Tag Archives: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer on Christian Unity

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ecclesiology, Uncategorized

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The question of unity among Christians is easily and often misunderstood. It is typically reduced to affectionate or friendly feelings toward people I know who attend my congregation and agree with me a lot. That is the unity of a club — it could easily be the unity of a cult. But Christian unity is Christ:

Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none that is less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily community of many years, Christian community is solely this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.
What does that mean? It means, first, that a Christian needs others for the sake of Jesus Christ. It means, second, that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. It means, third, that from eternity we have been chosen in Jesus Christ, accepted in time, and united for eternity.
First, Christians are persons who no longer seek their salvation, their deliverance, their justification in themselves, but in Jesus Christ alone. They know that God’s Word in Jesus Christ pronounces them guilty, even when they feel nothing of their own guilt, and that God’s Word in Jesus Christ pronounces them free and righteous, even when they feel nothing of their own righteousness. Christians no longer live by their own resources, by accusing themselves and justifying themselves, but by God’s accusation and God’s justification. They live entirely by God’s Word pronounced on them, in faithful submission to God’s judgment, whether it declares them guilty or righteous

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, ed. Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Albrecht Schönherr, and Geffrey B. Kelly, trans. Daniel W. Bloesch and James H. Burtness, vol. 5, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996), 31.

Bonhoeffer on Stupidity

22 Friday Jul 2016

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Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.

Biblical Conflict Resolution Part 1

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in 1 Corinthians, Biblical Counseling, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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COUNSELING PROBLEMS AND BIBLICAL CHANGE
BIBLICAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Redeeming church conflict is less about resolving specific problems than it is about seeing conflict as a means by which God is growing his people into true saints, true eternal children of who are being continuous conformed to his holy image.
—Barthel & Edling, Redeeming Church Conflicts

INTRODUCTION
Conflict resolution is the practical outworking of a cure for a spiritual disease. This week we will first take a look at both spiritual health & the spiritual disease. We will not be going through any of the mechanics of restoration and resolution. The education of a medical doctor does not begin with surgery and medication, but rather with training in disease, germs, health, anatomy, physiology, et cetera; and so, neither will we.
In fact, a too-quick jump to mechanics without an understanding of disease and health can easily lead to worse problems. Therefore, we will look at this situation from the prospective of spiritual mechanics of the heart, before we look to interpersonal mechanics.
II. PEACEMAKING AND FELLOWSHIP
Peacemaking is the act of restoring/developing true Christian fellowship. Peacemaking, understood rightly, is worship and seeks to create deeper, more God-glorifying worship. Peacemaking is an act of love, in that seeks to restore relationships between human & God, and between brother & sister. Thus, peacemaking is based upon fellowship and develops/restores fellowship.
A. Something in Common
Fellowship simply means to hold something in common:

Fellowship (Gk. koinōnía). The communion or common faith, experiences, and expressions shared by the family of believers, as well as the intimate relationship they have with God.

Allen C. Myers, The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 380.

When we speak of “fellowship” we are speaking of communion, holding something in common; we are not speaking of just friendship.

Since fellowship hinges upon having something in common with another, it is type of relationship which can develop quickly and will continue as long as the thing in common continues to draw the people into relationship. Consequently, it is a type of relationship which will end as soon as the basis for the relationship is withdrawn. Thus, it is fundamentally different than most friendships.

We know and experience fellowship at various levels and over various things. Some fellowship is very thin. Employees of a company have a sort of fellowship in common in that they have experiences, concerns, interests which are in common and based upon their common employment. If the group from work goes out to dinner together, they will most likely center their attention on their common interest: work.

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Power Blinds

25 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by in Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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First, moral blindness is more dangerous than malice. Reason is not an option.

Second, moral blindness cannot be reduced to “an intellectual defect but to a human [character] one” (43). It is not so much “psychological” as it is a “sociological problem” (43). This is why I don’t think the word “stupid” is a good enough translation. People, he says, are made morally blind in consort with others — this rarely happens to the person living in solitude.

This is where Bonhoeffer gets to the core of his insight in seeking to comprehend the German problem: Third, “every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with” moral blindness (43). That is, as power increases moral blindness increases. Without it the power could not increase; without it the moral blindness would not increase. Instead of acting, the morally blind person is filled with stupor and quiescence.
Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2014/09/25/how-can-it-happen/#ixzz3ELPd9h00

It Creates a New Existence

12 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Faith, Obedience, Self-Denial

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Following Christ means taking certain steps. The first step, which responds to the call, separates the followers from their previous existence. A call to discipleship thus immediately creates a new situation. Staying in the old situation and following Christ mutually exclude each other. At first, that was quite visibly the case. The tax collector had to leave his booth and Peter his nets to follow Jesus. According to our understanding, even back then things could have been quite different. Jesus could have given the tax collector new knowledge of God and left him in his old situation. If Jesus had not been God’s Son become human, then that would have been possible. But because Jesus is the Christ, it has to be made clear from the beginning that his word is not a doctrine. Instead, it creates existence anew. The point was to really walk with Jesus. It was made clear to those he called that they only had one possibility of believing in Jesus, that of leaving everything and going with the incarnate Son of God.

