3.27.2013 THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP I by DEITRICH BONHOEFFER

the first few are from the 'memoir' section giving a short sketch of bonhoeffer's life.

when war seemed inevitable his friends abroad
wanted him to leave germany to save his life,
for he was unalterably opposed to serving in the army
in an aggressive war.
..the reasoning which brought him  to the decision to return to germany
he writes to reinhold niebuhr as follows,
'i shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of christian life
in germany after the war
if i do not share the trials of this time with my people..
christians in germany will face the terrible alternative of
either willing the defeat of their nation
in order that christina civilization may survive,
or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization.
i know which of these alternatives i must choose;
but i cannot make this choice in security.

bon never regretted this decision, not even in prison,
where he wrote in later years:
'i am sure of God's hand and guidance...
you must never doubt
that i am thankful and glad to go the way which i am being led.
my past life is abundantly full of god's mercy,
and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the crucified.

..his own concern in prison was to get permission to minister
to the sick and to his fellow prisoners,
and his ability to comfort the anxious and depressed was amazing...
we know what bon's practical aid meant in prison (tegel)
during political trials to those men of whom ten or twenty
were sentenced to death by military court every week in
1943-4.
some of these (among them a british soldier),
charged with sabotage,
were saved by him (and his father and solicitor)
from certain death...
during the very heavy bombings of berlin, when the explosions
were accompanied by the howling of his fellow prisoners,
how beat with their fists against the locked doors of their cells
clamouring to be transferred to the safe bunkers,
bon stood, we have been told, like a giant before men.

but this is only the one side of the picture...
one day he gave expression to this conflict in the following...
WHO AM I?

who am I? they often tell me
i stepped from my cell's confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a squire from his country house.
who am I ? they often tell me
i used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly
 as though it were mine to command.

who am I? they also tell me
 I bore the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

am I then really that which other men tell of?
or am I only what I myself know of myself?
restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were
  compressing my throat,
yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness.
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.

who am I?
This or the Other?
am I one person today and tomorrow another?
am I both at once? a hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
or is something within me still like a beaten army
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

who am I? they mock me, thee lonely questions of mine.
whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am Thine!

....the idea that God Himself has been suffering through Christ
in this world and from its remoteness from Him,
had occupied bon's mind again and again.
bon frequently felt strongly that God Himself shared his suffering.
in the second verse of the poem 'christian and unbeliever',
composed by bon a few months before his death,
this feeling is expressed as follows:

men go to God when He is sore bested;
find  Him poor and scorned, without shelter and bread,
whelmed under weight of the wicked, the weak, the dead.
christians stand by God in His hour of grieving.

bon's standing with God in His hour of grieving explains ultimately
why he did not take his own suffering seriously
and why his courage was so great and uncompromising.

this steadfastness of mind and preparedness
to sacrifice  everything
has been proved on many occasions.
for instance, when in the summer of 1940 despair had seized
most of those who were actively hostile
to the nazi regime
and when the proposal was made
that further action should be postponed
so as to avoid giving hitler the air of a martyr,
bon unswervingly and successfully opposed this suggestion:
'if we claim to be christians,, there is not room for expediency.
thus the group led by him went on with its activities
at a time when the world inside and outside germany
widely believed in a nazi victory.
or when the question arose as to who was
prepared to inform the british goverment,
through the bishop of chichester,
of the exact details of the german resistance movement,
it was again bon who, as early as may 31, 1942,
at the risk of his life,
undertook this task at the instigation of his brother in law
hans von dohnanyi in the hope of a sympathetic understanding
on the part of the british government.

...in the earlier stages of his career bon accepted the
traditional lutheran view that there was a sharp distinction
between politics and religion.
gradually, however, he revised his opinion,
not because he was a politician
or because he refused to give caesar his due,
but because he came to recognize
that the political authority in germany
had become entirely corrupt and immoral
and that a false faith is capable of
terrible and monstrous things.
for bon hitler was the antichrist, the arch destroyer of the world \
and its basic values,
the antichrist who enjoys destruction, slavery, death
and extinction for their own sake,
the Antichrist who wants to pose
the negative as positive and as creative.

