Christian Moral Actions

• Discipleship 


  following the life, example and teaching of Jesus
• Cheap Grace

  grace that is offered freely, but is received without any change in the recipient and ultimately is false as it does not save
• Costly grace

  grace followed by obedience to God's command and discipleship
• Passion 


  Jesus' suffering at the end of his life
• Solidarity

  altruistic commitment to stand alongside and be with those less fortunate, the oppressed, those who suffer
• Bonhoeffer 1906-1945


  German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident who was a key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential; his 1937 book The Cost of Discipleship is described as a modern classic
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

  • lectured in theology during the 1930s
  • served as a Lutheran pastor
  • Being raised a Lutheran meant that he, like Luther, had a tendency to criticise the Church if it diverged from the Bible
  • Pastors Emergency League in 1934 which evolved into the Confessing Church
  • Confessing Church was outlawed by Nazis in 1937
  • joined the resistance against the Nazis in 1940
  • Bonhoeffer was arrested due to involvement in an assassination attempt
  • executed in 1945
• The Confessing Church:

  • founded by Bonhoeffer in opposition to Hitler’s founding of the German Evangelical Church in 1934
  • Confessing Church then made the Barmen declaration, mostly written by Karl Barth, where they rejected governmental interference in the Church and affirmed the bible as the source of revelation
• Finkenwalde:

  • where Bonhoeffer held an illegal secret seminary
  • form of civil disobedience
  • troduced the seminarians to the African-American church music he had experienced. Clifford Green remarked on the significance of this that for the first time the young men trained in rigorous systematic theology ‘encountered for the first time the Social Gospel, the need for moral responsibility in the world’
• The Cost of Discipleship: Cheap Grace

  • argued that the church preaches cheap grace
  • grace without price or cost
  • Bonhoeffer criticised the idea that Christian living was easy and comfortable
  • Jesus Christ has saved everyone from their sins and death
  • church gave out Grace for free - Grace is offered without discipleship
  • mislead people into thinking that they can do no wrong and don't have to make changes
  • Cheap grace is effectively a lie, and is self-congratulating grace
• "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die ... Suffering then, is the badge of true discipleship"


  The Cost of Discipleship: Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship 1959
• "Cheap Grace is the deadly enemy of our Church [...] Cheap Grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack's wares."


  The Cost of Discipleship: Cheap Grace, Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship 1959
• The Cost of Discipleship: Costly Grace

  • grace that a person would gladly sell everything to obtain - 'treasure hidden in a field' (Matthew 13:44)
  • sacrificing everything
  • calls for us to follow Jesus and that means making changes to our lives and decisions
  • Bonhoeffer believed the church became too secularised and lost the sense of costly grave - too much emphasis on the modern world
  • Luther - grace alone is needed for salvation but Bonhoeffer believed that this was misinterpreted to allow for people to disobey
  • absolute obedience
• It is costly because it costs a man his life

  The Cost of Discipleship Bonhoeffer, (costly grace)
• Grace and Bonhoeffer: debate

  • He puts too much emphasis on suffering -> Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on suffering made more sense in his time where he was resisting Nazi rule. We live in times of relative peace and security and thus suffering isn’t as required.
  • THAT BEING SAID -> sacrifice is still relevant, Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross, and so should we
• Civil Disobedience:

  • Bonhoeffer believed that the duty of God outweighed the duty to the state.
  • But, Bonhoeffer also agreed with Luther that Christians should obey the state’s laws because order is useful for sinful creatures like us. However, human law is fallible
  • love requires injustice to actively be challenged and resisted
  • Bonhoeffer himself went against the Nazi state - involved in plot to kill Hitler and actively spoke against the state
  • Bonhoeffer was a double agent
• Civil Disobedience continued:

  • Bonhoeffer justified assassination, is this not dangerous for society to allow evil acts if it is in the name of God -> terrorism
  • Bonhoeffer would respond: acting according to God’s will, we put aside human ethics but also our own desires in order that it be a truly selfless act. Bonhoeffer thought Jesus’ injunction to love your neighbour as yourself required selflessness of us. Arguably those conditions make his recommendation less susceptible to justifying terrible thing
  • However: personal desires shape your perspective on the world
• "Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative or either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilisation may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilisation"

  Bonhoeffer - No Rusty Swords: Letter, Lectures and Notes
• Bonhoeffer vs Secularism:

  • Secularists would argue against Bonhoeffer for a complete separation between Church and state -> reject the idea that the church should have the power to act as a check on the state. They might argue that the church is even more corruptible than the state because state is voted for in elections in a democracy, rise of democracy demonstrated that the religion is not needed
  • Stanley Hauerwas defends Bonhoeffer. He argues that the Church does protect against authoritarian dictatorship. Liberal secular western societies have undermined theological and religious truth
• Bonhoeffer vs Secularism: continued

  • The loss of God results in a void of purpose which can be exploited by authoritarians to gain power by tempting people with grand visions of utopia. In their purpose-starved state, people will be more gullible and less likely to notice their freedoms being taken away, until it is too late. Arguably Bonhoeffer has a point that the Church can act as a useful moral compass for society to protect against this possibility.
• Aquinas vs Bonhoeffer:

  • Aquinas would be against Bonhoeffers theology as it doesn't take natural law into account -> Aquinas thinks that we can know God’s will is for us to follow the primary precepts
  • Aquinas accepted that human reason could never know or understand God’s infinite divine nature. However, he argued that human reason can gain lesser knowledge of God
  • If a law goes against the ‘human good’ then civil disobedience might be justified unless disorder created by disobeying the law would be worse ->civil disobedience is justified but has a much clearer view than Bonhoeffer
• Aquinas vs Bonhoeffer: pt 2

