminary.”
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian. He was also a participant in the German Resistance movement against Nazism, a founding member of the Confessing Church. His involvement in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler resulted in his arrest in April 1943 and his subsequent execution by hanging in April 1945, shortly before the war's end.
Overshadowed by his life and death, his theology and his view of Christianity's role in the secular world has nevertheless remained very influential.
He seems to have undergone something of a personal conversion from a theologian primarily attracted to the intellectual side of Christianity to a dedicated man of faith, resolved to carry out the teaching of Christ as he found it revealed in the Gospels.