bon was firmly and rightly convinced that it is not only a
christian right but a christian duty toward God to oppose tyranny,
that is, a government which is no longer based on
natural law and the law of God.
for bon this followed from the fact that
the church as a living force in this world
entirely depends on her this-sidedness.
of course, bon understood this term neither in the sense of
modern liberal theology nor
in the sense of the national socialist creed.
both modern liberal theology and secular totalitarianism hold
pretty much in common that the message of the bible
has to be adapted, more or less,
to the requirements of a secular world.
no wonder, therefore, that the process of debasing
christianity as inaugurated by liberal theology led,
in the long run, to a complete perversion and falsification
of the essence of christian teaching by national socialism.
bon was firmly convinced that 'this side' must be fully related to,
and permeated by,
christian love,
and that the christian must be prepared, if necessary, to offer
his life for this.
thus all kinds of secular totalitarianism which force man
to cast aside his religious and moral obligations to "god
and subordinate the laws of justice and morality to the state
are incompatible with his conception of life.

this explains why bon did not take the pacifist line,
although his aristocratic noble mindedness and charming gentleness
made him, at the bottom of his heart, a pacifist.
but to refrain from taking any part in the attempt
to overcome the national socialist regime
conflicted too deeply with his view
that christian principles must in some way be translated
into human life
and that it is in the sphere of the material,
in state and society,
that responsible love has to be manifested.

again, it was typical of bon that he did not commit the church
by his actions.
the responsibility was his and not that of the church...
he once said:
'he who severs himself from the confessional church
severs himself from the grace of God...

a few months before his death,
when coming events cast their shadows before,
he wrote in prison:
'it all depends on whether or not the fragment of our life
reveals the plan and material of the whole.
there are fragments which are only good
to be thrown away
and others which are important for centuries to come
because their fulfilment can only be a divine work.
they are fragments of necessity.
it our life, however remotely,
reflects such a fragment...
we shall not have to bewail our fragmentary life,
but, on the contrary, rejoice in it.

the following is taken from CHAPTER ONE 'COSTLY GRACE'

cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church.
we are fighting today for costly grace.

cheap grace means grace sold on the market like
cheapjacks' (a peddler, especially of inferior articles) wares
the sacraments, the forgiveness of sin,
and the consolations of religion
are thrown away at cut prices.
grace is represented as the church's inexhaustible treasury,
form which she showers blessings with generous hands,
without asking questions or fixing limits.
grace without price;
grace without cost!
the essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account
has been paid in advance;
and, because it has been paid,
everything can be had for noting.
since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of
using and spending it are infinite.
what would grace be if it were not cheap?

cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system.
it means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth,
the love of God taught as the christian 'conception' of God.
an intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself
sufficient to secure remission of sins.
the church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has,
it is supposed, ipso facto a part in that grace.
in such a church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins;
no contrition is required,
still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.
cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial
of the living word of God,
in fact, a denial of the incarnation of the word of God.

cheap grace means the justification of sin
without the justification of the sinner.
grace alone does everything, they say,
and so everything can remain as it was before.
'all for sin could not atone'.
the world goes on in the same old way,
and we are still sinners 'even in the best life' as luther said.
well, then, let the christian live like the rest of the wold,
let him model himself on the world's standards
in every sphere of life,
and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life
under grace from his old life under sin.
that was the heresy of the enthusiasts, the anabaptists
and their kind.
let the christian beware of rebelling against
the free and boundless grace of God and desecrating it.
let him not attempt to erect a new religion of the letter
by endeavouring to live a life of obedience
to the commandments of Jesus Christ!
the world has been justified by grace.
the christian knows that,
and takes it seriously.
he knows he must not strive against this indispensable grace.
therefore-let him live like the rest of the world!
of course he would like to go and do something extraordinary,
and it does demand a good deal of self restraint to refrain
from the attempt and content himself with living as the world lives.
yet it is imperative for the christian to achieve renunciation,
to practise self effacement,
to distinguish his life from the life of the world. 
he must let grace be grace indeed,
otherwise he will destroy the world's faith in the free gift of grace.
let the christian rest content with his worldliness
and with this renunciation of any height standard than the world.
he is doing it for the sake of the world
rather than for the sake of grace.
let him be comforted and rest assured in his possession of grace-
for grace alone does everything.
instead of following Christ, let the Christian enjoy the
consolations of his grace!
that is what we mean by cheap grace,
the grace which amounts to the justification of sin
without the justification of the repentant sinner
who departs from sin and from whom sin departs.
cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us
from the toils of sin.
cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance,
baptism without church discipline,
communion with confession,
absolution without personal confession.
cheap grace is grace without discipleship,
grace without the cross,
grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

