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Homage to a Broken Man
The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold
Without your wounds where would you be?
The very angels themselves cannot persuade
the wretched and blundering children of earth
as can one human being broken in the wheels of living.
— Thornton Wilder
The very angels themselves cannot persuade
the wretched and blundering children of earth
as can one human being broken in the wheels of living.
— Thornton Wilder
People who knew J. Heinrich Arnold (1913-1982) say they never met another person like him. Some speak of his humility, sensitivity, and compassion; others of his frankness and earthy humor. In his presence, complete strangers poured out their darkest secrets and left transformed. Others wanted him dead.
Writer Henri Nouwen called him a “prophetic voice” and wrote of how his words “touched me as a double-edged sword, calling me to choose between truth and lies, selflessness and selfishness…Here was no pious, sentimental guide; every word came from his experience.”
Few knew Arnold’s past, or could have imagined the crucibles he had endured. Until now.
Peter Mommsen sets out to uncover the story of his grandfather’s life. This is what he finds: A boy who faced down Nazis and hunger, growing up on potatoes and radical ideas. The son of a famous intellectual, determined to drop out of school and take to the road. A young lover fleeing his homeland. A new father losing his first child. An unlikely pioneer in the heart of South America.
There, in the jungles of Paraguay, the religious community his parents had founded was twisted by legalism and power-hungry leaders into a cold and lifeless caricature. Arnold was betrayed by those he trusted most, separated from his wife and children, and exiled to a leper colony.
Often his life hung on a knife’s edge. But he couldn’t die yet, because he hadn’t fulfilled his calling, or the promise he had made as a child….
Homage to a Broken Man is a remarkable story of betrayal and forgiveness. Read it, and you’ll never look at your own life the same way again.
Praise for Homage to a Broken Man
Columbia University, author of Being Jewish
What goes through the hearts and minds of great men? In this wise and sensitive volume, Peter Mommsen brings the life of J. Heinrich Arnold into clear and penetrating focus. It is a book full of vital lessons about leadership, patience, sacrifice and forgiveness.
Author of The Upside-Down Kingdom
With candor and honesty, Mommsen shares the joy and pathos, suffering and love, deceit and forgiveness of a Christian community. It is a breathtaking story, and reads like a novel. I couldn’t put it down.
Founder and president, Shira Dicker Media International
One of the most moving books I have read – and one of the most instructive. For all those concerned with living a life of meaning and integrity, it ought to be required reading.
Editor-in-Chief, Orbis Books
This inspiring biography does more than simply recount the story of a fascinating life. It describes an adventure that challenges the reader to ask, “What would my life look like if I lived as if the Gospel were really true?”
The Individual and World Need
Timeless yet as timely as ever, this short book explores the relationship of the individual to world suffering and points clearly to a solution. Enlivened by a wide variety of anecdotes–from the ancient myth of Prometheus to the expressionist Franz Werfel–Eberhard Arnold’s message is simple but revolutionary: only by overcoming the cancer of individualism can we begin to address the need of the world.
Arnold’s essential diagnosis of what is wrong in the world–fragmentation, alienation, lust for power and wealth–is as precise today as when he penned this essay in the 1920s. The agony he has us confront is so grim, it could lead one to despair. But instead he faces despair head on, grapples with it, and emerges writing about joy. How is this possible?
Readers solely interested in personal salvation may not like this essay. Arnold calls for a commitment that may seem too demanding to some. Yet without that commitment the world will remain as it is, full of illusions about self and material things and unable to see the consequences. Arnold believes that this state of affairs does not have to be. It can be transcended by the faith that moves mountains.
Praise for The Individual and World Need
A timely challenge to a world where millions claim the title “born again,” yet where more and more of God’s children sleep in alleys, are enslaved to drugs, are locked away in prison, grow up without a father, or struggle to survive in dangerously deteriorating ghettos. Arnold powerfully calls us to a whole new relationship with the poor, lest the credibility of our love for God be called into question.
A profound and compelling apologetic for the Gospel, Arnold’s book is more relevent now than it was then. It was a privilege and a blessing, a challenging blessing, to read.
Inner Words
For Every Day of the Year
These passages were selected by Emmy Arnold, drawing from the writings of her husband Eberhard Arnold, as well as those of Augustine, Blumhardt, Bodelschwingh, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Meister Eckhart, Hermann Loens, Martin Luther, Thomas a Kempis, Hudson Taylor and others.
As Emmy Arnold writes, “We need voices of our time which speak to people’s hearts. It has been important to me in choosing these words that they come from people who have not only expressed their faith in words, but who have actually lived what they thought and wrote and believed.”
Innerland
A Guide into the Heart of the Gospel
It is hard to exaggerate the significance of Innerland, either for Eberhard Arnold or his readers. It absorbed his energies off and on for most of his adult life – from World War I, when he published the first chapter under the title War: A Call to Inwardness, to 1935, the last year of his life. The fruit of this long labor of love was not only a book, but a wellspring of remarkable depth.
Packed in metal boxes and buried at night for safekeeping from the Nazis, who raided the author’s study a year before his death (and again a year after it), Innerland was not openly critical of Hitler’s regime. Nevertheless, it attacked the spirits that animated German society: its murderous strains of racism and bigotry, its heady nationalistic fervor, its mindless mass hysteria, and its vulgar materialism. In this sense Innerland stands as starkly opposed to the zeitgeist of our own day as to that of the author’s.