  • Defence of Bonhoeffer -> Since human reason is corrupted by original sin, its ability to know the primary precepts of natural law cannot be relied on, similar to Karl Barth that it is dangerous to rely on reason as it is corrupt from original sin.
  • Aquinas defends his natural theology from original sin. Only rational beings can sin. -> realistic approach
  • However, Barth still seems correct that being corrupted by original sin makes our reasoning about God’s existence and morality also corrupted.
• The Cost of Discipleship: solidarity

  • Bonhoeffer felt he had to live through the experience of suffering that his people were enduring rather than waiting in safety -> returned to Germany instead of fleeing.
  • In prison he reflected on his suffering and that of Jesus
  • we encounter a transcendental God in the middle of life when we are there for our neighbours
  • purpose of Christian life is to have a relationship with God through living an existence for others
• "Our relation to God is not a 'religious' relationship [...] our relation to God is a new life in 'existence for others', through participation in the being of Jesus"

  Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
• The Cost of Discipleship: solidarity cont'd

  • Goal of Christian life is not to become religious but to be there for others
  • an experience of Transcendence with others - just like Jesus
  • God makes a bond of suffering with humanity
  • Bonhoeffer - conviction of being with and for others led to him returning to Berlin
  • shift from his work in matters of Church and religion to social action
  • subversive act - Church should be interpreted into a language meaningful for people
• The Cost of Discipleship: sacrifice, suffering and the cross

  • Bonhoeffer says the call to discipleship is clearly linked to the passion of the death of Jesus, his suffering and rejection
  • suffering and sacrifice are inherent to discipleship for anyone who follows Jesus -> they pick up the cross and follow the path of suffering Jesus walks
  • entails self-denial and endurance of the cross
  • allegiance to Jesus - involves suffering that is not general - specific suffering is essential to Christian life
  • rejection for the sake of Christ
  • life of a Christian is a life of suffering for Christ
• The Church and the State:

  • German Christians were divided by the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party
  • split in the German Protestant Church in 1934 - Nazi controlled and the Confessing Church
  • Nazi ideals gained a strong influence over the Church - Aryan Clause (removing Jews from the Bible), Swastika and the cross put together
  • Hitler was seen by some as the leader of Christianity alongside Jesus
  • Bonhoeffer was ordained in 1931 alongside 'young reformers' - change what was happening
• The Church and the State: cont'd

  • conflict between Germanism and true Christianity
  • Bonhoeffer criticised the Nazis and their ideals
  • New Confessing Church
• Obedience, Leadership and doing God's will:

  • Bonhoeffer - call to discipleship is a call to obedience and the Will and Leadership of God and Jesus
  • first disciples - act of obedience
  • Christian discipleship is fundamentally about something you do a - which leader you obey
  • Discipleship - exclusive obedience to the leadership of God - legal ties are burnt -> Bonhoeffer quotes Luke 9:57 - 62
  • God's Will - cutting ourselves off from our previous existence
• Obedience, Leadership and doing God's will: cont'd

  • road to faith passes through obedience
  • Bonhoeffer - act of obedience is the only real faith
  • "Single - minded obedience" -> Bonhoeffer
  • Bonhoeffer thought that the fall corrupted our ability to have knowledge of good and evil
  • Reason, conscience, responsibility and piety ->single minded obedience
  • Obedience to Jesus doesn't like within human power - Jesus' offer to us that makes it possible to respond -> space of faith
  • Bonhoeffer thought that the fall corrupted our ability to have knowledge of good and evil
• Obedience, Leadership and doing God's will: pt 3

  • Bonhoeffer said that his generation had the least ‘ground under its feet’ in history. It was a time of spiritual and political chaos
  • Taking part in violence goes against pacifism & the will of God. Bonhoeffer’s role in the conspiracy against Hitler seems to amount to an abandonment of pacifism.
  • Barth & Bonhoeffer’s Neo-Orthodox view of the Bible - much of the Bible does seem to go against Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer doesn’t think the Bible is the perfect word of God.
• Church as community and source of spiritual discipline:

  • Sermon on the Mount - Jesus followers must be salt and light
  • presence of Christians amongst other people in the community
  • visible community - follow in its mission and be a sign for others
  • act morally in the community
  • Good works is what matters
• Bonhoeffer's role in the Confessing Church and Finkenwalde:

  • God/Jesus only have authority over a persons life - nothing else
  • Bonhoeffer opposed taking an oath to Hitler
  • 1935 - secret seminary - private school in Finkenwalde
  • train pastors without Nazi influence
  • Bonhoeffer joined the seminar because of Luke 10:38-42
  • closed by the Gestapo in 1937
  • The Cost of Discipleship written
• Luke 10: 38-42


  Jesus is staying with Mary and Martha and rebukes Martha when she gets mad at Mary. Mary is listening to Jesus instead of helping with preparations of the house
• Luke 9: 57 - 62


  Jesus speaks of the Son of Man having no place to rest. Jesus says the dead should be left to bury the dead, after a mans says he must first bury his dead father
• The followers are a visible community; their discipleship visible in action which lifts them out of the world


  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
• “We must obey God rather than human beings!

  Acts 5: 27 - 32

  • Christians can go against their government to uphold their faith
• Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 


  Romans 13: 1-7

  • must follow the authority
  • only be afraid if you're doing wrong
• John 19:30 - cheap grace - nothing left for us to do 


  It is finished
• John 3:16 - cheap Grace -- just have to believe in God/Jesus


  So that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life