....costly grace is the sanctuary of God;
it has to be protected from the world,
and not thrown to the dogs.
it is therefore the living word, the word of God,
which He speaks as it pleases Him.
costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus,
it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit
and the contrite heart.
grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ
and follow Him;
it is grace because Jesus says:
'My yoke is easy and my burden is light....

this grace was certainly not self bestowed.
it was the grace of Christ Himself,
now prevailing upon the disciple to leave all and follow Him,
now working in Him that confession which to the world
must sound like the ultimate blasphemy,
now inviting peter to the supreme fellowship of martyrdom
for the Lord he had denied,
and thereby forgiving him all his sins.
in the life of peter grace and discipleship are inseparable.
he had  received the grace which costs.

as christianity spread and the church became more secularized,
this realization of the costliness of grace gradually faded.
the world was christianized and grace became its common property.
it was to be had a low cost.
yet the church of rome did not altogether lose the earlier vision.
it is highly significant that the church was astute enough to find room
for the monastic movement,
and to prevent it from lapsing into schism.
here on the outer fringe of the church was a place
where the older vision was kept alive.
here men still remembered that grace costs,
that grace means following Christ.
here they left all they had for Christ's sake,
and endeavoured daily to practise His rigorous commands
thus monasticism became a living protest
against the secularization of christianity
and the cheapening of grace.
but the church was wise enough to tolerate this protest,
and to prevent it from developing to its logical conclusion.
it thus succeeded in relativizing it,
even using it in order to justify the secularization of its own life.
monasticism was represented as an individual achievement
which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate.
by thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus
to a restricted group of specialists,
the church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard-
a maximum and a minimum standard of christian obedience.
whenever the church was accused of being too secularized,
it could always point to monasticism,
whose mission was to preserve in the church of rome
the primitive christian realization of the costliness of grace,
afforded conclusive justification for the secularization of the church.
by and large, the fatal error of monasticism lay not so much in its rigorism
(though even here there was a good deal of misunderstanding
of the precise content of the will of Jesus.)
as in the extent to which it departed from genuine christianity
by setting up itself as the individual achievement of a select few,
and so claiming a special merit of its own.

when the reformation came, the providence of God raised
martin luther to restore the gospel of pure, costly grace.
luther passed through the cloister;
he was a monk, and all this was part of the divine plan.
luther had left all to follow Christ on the path of absolute obedience.
he had renounced the world in order to live the christian life.
he had learnt obedience to Christ and to His church,
because only he who is obedient can believe.
the call to the cloister demanded of luther the complete surrender of his life.
but God shattered all his hopes.
he showed him through the scriptures that the following of Christ
is not the achievement or merit of a select few,
but the divine command to all christians without distinction.
monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship
into the meritorious activity of the saints,
and the self renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual
self assertion of the 'religious'.
the world had crept into the very heart of the monastic life,
and was once more making havoc.
the monk's attempt to flee from the world
turned out to be a subtle form of love for the world.
the bottom having thus been knocked out of the religious life,
luther laid hold upon grace.
just as the whole world of monasticism was crashing about him in ruins,
he saw God in Christ stretching forth His hand to save.
he grasped that hand in faith,
believing that 'after all, nothing we can do
is of any avail, however good a life we live'.
the grace which gave itself to him was a costly grace,
and it shattered his whole existence.
once more he must leave his nets and follow.
the first time was when he entered the monastery,
when he had left everything behind except his pious self.
this time even that was taken from him.
he obeyed the call, not through any merit of his own,
but simply through the grace of God.
luther did not hear the word:
'of course you have sinned,
but now everything is forgiven,
so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness'.
no, luther had to leave the cloister and go back to the world,
not because the world in itself was good and holy,
but because even the cloister was only a part of the world.

luther's return from the cloister to the world was
the worst blow the world had suffered since the days 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.
now came the frontal assault.
the only way to follow Jesus was by living in the world.
hitherto the christian life had been the achievement
of a few choice spirits under the exceptionally favourable
conditions of monasticism;
now it is a duty laid on every christian living in the world.
the commandment of Jesus must be accorded
perfect obedience in one's daily vocation of life.
the conflict between the life of the christian and the life of the world
was thus thrown into the sharpest possible relief.
it was a hand to hand conflict between the christian and the world.

