Love Letters
Eberhard Arnold and Emmy von Hollander
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
Anthony Tony Campolo
Eastern University
More than love letters. They show how a man
and a woman can nurture each other toward spiritual maturity.
Frederica Mathewes-Green
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.
Father Philip K. Eichner
S.M. Catholic League for Religious and Civil
Rights
A rare find. It is a privilege to be invited
into such an intimate conversation.
Prof. John Briggs
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.
Prof. Lawrence S. Cunningham
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.
Denton Lotz
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!
