Book Review #12 – “Life Together” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (the character of Christian community)
Book Review #12 – “Life Together” by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (the character of Christian community); published 1938.
“How truly wonderful and delightful to see brothers and sisters living together in sweet unity! It’s as precious as the sacred scented oil flowing from the head of the high priest Aaron, dripping down upon his beard and running all the way down to the hem of his priestly robe. This heavenly harmony can be compared to the dew dripping down from the skies upon Mount Hermon, refreshing the mountain slopes of Israel. For from this realm of sweet harmony God will release his eternal blessing, the promise of life forever!” (Ps. 133, TPT).
Brief Review of Bonhoeffer’s Life (1906-1945). Is anyone looking for a hero these days? Consider Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The events in his courageous and faithful life that led up to his martyrdom in Nazi Germany would probably need to include these:
1906. He was raised in Berlin in a strong Christian home, his father being a successful psychiatrist and MD who had the bravery to speak out against the apparent shift in Germany that was giving rise to euthanasia for the unwanted and “undesirable.” Dietrich decided at sixteen years of age to be a Christian theologian, and that strong desire remained with him to his dying day.
1927. DB earned his Doctor of Theology degree at 21 years old, and decided to spend a year studying theology at a well-known seminary in New York, Union Theological Seminary. While there, he became entrenched in an African American church in Harlem, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, because of his friendship with a fellow seminarian at Union. During his year in the church, he taught Sunday School, joined various church clubs and Bible studies, visited the homes of church members, and read many of the novels and poetry written by Harlem Renaissance authors. He loved everything about that Black church… the gospel preaching, his friendships within the church, the intimate Christ-centered community, and the inspirational worship music, especially the spirituals from the slavery era. He collected as many records of Negro Spirituals as he could before returning to Germany, where he taught them to his various churches as pastor. One friend of his remembered when, during a difficult time in Nazi Berlin, Bonhoeffer focused on singing with his church “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.”
1931. His experience in Harlem changed his life, tenderizing his heart to social justice issues, especially regarding racial and ethnic minorities. He said often that he was “truly moved by the people on the margins.” He soon was involved in various ministries to the poor in Germany, preaching and teaching in working-class neighborhoods noted for its high employment and poverty. Bonhoeffer also began ministering in a care facility devoted to those with mental and physical disabilities. It was during this time that he experienced an important rebirth in his faith, a redirection of focus, from his more intellectual beliefs to more of a daily lifestyle of faith. He stated that he wanted more than anything else to simply obey more literally the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels. During this year, at 25 years old, Bonhoeffer was ordained into the Lutheran pastorate.
1933. He decided to broadcast the truth in a more wide-ranging way, and delivered a prophetic radio message that turned out be a turning point in his life. In his speech, he declared that Germany must not allow itself to slip into an idolatrous cult by following a dangerous leader who would turn into a “seducer” and “misleader.” Bonhoeffer’s open criticism of Hitler and Nazism resulted in that broadcast being cut off suddenly and without warning before Bonhoeffer was able to finish.
1935. Germany was indeed slipping into just what Bonhoeffer had feared, and he was tempted to leave Nazism behind and go somewhere else. But his famous mentor, theologian Karl Barth, sharply criticized Bonhoeffer in a personal letter, accusing him of “abandoning his post” in Germany, of letting his “splendid theological armory” go to waste while “the house of your church is on fire.” So Bonhoeffer committed himself to remaining with his fellow German Christians during this mortal danger of Nazism. His fellow pastors in Germany who did not compromise their beliefs during this time, those who were called the “Confessing Church,” invited Bonhoeffer to a village named Finkenwalde to lead an illegal, underground seminary. This school would train young pastors in Scripture, the Christian life, theology, and in the faith development needed for what everyone saw was coming right around the corner with Hitler. Bonhoeffer led this forbidden seminary for two years, and put together his notes from this experience of Christian community in 1938 in his book “Life Together.” He also wrote his most famous work during this time, “The Cost of Discipleship,” a study of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. Not only that, but he also completed his book on the Psalter, “The Prayer Book of the Bible: An Introduction to the Psalms.”