it is a fatal misunderstanding of luther's action
to suppose that his rediscovery of the gospel of pure grace offered
a general dispensation from obedience to the command of Jesus,
or that it was the great discovery of the reformation
the God's forgiving grace automatically conferred
upon the world both righteousness and holiness.
on the contrary, for luther the christian's worldly calling
is sanctified only in so far as that calling registers the final,
radical protest against the world.
only in so far as the christian's secular calling is exercised
in the following of Jesus does it receive
form the gospel new sanction and justification.
it was not the justification of sin,
but the justification of the sinner
that drove luther from the cloister back into the world.
the grace he had received was costly grace.
it was grace, for it was like water on parched ground,
comfort in tribulation,
freedom from the bondage of a self chosen way
and forgiveness of all his sins.
and it was costly, for so far from dispensing him from good works,
it meant that he must take the call  to discipleship more
seriously than ever before.
it was grace because it cost so mush,
and it cost so much because it was grace.
that was the secret of the gospel of the reformation-
the justification of the sinner.

yet the outcome of the reformation was the victory,
not of luther's perception of grace in all its purity and costliness,
but of the vigilant relgious instinct of man
for the place where grace is to be obtained at the cheapest price.
all that was needed was a subtle and almost imperceptible
change of emphasis and the damage was done.
luther had taught that man cannot stand before God,
however religious his works and ways may be,
because at bottom hi is always seeking his own interests.
in the depth of his misery, luther had grasped by faith
the free and unconditional forgiveness of all his sins.
that experience taught him that this grace had cost him
his very life,
and must continue to cost him
the same price
day by day.
so far from dispensing him from discipleship,
this grace only made him a more earnest disciple.
when he spoke of grace,
luther always implied as a corollary
that it cost him his own life,
the life which was now for the first time subjected
to the absolute obedience of Christ.
only so could he speak of grace.
luther had said that grace alone can save;
his followers took his doctrine and repeated it word for word.
but they left out its invariable corollary,
the obligation of discipleship.
there was no need for luther always to mention that corollary
explicitly
for he always spoke as one who had been led by grace
to the strictest following of Christ.
judged by the standard of luther's doctrine,
that of his followers was unassailable
and yet their orthodoxy spelt the end and destruction of the reformation
as the revelation on earth of the costly grace of God.
the justification of the sinner in the world degenerated
into the justification of sin and the world.
costly grace was turned into cheap grace without discipleship.

luther had said that all we can do is of no avail,
however good a life we live.
he had said that nothing can avail us in the sight of God
but 'the grace and favour which confers the forgiveness of sin'.
but he spoke as one who knew that at the very moment of his crisis
he was called to leave all tha he had a second time and follow Jesus.
the recognition of grace was his final, radical breach with his besetting sin,
but it was never the justification of that sin.
by laying hold of God's forgiveness,
he made the final, radical renunciation of a self willed life
and this breach was such that it led inevitably
to a serious following of Christ.
he always looked upon it as the answer to a sum,
but an answer which had been arrived at by God, not by man.
but then his followers changed the 'answer' into the data for
a calculation of their own.
that was the root of the trouble.
if grace is God's answer, the gift of christian life,
then we cannot for a moment dispense with following Christ.
but if grace is the data for my christian life, it means that
i set out to live the christian life in the world with all my sins justified beforehand.
i can go and sin
as much as i like,
and rely on this grace to forgive me,
for after all the world is justified in principle by grace.
i can therefore cling to my bourgeois secular existence,
and remain as i was before,
 but with the added assurance that the grace of God will cover me.
it is under the influence of this kind of 'grace'
that the world has been made 'christian',
but at the cost of secularizing the christian religion as never before.
the antithesis between the christian life
and the life of bourgeois respectability is at an end.
the christian life comes to mean nothing more than
living in the world
and as the world,
in being no different from the world,
in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world
for the sake of grace.
the upshot of it all is that my only duty as a christian
is to leave the world
for an hour or so on a sunday morning
and go to church
to be assured that my sins are all 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.
grace as the data for our calculations
means grace at the cheapest price,
but grace as the answer to the sum means costly grace.
it is terrifying to realize what use can be made of a genuine
evangelical doctrine.
in both cases we have the identical formula-
'justification by faith alone'.
yet the misuse of the formula leads to the completed destruction of its very essence.

