The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (PDF)

Description

NEW FOREWORD BY ERIC METAXAS Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the most important theologians of the twentieth century, illuminates the relationship between ourselves and the teachings of Jesus in this classic book on living as a Christian.What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the government worker? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers these timeless questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” “Cheap grace,” Bonhoeffer wrote, “is the grace we bestow on ourselves…grace without discipleship….Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the girl which must be asked for, the door at which a man must know….It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.” The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of sacrifice and ethical consistency from a man whose life and thought were exemplary articulations of a new type of leadership inspired by the Gospel, and imbued with the spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty.

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Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Every American Christian should read this book and take what it says to heart. Unlike a lot of modern theological books that are written by people sitting in air conditioned offices that have never paid a price for their belief in Jesus, this book was written by a man that eventually and voluntarily gave up his life for the cause of Christ. As a person, who myself has faced persecution and arrest in anti-christ countries as a missionary, I can attest to the validity of the core message of this book.The idea that God loves you too much to let you suffer, is about the most blasphemous and false doctrine to ever permeate the Christian church. It is especially rampant in the United States of America where preachers preach the false doctrine of self gratification, self indulgent Christianity where God is reduced to genie in a bottle that you can rub with the write words (faith formulas) and get anything you want. Where salvation and lavish prosperity is taught as a birthright because you were lucky enough to be born in the the country of America, and because of this God loves you more then any other race in the world and would never consider letting you suffer even the slightest bit.The Cost of Discipleship will open your eyes to the truth about what is necessary to truly follow the “real” God of the Bible. An omniscient, omnipotent creator who deserves to be worshiped and served. A God who deserves to be followed by His creation that loves Him above all else and trust Him and respects His decrees more then their own opinions, culture or traditions. A God who requires His followers to honor Him as King in their lives and to be patriotic to His kingdom more then their own countries.

⭐Fortunately, I could finally finished reading this book, which is called one of the most important theological books of the 20c, and a modern theological classic. It required approximately two months for me to finish because of my English ability and theological knowledge, but needless to say it was worth the time and cost to examine.Even in the terrible oppression under the Nazi German government, Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not give up his faith with no fear of being killed. He is apprised as an “Apostle of the modern era” and a “defender of Western civilization”. Through this book, I had been kept seeking his core theological source of conviction which enabled him to keep his faith so resiliently: Unfortunately, the conviction lead him to his death of the young age 39. From this book, I could successfully recognize Bonhoeffer’s rigid ideological foundation that made it possible for him to be killed by a capital death of hanging, as a martyr. I found that he thought it is not only the Christian’s right but duty to protest the government which is against God’s law, righteousness or providence.Needless to say, on the premise that he was a Lutheran pastor, his logic and ethics are elaborated with these words such as “only the Bible”, “Grace alone”, “faith alone”, “the mystery of Incarnation”, and the “theology of Cross”. However, I paid attention to the logical point that how theologically he could make possible to refuse the law of “the world”, the law “on the earth”. Even though those laws and the Nazi government itself had occurred legally in a democratic regime and had legitimacy, he could deny it because of the reason that God’s law is superior to laws “on the earth”.Bonhoeffer proved theologically the superiority of God’s law than the law of the world with criticism on “leagalism”, the concept of Christ as a “Mediator”, criticism on the Reformers who justify and admits nations’ the right of revenge, criticism on some Protestant denomination who has theology that confuse Christ’s love and patriotism (p.152). Bonhoeffer’s theology depends on fine exegesis or interpretation of scriptures. In fact, we can find at least some evidence that his theology is breaching Lutheran authentic “doctrine of two kingdoms”, i.e. the mutual non-aggression between religion and states. Although it would not be completely denied the doctrine of separation of religion and states, we are able to recognize these phrases as a clue to breach the doctrine: For instance, “The law must be broken for the sake of Jesus; it forfeits all rights if it acts as a barrier to discipleship (p.61)”, Bonhoeffer wrote, “No law of the world can interfere with this fellowship (p.257)”, “They live their own life under alien rulers and alien laws (p.296)”, “Jesus, the champion of the true law, must suffer at the hands of the champions of the false law (p.121)”. From this point of view, we can find the reason of “the evil law is not a law”, in other words, he breached the dogma that “a law is a law, however undesirable it may be”. Laws on the earth are valid only if those are not against the will of Jesus, that is to say God’s law. Jesus “alone understands the nature of the law as God’s law (p.122)”. Apparently this logic is the base what enables Bonhoeffer to protest Nazi Germany and its laws.Then, if that is the case, on what ethical ground or virtue should we human beings live “in the world”. In Bonhoeffer’s theology, the corner stone of ethics is based on the Lutheran notion of “Pecca fortiter”, i.e. Sin Boldly: Human beings must recognize deeply his weakness, incompleteness, and sinfulness, and then we may be compensated if we completely rely on Omnipotent Father God and Christ as the Mediator. According to Bonhoeffer, Christians need to follow Jesus’ life and death, and to obey his teaching, that means realization of God’s Word. And they should put “beatitudes” into practice in “the Body of Christ” namely in the Church, in the Christian community.When Christians take the Sermon on the mount into practice, they need to be the Beatitudes; the poor, the person who mourn, the meek, the person who suffer from hunger and thirst, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace makers, the person who are persecuted for righteous sake. Only through this practice, they can become disciples of Christ. If they could practice, simply to do this discipleship on the world, i.e. in daily life, with love of fellowship, they could be “salt of the earth” and they could be able to express their extraordinariness or peculiarity without intention. Bonhoeffer argues that this extraordinariness is the realization of the law of God, and Christian peculiarity will come out in their proclamation, which means manifest of God’s law. The righteousness of God can never be contributed back to “Justica Civils” i.e. laws of citizen, and therefore Christians shall be persecuted as strangers in the secular world. Nevertheless, just in the midst of the persecution, Christians must show the divinity of the righteousness of God. Therefore he wrote it down not only once that the death in martyrdom is the supreme grace for Christians who follows Jesus’ life and want to be imitative of Jesus’ death on the Cross.From above, we can confirm the base conceptions of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: First, for Christian, God’s law exceeds law on the world. Second, Christians are separated from the secular world and must show their divinity and extraordinariness in the daily life by practicing beatitudes. Third, the death of s martyr is the supreme gift which a few of Christians are given. I guess if he had not these theological conceptions, Bonhoeffer could not get the triumph of martyrdom under the cruel Nazi government.Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in 1906. He learned theology in Tuebingen University and became a lecturer of the University of Berlin when he was only 24 years old. Then he studied at the Union theological Seminary in New York. Reckless of danger, in 1935 he started protesting against the German Christian Movement that spread rapidly in Germany together with the prosperity of Nazional Sozialisms. He accused it as an Antichrist ideology. He reported to his friends in Britain and the US the truth and facts of German Church Struggle between the Deutchen Kristen and the Confession Church, and as a leader of the Confession Church movement, he also taught underground at an illegal Church Training College. When the assassination plan for Adolf Hitler comes to surface, Bonhoeffer was arrested by Gestapo, as one of the suspects on April 5th in 1943. On April 9th in 1945, he was killed by hanging through SS chief Heinlich Himmler’s order. It was only few weeks before the day when Berlin was freed by the Soviet Union Red Army.