At a glance, the focus of Innerland seems to be the cultivation of the spiritual life as an end in itself. Nothing could be more misleading. In fact, to Eberhard Arnold the very thought of encouraging the sort of selfish solitude whereby people seek their own private peace by shutting out the noise and rush of public life around them is anathema. Thus he writes in the section “The Inner Life”:
These are times of distress. We cannot retreat, willfully blind to the overwhelming urgency of the tasks pressing on society. We cannot look for inner detachment in an inner and outer isolation…The only justification for withdrawing into the inner self to escape today’s confusing, hectic whirl would be that fruitfulness is enriched by it. It is a question of gaining within, through unity with eternal powers, a strength of character ready to be tested in the stream of the world.
Innerland, then, calls us not to passivity, but to action. It invites us to discover the abundance of a life lived for God. It opens our eyes to the possibilities of that “inner land of the invisible where our spirit can find the roots of its strength and thus enable us to press on to the mastery of life we are called to by God.” Only there, says Eberhard Arnold, can our life be placed under the illuminating light of the eternal and seen for what it is. Only there will we find the clarity of vision we need to win the daily battle that is life, and the inner anchor without which we will lose our moorings.
Praise for Innerland
Southwestern Journal of Theology
…looks beyond the extremities of institutional Christianity into the depths of the life of discipleship…It is simple in language, yet complex in thought and message…It will challenge the serious reader to the core of their commitment and relationship to God and the church.
Powell’s Books
Innerland is a bold and challenging invitation to the path of discipleship, and speaks to both the terrors and the hopes of our time. Along with the likes of John Woolman, Thomas Kelly, and Dorothy Day, its author is one of the great secrets of radical Christianity. The reprinting of this masterpiece is truly a gift.
Innerland calls men and women to a life of such trust in God that their attitudes toward his kingdom, other people, material wealth, and earthly power are transformed.
Arnold’s writing is simple, luminous, direct…it has the authentic ring of a truly evangelical Christianity, and moves me deeply. It stirs to repentance and renewal.
Sojourners
The witness of Eberhard Arnold is a much needed corrective to a contemporary church that has lost the vital connection between belief and obedience.
A treasure trove of remarkable depth, there is not a page that fails to prick the conscience or enkindle the spirit.
Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution
André Trocmé (1901-1971) is famous for his role in saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis, as pastor of the French village of Le Chambon. But his bold deeds did not spring from a void. They were rooted in his understanding of Jesus’ way of nonviolence and the social implications of Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God on earth.
In this book, you’ll encounter a Jesus you may have never met before–a Jesus who not only calls for spiritual transformation, but for practical changes that answer the most perplexing political, economic, and social problems of our time.
Newly revised and expanded, this edition includes a concise biography of André Trocmé, and extensive notes on how contemporary thinkers have grappled with his ideas.
Praise for Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution
Duke Divinity School
This book–and especially this newly expanded edition–deserves to be more widely known, and not only because it was so influential on John Howard Yoder…Trocmé’s focus saves any account of salvation from pietistic distortion…His comparison of Gandhi and Jesus is also extremely important.
Auburn Theological Seminary
Jesus and the Nonviolent Revolution is one of the most important writings on nonviolence ever penned. Andre Trocme not only lays out his principles with astonishing clarity, but he lived them out at great risk. I can think of no better place to begin the study of this timely subject.
Re:generation Quarterly
Andre Trocme brings a ground-breaking historical clarity to Jesus’ life and teachings. The result is a vision for Jesus’ followers that is unsettling, exhilarating, and–most amazing of all–possible.
Author, Jesus the Rebel
Gandhi once said that Jesus was the greatest practitioner of nonviolence in history and that the only people who do not know that Jesus was nonviolent are Christians. Now more than ever, we need to study and imitate the nonviolent Jesus. This classic text by a legendary Christian peacemaker is a must for anyone who is concerned not only about the world’s wars and violence, but who wants to know what Jesus would do. It is a great source of inspiration and encouragement.
Denver Seminary
Andre Trocme has been one of my heroes for years. He was an outstanding model of reconciling grace, and his book, like few others, sets forth an amazingly convincing case for biblical peacemaking.
Author, The Upside-Down Kingdom
Andre Trocme has the prophetic gift of bypassing doctrinal fluff and cutting to the heart of Jesus’ message: a stark call for repentance, love and socio-economic change. A prophet for the 21st century, Trocme speaks in plain and simple words we can understand but may not want to hear. Read him with caution: this book may change your life.
Author, Who Will Roll Away the Stone?
Trocme pioneered territory where many of us now dwell, and opened doors we seek still to pass through…It is wonderful that a new generation might come to know this book: it represents a continuing light in our darkness.
Author, The Transformation of Culture
In this new edition of Andre Trocme’s classic work, the genius of a pastor-revolutionary shines through once more, magnified under the light of notes that reinforce his startling conception of witness and hope.
Fuller Theological Seminary
In a time when the church is being seduced by the concentration of power and violence, this book gives us the ethic we need to remain faithful. Almost all the major themes on which John Howard Yoder later based his classic Politics of Jesus are here—in briefer and highly readable form.
Eastern Seminary
Trocmé’s courage in the face of Nazi oppression is reason enough to give him a fresh hearing in a world of continuing injustice and rising ethnic hatreds. One need not agree with every point to learn from his vision of justice—a vision to which we often give lip-service while neglecting its challenge in our daily lives.
Jesus Is the Victor
A controversial German pastor, Christoph Blumhardt (1842-1919) didn’t care much for religion. His critique of Christianity touched a nerve that is still raw today. For him faith was a matter of fighting for God’s kingdom, the victory of Christ over all injustice and suffering here on earth. Throughout his life, “Jesus is the victor!” was his battle cry.
