Merry Christmas. Over the years, we have had many Christmas episodes here at Five Minutes in Church History, and this year we're going to have another one.

We will spend Christmas with Bonifur. Two weeks ago, we visited with Bonifer and looked at his

thought in five sayings, but today, on Christmas Day, we will look at a sermon that Dietrich Bonnefer wrote for his students. This was December 25, 1939.

Yes, Hitler is firmly in power in Germany.

Bonifur had long ago been kicked out of the University of Berlin where he was a professor.

They had established the underground seminary at Finkelwolda.

It too was shut down by the Gestapo.

And these young seminarians, what Bonifer saw as the hope for the Lutheran Church, on the other side of the war, these young seminarians scattered.

And Bonifer continued to train them, and he would send them letters, and he would

send them sermons, and he would keep them up with their studies. And so he wrote them a letter

for Christmas Day, December 1939. He begins by saying, no pastor, no theologian stood at the cradle

of Bethlehem.

And yet, all Christian theology finds its origin in the miracle of miracles that God became man.

Teologia Sacra.

Sacred theology.

It originates in prayerful kneeling before the mystery of the divine child in the stable.

Bonifer goes on to say, without that holy night, there is no theology. God revealed in the flesh, the God, man, Jesus Christ. That is the holy mystery,

which theology was instituted to preserve and protect. Now Bonfer goes on to explain why theology

protects that moment. He says, what foolishness, as if it were the

task of theology to decode God's mystery, pulling it down to the commonplace. Miracle less

words of wisdom based on human experience and human reason. What is Bonifur talking about here?

Well, he's talking about liberalism. When he talks about human experience, he's going back to

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