Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Decision to Pastor a Church in London…

…was not easy, as he wrote eight days after his appointment in a detailed letter to Karl Barth–someone who is still famous and Bonhoeffer’s well-regared professor of theology:

“If one were going to discover quite definite reasons for such decisions after the event, one of the strongest, I believe, was that I simply did not any longer  feel up to the questions and demands that came to me.  I feel that, in some way I don’t understand, I find myself in radical opposition to all my friends; I became increasingly isolated with my views of things, even though I was and remain personally close to these people.  All this has frightened me and shaken my confidence so that I began to fear that dogmatism might be leading me astray–since there seemed no particular reason why my own view in the in these matters should be any better, any more right, than the views of many really capable pastors whom I sincerely respect…”

(Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life, 26-27)