It is not that I am afraid of disappointing … but that sometimes I simply cannot see how I am going to get things right … (in) the unprecedented state of our public life in Germany.1 How is one to preach such things to these people? Who still believes them? The invisibility destroys us.… This absurd, perpetual state of being thrown back upon the invisible God—no one can stand it any longer.2 Bonhoeffer’s return to Germany in 1931 represented a break in his
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