I have been thinking for a few months about writing a series of reflections on Part II of Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship. Part II is titled, The Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship; it consists of six chapters and is about one hundred pages. My reluctance has been that it is dense, much denser than Life Together which has 97 pages and for which I wrote 110 reflections a few years ago on this blog.
When I write “dense” I mean that Bonhoeffer uses concepts that most of us are unfamiliar with – even though they are Biblical – and that those of us who are familiar with them wrestle with (at least I wrestle with them). When I consider that Life Together required 110 reflections to complete the journey, I can’t begin to think what The Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship might demand, I’m not even sure that I can do it.
Yet, when I see that the professing church in the United States has abdicated its identity in Christ, when I see that God’s People do not know that they are God’s People and that they are not their own but have been bought with a price, when I see the great need of our generation to know Jesus, I want to explore what Bonhoeffer writes about discipleship and the Church; I want to hear the call of Jesus, I want us to hear the call of Jesus – to live in community, to live as His Body, to be His Presence in the world.
There is a sense in which Life Together is a practical manual for living in koinonia with one another in Christ, while The Church of Jesus Christ and Discipleship (CJCD) explores the deep space, the height and depth and breadth and length, of who we are as the People of God, the Body of Christ, the Bride of the Lamb, the Temple of God, the Church of the Living God. Perhaps Life Together is our trek to base camp, while CJCD takes us to the summit of Everest.
I was undecided about embarking on this journey until last Friday, when I had the briefest of interchanges with someone in the parking lot of a building not far from where we live. The nature of the interchange had to do with the book Discipleship, and it was so unusual that I thought that I’d better get with the program and take the journey that Aslan was offering.
I first read Discipleship (then published as The Cost of Discipleship) about sixty years ago as a teenager. At the time I also read Letters and Papers from Prison (a more comprehensive edition has since been published). I am hardly an expert on Bonhoeffer, but he has been with me most of my life.
When someone says to me, “I know Bonhoeffer,” I want to ask, “Is that possible?”
On the one hand Bonhoeffer is straightforward when he says, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” On the other hand, to live with Bonhoeffer from that point onward is to invite more questions than answers – yet the questions keep us seeking and knowing Jesus and the answers are always found in Jesus Christ – Bonhoeffer is unambiguous about Jesus Christ. He is also unambiguous about us needing to live in koinonia with one another in Christ. There is no discipleship apart from the Body of Christ.
My current copy of Discipleship is translated by Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss and is the Reader’s Edition published by Fortress Press. If you want to know Bonhoeffer, in some measure, I don’t think you can do so without knowing Discipleship. If you want to know Jesus, Discipleship can be an important element in that process…and a lifelong friend. It can be the kind of friend who challenges you and puts weight on the bar, the kind of friend who is steadfast and faithful.
If you want a biography of Bonhoeffer, make the commitment to read Eberhard Bethge’s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer A Biography. Bethge was a close friend of Bonhoeffer’s and was married to his niece. Bethge’s work will not only take you on a journey, but will serve as a future reference, allowing you to return to it time and again to refresh your memory and understanding. There was a (sadly) popular bio of Bonhoeffer published a few years ago that contained historical inaccuracies and lacked literary merit – Bethge is worth the effort.
My goal in these reflections is to interact with what Bonhoeffer wrote, it is not to explain why Bonhoeffer wrote what he wrote, it is not to delve into Bonhoeffer’s motives, it is to take what he wrote, as he wrote it, and allow the words to speak to us today – we don’t always know the full extent of what we write, of what we say, of what we create.
Discipleship was published in 1937 as Germany and the professing church in Germany were being enveloped in darkness. Bonhoeffer saw the darkness, and in the midst of the darkness he also saw the Light of Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer was in the minority with his perspective, both the minority in society in general and the minority within the professing church. What is popular is seldom true, this was the case in the German church in 1937, and it is the case in the church in the United States in 2025.
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13 – 14).
Part II of Discipleship begins with a short chapter titled Preliminary Questions and in the first paragraph Bonhoeffer poses no less than eight questions. He then begins the second paragraph by telling us that the questions in the first paragraph are all wrong because they indicate that we don’t really believe that Jesus Christ is alive, we don’t believe we are in His Presence.
“There is something wrong with all of these questions. Every time we ask them, we place ourselves outside the living presence of the Christ” (page 178).
We might ask ourselves, “Do we speak and act as if Jesus is alive or as if He is dead?” Is Jesus in the past tense or is He in the present? What does our language reveal about the way we think of Jesus? What does our language tell us and others about our relationship with Him, about our discipleship?
Bonhoeffer writes, “Discipleship in essence never consists in a decision for this or that specific action; it is always a decision for or against Jesus Christ…What counts is not the call as such, but the one who calls” (page 178).
What role does the Word of God, Scripture, play in all of this? We’ll return to this in the next reflection, the Lord willing, and hopefully have a fruitful beginning in CJCD.
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