Discipleship in the Life and Work of Bonhoeffer (Part II)
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In my previous essay in this discipleship series, I wrote about German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, providing an overview of this extraordinary man who showed courageous witness in the face of the Nazi regime. Part I offered a short biography of the man; in Part II, I delve into his ideas about Christian discipleship.
Discipleship in the Life and Work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Part II)
It was within the context of the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and the outbreak of World War II that Bonhoeffer developed his ideas about what it means to follow Jesus Christ and published them in his seminal book The Cost of Discipleship.1 Developing his ideas from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, Bonhoeffer is responding, in part, to concerns he has about how the church was capitulating to worldly desires and justifications, the most egregious example of this being its collusion with Nazi ideology.
Rather than creating an additional burden for good action in the world for Christians on top of their secular commitments, for Bonhoeffer discipleship is about liberating humanity from all “man-made dogmas,” burdens, oppressions, anxiety, etc. “If they follow Jesus,” Bonhoeffer says, Christians can “escape from the hard yoke of their own laws, and submit to the kindly yoke of Jesus Christ.”
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