The cost of discipleship in Bonhoeffer’s underground seminary

Last updated on: August 5, 2015 at 3:31 pm by Gerald McDermott

The cost of discipleship in Bonhoeffer’s underground seminary 2015-08-05T15:31:40-04:00 Gerald McDermott

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More from Paul House’s Bonhoeffer’s Seminary Vision . . .

1. Bonhoeffer believed that church renewal depended on a group of pastors formed by Christ reforming the church in a visible body in a hostile environment (this and the following from chapter 3).

2. Grace must be stressed, but only biblical grace, which is costly grace. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Too many think that since we cannot be saved by works, then we should do no works! Lutherans, he said, have made grace available on the cheapest and easiest terms, and have left the following of Christ “to legalists, Calvinists, and enthusiasts–and all this for the sake of grace” (quotes from the Cost of Discipleship).

I might add that this cheap grace is now rampant not just among Lutherans but mainline Protestants and evangelicals.

Costly grace, Bonhoeffer wrote, is the key to joy.

“Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.”

3. Those who follow the way of costly grace during a time of cultural crisis will “provoke the world to insult, violence, and slander.”

That’s exactly what happened to his students. The state tempted them with with official ministerial status if they would turn from the Confessing Church. Some succumbed, says House, but most did not. House reports that “without question, many of B’s students suffered financially much more than he [B] did.” (70)

4. Christ’s disciples are not to view nonbelievers as strangers or enemies, but as people to whom Christ comes through them. “They meet others by going to them with Jesus” (70).

5. Bonhoeffer wrote in *Cost of Discipleship, “*The disciples are few in number, and always will be few. . . . Never let a disciple of Jesus pin his hopes on large numbers.”

6. False prophets and teachers look like Christians and act like them. But dark powers are mysteriously at work. Their words are lies and their works are full of deceit. (72)

7. It seems unlikely that a few people with compassion can bring in a great harvest, but that is exactly what Jesus envisions (75).

8. Disciples are not to keep repeating the message over and over to those who will not listen. When their message is rejected in one place, they are to move to another. Jesus said to his disciples in Matt 15 when the disciples urged Jesus to argue with those who had rejected him, “Leave them alone.”

9. Disciples will be blamed for dividing households and nations (78).

10. Paul has little to say about the earthly ministry of Jesus, but much to say about the risen and glorified Lord in the midst of the Church. “This is not just a mystical reality; it is a physical one” (82).

11. Preaching is not enough. Sacraments are indispensable. With preaching and sacraments “The Church is the real presence of Christ. . . . We should think of the Church not as an institution, but as a person, though of course a person in a unique sense” (83).

12. A seminary is not a place where abstract doctrines of religion get passed along from one mind to another, but a place where communion between believers occurs, where the concrete acts of Christ and the apostles are reenacted daily (85-86).

13. Bonhoeffer warned his students about belonging to so-called churches that were in fact not churches at all.

14. “It is vitally important that we should be trained to do good works. That indeed is the whole purpose of our new creation in Christ” (87).

15. Many of those who heard these lectures on Cost of Discipleship at the underground seminary served jail time for their devotion.

Tomorrow: the seminary and Life Together

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