The Cost of Discipleship

by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer believed that if one could not translate one’s theological ideas from the academic realm down to the layman in the pew—and

and not just to him but to his children—perhaps one did not understand much at all or have much to say.

And their many activities during the week reflected what they did on Sunday.

they were real Christians, disciples of the Christ they worshiped.

Bonhoeffer had seen in New York how the African American Christians spoke up about the injustices done to their brethren, especially in the American South,

Bonhoeffer quickly saw a parallel with the Jews in Germany.

While he had been away, the political winds in Ger...

Bonhoeffer felt more alone than ever,

but he knew that in the end he answered to his audience of One,

the only One whose opinio...

Bonhoeffer also knew that in the end that was where each of u...

In the light of his achievement and

in the prospect of what he might have achieved, his death is a great tragedy.

“I cannot get away from Jeremiah 45,” wrote Bonhoeffer from the prison cell.

He was one of the few who quickly understood, even before Hitler came to power,

that National Socialism was a brutal attempt to make history without God

and to found it on the strength o...

Bonhoeffer’s heart belonged to his oppressed and persecuted

fellow Christians in Germany and that he would not desert them at a time when they needed him most.

“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….

I cannot make this choice in security.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer never regretted this decision,

not even in prison, where he wrote in later years: “I am sure of God’s hand and guidance….

He even inspired his guards with respect, some of whom became so much

attached to him that they smuggled out of prison his papers and poems written there,

and apologized to him for having to lock his door after the rou...

His own concern in prison was to get permission to minister to the sick and t...

and his ability to comfort the anxious and depres...

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

God, in whom he found peace and happiness.

If Christian teaching does not guide us in the use of freedom and God is denied,

all obligations and responsibilities that are sacred and binding on man are undermined.

A Christian has then no other choice but to act, to suffer and—if...

Come now, solemnest feast on the road to eternal freedom,

Death, and destroy those fetters that bow, those walls that imprison

this our transient life, these souls that lin...

so that at last we see what is here withheld ...

Long did we seek you, freedom, in discipline, acti...

Now that we die, in the face of God himself...

he was in deadly earnest when he called for Christian action and self-sacrifice.

he considered self-righteousness and complacency great sins against the Holy Spirit,

and regarded ambition and vanity as the start of the road to hell.

To Bonhoeffer, Christianity was not the concern of the believing, pious soul who

shuts himself up and keeps himself within the bounds of the sacramental sphere.

a man throws himself into the arms of God…

then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith,

that is metanoia and it is thus that he becomes a m...

How can a man wax arrogant if in a this-sided life he shares th...

he stood erect and unbroken before his tormentors.

He refused to recant, and defied the Gestapo