Compiled from Blumhardt’s talks, sermons and writings, Jesus Is the Victor reveals his unconventional understanding of this battle and victory, which ought to define the life of every follower of Christ.
For Blumhardt, Jesus’ triumph over sin and death wasn’t an abstraction, but something that he experienced as a reality in his life and the lives of those around him. Sick were healed, sinners forgiven, relationships restored. When the miraculous healings caused too much of a sensation, Blumhardt retired from preaching and entered politics, sensing Christ at work in movements for social justice. But he soon left that as well, saying, “State and church are no soil for the fire of God.”
If you ever doubt that Jesus has power to change the world, or despair of seeing his victory come to fruition in your own personal life, you should read this book.
A Joyful Pilgrimage
Not many people talk about “joy” these days. Emmy Arnold’s memoir radiates just that – an enthusiasm for life and an unflagging optimism grounded in faith. In a genre awash in sordid sex and dysfunctional relationships, she offers a refreshing account of a hard life lived victoriously, of people brought together, despite their own weakness and turbulent times, to experience new levels of freedom, trust, and unity.
The setting is the tumultuous aftermath of World War I, when thousands of young Germans defied the social mores of their parents – and the constricting influence of the churches – in search of freedom, social equality, nature, and community. Hiking clubs were formed and work camps organized, and hundreds of rural communes sprang up across the country. In the 1930s Nazism swallowed this so-called Youth Movement virtually whole.
A Joyful Pilgrimage is the story of a remnant that survived: a community movement that began when Emmy Arnold and her husband Eberhard, a well-known writer and lecturer, abandoned their affluent Berlin suburb to live a completely different life. It is her own story, candidly told, of a venture dared and realized, in spite of poverty, persecution, skepticism, and trust betrayed. Through it all Arnold clung to her belief that we can break free from the structures of power, greed, and injustice that divide us.
Praise for A Joyful Pilgrimage
Very moving…A simple and direct account of a Christian life stripped to the essentials.
Arnold’s portrait of communal life is brutally honest.
Lift Thine Eyes
Evening Prayers for Every Day of the Year
Children the world over are taught to say prayers at bedtime – but how many adults take time to turn to God at the end of the day? This collection of prayers is one of the few daily devotionals especially intended for use in the evening.
In Lift Thine Eyes, the faith of a man who recognized human despair but refused to give in to it offers a wellspring of hope to turn to again and again. Blumhardt’s prayers (and the corresponding Bible passages he has chosen for them) bespeak a certainty in God’s nearness the peace that flows from them comes from an unshakable conviction that God’s kingdom is indeed on the way. In turbulent times like our own, most people need this reassurance frequently, if not daily.
Blumhardt’s prayers flow out of his feeling for the suffering of the whole world. They all point in the same direction – to the prayer that God’s kingdom shall come, that the Savior shall come. If we pray, all suffering and need can only strengthen our faith in the certainty of God’s promise that he will complete his work and bring an end to all affliction.
Praise for Lift Thine Eyes
Currents
These are prayers of one who is at once saddened by the suffering of the world and yet empowered by the message of the Gospel. They breathe the spirit of hilaritas, bold confidence and joy before God.
Harvard Divinity School
“The writings of Blumhardt are a tonic many weary souls need.”
Blumhardt’s message is a most spontaneous and penetrating word of God, and it speaks right into the need of the world.
Bangor Theological Seminary
Not unlike Bonhoeffer, Blumhardt sees the light of Christ in the midst of the world, even when the world does not know it or understand it.
Evangelicals for Social Action
Blumhardt reminds us that personal peace is merely the wrapping paper of a more magnificent gift: confidence in the coming of God’s kingdom.
Author, Water My Soul
This small book of prayers is a treasure, a precious pearl…may others discover its riches, as I have.
A Little Child Shall Lead Them
Hopeful Parenting in a Confused World
Parenting was never easy. In these times of cultural decline and moral confusion, it has only gotten harder. But what if parenthood is not just a duty but a privilege, and what if our children can draw us closer to God and each other?
Johann Christoph Arnold offers down-to-earth insights every parent can apply. His prose is simple, straight to the heart, and filled with wisdom. Topics include fatherhood, motherhood, spoiling your child, discipline, adoption, special needs, building character, academics, sports and play, sex education, the role of grandparents, media consumption, and homeschooling.
Praise for A Little Child Shall Lead Them
Author, Amazing Grace
Beautiful…It is the reverence for children that I love.
Author, Pain: the Gift Nobody Wants
Probably the best book of its size and scope that I have read on this subject.
Children’s Defense Fund
Those of us who are parents know the crucial role we play in the lives of our children. Arnold conveys the seriousness of this commitment we have undertaken and reminds us what we are about.
President, Taylor University
Reading Arnold is like discovering the “pure strain” of Christ’s teachings before the “yes/but” rationalizations of modernity corrupted them…This is a book about children as God intended.
Author, The Empty Child
Even where we differ, I am glad to hear what this author has to say–and I love the quiet authority in his words.
Author, All God’s Children
This book should stand beside the likes of Spock and Brazleton as a “must read” for every parent. It not only gives sound advice but teaches us the value, reverence and preciousness of each child.
The Vatican
The moral and educational statements in this book agree completely with what the Pope is tirelessly teaching. I am happy that this book is written simply so we can all understand it. It is indeed very beautiful.
Minirth Meier New Life Clincs
A powerful book…Provides a wealth of information in a small space.
Musician, author
This book belongs in every new home.
Church of the Savior
A gift to the heart…Reminds us that children are to be revered as teachers because they teach us as no one else can how to unlearn the lessons that keep us from being children.