1937. Heinrich Himmler ordered the Gestapo to close the doors to Bonhoeffer’s illegal seminary, and two months later Himmler arrested all 25 of its pastors and students. Bonhoeffer was also ordered to never step foot into Berlin again, banned from even entering the city to see his parents and friends.
1939. The Nazi government continued to harass Bonhoeffer by banning him from any public speaking and making it illegal for him to print or publish any of his writings. Bonhoeffer then secretly conducted what he called a “seminary on the run,” in which he traveled from one village to another in Germany, quietly preaching, teaching and encouraging Christians who did not want to compromise with Nazism.
1940. Bonhoeffer made the momentous decision to become a double agent, joining the German Military Intelligence, the Abwehr. While he was supposed to be gathering information that would benefit the Nazi agenda, he was actually secretly distributing information that would benefit the Resistance movement. He also thought that maybe by joining the Abwehr he would not be drafted into the German army. He had earlier committed himself to resisting the German military for himself, no matter the cost. While in the Military Intelligence, he became aware of a secret conspiracy amongst some of its members to assassinate Hitler and stage a coup to replace the Nazi regime. His presence in the MI also enlightened him to the more full-scale atrocities being committed against the Jews and other minorities. This awareness moved him to get involved in the underground operations to help German Jews escape to Switzerland.
1943. Bonhoeffer was arrested after being implicated in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler, remaining in various military prisons for a year and a half. During that time there were sympathetic guards who allowed him private moments of prayer and Bible study with other prisoners. These guards even went so far as to secretly set up a courier service for him so that he could receive everything from love notes to cookies to cigars, and allow him to sneak messages and writings to his friends and family. These contraband materials from Bonhoeffer were later collected and published in an inspiring book named “Letters and Papers from Prison.” At one point in prison, a guard claimed he could help Bonhoeffer escape, but Dietrich rejected that possibility because he was afraid the Gestapo would punish his family if the escape ws successful.
1945. After only three months of long-distant engagement to his fiancé Maria, and only a few days before the Allies freed all those prisoners, Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging in Nazi gallows prison yard. This was by the special orders of Heinrich Himmler. There was a sham trial beforehand in which there were no witnesses, no defense arguments, no evidence, and no formal records kept of the proceedings afterwards. Himmler declared him guilty, and that was enough. Bonhoeffer’s final moments before his execution was observed by a fellow prisoner… “On Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship and spoke to us in a way that went to the heart of all of us. He found just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment, the thoughts and resolutions it had brought us. He had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians entered. They said, “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us.” That had only one meaning for all prisoners – the gallows. We said good-bye to him. He took me aside and said, “This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life.” The next day he was hanged in Flossenburg.”
The Context for Bonhoeffer’s Book, “Life Together“: After being challenged by Christian leaders in Germany who rejected Hitler and the Nazi government, Bonhoeffer was asked to establish an illegal underground seminary to train young pastors to faithfully lead the Confessing Church during the Nazi era. They settled on a village named Finkenwalde, and invited 25 young pastors for this special training in a monastic setting of which the Gestapo were unaware. Bonhoeffer managed a fifthly structured day for these young men in which each day was very intentionally organized to include… a time alone for Scripture mediation and prayer; a time together for worship and the sacraments; a time to work to maintain the seminary; a time for diligent Bible study; and time for recreation together on the property. Finkenwalde seminary would be rooted in the character of Christian community and would help develop the spiritual disciplines needed for what they would face in the Nazi era under Hitler. Sure enough, after two years of existence, the seminary was shut down by the Gestapo, who soon arrested all of the pastors and students involved in the seminary. Bonhoeffer recorded his thoughts and experiences during these two years and published this profound book about Christian community.
