The Cost of Discipleship
| Author | Dietrich Bonhoeffer |
|---|---|
| Original title | Nachfolge |
| Translator | Reginald H. Fuller |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
|
Publication date
|
1937 |
The Cost of Discipleship is a book by the German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, considered a classic of Christian thought. The original German title is simply Nachfolge (literally: "following" or: "the act of following"). It is centered on an exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Bonhoeffer spells out what he believes it means to follow Christ. It was first published in 1937, when the rise of the Nazi regime was underway in Germany and it was against this background that Bonhoeffer's theology of costly discipleship developed, which ultimately led to his death.
One of the most quoted parts of the book deals with the distinction which Bonhoeffer makes between "cheap" and "costly" grace. According to Bonhoeffer,
Cheap grace, Bonhoeffer says, is to hear the gospel preached as follows: "Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness." The main defect of such a proclamation is that it contains no demand for discipleship. In contrast to cheap grace,
Bonhoeffer argues that as Christianity spread, the Church became more "secularised", accommodating the demands of obedience to Jesus to the requirements of society. In this way, "the world was Christianised, and grace became its common property." But the hazard of this was that the gospel was cheapened, and obedience to the living Christ was gradually lost beneath formula and ritual, so that in the end, grace could literally be sold for monetary gain.
But all the time, within the church, there had been a living protest against this process: the monastic movement. This served as a "place where the older vision was kept alive." Unfortunately, "monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate"; the commandments of Jesus were limited to "a restricted group of specialists" and a double standard arose: "a maximum and a minimum standard of church obedience." This was dangerous, Bonhoeffer says, because whenever the church was accused of being too worldly, it could always point to monasticism as "the opportunity of a higher standard within the fold - and thus justify the other possibility of a lower standard for others." So the monastic movement, instead of serving as a pointer for all Christians, became a justification for the status quo.
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