Community & the Cost of Discipleship: The Seminary that Defied Nazis

ROB_episode6.mp3
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[MUSIC]
If you want to know what the commitment to Christ is really all about,
you could not get a clearer definition than what you'll get in this book,
the cost of discipleship.
If you were looking for a very powerful and very short read on the life of the church,
I cannot recommend to you highly enough, this very short work, life together.
I think that part of what was influential about reading life together was the way in which
Bonhoeffer was still focused on Jesus.
We participate in Christ in the world, manifesting this kingdom of God that has broken through via
the life and work of Jesus.
This idea of participating in Christ is the whole fundamental idea of the book discipleship.
I would say in this book, there's not a sentence that is just filler.
Everything you read has substance, has meaning, has relevance.
In life together, discipleship, he was saying things that I was intuiting,
and he was saying them in the direction that I wanted to go,
but I didn't know how to articulate them yet, and no one else was articulating them for me.
Definitely one of the great classics of Christian spirituality.
I was looking for something, I was looking for a former religiosity,
but I thought Christianity can't be it, and I was profoundly moved by reading discipleship.
You know, somebody like Bonhoeffer could do this,
maybe I should go back to Christianity since that's what I know.
I've often said that if you really are a Christian, this is mandatory reading.
This is Christianity 101.
Hello everyone.
This is Trip and I am here with Jeffrey Pugh for episode six of the Rise of Bonhoeffer.
Last time we were talking about Bonhoeffer's call back to Germany.
There have been transitions going on in the life of the confessing church,
those trying to resist the not-signification of the church,
and this call back from London to thinkin' Volda for the seminary
is not just a transition in what's going on in Germany and in Bonhoeffer's own life,
but it was really a crucible through which so much of the writing
and the text that people have come to hear as Bonhoeffer's greatest contribution,
things like cost of discipleship and life together were written.
Jeff, this period of time is such a transformative one.
I'd love for you to help us understand all that's going on in this movement
from London back to Germany.
What are the connections that are being made and formed in London
that will shape his journey going forward and what are the streams of thought and influences
that he's discovered that will help bring thinkin' Volda to reality.
In April of 35 Bonhoeffer was in the Northern Seacoast town of Zincs
where he start training his first group of students and that's just a temporary setting.
It might be more interesting just to take a couple of minutes and review his life in London
because that was very, very important. He actually had thoughts in the first part of
1934 he wanted to go visit Mahatma Gandhi's Ashram in India.
Bishop George Bell had even written him a letter of introduction saying that Bonhoeffer wanted to come
and study how community life worked in Gandhi's Ashram in India.
Gandhi wrote Bonhoeffer back inviting him for a visit,
but Bonhoeffer decided against taking the trip because this other call from the church in Germany
had arisen. Now that's one piece. I think the other piece that we should keep in mind is that
when Bonhoeffer is in London he's actually visiting monastic communities, going to places in London
where ancient practices are centering the worship and church life, the ecclesial life of the adherents.
He's learning about how community works and what resources for Christian faith those communities
possess. Bell is of course giving him introductions to places that he can go and visit, but this is
formative for him.
In Bonhoeffer's context he's wondering how does a church resist a cult of personality? How does
a research resist a political death cult that wants to draw an entire nation into its grasp? He's
dealing with that and he's trying to also struggle with the fact that the very church that was supposed
to be resisting is in fact becoming weaker and weaker under the onslaught of that political power.
Lory Hill helps us understand how the beginning parts of his thinking are going to later on flesh out
in the experience at Lincoln-Balta.
So recognizing that kind of cult status group sync thing that's happening that he needs to counter
and then the ecumenical friendships open up other doors. So through his friendship with Bishop George Bell
he has a connection to Gandhi. We know that he never got to go to India. He'd hope to go to India to
study nonviolent resistance, but the confessing church opened the preacher's seminaries and he was
invited to go do that. Even that forced him to think that the seminary he is now putting into practice
trying out concrete expressions of community that he'd only thought about abstractly before that.
So all that stuff he'd written about what does this look like when we're actually living together
a community? How do we spend time together? How do we spend time alone? What happens when we confess
our sins to one another? How does that enhance the relationships deep in the community?
And then when he received criticism that he was trying to menastocize the seminarians he said,
no, no, I'm trying to prepare them to go back into this very difficult context. They have to have
this strength and the resources to lead communities that are existing in the context of Nazi Germany.
So this idea of community became concrete. For Bonhoffer in this time of transition,
there are two big features. One is this recognition that the church is going to need to turn
internally to find some kind of integrity, a community to hold each other accountable, to call
fidelity to Christ out of each other. And part of that is trying to connect to the confessing
church to support it, building a seminary where friendships and bonds of relationships are
cultivated to support each other, to be a community of integrity in a time of resistance.
And this other feature that we've been discussing throughout the series is Bonhoffer's
rediscovery of the sermon on the Mount. And when you think about what the people of faith do,
what is their enactment of faith in the world? The sermon on the Mount comes to the fore.
This is where it's both shaping how he understands the life of the students in the seminary.
And it's also the text that he spends so much time digging into in discipleship.
Plenty of people have met Bonhoffer for the first time. He's also staying connected to his family,
many of whom don't understand the kind of radical nature of his faith, but recognize his desire to
resist what's going on in Germany. You know, it's interesting in January of 1935 before Bonhoffer comes back.
He writes his brother, Karl Friedrich, a letter, and he tries to explain himself in the path that he
was following, and he writes the following words. But I do believe that at last I am on the right track
for the first time in my life. I often feel quite happy about it. I only worry about being so afraid of
what other people might think as to get bogged down instead of going forward. I think I am right
in saying that I would only achieve true inner clarity and honesty by really starting to take the
sermon on the mount seriously. Here alone lies the force that can blow all this hocus-pocus sky high,
like fireworks leaving only a few burned out shells behind. The restoration of the church must
surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old, but a life
of uncompromising discipleship following Christ according to the sermon on the mount. I believe the
time has come to gather people together to do this. Now he's writing to his brother, kind of agnostic
physicist, that he believes in the power of the sermon on the mount to blow up the entire Nazi apparatus.