Love Letters
Everyone’s looking for true love, but few people seem willing to work at making it last. With separation and divorce so commonplace that most people see them as inevitable, it seems the very idea of marital commitment is fast becoming a foreign one. What’s gone wrong?
On Good Friday 1907, in the German university town of Halle, a young couple sealed their secret engagement with a kiss – and a vow to follow God wherever he led them. They were passionately in love, yet they rejected romance as the basis of their relationship, building instead on the promise of Jesus’ words, “Seek first the kingdom of God.” Circumstance (and scandalised parents) kept them separated for most of the next three years. But that separation bore its own fruit: an intense exchange of letters.
Praise for Love Letters
Eastern University
More than love letters. They show how a man and a woman can nurture each other toward spiritual maturity.
Author of 'The Lost Gospel of Mary'
These letters disclose the writers’ burning commitment to the Lord above all else, and demonstrate how it became the foundation of the commitment they bore to each other. Such clarity and passion are rarely seen these days.
S.M. Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
A rare find. It is a privilege to be invited into such an intimate conversation.
Oxford University
Here are letters of both immense intensity and the deepest intimacy, almost too sacred for publication. They witness to a deeply based love nurtured in the context of an absolute commitment to Christ.
The University of Notre Dame
These inspiring letters interweave a profound love for Jesus Christ with a deep love between two young people, as well as an utterly transparent search to do God’s will.
General Secretary, Baptist World Alliance
For modern secular humanity these Love Letters of Eberhard and Emmy Arnold must seem from another planet! But for Christian believers these letters are a powerful reminder of God’s transformation of ordinary human relationships into divine grace and the mystery of God’s love. Love Letters portrays the depth of human emotions that can be kindled by expressing through the written word the meaning and purpose of Christ’s love.
With enthusiasm I commend reading these letters for one’s own spiritual growth. In so doing one will also gain a greater appreciation for the tremendous spiritual movement that renewed the Church universal at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. This renewal raised up a generation of young men and women completely dedicated to Christ and the evangelisation of the world in their generation. The love story of Eberhard and Emmy is a thrilling testimony of what complete commitment and obedience to Christ can do. Read it, pray about it, and your marriage will take on new life and joy!
Love is Like Fire
The Confession of an Anabaptist Prisoner
Peter Riedemann (1506-1556) wrote this confession as a 23-year-old while imprisoned in Austria on account of his faith. At the time, the Anabaptists were being drowned, beheaded, and burned at the stake as heretics by the thousand for their commitment to baptism of believers, economic sharing, nonviolence, and the restoration of a New Testament Christianity free from state control and institutional hierarchy.
In addition to the confession are two important supplements: How We Should Build the House of God and The Seven Pillars of This House. These meditations, like the confession, are of a deeply spiritual character.
From the book:
Love is like fire –
When it is first kindled in a man,
small troubles and temptations smother
and hinder it; but when it really burns,
having kindled the man’s eagerness for God,
the more temptations and tribulations meet it,
the more it flares, until it overcomes and consumes
all injustice and wickedness.
When it is first kindled in a man,
small troubles and temptations smother
and hinder it; but when it really burns,
having kindled the man’s eagerness for God,
the more temptations and tribulations meet it,
the more it flares, until it overcomes and consumes
all injustice and wickedness.
Praise for Love is Like Fire
Much of the teaching of the Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians of the sixteenth century is today unreal and irrelevant, but what the Anabaptists taught about mutual aid, peace, discipline, religious liberty, and lay witness is as fresh and important as it was fifteen generations ago.
Alderson-Broaddus College
For Riedemann, Christian discipleship was an incendiary fellowship between the believer and his Lord. Love like a fire burned within him… Love begets love, it must “show itself in active work, serving all men and doing good.”
My Search
In a world that is increasingly torn by violence, hatred, injustice and war, is there an answer to the need of humanity? Here is the story of one man who grappled with this question in an intensely personal way: growing up in Germany in a Jewish family under the shadow of the Nazis, forced into exile in Siberia, barely escaping with his life from starvation and disease in southern Asia, he finally made it to the land of Israel.
Faced with the horror of the Holocaust, he was determined to fight for the independence of his new homeland. But the inhumanity of war continued to pursue him, along with the question: why cannot men and women live together in peace?
This is a fascinating account of survival against all odds, but it is more than that – the story of one man’s search for the answers to the questions that in one way or other face us all.
Praise for My Search
I.C.S.A.
One of the book’s virtues … is that it pulls you along without commentary or long-winded descriptions. It makes for absorbing reading, hard to put down and harder to forget.
No One Can Stem the Tide
Selected Poems 1931-1991
Though most of Jane Tyson Clement’s poems remained hidden in private notebooks during her lifetime, the few that travelled beyond her hands were widely admired and drew critical acclaim. Now, with this first comprehensive anthology of her work, the public can at last discover this gifted poet and give her the audience she deserves.
Evoking comparisons to such better-known contemporaries as Jane Kenyon, Wendell Berry, and Denise Levertov, Clement is direct and understated. Even when technically sophisticated, her poetry speaks with a familiar voice and draws on accessible images from the natural world.
Still, these are no mere “nature poems.” In exploring the varied emotions of life – of love, longing, and loss; memory, sacrifice, and desire; struggle and frustration, joy and resolve – they reveal the tireless seeking of a generous and honest heart and beckon the reader down new avenues of seeing and hearing.
Praise for No One Can Stem the Tide
An amazing breadth of subject matter…Clement demonstrates an unusual ability to speak to the reader on varying levels.
Beautiful…offers quietude in the midst of cacophony and literary cynicism.
