Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (affiliate link) revised ed., New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1963; first published, 1937. 352 pages.
This book is one of the most influential works on discipleship in the last century. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, born February 4, 1906, was a brilliant man who developed his theology while pastoring and teaching in Nazi Germany. He was ultimately arrested for participating in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler and was executed by special order of Henrich Himmler just days before the Allied forces liberated his prison. Bonhoeffer was granted a coveted teaching position at Union Theological Seminary in New York and could have safely waited out World War II. Instead, he believed he could not help rebuild Germany if he did not also suffer with it during its troubled times. That decision cost him his life. His writings on the cost of following Jesus have exerted a powerful force on readers ever since.
I must confess that I had started reading this book a dozen times, but I would inevitably set it aside for a more “pressing” reading assignment. I recently determined it was time to read it through to the end. I should address a few points at the outset. First, Bonhoeffer was brilliant, so some of his thoughts must be read slowly. He was also German, so his English writing must be considered carefully. Third, Bonhoeffer was Lutheran. He was trained in some of the most liberal schools in the western world, including Tubingen. He also studied under liberal professors, such as Adolph Von Harnack, and read widely from Karl Barth. While his book contains many insightful thoughts and we should not dismiss someone as a liberal merely based on their alma mater, understanding an author’s background allows the reader to better appreciate and understand the author’s message.
Though Bonhoeffer was by temperament and ethics a pacifist, he came to believe that “it is not only my task to look after the victims of madmen who drive a motorcar in a crowded street, but to do all in my power to stop their driving at all” (28). He notes, “If we claim to be Christians, there is no room for expediency” (25).
Bonhoeffer believed that “Revival of church life always brings in its train a richer understanding of the Scriptures” (37). He states that “The real trouble is that the pure Word of Jesus has been overlaid with so much human ballast—burdensome rules and regulations, false hopes and consolations—that it has become extremely difficult to make a genuine decision for Christ” (38). He bemoans, “Does not our preaching contain too much of our own opinions and convictions, and too little of Jesus Christ?” (39). He urges, “Let us try to get away from the poverty and pettiness of our own little convictions and problems, and seek the wealth and splendor which are vouchsafed to us in Jesus Christ” (39).
Bonhoeffer’s chief attack is against what he refers to as “cheap grace.” He argues that “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace” (45). He adds, “Cheap grace means grace as doctrine, a principle, a system” (45). “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate” (47).
Bonhoeffer lived in a Germany that had been heavily influenced by Martin Luther, who rejected works as a means of salvation. Yet grace was emphasized to the point that people were not expected to do anything in response to the grace that was freely dispensed.
Bonhoeffer notes that “On two separate occasions Peter received the call, ‘Follow me.’ It was the first and last word Jesus spoke to his disciple (Mark 1:17; John 21:22). A whole life lies between these two calls” (48). Bonhoeffer notes that “Luther’s return from the cloisters to the world was the worst blow the world suffered since the day of early Christianity. The renunciation he made when he became a monk was child’s play compared with that which he had to make when he returned to the world” (51). He notes, “That was the secret of the gospel of the Reformation—the justification of the sinner” (52). However, he laments, “Costly grace was turned into cheap grace without discipleship” (53). He concludes, “The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that” (54).
Bonhoeffer declares that “The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ” (55). He grieves, however, that “We Lutherans have gathered like eagles around a carcass of cheap grace, and there have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ” (57). He confesses, “We gave away the Word and Sacraments wholesale, we baptized, confirmed, and absolved a whole nation unasked and without conditions” (58). He posits, “The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works” (59). In a country that practices infant baptism and emphasizes grace over works, it is easy to see how people could come to believe that nothing was expected of them as Christians.
Bonhoeffer claims that “The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus” (61). He notes, “And what does the text inform us about the content of discipleship? Follow me, run along behind me! That is all. To follow in his steps is something which is void of all content. It gives us no intelligible programme for a way of life, no goal or ideal to strive after. It is not a cause which human calculation might deem worthy of devotion . . .” (62). Bonhoeffer notes, “When we are called to follow Christ, we are summoned to an exclusive attachment to his person” (63). Bonhoeffer derides heady, intellectual discipleship. He argues, “You can only know and think about it by actually doing it. You can only learn what obedience is by obeying” (86).
Bonhoeffer notes that “Obedience to the call of God never lies within our own power” (93). Yet, famously, he also writes, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die” (99). He observes, “Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend—it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your comprehension . . .” (103). Interestingly, he suggests, “Every man is called separately, and must follow alone” (105).
Ironically, when discussing resisting evil, he notes, “Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames” (158). After living under Hitler and Himmler, he adjusted this view. He writes, “The cross is the only power in the world which proves that suffering love can avenge and vanquish evil” (161). While living in the increasingly dark times of Nazi Germany, Bonhoeffer wrote, “Our adversaries seek to root out the Christian Church and the Christian faith because they cannot live side by side with us, because they see in every word we utter and every deed we do, even when they are not specifically directed against them, a condemnation of their own words and deeds. They are not far wrong” (168). This warning may say much for our age as well.
Bonhoeffer becomes somewhat esoteric in his discussion of the body of Christ being the church and how we can relate to Christ through the sacraments. He struggles with the issue of Lutheran infant baptism. He notes that baptism is invalid unless genuine faith is present but suggests that the faith of others in the Church is sufficient (261). He also states, “The baptized can still live in his bodily presence and enjoy communion with him” (263). Here I felt he was somewhat entrapped in his Lutheran upbringing. This book lacks an adequate discussion of the work of the Holy Spirit. Bonhoeffer seems to emphasize our communing with Christ as we observe the Lord’s Supper more than he does our daily, hourly walk in the Holy Spirit. We do not relate to Christ in his bodily form, despite what Luther might have said. We relate to him by his Spirit.
Speaking of the incarnation, Bonhoeffer says, “God was made man, and while that means that he took upon him our entire human nature with all its infirmity, sinfulness, and corruption, it does not mean that he took upon him the man Jesus” (265). I am not sure what he means here. I disagree that he took on our sinful nature, though as man he embraced our flesh and died for it.
Bonhoeffer claims that “The Church is the real presence of Christ. . . We should think of the Church not as an institution but a person” (269). He suggests, ironically it would seem, “No greater glory could he have granted to his own, no higher privilege can the Christian enjoy, than to suffer ‘for Christ’” (273). He notes that “It is the essence of teaching that it seeks to render itself superfluous” (278). Yet he posits that Christian teaching can never be satisfied.
Bonhoeffer suggests that “The image of Jesus Christ impresses itself in daily communion on the image of the disciple. No follower of Jesus can contemplate his image in a spirit of cold detachment. That image has the power to transform our lives” (337). He notes that when Adam rebelled, he sought to become his own god, in his own image. “But now that he had made himself god, he no longer had a God. He ruled in solitude as a creator god in a God-forsaken subjected world” (338). However, man could not transform himself into a god, so, “The change of form. Which could not take place in man, now would take place in God” (339). Bonhoeffer concludes by exhorting that “If we would bear the image of his glory, we must bear the image of his shame” (341).
This is a powerful, thought-provoking book. You must read it slowly. You probably won’t agree with everything he says, but he will take you to deep places for your consideration. Certainly because of the courage with which he lived and died, his writing deserves our careful consideration.
Though he wrote as a Lutheran pastor primarily to Lutherans, much of what he addresses is relevant to our day and context as well. Understanding the true nature of discipleship may be the most critical issue for the church today, even as it was in his. This book is not for the fainthearted reader or disciple. But if you truly want to follow Jesus at the level Christ expects, you would do well to read this Christian classic.
Rating: 4
