Question

In Part I of The Cost of Discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer contrasts cheap and costly grace. Discuss how the context of the Lutheran Church of his day influenced his teaching on cheap and costly grace.

Abstract

This paper argues that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s teaching on ‘costly grace’ in The Cost of Discipleship was directly influenced by the the context of the Lutheran Church of his day. In particular, the failure of the Bethel Confession of 1933 disillusioned Bonhoeffer with respect to the Confessing Church, causing him to reject an institutional approach to reforming the Church in favour of an individualistic one. His appointment as director of the Zingst/Finkenwalde seminary in 1935 both reflected this attitude and gave it an outlet. As a result, Bonhoeffer taught ‘cheap grace’ as an institutional problem and individual discipleship founded upon ‘costly grace’ as its solution.

Essay

The political turning point on 30 January 1933 [sc. the ascension of Adolf Hitler to the German Chancellorship] would force Bonhoeffer’s life onto a different course.¹

So wrote Eberhard Bethge, friend, confidante and (later) nephew by marriage to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his monumental biography. A scant two days after Hitler’s investiture, Bonhoeffer participated in a radio broadcast on “The Younger Generations Altered View of the Concept of Führer” in which he offered criticism of the newly instated leader and the foundations of his leadership.² Yet whilst he was concerned about developments on the national political stage, it was the invasion of the church by the Reich that drew his ire; he wrote a paper and a pamphlet on the church’s response to the Aryan clause during this year.³ Thus, whilst his life was irrevocably redirected by the events of 1933, his theology instead grew more focused; as Hanfried Müller noted, Bonhoeffer became from this time a theologian ‘who labors for the church not so much to interpret it, but to try aggressively to change it.’⁴

This new activism on behalf of the church certainly resonates in Bonhoeffer’s teaching on ‘costly grace’ in his most famous and enduring work, The Cost of Discipleship. Whilst not published until 1937, Bethge tells us that this book finds its genesis much earlier, and was given its razor edge by the events of 1933.⁵ The insight of the one Bonhoeffer would later call his ‘pastor’⁶ and who was present as Bonhoeffer put the finishing touches on Discipleship, is not to be ignored.⁷ But is this sharp focus reflected in Bonhoeffer’s teaching on ‘cheap grace’ and ‘costly grace’?

The opening line of the first chapter reads: ‘Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace.’⁸ Bonhoeffer explicitly connects cheap grace with the Lutheran church, saying, ‘We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcase of cheap grace’.⁹ The result, he says, is ‘the collapse of the organized Church’ as an ‘inevitable consequence’ of cheap grace.¹⁰ Most stinging of all: ‘We confess that, although our Church is orthodox as far as her doctrine of grace is concerned, we are no longer sure that we are members of a Church which follows its Lord.’¹¹ Thus, in Bonhoeffer’s eyes, cheap grace was endemic to the Lutheran church of his day.

Two things are surprising about Bonhoeffer’s teaching here. Firstly, he nowhere distinguishes between the Confessing and Reich churches. This might, perhaps, be attributed to a discretion required in order for Bonhoeffer to continue his ministry; but this didn’t seem to influence his other writings. More likely, it reflects a measure of disappointment with the witness of the Confessing Church.¹² In any case, his message is for Confessing Christians and German Christians alike.

The second surprising feature of his teaching is that, having identified cheap grace as a church-wide problem, his remedies are predominantly directed toward individuals. He defines ‘costly grace’ in singular terms: ‘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.’ His call is to ‘personal obedience’¹³ and ‘personal communion’.¹⁴ Bonhoeffer defines Christ’s mediatorship at an individual level: ‘We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him’.¹⁵ Indeed, the choice of title for his book, Nachfolge,¹⁶ and the selection of the Sermon on the Mount as the key text for exposition, both speak to Bonhoeffer’s focus on the individual. If he was indeed labouring ‘aggressively to try to change’ the church,¹⁷ his strategy was to do so one disciple at a time.

Two reasons may be offered for this strategy. The first also finds its roots in 1933, with the failure of the Bethel Confession. Bonhoeffer and others gathered in Bethel in August, 1933 and, between the 15th and 25th, worked hard to draft a confession that would clearly highlight the differences between the Confessing Church and the German Christians. He was intensely disappointed when the experts consulted to review the document watered it down to a point where he was no longer willing to sign it.¹⁸ Whilst the later Barmen¹⁹ and Dahlem²⁰ declarations were more successful, it seems that Bethel left a bitter taste in Bonhoeffer’s mouth, making him consider a grass-roots approach essential in combatting the Reich’s influence on the church.