And he was going to put his best effort in figuring out just how to do that there at Finkinvalda.
One of the things I think that might be helpful to set up here, Jeff, is earlier on, and we saw the say in
the kind of framing discussion around the church in the Jewish Christian, is Bonhoeffer's wrestling
with that Lutheran vision of the church state relationship and how the church, when things get
really out of hand, have to witness to the state on behalf of citizens who are being harmed, rights
that are being denied. And in that essay he posits the conditions under which what faithfulness looks
like for the church changes. One where its witness to the state is no longer plausible, but the state is
a failed state. And now the church has to ask this questioning again. Can you kind of help us understand
just what transition meant in Bonhoeffer's driving, organizing energy for life at Finkinvalda?
I may not be the best person to help you understand that, but we do have someone who does have a very
interesting take on this. Michael D. Young, who we've heard before in this series, he sees this move
in Finkinvalda, this move to discipleship as being the second type of resistance. Bonhoeffer has
had a resistance in the first stage of proclamation and witness. And now the resistance comes in forming
and shaping people who would be strong enough to withstand the kind of political onslaught that
Germany was experiencing. Michael talks to us a little bit more about that. If you read his letters
and diaries in the early 1930s, he's wrestling through those issues and as he's publicly calling
for the church to make a stand in its proclamation, which he's doing not only domestically, but also
internationally in the ecumenical scene, he's also expressing doubt about whether or not the church has
what it takes to do that. And the way that he expresses that doubt is he wonders whether enough the church
has the kind of character, so to speak, so that this message will resonate and have to be taken
seriously. He seems to conclude that perhaps it doesn't, or at least that's the place where the
church needs to shore itself up. And as his thinking develops, that character of the church that he's
focused on becomes expressed in the language of discipleship. If in the first phase he's thinking
about the church and its proclamation primarily, then in the second phase he's thinking more about the
church as the discipleship body that can preach the proclamation with authority and that becomes
his focus in the second phase. And of course we also can't ignore the fact that things in the
stateside are deteriorating quickly. I think it's both of those factors that lead to the second phase.
On the one hand, lack of confidence in the church's ability to proclaim the word with authority.
And secondly, a realization that the state may not be the kind of state that will listen to that
kind of word, even if it is preached with authority. So then the focus becomes about cultivating and
preserving this authentic discipleship community so that when the time is right it can again
preach strong proclamation. It needs to be a discipleship church and not a church that is co-opted
by the right. So that's sort of the second phase associated with the finken ball the community,
the works discipleship and life together. And that's where you see a lot of rhetoric from
Bonhoeffer that can be interpreted as sort of withdraw from the world. Although again I would say
that needs to be balanced with the idea that the church's proclamation is always in and for the
world but at that moment that tends to be the focus. So that's how I would understand the second phase
in his resistance journey. So Jeff in this transition in Bonhoeffer's mind to a new form of resistance,
what's going on in the church at large in the confessing church where this project of founding
a seminary is an expression of what faith looks like for Bonhoeffer. Well if we put the lens back to
confessing church had lost a significant battle within the ecclesiostircles and was no longer
recognized as an official part. It was not the official Reich's church which the German Christian
Bishop Mueller had kind of won the day although as Peeric in some ways because Hitler realized that
with the church struggle he was not going to be able to use the church the way that he had hoped.
He kind of just cut it loose left them to their own devices. Here we have a situation then in
35 where the confessing church wants to train its own pastors. It wants to have a theological education
that's not connected to the educational system in Germany because in some ways that was closed off
to them. Now the interesting part about that right is there are actually theologians whose names are
familiar Paul Althaus, Emmanuel Horst, Gerhard Kittle familiar to many people still in the western
world who were if not not curious absolute sympathizers. It's very difficult for us to realize
it in 1935. It's just another political movement. It's another totalitarian political movement.
It's not seen as a genocidal death cult at this point. The people that are still on board with it
being able to make Germany great again they just don't want state control over the churches.
They didn't necessarily oppose the erosion of civil rights especially if it did not impact them.
It was when it started to impact them that things got a little bit dicey. So in 1935 you have
something like the Nuremberg laws are passed in September. Canceling citizenship for German Jews
in this ratchet stop the situation for baptized Jewish Christians yet again. And then in December
that year you had him learn declaring all examinations for the Compessing Church invalid all training
in valid all participants liable for rest in these seminaries. That's the kind of pressures that
the underground seminaries were experiencing at the time. But in April when Bonhoeffer gets to zinxt
and then later on in that year when they actually set up the situation it think in Volda you have
the Compessing Church sending its ornans its people for ministry to Bonhoeffer. And Bonhoeffer has in
mind a particular type of theological education we've talked about it. It's monastic in orientation
cultivating the disciplines of ancient and contemporary Christian practices. But man when they
get there the facilities itself are not great. I know they worked as a team for quite a while just
to get it even in working water for posting classes and living together. Yeah it's not like they had a
lot of church youth groups in Germany sending out mission teams to help them paint the walls and
repair the building and try to find sources of heat right. Part of what's going on is this
institutional capture of so many different places that Bonhoeffer found deep connection for his
identity. The institutional capture of the church by the whole German church movement is
connection to Nazi ideology and the same things going on at the university where he's eventually
cut off from his position in Berlin and academically homeless. This happens in 1936 they actually
declared him a pacifist which was like the worst thing you could be in Germany. Oh my god he's a
pacifist and pacifistor by definition enemies of the state and Bonhoeffer has his authorizations to
teach it to Berlin terminated. Maybe we can go back and talk about the fact that the church is feeling
some kinds of pressure in 1934 and 35 and when Bonhoeffer starts to teach these classes it's not as if
these classes themselves are not under a great deal of pressure and it says a lot Bonhoeffer
believes that the sermon on the mount is the key to finding out how to resist what happens when
the state starts to take away the very life of the church. He's trying to work out the visible and
embodied life of the church under pressure. He gave a vision of what he thought theological
education should look like in a crisis moment. He wrote to his union friend Erwin Satsui met before
in September of 1934 and he says the following words. I no longer believe in the university. In fact
I never really have believed in it to your secret. The next generation of pastors this day's
ought to be trained entirely in church monastic schools where the pure doctrine the sermon on the
mount and worship are taken seriously which for all three of these things is simply not the case
at the university and under present circumstances is impossible. Even in Finkenbohler was created out of
crisis. The crisis is defining what the church is is the community of Christ. Once again we find
this is a lifelong preoccupation with Bonhopper as Dr. Diane Rason professor of ethics at the
Pacific Theological College in Fiji and in Australian Theologian who writes on Bonhoffer in the
ecological crisis reminds us. I think he glimpses church community in Harlem and I think he also
experiences that in the underground seminary so when they're forced to be outside of the structure of
the church and they're living almost a sort of monastic life and contesting to each other and deeply
searching the wisdom of the early church for how can we be church when the world's gone crazy
around us. I wonder if he's finding glimpses of the church community being the body of Christ there.
