Explore "Forgiveness" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Finkenwalde, Next-to-Last Sunday of the Church Year, November 17, 1935.
Finkenwalde, the country estate where Bonhoeffer trained pastors for the Confessing Church from 1935 to 1937, had previously housed a school. In what had been the gym, the seminarians created a simple chapel, large enough to invite their neighbors to join them for Sunday morning worship. Usually, the preacher on Sunday mornings was a seminarian, gaining experience, while Bonhoeffer himself preached for vespers on Saturday evenings and at Communion services. However, when he had an urgent theme to emphasize, Bonhoeffer occasionally took the pulpit on a Sunday. That was the case for this sermon. For Bonhoeffer, forgiveness was absolutely central to the community life of Christians. We can see this in his book Life Together, which describes life in the Finkenwalde community. The last paragraph of the sermon refers to the practice he promoted of turning to a peer, a fellow seminarian, to hear one's confession of sin and assure liberating forgiveness in God's name.