Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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- "There is no way to peace along the way to safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God's commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes." Deitrich Bonhoeffer
- Making my way thru Bonhoeffers Discipleship vol. 4 and found this insight below about Bonhoeffer and M. Luther, WOW! Below half way thru Ch. 1 on “cheep grace” and Costly Grace” The expansion of Christianity and the increasing secularization of the church caused the awareness of costly grace to be gradually lost. The world was Christianized; grace became common property of a Christian world. It could be had cheaply. But the Roman church did keep a remnant of that original awareness. It was decisive that monasticism did not separate from the church and that the church had the good sense to tolerate monasticism. Here, on the boundary of the church, was the place where the awareness that grace is costly and that grace includes discipleship was preserved. People left everything they had for the sake of Christ and tried to follow Jesus’ strict commandments through daily exercise. Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace. But because the church tolerated this protest and did not permit it to build up to a final explosion, the church relativized it. It even gained from the protest a justification for its own secular life. For now monastic life became the extraordinary achievement of individuals, to which the majority of church members need not be obligated. The fateful limiting of the validity of Jesus’ commandments to a certain group of especially qualified people led to differentiating between highest achievement and lowest performance in Christian obedience. This made it possible, when the secularization of the church was attacked any further, to point to the possibility of the monastic way within the church, alongside which another possibility, that of an easier way, was also justified. Thus, calling attention to the original Christian understanding of costly grace as it was retained in the Roman church through monasticism enabled the church paradoxically to give final legitimacy to its own secularization. But the decisive mistake of monasticism was not that it followed the grace-laden path of strict discipleship, even with all of monasticism’s misunderstandings of the contents of the will of Jesus. Rather, the mistake was that monasticism essentially distanced itself from what is Christian by permitting its way to become the extraordinary achievement of a few, thereby claiming a special meritoriousness for itself. During the Reformation, God reawakened the gospel of pure, costly grace through God’s servant Martin Luther by leading him through the monastery. Luther was a monk. He had left everything and wanted to follow Christ in complete obedience. He renounced the world and turned to Christian works. He learned obedience to Christ and his church, because he knew that only those who are obedient can believe. Luther invested his whole life in his call to the monastery. It was God who caused Luther to fail on that path. God showed him through scripture that discipleship is not the meritorious achievement of individuals, but a divine commandment to all Christians. The humble work of discipleship had become in monasticism the meritorious work of the holy ones. The self-denial of the disciple is revealed here as the final spiritual self-affirmation of the especially pious. This meant that the world had broken into the middle of monastic life and was at work again in a most dangerous way. Luther saw the monk’s escape from the world as really a subtle love for the world. In this shattering of his last possibility to achieve a pious life, grace seized Luther. In the collapse of the monastic world, he saw God’s saving hand reaching out in Christ. He seized it in the faith that “our deeds are in vain, even in the best life.” It was a costly grace, which gave itself to him. It shattered his whole existence. Once again, he had to leave his nets and follow. The first time, when he entered the monastery, he left everything behind except himself, his pious self. This time even that was taken from him. He followed, not by his own merit, but by God’s grace. He was not told, yes, you have sinned, but now all that is forgiven. Continue on where you were and comfort yourself with forgiveness! Luther had to leave the monastery and reenter the world, not because the world itself was good and holy, but because even the monastery was nothing else but world.[23][1] [1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 46–48.
- Totally agree
- From "Ethics" https://biblia.com/books/dbw06/p%2049Page 49Ethicsthen the decision about the whole of life depends on our relation to God’s revelation. Awareness of it is not only a step-by-step progress in the discovery of deeper and more inward realities, but this awareness is the turning point, the pivot, of all perception of reality as such. The ultimate, or final, reality discloses itself to be at the same time the first reality, God as the first and last, the Alpha and Omega.[11] Without God, all seeing and perceiving of things and laws become abstraction,
- Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.Shared from Logos Bible SoftwareThe Bible, and much more. Biblia is an online Bible study tool with dozens of Bibles for your Bible Study needs. It is a service of Faithlife / Logos Bible Software.fl.vu
- How much do you agree with Bonhoffer's assessment of possession of stuff? "The main concern is not whether or not I have any worldly goods, but that I should possess goods as if I did not possess them, and inwardly I should be free of them."Shared from Logos Bible SoftwareThe Bible, and much more. Biblia is an online Bible study tool with dozens of Bibles for your Bible Study needs. It is a service of Faithlife / Logos Bible Software.fl.vu
- I agree with the basic point. I work at an AutoParts store and a customer needed to rent a tool but did not have enough money. I lent him the money since he would get it back when he returned the tool. Well he came back while I was there but I was busy with a customer outside. He did not return the money which bothered me more than I thought it would. But I was able to work through the issue. Learned a little bit more of while it feels good to do the right thing, it can still hurt when others take advantage.
- Great example. Thanks for the Story Dennis. I'll add one from my life. My wife and I were serving the church on a church planting team, poor and busy. We were directing a coffee shop ministry and one of the volunteers stole from us. It was heart breaking. Then someone stole a laptop from our offices. My wife and I really struggled with frustration and anger. Nearly 10 years later, with a decade of life experience and more than enough STUFF for our family, it is a bit easier to realize the fleeting nature of money and stuff. God is still working on my heart though, as we now have kids who like to bounce on the new couch, or don't take care of stuff the way I think they should. You can only serve one master! :) Jesus is the king of all stuff, and he gives it freely, asking us to hold it with open and generous hands. It's for enjoying, giving, and using for the greater good, that he grants us anything to possess temporarily. Thanks Bonhoeffer for the reminder to be inwardly free from attachment to these things, and to look up the beams of blessings to God the Sun who gives them.
- Stephen The has joined the group.