The community is formed in crisis defining out what the church is but look it Finkenbohler wasn't the
kind of airds, stultifying academic setting run by mediocrity pulled from the hot sea ranks. It was
an adventure to work out practically what seminary trainings for pastoral minute. We should look like in
a communal setting. We've already alluded to the fact that they had to work significantly at just
making their building a place that was able to have classes and to be worked in complicating that is
the increasing pressure of the Nazi regime but there they were out on the margins of this situation
in a certain sense and Bonhoeffer's wanting to establish his Christian community that takes the
sermon on the mound seriously guided by it. As the community is putting together trip, what do you think?
You see in the rhythm that takes place at Finkenbohler a response to the failure of both theological
education, the failure of what the German church is doing in the face of the Nazi rise and the kind
of confidence Bonhoeffer has discovered of Christ showing up in intimate, vulnerable, shared
relationships. And so the sermon on the mount that he's returning to is specifically in the gospel of
Matthew something Jesus gives to his disciples. They come up on the mount and he's talking to his disciples
and throughout it you hear Jesus saying like you've heard it said that I say unto you or when you give
when you pray do it this way the sermon on the mount is a description of the community of disciples
with Christ at the center taking this discovery of the sermon on the mount and then the recognition
that throughout church history and even in the ecumenical movement at that time there were Christians
recognizing that to be faithful to have integrity you're going to have to cultivate a collective
consciousness of the call of Christ through rhythm, through practice and through relationships.
That shifts theological education if before the university trains you to be a minister to a state
church and faithful to the limited imagination expressed in the university Bonhoeffer goes let our
imagination be formed by relationships and rhythms and what's fascinating to me is it's so not what
people expected. There are these weird parts that if it's a Lutheran you're like whoa is this
Catholic right? Regular daily prayer things that you do as a community things you do alone.
You were centered for weeks at a time on one passage of scripture that you keep coming back to
with Bonhoeffer's insistence that if we want to figure out what it's like to be faithful today the
text has to call us to faithfulness because our imaginations our institutions are so already occupied
by not the ideology what is it that's going to break through and so there are these practices there
are these rhythms and these deep relationships of play build relationships that then can sustain
each other because you can imagine in Bonhoeffer's mind going I was lonely and went into the wilderness
to London and I'm called back but what would it be to not be alone what would it be to be faithful it's
going to be knowing the names and faces of people who heard me can stress my sins who heard me
wrestle with the word proclaim in the Christ event and it's going to be a community that says let
us live this in these uncertain and difficult moments together it's that life together that I think
for Bonhoeffer is what's trying to be expressed in returning to these ancient rhythms and returning
to reflection on the text in a sense it's like what does the situation in which Jesus gave the
sermon on the mount an invitation to the way of Christ his disciples what would it look like for
that to be how we form ministers could we then have a church with a conscience if we have a community
that calls it out of us famously this is where Bonhoeffer meets Eberhard Betke who ends up writing
the biography and carries the Bonhoeffer legacy into the western world after the end of the war
Andrew Rute told us the story of Betka meeting Bonhoeffer the first time as he showed up at Finkenvolda
as a student as I understand that story goes is that Betka says that he comes late from he's missed
orientation week Eberhard talks about this and he says it came late and they were all down on the
beach playing soccer and he had no idea who the principal was who is the president of this seminary
and then somebody pointed it out to him and he's like in his German accident he's like all of that
sporty one so you get the impression that Dietrich's down there just dominating them in soccer and
football which fits Paul Lehman assertions that Bonhoeffer is pretty sure of himself and pretty good
at sport as as they would say you know great tennis player and that starts that relationship and
as I understand it their friendship really builds around these classic Christian practices and that
Eberhard becomes his confessor so they confess since to one another so they become very close
through that process of him being his confessor which is another really interesting dynamic thinking
about power structures there or thinking about how one leads others into spiritual practices it's
really clear that they find this to be unusual but they also are asked to do it and they're told
they don't have a choice do either do it or you go to one of the other seminaries or you go back
to the university they're not asked to do something that Dietrich himself won't do and I think
that's an important piece of leadership here so these long meditations on scripture isn't Dietrich's
in his office working on his own stuff or playing the piano while they're out there meditating on
scripture he is too and if one of the most difficult things is to confessor since to someone then he
has a confessor too and that's where Eberhard comes in at that point. Confessing sins to each other
sounds a bit messy a bit complicated and I think the temptation for a lot of us Jeff is to read life
together in a kind of idealistic or utopian way the cultivation of community is not always the kind
of idealistic dream that we sometimes think it is the cultivation of community means you rub up against
your brothers and sisters in such a way that they irritate you human beings can be in very irritating
and there was in some senses that this life was not readily embraced by all of the ordinance some
of them were very resistant some of them left those who had not previously encountered bon offer in
Berlin for instance were not as totally own bored as those who had come under bon offers and
fluids in an earlier theological education so those who had known him in earlier classes were
more willing to stick it out but this kind of communal education these kind of communal practices
the way that lives kind of rubbed in against one another in this setting it wasn't for everybody
one can say that bon offer was seeking to form students whose first commitment was to the gospel
and not to the country if Hitler was skillful in in a certain sense is shaping the Nazi conscience
bon offer wanted to shape informed disciples who understood how radical Christianity
rooted in the sermon on the mount could be you know one of the things that I find fascinating is
how different these texts that come out of this period are read when set at finkenvolta the cost
of discipleship or discipleship life together even praying in the Psalms when you imagine bon offer
writing those books reflecting on this experiment of ecclesial imagination and experiment in what a
faithful church looks like under extreme pressure those texts take a different flavor they really
really do now think sometimes if we take them out of context and let's be honest many of those who