This leads to the second reason for Bonhoeffer’s individualistic approach in Discipleship; for, in the summer of 1935, Bonhoeffer became the founding director of an illegal seminary in Zingst (later moved to Finkenwalde), a position he held until its closure in September 1937.²¹ In this capacity, he was responsible for the training of ordinands for the confessing churches, and his thoughts were inevitably drawn to the discipleship of individuals. It was the closure of Finkenwalde which afforded Bonhoeffer the opportunity to complete Discipleship, as well as Life Together and The Prayerbook of the Bible, three books which ‘take us to the heart of the theological and practical preparation that Bonhoeffer gave to the five sets of ordinands who went through the six-month-long course’.²² As Bethge put it, ‘The Cost of Discipleship was to become Finkenwalde’s own badge of distinction.’²³ Shortly after its publication, Bonhoeffer wrote to his former students that he had

dedicated it in spirit to you all. I would have done so on the title page had I not feared to lay the responsibility for my theology and my ideas on your shoulders… In any case you all know what’s in it.²⁴

Thus it is not altogether surprising that the tone of Discipleship should largely be personal, directed to students facing persecution and arrest.

In conclusion, as a result of the events of 1933, and in particular the failure of the Bethel Confession, Bonhoeffer was disillusioned with the efficacy of an institutional approach to church reform. His appointment to the directorship of the Finkenwalde seminary served to redirect (or perhaps itself reflected a pre-existing redirection) toward influencing individuals. This is not to say that Bonhoeffer had abandoned ecclesiology, nor that he refused to address the corporate church.²⁵ Rather, this paper has suggested that he sought to implement his ecclesiology by first influencing individuals to follow Christ; he sought to solve the problems of the church by calling the individuals who made up the church to a radical and costly grace.

Bibliography

Bethge, Eberhard. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography. Edited by Victoria Barnett. Rev. ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.
———. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Contemporary. Translated by Eric Mosbacher, Peter and Betty Ross and Frank Clarke. Edited by Edwin Robertson. London: Collins, 1970.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. Edited by Eberhard Bethge. Enlarged ed. London: The Folio Society, 2000.
———. The Cost of Discipleship. 1st Touchstone ed. New York: Touchstone, 1995.
Currie, James S. “Christianity and Marxism: A Historical Perspective on the Role of Ideology in the Thought of Hanfried Müller.” PhD, Rice, 1997.
Metaxas, Eric. Bonhoeffer : Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy : A Righteous Gentile Vs. The Third Reich. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010.
Plant, Stephen. Bonhoeffer. London: Continuum, 2004.
Robertson, Edwin Hanton. The Persistent Voice of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bath: Eagle Publishing, 2005.
Willmer, Haddon. “Costly Discipleship.” In The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited by John W. De Gruchy, 179-89. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Endnotes

1. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, ed. Victoria Barnett, Rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 258.
2. Radio Broadcast,1 February, 1933. The broadcast was interrupted before Bonhoeffer finished talking, meaning that his stinging conclusion was lost, leaving Bonhoeffer in consternation the “he might actually be suspected of joining in the general acclaim. He therefore had the script duplicated and sent to his friends and relations with the explanation that he had been cut off, which “had distorted the greater picture.”‘ Ibid., 260.
3. “The Church and the Jewish Question” in the June issue of Vormarsch; and “The Aryan Clause in the Church”. The latter resulted in Bonhoeffer being excluded from representing the German church in London. Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer : Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy : A Righteous Gentile Vs. The Third Reich (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 186.
4. Cited in James S. Currie, “Christianity and Marxism: A Historical Perspective on the Role of Ideology in the Thought of Hanfried Müller” (PhD, Rice, 1997), 112.
5. ‘Both the theme and the underlying thesis of The Cost of Discipleship were already fully evolved before 1933, but it is to that year that the book owes its single-minded concentration.’ Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Contemporary, ed. Edwin Robertson, trans. Eric Mosbacher, Peter and Betty Ross, and Frank Clarke (London: Collins, 1970), 375.
6. Letter to Bethge, 18 November, 1943. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge, Enlarged ed. (London: The Folio Society, 2000), 115.
7. Edwin Hanton Robertson, The Persistent Voice of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Bath: Eagle Publishing, 2005), 138. Bethge was also present with Bonhoeffer at Klein-Kössin (estate of Ruth von Kleist-Retzow, grandmother to Bonhoeffer’s future fiancée) as the latter put the finishing touches on Discipleship at Easter, 1937.
8. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 1st Touchstone ed. (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 43.
9. Ibid., 53.
10. Ibid., 54.
11. Ibid., 55.
12. See comments on the Bethel Confession below.
13. Ibid., 59.
14. Ibid., 122.
15. Ibid., 96.
16. Commonly translated as ‘following’ or ‘emulation’. It is only in a Christian context that it can be translated ‘discipleship’.
17. Hanfried Müller, cited in Currie, “Christianity and Marxism”, 112.
18. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, 302-3.
19. 29-31 May, 1934.
20. 20 October, 1934.
21. Robertson, Persistent Voice, 132-3.
22. Haddon Willmer, “Costly Discipleship,” in The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. John W. De Gruchy (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 173.
23. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Contemporary, 369.
24. Cited in Stephen Plant, Bonhoeffer (London: Continuum, 2004), 97.
25. Indeed, he published an important paper in the June 1936 urging to church to be clear in defining its boundaries. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, 517-31.