God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past.

He observed "Here one can truly speak and hear about sin and grace and the love of God. Bloesch. His father Karl Bonhoeffer was a distinguiDietrich Bonhoefferd neurologist.

He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and executed by hanging in April 1945 while imprisoned at a Nazi concentration camp just 23 days before the German surrender. He was also involved in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential and many have labelled his book The Cost of Discipleship a modern classic.