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What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers these timeless questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between "cheap grace" and "costly grace." "Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer wrote, "is the grace we bestow on ourselves...grace without discipleship....Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the girl which must be asked for, the door at which a man must know....It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."
The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of sacrifice and ethical consistency from a man whose life and thought were exemplary articulations of a new type of leadership inspired by the Gospel, and imbued with the spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty.
DIETRICH BONHOEFFER was born in Breslau on February 4th, 1906, the son of a university professor and leading authority on psychiatry and neurology. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Wears on You Over Time,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Cost of Discipleship (Paperback)
I used to think this was one of the most important spiritual books ever written. Over time, though, I have come to the realization that Bonhoeffer's sacrifice -- his failed attempt to assassinate Hitler -- was in itself an attempt at "cheap grace", the very thing he decried. He isolated himself from his community, and lacked the courage and fortitude to speak out when he had the opportunity. The result of his failed plot may have contributed to the deaths of millions of people, because without his plot it now seems likely that Hitler's generals would have overthrown him as much as two years before the end of the war.Bonhoeffer has become somewhat of a cultic figure in recent years, and that's unfortunate. He was an important but flawed thinker who could never escape the Protestant individualism of his religious tradition. This book is probably the best example of his work, though Bethge's picture book on his life ("Steps") contains enough for most people.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The price to be paid,
By FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME)
This review is from: Cost Of Discipleship (Class) (Paperback)
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one who knew of that which he spoke when dealing with the issue of cheap grace versus costly grace. Bonhoeffer's commitment to the principles of his vocation and being cost him his life - executed in the closing days of World War II, Bonhoeffer walked a dangerous path through exercising his vocation faithfully in the midst of the twin evils of warfare and Nazi domination of Germany. Bonhoeffer's life, from the earliest days, probably seemed like it was set on an idyllic path - the son of a professional family with strong roots in a prosperous and civilised culture, Bonhoeffer would seem to have 'had it made'. His early days in school showed him to be a minister and academic of great promise. However, his experiences at Union Seminary in New York City, an academic environment very different from the German academy, and at the Abyssian Baptist Church, an African-American congregation, vastly different from his Germanic Lutheran background, prepared a way for Bonhoeffer to expand beyond his upbringing and learning to become someone striving to find God in all people, and the will of God in all that he did. The subject of this book is grace - too often, in Bonhoeffer's day and our own, people seem to look at grace as something free, instead of something freely offered. Bonhoeffer points out that the call of God and the gift of God's grace is not to be taken lightly - 'the call to follow Jesus always leads to death'. This may seem an unusual call in our day; after all, the more prosperous of our churches would seem to espouse a conventionally respectable lifestyle (far from the 'death' Bonhoeffer speaks about) as the reward for following God. However, Bonhoeffer uses the example of the disciples, each of whom faced martyrdom, as did many early Christian leaders, as a touchstone for the vocation. Bonhoeffer also gives a great deal of attention in this text to the Sermon on the Mount, providing interpretations that still speak to congregations today, but also with warnings. Bonhoeffer admonishes those who would pick and choose the parts of scripture, or indeed the parts of the Sermon on the Mount, that fit what they want to hear, disregarding the rest. Bonhoeffer writes that we are not called to interpret, but to obey, giving ourselves up to God, as the disciples did, as martyrs did, and as Bonhoeffer himself would do in the fullness of his lifetime. The real substance of the book is in Bonhoeffer's own words. Cheap grace was the deadly enemy of the church then, and it remains a dangerous foe to this day.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Costly Grace,
By
This review is from: The Cost of Discipleship (Paperback)
This is a most powerful theological examination of the challenging truth we find in James: "Faith without works is dead." This book communicates how "costly grace" compels all true Christians to live as loving and humble servants to others out of pure joy for what occurred on the cross.DB sacrificed his life (literally) for theological purity and exposed the ignorance and passivity of the Reich church -- particularly in its handling of the Jews. He has some credibility worth considering. . . .
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