Now Is Eternity
Comfort and Wisdom for Difficult Hours
Bad days are one thing – everyone has them now and then. But what about the darker clouds that settle over a life for weeks or even months at a time? What about separation and divorce, prolonged illness and hospitalization? What about the loss of a friend or a parent, the absence of a child or a spouse?
For the friend or family member who just isn’t coping, no matter what you say, the sturdy simplicity of this little volume offers something most well-meaning sympathy cards forget: a gentle insistence that there is still a God who watches over all, and a stubborn faith that the worst trials of life’s “difficult hours” will one day be overshadowed by his comfort and peace.
In reminding us of the power conferred by hope, Now Is Eternity is a source of daily strength. Given the understated beauty and brevity of its texts, it is one the thirsty reader will surely come back to again and again.
Christoph F. Blumhardt (1842-1919) influenced a whole generation of Europeans, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Emil Brunner, Oscar Cullman, and Karl Barth. His father, Johann C. Blumhardt (1805-1880) was a Swabian pastor and is regarded by many as the father of German pietism.
Praise for Now Is Eternity
The little book is indeed a gem – comforting in the sense of strengthening. Thank you.
Blumhardt’s message is a most spontaneous and penetrating word of God, and it speaks right into the need of the world.
Evangelicals for Social Action
Blumhardt reminds us that personal peace is merely the wrapping paper of a more magnificent gift: confidence in the coming of God’s kingdom.
Perfect for consultation in the most diverse moments – for meditation in the quiet of my church, and even when I visit the pub in town (for just one half-pint of bitter)!
Poems and Rhymed Prayers
Eberhard Arnold published most of his essays during his lifetime, but almost none of his poems. It might have been shyness: many are love poems, and others reveal private struggles. But if they open a window on a man’s inmost thoughts, they also show him at his most essential and Christ-centered.
A few days after Eberhard’s death, his wife Emmy approached a neighbor with a folder of his unpublished poems in hand: “They are not mine anymore…I want to share them.” Belated as it might be, this volume is a fruit of her generosity.
The Prayer God Answers
Why should I pray? What should I pray for? Why has God not answered my prayers? What if everything we prayed for came true? Would I be ready? In this essay, Eberhard Arnold describes the kind of prayer that pleases God, and the power of prayer to transform our lives and our world.
First published in German in 1913, The Prayer God Answers has been revised and expanded in this ebook to include important insights from Arnold’s other talks and writings on the importance of prayer for individuals and the church. Arnold explores the teachings of Jesus, as well as the example of the Hebrew prophets and the early Christians, and challenges us to rediscover the prayer that shakes the world.
From the book:
Do we have the faith that through our prayer the status quo can be shattered? Can we believe that at our call Christ will come among us to judge and save? When we ask for the Holy Spirit, are we ready for God to strike us like a burst of flaming lightning, so that at last we experience Pentecost? Do we really believe that God’s kingdom is imminent? Are we capable of believing that through our pleading, this kingdom will break in? Are we able to believe that as a result of our prayer the entire history of the world will be turned topsy-turvy?
Let us come to God in the absolute certainty that Jesus’ words are true: “The kingdom of God has drawn near!” and, “If you have faith, nothing will be impossible for you.” Wonders will take place, mountains will be torn from their place, and the whole situation as it is on earth will be changed. Mighty things will happen when we have faith.
Provocations
Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard
There are few authors as repeatedly quoted and consistently unread as Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard himself is partly to blame for this: his style is dense, his thoughts complex. And yet embedded within his writings and journals are metaphors and truths so deep and vivid, they can overwhelm you with an almost blinding clarity.
Editor Charles E. Moore has done us an invaluable service by putting together arguably the most accessible and complete Kierkegaard volume to be published in decades. Here is a book for anyone who takes the search for authenticity seriously.
Divided into six sections, Provocations contains a little of everything from Kierkegaard’s prodigious output, including his wryly humorous attacks on what he calls the “mediocre shell” of conventional Christianity, his brilliantly pithy parables, his amazing insights on the human condition, and his incisive attempts to dig through the fluff of theological jargon and clear a way for the basics: decisiveness, obedience, passion, and recognition of the truth.
Provocations is a must for every serious seeker. Indeed, the wealth of sayings and aphorisms collected in its final section is reason enough to download the e-book.
Praise for Provocations
Provocations is more of a health farm than a holiday. At the very least it shows that we are not the first generation to find the Church disappointing, the mind and spirit in tension, and God wonderfully paradoxical.
Author, The Divine Conspiracy
Kierkegaard is one of the few disciples of Jesus whose words open the world of his Master to the seeking soul in the contemporary world. Provocations is a fine selection from his writings, excellently arranged to make the demanding insights of Kierkegaard accessible to any thoughtful reader.
Fuller Theological Seminary
Kierkegaard’s writings seem to get more “contemporary” every year. He was an extremely insightful Christian prophet who anticipated many of the dilemmas and motifs of our “post-modern” culture. This well-selected collection of writings should be read and re-read by everyone who is attempting to minister to our present generation.
Duke University Chapel
Charles Moore has done us a great service in sifting through Kierkegaard and giving us his essential writings. Here is a book to be savored, enjoyed, and yes, provoked by.
Author
Kierkegaard has taught me, moved me, perplexed me, and always provoked my thinking in new directions. I’m delighted to see his work in such an accessible form.
Author, Faith Beyond Reason
A wonderful introduction to Kierkegaard. Christians and others who are spiritual seekers will find here a treasure chest of powerful insights couched in glittering and provocative prose.
Author, The Crisis of Piety
An important and helpful guide to Kierkegaard’s spirituality.