came to bon offer through discipleship and life together many of those who first were exposed to him
the context sometimes can be missing and so what happens is that these become just spiritual manuals
for Christian life but if your nation is fallen into the hands of a right wing death cult you need to
look and read these in a certain way as being written in a condition where life itself is at risk
where to even be listening to these sermons puts you on outs with the state that you are actually
being a part of a situation where in fact as it happens many of these students are later arrested
many of them will find themselves on the front lines because they're pressed into military service
there's a certain sense then in which this is not just a journey to the interior world the circumstance
in which discipleship and life together the lectures the sort of founding of the house of the brethren
these end up becoming life and death decisions to become a part of this and to remain within this
community within this education one wonders if bon offer intended to protect Christianity from the
acids that were working itself out in the rest of the church but not many would necessarily resonate
with the idea of separating from the world and given all that bon offer written before this
separation does serve a purpose it is resistance itself Andrew Roo drew our attention to bon offer's
emphasis on the relationships formed at thinkinvalda for he understood that no disciple can resist alone
one of the things that's essential in thinkinvalda is that bon offer really does
fundamentally believe that Jesus Christ is alive and Jesus Christ is speaking and so this becomes
really at the core what thinkinvalda is about is discernment how do you discern the call of Jesus
Christ how do you hear that call and follow it this is where Luther C. L. G. the cross plays out if you
have to discern this there is a way to look at how this word comes to you and I think bon offer
would most definitely affirm that it comes underneath it comes broken it comes in suffering it actually
comes in a sense of a low anthropology it comes in the confession of being the kind of creature who needs
something outside you need a foreign righteousness to come to you so I think one of the real temptations
bon offer reminds us of is that there is a kind of temptation even to feel like you're on the right
side and to be triumphalistic and to perform even the right ideological perspective but cheap grace
for bon offer is grace as an idea when we become human beings who are more committed ideas than
persons and particularly broken persons persons who are yearning persons who are in moments of
suffering and longing it once we lose the kind of existential tone of what it means to seek for
something outside of us to save us for that foreign righteousness that we don't have within us that's
why it's foreign we don't have it within us until then we get confused and I think the real
temptation throughout modernity and even in this moment maybe because of the way the algorithms work
and the way social media works is we really do conform to ideas more than we conform to persons
we tend to see others as either at some level either our fans or our opponents in some way like
they're either supporting what we think or they're in opposition to what we think they're therefore
really good or really bad but it's not their concrete humanity and they're broken as before God
their experiences of impossibility they're longing for some kind of salvation or something
to save them that draws us to them it's whether we can stomach their ideas or not that's the real
temptation this is why for Bonhoeffer it really is the person and that's why thinkinvalda has to be
about persons in relationship it has to be about prayer and ask you about meditation because we have to
discern the call of the living Jesus Christ to follow and respond to it now so we need those
practices those classic Christian practices to try to discern this but we also need to stay up late
and play music we need to be together and hear each other's stories and wrestle with these ideas and
as I understand it being well not everyone agreed on all of this I think everyone agreed to
confessing church is what we have to do but how really bad were the national socialist what was the
future was really war right around the horizon there was a lot of debate and there was always the
temptation as I understand it that you could go and get legal anytime you wanted especially in kind
of 36 you could decide you know and I really would like a pension and health insurance I would like my
paycheck to come from the state that's pretty good I'd like to stay in the union as I understand it
you could go down and simply become legal that changes when the national socialists feel humiliated
and then it becomes about shutting this down but early on the national socialists were like
five little seminaries of 20 to 30 men were not all that concerned about that we're thinking about
world domination here there was always debates about that temptation I think bona for at a sense that
to be a pastor now to be in these confessing churches you would always be wrestling with temptation
that you would have to have this humility both this dog and his deceit for the living Jesus Christ
to hear his word follow and this humility are on finitude your own longings your own fears your own
susceptibility to temptation when people re-cost of discipleship for the first time those opening
chapters draw an intense contrast between cheap grace and costly grace the context in which many of us
read them for the first time is so foreign to the place in which they were birthed here at Finkinvalda
I wonder if you could help us understand in context that initial framing that sets up bonauffer's
guide to the sermon on the mount perhaps the best place to do that would actually be from bonauffer
himself while it's hard to distill all of these writings there are certain places where we see the
heart of what bonauffer is trying to get at one of which is this notion of cheap grace bonauffer
rights cheap grace means grace as a doctrine as principle as system it means forgiveness of since
as a general truth it means God's laugh as merely a Christian idea of God those who affirm it have
already had their sense forgiven the church that teaches this doctrine of grace thereby
confers such grace upon itself the world finds in this church a cheap cover up for its sense
for which it shows no remorse and from which it has even less desire to be set free
cheap grace is thus denial of God's living word denial of incarnation of the word of God
this cheap grace the existence of church where truth isn't told lies are allowed to flourish
that's an uncomfortable truth for those who want the confessing church to be the heroes of the
story the story of church resistance has become more complicated actually is the historians
have dug into the dirt some more wasn't just the German Christian churches who supported the Nazis
the confessing church was permeated with the reality of cheap grace as well and that's that's a very
hard truth for us but in truth in the late 30s most churches to slip back into the role that religion
often plays in society of legitimating justifying the prevailing social order so when the quench time came
in Germany church leaders reverted back to a Christianity that showed they were loyal Germans
first and foremost now this is an interesting aspect when we realize that cheap grace may in fact
lead us into confessions of a wrongful nature trip when you're thinking about this what do you