⭐Have you realized yet that following Jesus is not easy? In fact, we can say that it is really far from easy. Sometimes it is extremely hard to do! It is something that can really upset our lives. It can introduce difficulties that are new and challenging. It can be simply demanding! If you or I do not agree with this, then we are probably doing something that I once read about, which was scary: being mediocre! And so, life is not what it could be or should be and one possible reason for this, Father Thomas Dubay says, can be mediocrity. Saint Teresa of Avila would ask, “Are you giving God all that you know he is asking from you?” Yes, this can be a very difficult thing. It’s enough to make us question the foundations of our faith. Even so, Father Dubay claims that if we are holding back on giving God something, this is “bad news.” And so, we are not experiencing the full effect of discipleship.To open this book and read the Forward is enough to scare anyone. Written by G. K. A. Bell, late Bishop of Chichester, it begins, “‘WHEN CHRIST calls a man,’” says Dietrich Bonhoeffer [the author], “‘he bids him come and die.’ There are different kinds of dying, it is true; but the essence of discipleship is contained in those words.” He is not kidding either. These words come from the mouth and pen of a man who, defiant of the Gestapo, the Secret State Police, eventually suffered martyrdom in Nazi Germany. Bonhoeffer’s words are such that we can hang on them. They are for each of us to meditate upon. They can help us to evaluate the extent of our discipleship or lack of it.Bonhoeffer says, “everything is left for us to decide….” Can we really decide not to be a disciple? Yes, we can. Many others have done so, right from the beginning. Christianity has always been hard. When Jesus had finished explaining that he was the Bread of Life and we must eat this Bread or perish, Saint John tells us, “Many of his disciples who were listening said, ‘This saying is hard; who can accept it?’ … [and] as a result of this, many (of) his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him” (Jn 6: 60, 66).Simon Peter, faced with the same dilemma, answered him with the answer and belief we all need to have—the only reason it makes sense to choose to be disciples, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:67-68).

⭐This book is having a major effect on my Christian way of life. It’s not just theology – though rich and prayfully uplifting in its exegesis – it is about the sacred calling that each baptised member of the Church is called upon to follow. I find one page of Bonhoeffer’s blessed commentary is sufficient to sustain my spiritual contemplation for a few days. I believe that it is not a book that one reads as an academic/ philosophical exercise. I find that this work urgently knocks on my heart and soul; once I open that door with obedience, my life is never the same. A revelation and a blessing.

⭐DB calls a spade a spade and laments the rise in the “new” evangelical Christianity where its a do anything , believe anything and its OK faith.. The message of the gospels is lost in the spin that pastors put on it to satisfy and gain ghe support of the massives . It is a showmanship gospel without truth and therefore a gospel without salvation But it brings the money in and fills seats. Time for some hard talking and getting back to the truth

⭐Read this with friends as part of a challenge to grow beyond modern easy-reads and take on some classics. Did not disappoint! Challenged us to the core in two ways:1. Can we get beyond our Gen X-spoiled expectation of point – story – application (none of that easy-read communication style here)2. Are we even Christians!!?! (Yes, we concluded, but what a challenge to return to the all-in, just-follow-Jesus, no-matter-the-cost discipleship Jesus calls us to.)Fascinated to learn more about the author, but might just need an easy-read break first whilst I recover from the challenge Dietrich has laid out for us!

⭐Not sure how to review this other than to say you must buy this book.If i could buy everyone a copy myself i would.The central idea of “cheap grace” v “costly grace” will stick with you in your own walk with God….hopefully forever.other highlights are his discussion of the “riddle of predestination”and on page 207 the discussion about how God creates a community of saints.As i said buy this book it will not disappoint

⭐This book does the intellectual equivalent of picking you up by the lapels and shaking you. The style is simple (though not simplistic) and straightforward. But it is also ruthlessly uncompromising. The book is littered with instances where Bonhoeffer points out the thinking of the person who wants to make excuses and worm their way out of 100% commitment. In those instances, I read my own words and thoughts coming back at me.This was not merely an academic treatise. It is a call to action; to a life of devotion. Bonhoeffer’s life and death bear the hallmarks of someone who lived out their writings in complete obedience to Christ. This is not to be read lightly, or glossed over. Read it and prepare to have your life changed.

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