Bonhoeffer is speaking to his social context, which is shaped by Nazi propaganda. But what he interrogates in Of Folly parallels our current discourse labeled as post-truth or alternative facts.
Like Adam, we may end up treating God as if God were at the periphery. But where there is no center—or where we become the center—the circumference of life disappears.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison comes under the category of “Books to Be Read on an Annual Basis”—like Augustine’s Confessions, King Lear, or anything by Flannery O’Connor. In general, we read too many books and return to too few.
These sermons, selected and introduced by Isabel Best, range in time from Bonhoeffer's pastoral tenure in Barcelona to a few months after the start of World War II.