I went into Discipleship thinking that I would really hate it. I love the early academic theology of Bonhoeffer, and I'm really interested in Bonhoeffer studies, but I figured that a book couldn't be that interesting and ground breaking if so many fundamentalists love it. I was so wrong.

Bonhoeffer puts forth a lot of very radical ideas here. The idea of the Church being the physical manifestation of Christ, and therefore vicariously representing Christ on earth is brilliant. Bonhoeffer completely redefines ontology and personhood. Bonhoeffer argues, "The new human being is not the single individual who has been justified and sanctified; rather, the new human being is the church-community, the body of Christ, or Christ himself." The implications of this train of thought on philosophy, theology, ontology, ethics, race issues, ecclesiology, etc. are staggering. And yet Evangelicals skip over these ideas and only talk about Bonhoeffer's concept of cheap and costly grace. While that is a great meditation on the role of grace in our lives, there's so much more to this book.

Having a knowledge of Bonhoeffer's life, particularly his role in the conspiracy against Hitler, his context in Nazi Germany, and his disgust with the holocaust, is essential to fully understanding this work. According to the German editors of this volume, this work is entirely bound up in Bonhoeffer's life, inseparably so.

This critical edition is essential reading. The editors do a great job of providing contextual footnotes to help the reader understand many of the concepts presented here and how they are being built on the foundation of his early academic theology. The foreword and afterword are incredibly helpful as well.