"Only those who believe can obey / Only those who obey can believe" -Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
"Christians always see other men as brethren to whom Christ comes; they meet them only by going to them with Jesus. Disciple and non-disciple can never encounter each other as free men, directly exchanging their views and judging one another by objective criteria. No, the disciple can meet the non-disciple only as a man to whom Jesus comes. Here alone Christ's fight for the soul of the unbeliever, his call, his love, his grace and his judgement comes into its own. Discipleship does not afford us a point of vantage from which to attack others; we come to them with an unconditional offer of fellowship, with the single-mindedness of the love of Jesus."
"Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves . . . the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship. . . .
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. . . .
It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "The Cost of Discipleship"
"What I believe by faith, what I understand by the habit of theology, I posses and make my own by hope. Hope is the gateway to contemplation, because contemplation is an experience of divine things and we cannot experience what we do not in some way possess. By hope we lay hands on the substance of what we believe and by hope we possess the substance of the promise of God's love.
Jesus is the theology of the Father, revealed to us. Faith tells me tht this theology is accessible to all men. Hope tells me that He loves me enough to give Himself to me. If I do not hope in His love for me, I will never really know Christ. I hear of Him by faith. But I do not achieve the contact that knows Him, and thereby the Father in Him, until my faith in Him is completed by hope and charity: hope that grasps His love for me and charity that pays Him the return of love I owe."
-Thomas Merton, "No Man Is An Island"
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