One Christmas Eve in Potsdam I opened the Holy Scripture and fled after a few chapters onto the cold dark street. For it was clear: under this claim of truth, life turns itself around. This book is no book, but a life-power. And it is impossible to grasp even a single line without the resolve to carry it out. For herein lies the hardest impossibility of human understanding: that only the one who believes understands faith.

— Reinhold Schneider (1903–1958), Schriftsteller

Topics: The Bible & the Word of God, Faith & Trust

Reinhold Schneider

Reinhold Schneider (1903–1958) war ein deutscher katholischer Schriftsteller und Essayist, der vor allem in Freiburg im Breisgau lebte und wirkte. Bekannt als literarische Stimme des christlichen Widerstands gegen den Nationalsozialismus, geriet er in den 1950er-Jahren wegen seines strikten Pazifismus und der Ablehnung der Wiederbewaffnung in Konflikt mit Politik und katholischer Kirche. Für Bibelleser stehen seine Texte für eine von Kreuzestheologie geprägte Treue zum Gewissen sowie das Ringen um christliche Verantwortung in gesellschaftlichen Krisen.

All quotes by Reinhold Schneider (16)

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The law is divine and holy. Let the law have its glory, but yet no law, be it never so divine and holy, ought to teach me that I am justified, and shall live through it. I grant it may teach me that I ought to love God and my neighbor; also to live in love, soberness, patience, etc., but it ought not to show me how I should be delivered from sin, the devil, death, and hell. Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teaches me, not what I ought to do but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel wills me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.
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