think in about the for bonhoeffer costly grace is one where to say yes to Christ is to be obedient
that you can't differentiate the arrival of the gospel and the call to obedience and when you
can separate the two then you have this possibility of a cheap grace one where you say yes to Jesus as
the Christ but don't let him tell you what the Christ looks like and that's why right after
in cost of discipleship where you get this opening he uses the story of Peter to describe the nature
of a true confession of faith so Jesus asks all the disciples well who do they say I am and they're
like well you're Elijah come back down he didn't die oh your John the Baptist with the head
reattached you know all these things that people in that time period can say maybe that's who Jesus is
and then he says well who do you say I am in bonhoeffer with his pocket filled with Kirchegard
and that existential energy goes you are the Christ son of the living God and Jesus doesn't go well
thinks Pete the evidence demanded that verdict or thanks for the rational deduction your dogma is
correct he goes my heavenly fathers revealed that to you and so there's this identification of Jesus
as the Christ but just a few chapters later the very same Peter when Jesus says he turns his face to
Jerusalem interjects and is like Jesus you do know what happens when you go to Jerusalem you have
managed to preach the kingdom of God so effectively that religion politics culture society all the
arbors of power are going to take you down home boy think about it right and then Jesus says get
behind me Satan so there's this connection in the gospels between understanding that he is the
Christ and the actual way of the Christ going to Jerusalem going to the cross and I think that gap
is what's coming up in cheap grace versus costly grace and as Andrew Rute pointed out in our conversation
I think this is one of the places you hear bonhoeffers deep deep frustration with the ultimate failure
of the confessing church and the possibility of being a disciple in this kind of tumble well that's
right because in that confession it's fascinating and I think this is really important for bonhoeffer
is that after Peter reveals it and he says yeah this is from God that you're saying this then he says
I'm heading to Jerusalem and I'm going to die and Peter's like no I won't allow that to happen in
other words I want you to be triumphal and not suffer I don't want death to be in the equation
and then it's fascinating that this is the deep temptation that Jesus thinks it turns Peter the great
confessor into the one who is embodying the world of Satan there is that kind of quick duality
that's very interesting she bought over once again is when we lose this sense of Jesus Christ who
loves the neighbor and suffers with the neighbor and brings life out of the death of the experience of
the neighbor that we're called to minister to the neighbor by Jesus Christ who calls us into the
life of the neighbor that's so what Luther thinks is that justification doesn't lead you into some
hot tub of ideas it sends you out to love your neighbor that becomes your vocation and to continue
to encounter the living Jesus Christ there but if you refuse the cross then you can't
follow this Jesus Christ and that's the hard word brought on for once to part you I think he would
actually say that the confessing church right now as it's failing likes the idea of continuing to follow
Jesus Christ they like that they like the idea they may be even saying all sorts of praise about
Jesus but what they can't do is go to the cross and the only place that you can really follow this
Jesus Christ to death when Jesus Christ calls the person calls this person that comes and to die
it's a hard word christianity is a hard word in a cultural milieu where the church in state they're so
intertwined with one another state churches fly Nazi flag as a son of their patriotism as a matter of
fact when the church lost favor with Hitler and swastika flags were taken out of the churches some
of the pastors rebelled against that because they saw the swastika as a son of their patriotism puts a
whole new thing when you're looking at the episcopal church that you go to or whatever and there's the
American flag up there you know wanting the signal anyway christian faith is a means to resist
state power in Germany that's a radical move in the world of Luther's two kingdoms it's just not
done and bonhovers appeal here to the sermon on the mound it's under that umbrella we miss something
very vital about discipleship itself that it is a necessary response to a church has been captured
by the world and exist in a self-satisfying cheap grace but bonhovers has a word about that as well
but if grace is principle to presupposition of my christian life then in advance i have justification
of whatever sense i commit in my life in the world i can now sin on the basis of this grace
the world is in principle justified by grace i can thus remain as before in my buddhuras
secular existence everything remains as before and i can be sure that god's grace takes care of me
the whole world has become christian under this grace but christianity has become the world
under this grace as never before is the price that we are paying today with the collapse of the
organized churches anything else but the indivitable consequence of grace equates to cheaply
yikes you know kirk agar kind of jumps out there right that notion i was born in Germany i'm a
good christian that's kind of a cheap grace where christian faith becomes a cultural possession
it's not something that's hard fault or one or whatever it's just something you're born into
when i read that quote his reliance on kirk agar and discipleship does jump out yeah and i think
that there's this kind of intensity going on in bonthoffer because grace this radical insight
of looter that so shaped the reformation had actually eaten its own legs that what began as looter
having this insight that it is god who acts to redeem to save to justify has now become something
that that act of justification is no longer something for you the sinner who responds out of gratitude
but it's now something that has been appropriated to a culture to a nation to a state that the world
as it is still under the bondage to sin and injustice is now the carrier of grace legitimated
before the one it crucified and even looter himself with his powerful a notion of justification he does
connect it and he doesn't say works will save you but he does say knowing that you are justified by grace
there is this overflowing love cool in the leeway knowing how deeply you have been forgiven you
extend and you move into the world with that in a some sense maybe bonthoffer is doing recovery
bonthoffer's exploration of jesus is teaching that you know they're having very radical implications
very radical outcomes on the heirs it shouldn't be lost to us i don't think that discipleship can
actually become itself an act of cheap grace there's a certain christian piety that removes itself
from the world's sufferings and doesn't even pay attention to the kind of ways that political oppression
impacts people mostly the poor so what does it mean then for instance and this is a difficult and
hard question what does it mean to turn the cheek in the face of the not see oppression or
of what used as a sermon on the mail when your pastor is being taken to a concentration camp i
think that's where jesus does not compromise with evil jesus doesn't maintain jesus own piety
but it's a cheap grace where all reality is ignored do you know what i mean?