Author, All Saints
Few writers have so ably distinguished the challenge of real Christianity from its many counterfeit versions. After reading these selections from Kierkegaard it becomes harder to mistake a “half-way” gospel for the real thing.
North Park University
This book serves a real need in American Christendom. Moore’s introduction and collection retrieve the passion that animates Kierkegaard himself. That passion, with all its force, still addresses the reflective reader.
Chancellor, Denver Seminary
Provocations is an excellent selection from the vast Kierkegaard corpus…this book is an outstanding addition to Kierkegaard publications. It will influence readers to become enthusiastic students of his Christ-centered thought.
Rachoff
A True Story
Meet an upstart who disarms his wealthy parents by taking in a homeless man (he is robbed, of course); who receives accolades for teaching illiterates to read and write but gets run out of town for telling them about Jesus as well. Meet a revolutionary who spends his last savings on a night at the opera, only to disrupt the performance; a zealot whose habit of exposing hypocrisy in high places lands him behind bars. Meet a visionary who inspires ardour but refuses to accept followers; a counsellor who turns souls toward Christ by turning lives upside down. He’s a failure by most standards, and yet his memory still challenges and inspires. Meet Rachoff.
The Secret Flower
And Other Stories
In an age when cleverness often counts more than substance, the writer of these stories (and poems) offers a break from all the noise. Clement, a teacher, mother and poet, writes with a measured beauty that recalls Tolstoy and Tolkien. There is nothing heavy or stilted about these tales, which rely less on plot devices than on allegorical symbols and the evocation of moods. But there is the thrill of expectancy, a sense that something new is on the way, and the belief that the Someone for whom humanity longs and waits is seeking us, just as we seek Him.
Praise for The Secret Flower
Stories of real distinction.
Clement writes with simplicity and directness, a gentle, probing insistence, and conviction. One lays down the book in thought, and with thankful heart.
Beautiful…offers quietude in the midst of cacophony and literary cynicism.
Seeking Peace
Notes and Conversations along the Way
Everyone’s seeking peace, but few seem to find it. Why? Arnold says most people are looking in the wrong direction.
For anyone sick of the spiritual soup filling so many bookstore shelves these days, Seeking Peace is sure to satisfy a deep hunger. Arnold offers no easy solutions, but also no unrealistic promises. He spells out what peace demands. “There is a peace greater than self-fulfillment,” he writes. But you won’t find it if you go looking for it. It is waiting for everyone ready to sacrifice the search for individual peace, everyone ready to “die to self.”
Praise for Seeking Peace
A reader
Seeking Peace is the most important book I have ever read besides the Bible. I have given copies to so many friends I can’t count the number I’ve purchased.
St. John’s Seminary
Seeking Peace is a gem. The candor, simplicity, and humanity of the whole text, and especially of the anecdotes, should recommend it to an exceedingly wide reading public.
Author, The Lessons of St. Francis
Peace builds on justice and the mercy of forgiveness. It also begins by being peace. These simple truths are manifested by this beautiful and compelling book…This book has something to say to those of all faiths, and further, to believer and non-believer alike.
Author, Virtues of an Authentic Life
This book is a thoughtful and attractive vision of a truly dedicated Christian life and a convincing testimony to a truly ecumenical spirit. Readers will be grateful for the depth and insights of this outstanding author.
Plowshares
Seeking Peace has a lucidity and power completely comprehensible to the Christian, or any person of good will. Peace is the central characteristic of the Gospel, and it is too often avoided or ignored.
This newest volume from Johann Christoph Arnold is an incisive gospel book on the critical reality of seeking peace. May it help Christians regain their lost heritage of justice and peace.
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Seeking Peace inspires each of us to seek peace within our own hearts. To do this we need to humbly admit our brokenness…find wholeness, happiness, and harmony, which is after all the fulfillment of God’s plan for humanity.
The Islamic Cultural Center of New York
Arnold’s newest book is an excellent work and aids in promoting ideas I fully support. Seeking Peace is the very essence of what we are all about.”
Author, When the Well Runs Dry
Seeking Peace is solidly rooted in the Christian–and even Jewish and Buddhist–tradition. As Arnold reminds us, Jesus’ peace has nothing to do with passivity, nor is it for the spineless or self-absorbed. It demands deeds of love.
Albany Medical College Dept. of Psychiatry
Seeking Peace is a delight to read. It is measured and well balanced, and as in Arnold’s previous books, the rich human stories make for compelling reading… I will enthusiastically recommend this book to my family, friends, and colleagues. It is another support for me and my work.
A Testimony to Church Community
The Life and Writings of Eberhard Arnold
For a concise, readable introduction to a man who, in his search for Christ, spent his life turning conventional Christianity on its head, this is a good place to start. Eberhard Arnold (1883-1935) is relatively unknown today, yet his life’s work continues to bear fruit today as few lives have.
In 1920, venturing into an unknown future—and leaving wealth, security, and a public speaking career—he moved with his wife Emmy from Berlin to a tiny village, where they started a small community on the basis of early church practices as described in the Book of Acts.
A Testimony to Church Community contains a biographical sketch, selections from his most important works, and brief memoirs by friends and colleagues.
Praise for A Testimony to Church Community
Arnold’s writing is simple, luminous, direct…it has the authentic ring of a truly evangelical Christianity, and moves me deeply. It stirs to repentance and renewal.
Sojourners
The witness of Eberhard Arnold is a much needed corrective to a contemporary church that has lost the vital connection between belief and obedience.
Tübingen University
Arnold’s writings are a light of hope in an age that seems very dark. May they no longer remain hidden under a bushel, but shine out to be heeded by many.
