It is clear to us that the first Christian community in Jerusalem was more than a historical happening. It was here that the Sermon on the Mount came to life.
- Eberhard Arnold
Selected Reading
Not a New Law
Eberhard Arnold
The dedication demanded in the Sermon on the Mount is not a new law or moral teaching. Instead it is forgiveness. Its vital element is the light and warmth of the Holy Spirit. Here is Christ: the essence of salt, and the strength of the tree that bears good fruit. The Sermon on the Mount shows us the character of a community which shines like a light for the whole world.
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The Jesus of the Four Gospels
Eberhard Arnold
We live in an age where it seems Jesus has become almost unknown or his words distorted and disfigured, his work weakened. All the more, we must rediscover this Jesus and hold him up before all the world. We must place the Jesus of the four Gospels in the center of our faith and our life.
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The Spirit of the Early Church
Eberhard Arnold
The early church was not perfect, nor can it be blindly imitated, admits Eberhard Arnold in this groundbreaking 1926 essay. And yet, never since in church history has the Spirit been so forcefully at work. Why has the example of the first Christians never ceased to fuel renewal and reform?
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Eberhard Arnold and Dietrich Bonhoeffer
While studying in England in 1934, Eberhard Arnold’s son Hardy came in contact with the community of German émigrés living in London, including the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He found that Bonhoeffer had a keen interest in his experience with communal life at the Bruderhof and in Eberhard Arnold’s writings.
Continue ReadingQuick Quotes
We must let ourselves be pierced by the eternal words of the Sermon on the Mount, and hold on to the faith that God is leading us. Faithfulness is everything. By us, the work; by him, the achievement. He remains Lord of the world. His is the kingdom and the power and the glory.
- Eberhard Arnold
What the Kingdom of God means is made clear in the Sermon on the Mount, in the Lord’s Prayer, and in the words, “Enter by the narrow gate!” This means, treat people as you wish them to treat you. This is generally overlooked. You will not be going the way of discipleship until you do for everybody all that you ask from God for yourself, that is, absolute social justice and the peaceable atmosphere of God’s Kingdom. We are envoys of the coming Kingdom of God; we serve only one law, the law of His Spirit.
- Eberhard Arnold