at the end of a life spent in the pursuit of knowledge
faust has to confess:
'i now do see that we can nothing know'.
that is the answer to a sum,
it is the outcome of a long experience.
but as kierkegaard observed,
it is quite a different thing when a freshman comes up to the university
and uses the same sentiment to justify his indolence.
as the answer to a sum it is perfectly true,
but as the initial data it is a piece of self deception
for acquired knowledge cannot be divorced from
the existence in which it is acquired.
the only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone
is that man who has left all to follow Christ.
such a man knows that the call to discipleship
is a gift of grace,
and that the call is inseparable from the grace.
but those who try to use this grace as
a dispensation from following Christ
are simply deceiving themselves.

but, we may ask, did not luther himself
come perilously neqar tothis perversion in the understanding of grace?
what about his pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gauden in 'Christo'
(sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly still)
you are a sinner, anyway, and there is nothing you can do about it.
whether you are a monk or a man of the world,
a religious man or a bad one,
you can never escape the toils of the world or from sin.
so put a bold face on it, and all the more
because you can rely on the opus operatum of grace.
is this the proclamation of cheap grace, naked and unashamed,
the carte blanche for sin, the end of all discipleship?
is this a blasphemous encouragement to sin boldly
and rely on grace?
is there a more diabolical abuse of grace than to sin
and rely on the grace which God has given?
is not the roman catechism quite right in denouncing this
as the sin against the Holy Ghost?

if we are to understand this saying of luther's
everything depends on applying the distinction between the data
and the answer to the sum.
if we make luther's formula a premiss for our doctrine of grace,
we are conjuring up the spectre of chap grace.
but luther's formula is meant to be taken,
not as the premiss, but as the conclusion,
the answer to the sum,
the coping stone,
his very last word on the subject.
taken as the premiss, pecca fortiter
acquires the character of an ethical principle,
a principle of grace to which
the principle of pecca fortiter must correspond.
that means the justification of sin,
and it turns luther's formula into its very opposite.
for luther 'sin boldly' could only be his very last refuge,
the consolation for one whose attempts to follow Christ
had taught him that he can never become sinless,
who in his fear of sin despairs of the grace of God.
as luther saw it, 'sin boldly' did not happen to be a
fundamental acknowledgement of his disobedient life;
it was the gospel of the grace of God
before which we are always and in every circumstance sinners.
yet that grace seeks us and justifies us, sinners though we are.
take courage and confess your sin, says luther,
do not try to run away from it,
but believe more boldly still.
you are a sinner, so be a sinner,and
don't try to become what you are not.
yes and become a sinner again and again every day,
and be bold about it.
but to whom can such words be addressed,
except to those who from the bottom of their hearts
make a daily renunciation of sin
and of every barrier which hinders them from following Christ,
but who nevertheless are troubled by their daily faithlessness and sin?
who can hear these words without endangering his faith
but he who hears their consolation as a renewed summons to follow Christ?
interpreted in this way,
these words of luther become a testimony to the costliness of grace,
the only genuine kind of grace there is.

grace interpreted as a principle, pecca fortiter as a principle,
grace at a low cost,
is in the last resort simply a new law,
which brings neither help nor freedom.
grace as a living word,
pecca fortiter as our comfort in tribulation
and as a summons to discipleship,
costly grace is the only pure grace,
which really forgives sins and gives freedom to the sinner.
we lutherans have gathered like
we lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcase of cheap grace,
and there we have drunk of the poison
which has killed the life of following Christ.
it is true, of course, that we have paid the doctrine of pure grace
divined honours unparalleled in christendom,
in fact we have exalted that doctrine to the position of God Himself.
everywhere luther's formula has been repeated,
but its truth perverted into self deception.
so long as our church holds the correct
doctrine of justification,
there is no doubt whatever that she is a justified church!
so they said, thinking that we must vindicate our lutheran heritage
by making this grace available on the cheapest and easiest terms.
to be 'lutheran' must mean that we leave the following of Christ
to legalists, calvinists and enthusiasts
-and all this for the sake of grace.
we justified the world, and
condemned as heretics those who tried to follow Christ.
the result was that a nation became
christian and lutheran,
but at the cost of true discipleship.
the price it was called upon to pay was all too cheap.
cheap grace had won the day...