New Oxford Review
The undeniable power of Eberhard Arnold’s writing owes to the fact that there is absolutely no difference between what he professed to believe and the way he lived.
Mennonite Historical Bulletin
A commendable introduction to Eberhard Arnold and his views of Scripture and history, which are seldom found otheriwse. A radical view of church renewal—but Christendom will be unfaithful to the gospel if it neglects to give this message serious consideration.
A Third Testament
A Modern Pilgrim Explores the Spiritual Wanderings of Augustine, Blake, Pascal, Tolstoy, Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky
Based on an acclaimed TV series, this illuminating collection of portraits brings to life seven men in search of God–seven maverick thinkers whose spiritual wanderings make for unforgettable reading.
Saint Augustine, a headstrong young hedonist and speechwriter who turned his back on money and prestige in order to serve Christ…
Blaise Pascal, a brilliant scientist who warned people against thinking they could live without God…
William Blake, a magnificent artist and poet who pled passionately for the life of the spirit and foresaw the plight that materialism would usher in…
Soren Kierkegaard, a renegade philosopher who spent most of his life at odds with the church, and insisted that every person must find his own way to God…
Fyodor Dostoevsky, a debt-ridden writer and sometime prisoner who found, in the midst of squalor and political turmoil, the still small voice of God…
Leo Tolstoy, a grand old novelist who swung between idealism and depression, loneliness and fame–and a dual awareness of his sinfulness and God’s grace.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor whose writings–and agonized involvement in a plot to kill Hitler–cost him his life, but continue to inspire millions.
The Author
Often compared to G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, British writer and television commentator Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990) is best known for having introduced Mother Teresa to the English-speaking world through his classic biography Something Beautiful for God. A tart-tongued agnostic for most of his life, Muggeridge converted to Catholicism at 80. But he never stopped asking questions, which surely explains his enduring appeal.
Praise for A Third Testament
Muggeridge is a witty, sharp-eyed, skeptical observer…He can be amusing, trenchant, exasperating, unfair or absurd…What he can apparently never be is dull.
Boston College
After Chesterton, Lewis, and Tolkien, there is no one I would rather read than Muggeridge. A Johnny-come-lately convert to Christianity, he is also a great wordsmith.
Muggeridge was a most eloquent lay apostle of Christianity …and a journalist with few, if any, peers.
St. John’s Seminary
Both a wag and a shrewd observer of history and humbug, Muggeridge brings alive seven colossi of the Western intellectual tradition–and shows that the majority of them, ironically, are in fact quite counter-traditional.
First Things
A Third Testament reveals the gifts that made “St. Mug” such an effective apologist for the Christian way in his latter days. This scintillating little book continues to provoke, charm, and persuade.
New York University
In times like these, that try our souls, everybody needs a book like this: it is readable, stimulating, and substantive. It leaves you with the same feeling you have after a wonderful meal–though in this case, of course, the feeling lasts longer.
Author
God has always written his stories in the lives of those who love him, even those whose love is marked by struggle. In this marvelous short book we encounter seven of those incarnate stories, written by an eight.
Prison Fellowship
This classic occupies a spot on my shelf of favorite books.
Author
Muggeridge was a true prophet of the 20th century…a voice crying in the wilderness.
Thoughts on Children
It is sometimes said that each child is a thought in the mind of God. But even if we believe this, and approach the children entrusted to us with reverence, we may often feel helpless-whether in the face of a two-year-old’s tantrum or a teenager’s silence.
In this little book, two fathers (themselves a father and son) share their thoughts on the essence of bringing up children, as well as some helpful practical advice. Both lived in Germany more than a hundred years ago, in an era when parents and teachers tended to be overly strict; today most tend to be very lenient. All the same, there is plenty in what they say that is timeless.
The Authors
Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880) had eight children, his son Christoph Friedrich Bumhardt (1842-1919) had eleven.
Thy Kingdom Come
A Blumhardt Reader
Christians the world over pray “Thy kingdom come” daily, but do they know what they are asking for? These short selections will spark a burning expectation for this kingdom to break into this world, here and now.
Meet Johann Christoph Blumhardt and Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt, two German pastors who experienced this kingdom as a daily reality, through this compilation of excerpts from their sermons and discussions. This book is not intended to be an analysis of the Blumhardts’ thought, rather an opportunity for the Blumhardts to introduce their thoughts for themselves. “If their own words fail to inform, enlighten, or move the reader,” writes Eller, “there are no words of mine that could reverse that situation.”
From the book:
Jesus sees every person as abnormal but gives up no one as lost. If people were not as they are, they would have no need of Salvation. So, in the next place, Jesus allows all to come to him as they are: sinners and righteous, poor and rich, healthy and sick. Jesus gives himself to each person as he is; and people ought not play up their own piety and put down that of others.
Signs and wonders are all right as legitimate proof that one has to do with our dear God; but they cannot truly help us. What helps us is justice and truth; and a hundred thousand miracles are of little use in comparison to one word of truth, or one command of truth through which God makes something straight that was crooked.
The capacity to hope is extremely important both for the kingdom of God and for our own development, because something very real and powerful has been laid in our hearts with this hope. One might say that we have been given a power that corresponds to the power of God. A power goes forth from God to make something of us; and from us there goes forth a hope that we shall become something. And this power of God and our hope go together hand in hand, as in a marriage, walking together. We in hope and God in his power, we belong together so that we can follow a purpose, the good purpose of God.