in for bonthoffer what we're seeing in discipleship is like he's bolding and underlining
what is just coming off the text from the sermon on the mount in the gospel of Matthew for
these students who are called to serve the church and when he looks at the kind of failures rampant
in the state rampant in the church and the compromises that are so easily justified by even
some of his peers and allies in the confessing church movement it is the unquenching fidelity to
obedience the bonthoffer points towards that obedience is very difficult especially what does
costly grace look like for instance church in germany of spent centuries conforming itself in some
ways to what the state demands how could it be otherwise if your very salaries are coming from taxes
that are raised by the state to pay you so in that situation what does costly grace look like
what does obedience look like the church seeds its right to determine the conscience of its
self and so if the church enters into bondage to the state what does costly grace look like
that's a situation in which bonthoffer is dealing with and he writes about that as well
costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again the gift which has to be
asked for the door at which one has to knock it is costly because it calls to discipleship
it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ it is costly because it costs people their
lives it is grace because it thereby makes them live it is costly because it condemns sin it is
grace because it justifies the sinner above all grace is costly because it was costly to God
because it costs God the life of God's son you were bought with a price and because nothing can
be cheap to us which is costly to God grace is costly because it forces people under the yoke of
following Jesus Christ it is grace when Jesus says my yoke is easy and my burden is light
bondhoffer is challenging its students right they're raised in Lutheran reformed traditions they
consider themselves justified by Christ but bondhoffer keeps raising the issue but are you following
Christ have you in fact been taken captive by that cheap grace this goes back to the heart of what
we've been talking about with this whole series that bondhoffer is asking how is Christ made manifest
and embodied in material reality now is the church community a part of this that what are
faith and obedience in that kind of situation and if Christ is the true authority then how could you
follow an unjust state once again pretty radical but think about what's happening in Germany at this time
and the demands that are being placed on the German people by the Nazi regime Andrew Rout reminds us
that history was not written yet and that even in the life that thinkinvalda bondhoffer and the
students are responding to a changing crisis snowballing towards violence and war so at that level it seems
really clear but something that's hard to get your mind around that I think makes bondhoffer really
quite beautiful but also should remind us that that easy human being is that everyone who's in this
struggle even all these men who are going to think involved they don't necessarily know that Nazis
are not these yet they're getting some pretty good clues and this is why they've gone there but they
don't know where this is all leading and that makes it really quite confusing and trying to figure
this out and I think what bondhoffer would then remind us is whatever the moment calls for
and there will be more moments where it gets deeply confusing and calls for distinct forms of action
is that you can't have it figured out beforehand that this is the right action that this is the
innocent action that this is the justified action I think what we have to remember about bondhoffer
story is that he acts even feeling like he's disobedient feeling like it's not justified the action
that he's taken it is faithful but it's only faithful because he thinks the living Jesus Christ
is calling him into it it costs him that so I think what he would remind us is twofold whatever
the future calls for we have to think distinctly as a church of where is the revelation of Jesus Christ
how to concretely do we hear the call of Jesus Christ how we participate in the life of Jesus Christ
and that will have some real dynamic of being persons in relationship of being in communion
and that will mean we can bear each other suffering but also that we can celebrate with each other and
have joy that no matter how bleak it gets there still is this call to live and to laugh and to
celebrate in the bond offer family never stop that Dietrich can think involved a preparing man he
really thought some of these men will have a gun to their head their bleak day is but in community
even that heaviness shouldn't replace the celebration of what it means to laugh and live together
and so the focus on this kind of crystallological center that always is lived out concretely in
community is essential for us whatever bond offer moment that we're in to truly follow the
lead of bond offer it is this confessional sense that Jesus Christ is living and calling and is the
word that calls us to act obediently that calls us to follow and that will somehow be discerned
inside the deep love and willingness to suffer for those in your life wouldn't you think of the
students that could end up in this context going to think involved in knowing that they are
connected to the confessing church that are trying to negotiate all the tensions going on it's in
that context where they're digging into a community shaped by a rhythm and the sermon on the mount
in May 1st 1935 Hitler announces the rearmament of Jury this rearmament of the military is connected
to throwing aside this shame of Versailles after World War One it is a shock to imagine the diversity
of opinions that exist even at Finkenvalde some students responding in a traditional German way
to the idea of potential military service there are those who were shocked to hear bondhoffers
resistance and ethical wrestling with whether a follower of Christ could kill for their state
even there at Finkenvalde this one transition in the rise to the Second World War the rearmament of
Germany occasions a whole new set of conversations within the students in the light of Christ nationalism
is an adultery that leads to death when we think about what form this death takes its death that
the state our death that war takes bondhoffers address this already with his peace ethic but there's
more to this I think you're right Jeff because until this moment what's going on at Finkenvalde is
the training within community of disciples who are hopefully going to lead churches in the face of
the German Christian church the rise of Nazi anti-Semitism they're coming to have integrity with
their baptism that even ethnically Jewish people have been baptized deserve the Eucharist we need
fidelity to the cross and not a swastika and there are all these ways that the church is being
tempted to be pulled up into a culture war with Hitler as a vanguard of German renewal but it's
right here with the turn to rebuild the military that a question for the disciple shows up one that
after the Treaty of Versailles was eliminated there was violence on the streets violence that helped
generate an attractive for the Nazi movement but it's not until the rearmament that the disciple
who's also a citizen in Germany and has given their allegiance to a crucified lord has to ask the
question of picking up a gun handed to them by the state again this goes right into the very heart of
education at Finkenvalde because the students are arguing the same thing and many of them once again
that kind of patriotism that nationalism becomes the more guiding force in their life than obedience
to Christ through the sermon on the mount it makes this all very fraught there's even a story about