The first step puts the follower into the situation of being able to believe. If people do not follow, they remain behind, then they do not learn to believe. Those called must get out of their situations, in which they cannot believe, into a situation in which faith can begin. This step has no intrinsic worth of its own; it is justified only by the community with Jesus Christ that is attained. As long as Levi sits in the tax collector’s booth and Peter at his nets, they would do their work honestly and loyally, they would have old or new knowledge about God. But if they want to learn to believe in God, they have to follow the Son of God incarnate and walk with him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, Chapter 2

Is Far More Than Affirming an Orthodox Statement

03 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Ministry, Scripture, Submission

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What theological conservatives need to guard against, though, is thinking that because we affirm the Bible to be God’s inerrant and authoritative word, we have therefore submitted to the Bible. We can be conservatively confessional and functionally liberal. In other words, submitting to the Bible is far more than affirming an orthodox statement of Scripture. Affirming such a statement is crucial and essential. We should never minimize that. But affirming a high view of Scripture is only teh first step of submission. We fully submit to God’s Word when we accept its authority over our lives as we read it.

-Stephen J. Nicol, Bonhoeffer on the Christian Life, 96

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Life Together, Christian Brotherhood

02 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in Assemblying, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fellowship, Joy, Love

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My brother is rather that other person who has been redeemed by Christ, delivered from his sin, and called to faith and eternal life. Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. This is not true merely at the beginning, as though in the course of time something else were to be added to our community; it remains so for all the future and to all eternity. I community with others and I shall continue to have it only through Jesus Christ. The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ, but through Christ we do not have one another, wholly, and for all eternity.

That dismisses once and for all every clamorous desire for something more. One who wants more than Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood. 25-26

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Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live his call, by His forgiveness, by His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily. And is not what he has given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day? 29

The Training of the Twelve: The Rewards of Self-Sacrifice.3

08 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by in A.B. Bruce, Discipleship, Luke, Mark, Matthew, Romans

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Bruce explains the effect of the rewards of God:

These great and precious promises, if believed, would make sacrifices easy. Who would not part with a fishing-boat for a throne? and what merchant would stick at an investment which would bring a return, not of five per cent., or even of a hundred per cent., but of a hundred to one?

The promises made by Jesus have one other excellent effect when duly considered. They tend to humble. Their very magnitude has a sobering effect on the mind. Not even the vainest can pretend that their good deeds deserve to be rewarded with thrones, and their sacrifices to be recompensed an hundred-fold. At this rate, all must be content to be debtors to God’s grace, and all talk of merit is out of the question. That is one reason why the rewards of the kingdom of heaven are so great. God bestows His gifts so as at once to glorify the Giver and to humble the receiver.

Consider how such rewards have the effect of creating the appropriate understanding of both disciple and Master. Human beings are very uncomfortable with the extraordinary weight of the Gospel – the sheer generosity of it – when rightly understood – overwhelms our pride. Consider the matter at some length: We have two minds when it comes to our standing before God. On one end we tend to consider it nothing, a matter we are owed and thus we take following after Christ lightly.  Sin is nothing and holiness is nothing and forgiveness without cost – the “cheap grace” mentioned by Bonhoeffer. In fact, this problem appears in a form in the very next episode, where Jesus warns James and John of the cup to be drank.

In Matthew 10:38 (the first mention of the cross in the NT) Jesus lays out the bitter cost of discipleship; it will be everything:

32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. 34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Matthew 10:32–39 (ESV)

It is overweening pride which causes one to value the gift of God too lightly – and for these people, Jesus lays out the cost: everything. Yet, pride can cause us to fail in the other direction:  We think and hope that we can pay something toward the gift of God.  It is on this ground that much religion falls: the extraordinary penance of many throughout the world is a matter of extraordinary pride: but God will not sell. He will give bountifully, but he will not sell so that no one may boast:

1 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, Romans 4:1–5 (ESV)

Christ will cost us everything and then will reward us with gifts so great as to be beyond anything which we have lost. Indeed, when we see rightly, we will learn that we have lost nothing but our pride.