Some Favorite Quotes from “Life Together”:
Pg. 20: “It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.”
Pg. 21: “Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily fellowship of years, Christian community is only this: we belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.”
Pgs. 23-24: “Christ opened up the way to God and to our brother. Now Christians can live with one another in peace; they can love and serve one another; they can become one. But they can continue to do so only by way of Jesus Christ. Only in Jesus are we one, only through Him are we bound together. To eternity He remains the one Mediator.”
Pg. 25: “God Himself taught us to meet one another as God has met us in Christ. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ had done for both of us.”
Pgs. 26, 30: “Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream… Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality. And Christian brotherhood is a spiritual and not a human reality… Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate.”
Pgs. 34-35: “Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, while spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake. Human love makes itself an end in itself. Spiritual love comes from Jesus Christ, it serves Him alone; it knows that it has no immediate access to other persons. Human love can never understand spiritual love, for spiritual love is from above; it is something completely strange, new, and incomprehensible to all earthly love.”
Pg. 36: “Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ’s; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ’s eyes. Thus this spiritual love will speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ. It knows that the most direct way to others is always through prayer to Christ.”
Pg. 37: “The existence of any Christian life together depends on whether it succeeds at the right time in bringing out the ability to distinguish between a human ideal and God’s reality, between spiritual and human community.”
Pg. 38, 94: “The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door… The elimination of the weak is the death of fellowship.”
Pg. 39: “For Jesus Christ alone is our unity. He is our peace. Through Him alone do we have access to one another, joy in one another, and fellowship with one another.”
Pgs. 76-89: “How are we to be alone” Through solitude and silence; Scripture meditation; private prayer; intercession for others.”
Pgs. 90-109: “How are we to minister to others? Through holding one’s tongue; meekness; listening; helpfulness; bearing burdens; proclaiming the Word; servant authority.”
Pg. 77: “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. If you refuse to be alone you are rejecting God’s call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. Only in the fellowship do we learn to be rightly alone, and only in aloneness do we learn to live rightly in the fellowship. It is not as though the one preceded the other; both begin at the same time, namely, with the call of Jesus Christ.”
Pg. 84: “Seek God, not happiness, is the fundamental rule of all mediation. If you seek God alone, you will gain happiness: that is its promise.”
Pg. 89: “Blessed is he who is alone in the strength of the fellowship, and blessed is he who keeps the fellowship in the strength of aloneness.”
Pg. 93: “God does not will that I should fashion the other person according to the image that seems good to me, that is, in my own image; rather in his very freedom from me God made this person in His image. I can never know beforehand how God’s image should appear in others.”
Pg. 94: “Once a man has experienced the mercy of God in his life, he will henceforth aspire only to serve. He wants to be down below with the lowly and the needy, because that is where God found him.”
Pg. 97-99: “The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Listening can be a greater service than speaking. He who can longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.”
Pgs. 110-113, 121: “As James says (5:16), Confess your faults one to another. He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. In the Christian community when the call to brotherly confession and forgiveness goes forth, it is a call to the great Grace of God in the church. In confession the break-through to community takes place. If a Christian is in the fellowship of confession with a brother, he will never be alone again, anywhere… Where there is deep anxiety and trouble over one’s own sins, where the certainty of forgiveness is sought, there comes the invitation in the name of Jesus to come to brotherly confession.”
Pg. 122: “The day of the Lord’s Supper is an occasion of joy for the Christian community. The fellowship of the Lord’s Supper is the superlative fulfillment of Christian fellowship. As the members of the congregation are united in body and blood at the Table of the Lord, so will they be together in eternity. Here the community has reached its goal. Here joy in Christ and His community is complete. The life of Christians together under the Word has reached its perfection in the sacrament.”
Other Thoughts on Christian Community, by Steve Larson:
Spelling Out the Nature of Community – Christian Refuge
The One Anothers: The Muscular System Within Community – Christian Refuge