sitting around and they're talking about who's going to serve or who would serve or who would go
into the army and Bonhoff was very silent and he's not offering anything about this and finally it
does come out that Bonhoff for himself is somewhat ambivalent about this notion of how one serves a
state to the point where he sides with Jesus in the sermon on the mount and a very strong pacifist
ethic now this actually raises one of the interesting debates that is continually ongoing in Bonhoffer
circles about whether or not Bonhoffer was a pacifist was he a pacifist in the betray just pacifism to
enter into the conspiracy we'll have more to say about that later but let me just go ahead and say that
as Jenny McBride tells us and Jenny is the former president of the International Bonhoffer Society
English language section and now it works as an episcopal priest in Atlanta she tells us that it's
not necessarily a case of where we can look at Bonhoffer and interpret to him with a hard and fast
rule or a hard and fast absolute I don't like it when other people call Bonhoffer a pacifist because
I think it goes completely against one of his foundational insights that Christian ethics is not
based on universal principles I do think that he had a peacemaking ethic his whole life that was
based of course on following Jesus the Prince of Peace the one who non-violently went and suffered
the cross for me his basic fundamental understanding that Christian ethics is not based in universal
principles actually pushes us to how hard Christian faith is in the sense that it's hard to actually
have a relationship with the living God they have to live before and pray and discern and community
and try things out and fail and send a repent all of this stuff that especially the Christians that
I grew up with evangelicals say that they believe is it was supposed to have a relationship with God
and it turns out that having a relationship with the living God takes a whole lot out of us calls
us to a whole lot of things it's way easier to do ethics if all you have to do is point to a principle
that either you abide by or don't abide by the way that Christians are called to
make peace in all situations on our interpersonal local our neighborhoods our institutions our cities
our states our countries our world and all of that again gets back to this idea of concreteness
of having to immerse ourselves in a particular situation because we are creatures who are limited
it means we can't spread ourselves out and do everything but we have to do something and we have
to do it well and we have to trust that the idea is to be faithful followers of Jesus and trust
in the triumph of life and the triumph of the resurrection and God's grace to complete what we
begin so violence is a quick fix it's easy it's in a certain extent it's dominating other people the
slow work of making peace demands again that we take the form of the incarnate one the crucified one
and the one who lives in a new way by obeying Jesus commands that make visible the kingdom of God
oftentimes conversations around bonhoeffer and nonviolence have this cross-pressure of his radical
reflections on the sermon on the mount in cost of discipleship and then this awareness that
he became part of a group of conspirators that had a failed assassination attempt on Hitler and when
we take those pieces and then shove it into our contemporary debates around violence or nonviolence
and what discipleship looks like I think we miss where bonhoeffer begins the conversation and
Ginny helped us get to this first when we're asking the question of violence or nonviolence that
has already abstracted the question from the call to discipleship from allegiance to a singular lord
the one that died cross dead and so for bonhoeffer to really understand what's going on in the
question of violence is to go what does the one whose ultimate allegiance is not to the fjure not to
estate not to a family not even to a church what does allegiance to the one who died cross dead
look like when asking the question of violence and that's why it's important that Ginny goes yeah
bonhoeffer hated abstracted universalized it's always the case vision of ethics because what ethics
looks like isn't a commitment to a principle but to a person but it is a person right that doesn't
want cross building control it is a person that doesn't see violence as a quick fix or an expression
of the heart of God or the means by which the kingdom of God comes but it is one that's found in
the concrete in relationship and so from the very beginning of bonhoeffer's life we think back to
his earliest theological writings it's about allegiance to the one who exists in the face of the other
and so that question of allegiance of lordship is asked first and then what does the face of Christ
call out of me in the most desperate and difficult situations it doesn't call us to perfection
or an abstract principle but it does call us to responsible action in relations i don't mean to be
that guy but i'm just going to go ahead make a counter argue in just a minute he's talking about a grace
that takes seriously Jesus' commands you know love your enemies do we really want to give our
oppressor our coat and our shirt do we really want to do that these teachings of Jesus i'm just
going to go ahead and make an argument if you're list if you're sitting there in the room the class
is struggling with these teachings wouldn't you maybe possibly think these teachings of Jesus make
better victims they delay justice hmm why would bonhoeffer insist that the sermon on the man
was a key to upending the Nazis that sounds like a grace demanded by the oppressor the oppressor
says love me it's an offense to our right to self-defense it's in a world soaked in violence isn't
the call to pacifism surrender to the forces of evil you give your agency over to evil and so to
make Jesus' teachings a present reality is a costly grace because what it's going to mean is that
you'll see the world as it truly is but you won't be able to use the world's tools to respond to
that violence telling the truth about the structures of sin that often results in death at the
hands of those very powers that the Christian opposes i think this brings us back to something bonhoeffer's
first and foremost allutheran theologian and at the center of costly grace is the cross once again
we had the theologian of the cross we have the theology of the cross it's not limited to a theology
where gods sacrifices Jesus for our sins but the cross was also state-sponsored violence on love
and the cross is a suffering endured that the systems of the world place on us in that particular
sense then the cross is the space where that refusal to accept a lie and rather live into the truth
speaks of the gospel's power to resist the oppression but sometimes i do find myself in some sympathy
with those who do make the argument that if we were to truly follow this witness make us more
victim than resistor and i think that tension's important right and it's one that even exists in
bonhoeffer scholarship how does he understand himself at this time how does he reflect on it or
changes mine later and will obviously talk about that in the next few episodes but one of the
pieces underneath this that you see both here and going forward is that the recognition of evil
within a violent militaristic system that evil is not an identity of the ones enacting it
that for bonhoeffer even the most vile participants in Nazi evil are objects of divine love that
tension of the ethical demand is one where he's both working against cultivating a dismissive
judgmental contempt towards collaborators with evil and feeling that deep call to solidarity for
those bearing the violent burden of the Nazi regime at that time part of the disciples tension
that bonhoeffer is getting it what is the framework for working out are allegiance to Christ it begins
