Discipleship

Themes Bonhoeffer moves towards a beautiful vision of the disciple transformed into the Image of Christ in the final chapter of the book. To get there, he sweeps through history from the moment of God’s creation to the act of salvation in Jesus Christ. Starting at the beginning, Bonhoeffer offers a different interpretation of the […]

Themes The theological doctrines of justification and sanctification feature prominently in this chapter as Bonhoeffer explores God’s work of the justification of the sinner and the ongoing work of sanctification that takes place within the church-community, with some side examination of lists of vices and sins. The result is some difficult-to-navigate reading. The helpful question

Themes What is the proper relationship between the church—the Body of Christ—and the world as well as those who hold authority? What should that relationship look like when those who hold power and authority use it to persecute the church or to commit injustices in the world? These are the questions that Bonhoeffer tries to

Themes Building on the concept of being baptized into the Body of Christ from the previous chapter, Bonhoeffer turns his attention in this chapter to exploring what it means for the church to be the Body of Christ in the world today. For Bonhoeffer, this is not metaphor, but a literal statement. In the time

Themes For a book on the nature of discipleship, it might be surprising that Bonhoeffer has not brought up baptism until this point. Here he attempts to address that by connecting his understanding of discipleship, an understanding deeply rooted in the Synoptic Gospels, with the teachings about baptism as found in Paul’s writings in the

Themes Was not the experience of the disciple who heard Jesus’ call from his own lips different than ours, who listen for Jesus’ call through the distance of scripture and the teachings of the church? Bonhoeffer tackles this question head on in this brief chapter. Should we fall trap to the belief that the experience

Themes In previous chapters, Bonhoeffer has laid out the relationship of the disciple to Christ, the relationship of the disciple to the world, and even the relationship of the disciple to the neighbor. In this chapter, he moves his attention to the relationship of the disciple to the work of mission through his interpretation of

Themes In this chapter, and in the next, Bonhoeffer shifts the style and content of his writing. Building on the theological arguments of the first five chapters, Bonhoeffer turns to the exegesis (the critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially scripture) of the Sermon on the Mount. This extended teaching of Jesus, which in

Themes While this chapter is a bit heavier to read through than some of the others, the ideas Bonhoeffer explores here build logically off the preceding chapter. In chapter four, Bonhoeffer speaks of suffering as distance between us and God. In this chapter, he starts with the assumption that this distance is fundamental to the

Themes If grace has been cheapened by the Church, then so too has the idea of Christian suffering. Bonhoeffer moves quickly to dismantle two of the ways that suffering has been watered down within the Christian tradition. The first is by distinguishing between suffering that is celebrated and suffering that is rejected. The former, though