Praise for Thy Kingdom Come
Atlantic School of Theology
Vernard Eller’s book manifests the intuition for what those unusual outsiders – the Blumhardts – really wanted. Skillful selection and imaginative arrangement of both excerpts and full texts bring a rich and complete overview of their creative insights which, as is more widely recognized now, shaped determinative theologians and ecclesial movements of our times. A real need in historical theology, in homiletics and in pastoral care is being met with this work. One cheers at its appearance.
The Violence of Love
From the stirring foreword by Henri Nouwen to the last page of Romero’s text, this powerful little volume of eloquent, simple meditations never wastes a word. Yet the real depth of Romero’s message lies not in his words themselves, poetic as they are. It lies in the life they give witness to: the hard life of a man who was martyred for his faith. Thus The Violence of Love gives more insight, perhaps, than any biographical account of his life.
During his three years as archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero became known as a fearless defender of the poor and suffering. His work on behalf of the oppressed earned him the admiration and love of the peasants he served, a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, honorary degrees from abroad – and finally, an assassin’s bullet on account of his outspokenness.
Romero was martyred for his insistence that following Christ cannot be relegated to the spiritual realm. He did not die in vain the people of Central America say his spirit lives on in them. As their struggle for justice and dignity intensifies, his words take on renewed urgency.
Praise for The Violence of Love
The excerpts gathered in this volume have a luminous power…It is the power of preaching fed by love for God, church, friend, and foe.
Passionate, unpretentious, and deeply moving, The Violence of Love is a manual for the Christian life.
It is not eloquence that suffuses [Romero's words] with passion. It is not high office that mandates attention to them. It is not even martyrdom that clothes them with significance. It is a rare combination of two factors, mercilessly penetrating layers of human complacency.
Walk in the Light
And Twenty-Three Tales
Long hailed as one of the western world’s greatest writers, Leo Tolstoy is best known for his epic War and Peace and his novel Anna Karenina. Yet the undiminished popularity of his shorter works – including the two dozen collected here – attests to his equal prowess as a master of the short story.
Uncluttered by the complexities of plot and character that daunt so many readers of the longer Russian masterpieces, Tolstoy’s tales illumine eternal truths with forceful brevity. While inspired by a sense of spiritual certainty, their narrative quality, subtle humor, and visionary power lift them far above the common run of “religious” literature. Moralists purport to tell us what our lives should mean, and how we should live them. Tolstoy, on the other hand, has an uncanny gift for simply conveying what it means to be truly alive.
From “Walk in the Light,” a parable-like piece that reflects Tolstoy’s fascination with the early Christians, to beloved tales such as “Ivan the Fool,” “A Prisoner in the Caucasus,” and “What Men Live By,” the stories in this volume have stood the test of time for over a century. Together they form a rare treasure-trove you will want to return to often.
Praise for Walk in the Light
Inspirational…Short stories and essays that explore the spiritual hunger of humankind…stand side by side with lovely little tales.
There is only one problem with this book: once you start reading, you can’t stop! It should be in every library. It would be an excellent gift for people who like to tell or read stories to others.
Glorious…Here are stories to illuminate the darkness and the searching soul.
War: A Call to Inner Life
Words of Hope for Uncertain Times
We live in a time of war. From Baghdad, New York, and London, to Buenos Aires, Tokyo, and Kabul, the fabric of human society is being torn apart by hatred and greed, and almost everyone is nervous about something – if not droughts or floods, then the stock market, or another terrorist attack.
That’s why we put together this ebook: as an antidote to fear, and to the isolation and mistrust it breeds. The passages in this e-book were selected by readers. (If they told us why they chose a particular quote, we included their comments.) Some passages pertain to the events of September 11, 2001; others to escalating tensions in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. Still others address the broader themes of suffering, injustice, retribution, forgiveness, peace, and the eternal battle between evil and good.
Directly or indirectly, all of them sound a common note: our faith that though there will be war and rumors of war, God ultimately directs the course of history and holds us in his hands. And he is not a God of fear, but of hope.
When the Time Was Fulfilled
Christmas Meditations
The meditations in this collection are written by three seekers who struggled hard and long to find, in the words of Søren Kierkegaard, “the contemporary Christ.” They witness to the fact that the birth of Jesus is more than history – it is a reality – but only for those who feel their need and are personally ready to come to the manger.
A revised and expanded edition of an old favourite, the 40 short, pithy readings in this book will not leave you sitting comfortably this Christmas.
This book is available in India here.
From the book
Christmas did not come after a great horde of people had completed something good, or because of the successful result of any human effort. No, it came as a miracle, as the child that comes when his time is fulfilled, as a gift of the Father which he lays into those arms that are stretched out in longing. This is how the first Christmas came; in this way it always comes anew, both to us as individuals and to the whole world.
Eberhard Arnold
How many of us, in our good-hearted way, have ridden past the stable on the high horse of our opinions and convictions, leaving the Child behind, not realizing he was there? How many of us have stood up for what we believed, even in defiance, but were not awake to the fact that we were riding past a miracle – the miracle of life and love?
Alfred Delp
The star of hope has to appear again, but it will come only when our hearts seek it, when there is a passion for it – a sighing, striving, and aching for the great mercy to come. Yes, the star will return, and then it will shine not just for a few, but it will quickly spread its brilliance over the whole world.
Christoph Blumhardt
Why We Live in Community
Everyone’s talking about “community” these days, but in this classic manifesto, Arnold argues that it can be lived. Discussing the pillars of real community–self-sacrificial love, honest relationships, and the joy and unity that arises from both–he does not prescribe step-by-step solutions or offer easy “answers.” But he does describe the great “adventure of faith” shared by those who are willing to trade isolation for companionship, and he will further inspire those who are already traveling the road of community.
Wisdom of the Sadhu
Teachings of Sundar Singh