by both telling the truth about the reality of the situation denouncing the tools of domination
and control that we so easily cling to when we confuse our allegiance to Christ within allegiance
to nation or privilege or power it also is one where you cannot articulate your identity apart from
your connection to the faces of the neighbors in that crucible what does it mean to be committed to
making peace maybe even more specifically what does it mean when you're making peace in a society
that's rearming itself and getting ready for war bonhoeffer anticipates this too when he writes
the time is coming in which everyone who confesses their living God will become for the sake of
that confession not only an object of hatred and fury indeed already we are nearly that far
long now the time is coming and Christians for the sake of their confession will be excluded
from the human society as it is called hounded from place to place subjected to physical attack
abused and under some circumstances even killed the time of widespread persecution of Christians
as coming and that is actually the real meaning of all the movements and struggles of our time
cheap grace is taking that particular comment out of its context and to immediately
applying it to the present there are some Christians today who read those words and they are
often rage formed to believe that they are the ones who were being persecuted they are the ones
that bonhoeffer is writing about instead of those who cling to cheap grace that fears that it's
losing its social power to determine social morality but in discipleship bonhoeffer points to a life
that's shaped by other forces than the state and its economic structures allow for the gospel
has other ways of measuring the worth of persons the very fact that it was so radical that costly grace
meant that a follower of Christ must become a friend of suffering meant that those who remained with
bonhoeffer would end up suffering greatly in the lectures in the comments in the things that later
comprised the books of discipleship and life together he can sound overly pious with his language
but it's the centrality as it was all his life the centrality of Jesus that anchors these works
in how the life of Christ becomes visible in the world that is the crucial issue for bonhoeffer
and his answer is that Christ exists is visible within a community a viable visible community where
the words preached and the sacraments were offered one of the reasons that his rhetoric in these books
resonates with contemporary evangelicals is because they understand the world he's narrating
the external world is a fallen world he has this idea about the being in the sealed train the
disciples are in the sealed train going through enemy territory it is a realm of evil there's a very
dualistic world and one of the recurring themes is that the visible church's reality should extend to
all areas of life invade the world snatch its children this idea would find approval with many
dominionist orders of Christianity who would say that Christians must take over the culture must
take over the state but while he's teaching this the bishops of the church are willingly accepting
the Nuremberg laws now even if his language can appear quite daft how are we to renounce
all community with the world if those in the world suffer from the oppressions of the state
and the revolution of Jesus is such that the Christian expects nothing from this world
everything from Christ but does not abandon nor give up the world in its struggle so we might
just point step back and we might question that kind of heritage that he lives in that Lutheran
heritage that sees all authorities is given by God that was very very difficult for him to sort of
move beyond one of the elements that you're bringing up is how some readers of on offer when you
don't read him in historical context could take this call to discipleship as legitimating a
bounded vision of the church that we're to escape the world and build up these thick boundaries where
we can finally have integrity within the church over and against the world on the outside but
what bondhoffers doing and what he's actually enacting in thinkinvalda in this moment and I think
what makes us continue to resonate with him is the idea that the integrity of the church isn't
when it's set up over against the world but when it's centered on the reality of Christ and when
Christ is at the center then the boundary of church in state or the secular world in the sacred
reality gets reworked there's no longer a battle for privilege and domination or culture shaping
energy it's an orientation towards engaging the world where at the very center of one's existence
and the life of the Christian community is bonds who confess their sins and give their allegiance to
Christ as we come to the end of the story for this episode does not save one when the wolf comes at
the door right in February of 1937 the minister of the interior sends forth the host of rules that
shake up everything the pastor's emergency league into the confessing church is attempting to do
they prohibit the naming of anyone from the pulpit who's been removed from the right church
for issues of conscience just to name them in bondhoffer here picks this up and this is something
that's been a heart of what happens at thinkinvalda is the intercessory prayer for those you were
holding up and are who are holding you up to the call of discipleship so there that you have a rule
coming in to mute the prayer life of the church you're no longer allowed to ask for petitions within
church gatherings to support the character integrity of people that have been called to account for
speaking ill of the Nazi regime you're no longer allowed to give newsletters as to what's
happening with members and leaders of the confessing church those that have been rounded up and brought
into concentration camps you're no longer allowed to collect offerings to use for the the care of
families who say have lost someone to the concentration camp for not living up to the expectations
of this Nazi demand of culture in that proclamation it says that no church service can take place
an emergency church gathering like part of the emergencies faster's leak or in secular spaces
that at the end of this pronouncement the only place the church can gather or in churches in alignment
with the Nazi regime and in those worship services you can't even pray for those who are standing
up against it this extends then also into the seminaries himmler he proclaimed all examinations
to sending schools are invalid the schools and the teachers are subject to punishment
bonhoffer himself is hit with a ban on his teaching anyone who had anything to do with him could
face treason in the summer of 1936 bonhoffer he's terminated from his position his adjunct position
berlin he's barred from faculty seminary any institutions supported by the confessing church
his very work at finkenbold is declared illegal so in the summer of 1937 bonhoffer gives his last
lecture at finkenbold a rest of the students soon followed in in september of 1937 himmler outlawed
all the confessing church schools wasn't very long after that that a contingent of gistapo and
ss men arrived to shut down finkenbold in the next month 27 students 27 would be arrested
and though bonhoffer tried to keep the educational and spiritual formation of his students going
through an underground organization of collective pastures and circular letters among them these two
would soon fall apart not just the schools the nazis moved against people like neemolar bonhoffer
was at neemolars home when neemolar was arrested neemolar was taken the soxen house and a concentration
camp on the outside of berlin so the nazi shadow continues its path over the entirety the confessing
church as it itself collapses into impidant irrelevance
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