"Discipleship and the Individual"
Bonhoeffer on the Radical Call of Christ
Recently, I was studying Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship. I was startled with Chapter Five: “Discipleship and the Individual.” In fact, this was one of those experiences in which I remember the time and place of my reading and the deep sense of marvel and astonishment, of shame and repentance, mixed with an inspired thrill. It was that moving.
I recall thinking: this is what focused reading can do for a person, why we must take time to deeply contemplate the meaning of the Bible, the best books, what we are about, and what does it all (life) mean. Bonhoeffer’s book does that to you. And sometimes, as here, it is the reread that pours it on. And most of all, it is because Bonhoeffer is analyzing the words of Christ—and some of his more astounding and troubling statements.
I carefully read and reread, marked and underscored, and then a day later, I reread again. I’ve tried to understand it, but my analysis here is inadequate. Please read the chapter for yourself. If you don’t have the book, buy it. CT listed it as the second most important book written in the twentieth century (number one was Lewis’ Mere Christianity—buy that one too, and read it).1
Ch. 5: Discipleship and the Individual
Bonhoeffer begins with the text he will analyze for the chapter. Jesus says in Luke 14:26:
“If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”
Before discussing Bonhoeffer’s commentary on the text, I will make some preliminary comments and then give a brief excursus on individualism.
We have become accustomed to blunting the harder words of Jesus. We have ways of explaining things. Sometimes this is necessary, at others a cop out where we milk out every possible meaning of a hard word or phrase, then choose the least offensive.
The word for hate is a strong word: miseo. It is used over thirty times in the New Testament: Matt. 5:44: “do good to them that hate you;” Luke 1:71: “that we should be saved from our enemies . . . and all those that hate us.” And yes, it can mean to “love less,” which is the meaning I can prefer, but is that really what Jesus means here? Jesus does say in Matthew: “He that loveth Father or Mother more than me is not worthy of me.” Perhaps that is what is meant in Luke.
At any rate, Bonhoeffer does not bother to parse out the semantics of “hate”. But as we shall see, doing so is not necessary. What Jesus mainly meant is clear enough. And it is plenty startling to our co-dependent affections.
On Individualism
Bonhoeffer’s emphasis on a Christian individualism in this chapter may clash with our preferred definition of discipleship. We might rather lambaste “individualism” as too Western, or American, or modern. But the text from Luke cannot be avoided or explained away. Jesus calls a man first to be his disciple. And a man first comes to Christ not as a family, a nation, or an institution, but as an individual person.
Two Kinds of Individualism
Bonhoeffer was writing before it was trendy to excoriate individualism; he wrote before postmodernism became pronounced. Since the Second World War and especially towards the turn of the millennium, for partially sound reasons, Christian critics and preachers have denounced the ills of modern individualism. This strain has become so emphatic that I have often thought it exaggerated. Now in the twenty-first century, we can observe other problems, woven together with social components and wrapped within the skeins of postmodern metanarratives that should prompt us to a more careful criticism.
I. There is, for sure, an unbiblical individualism, a self-interested humanistic focus on the self that avoids God and seeks self-aggrandizement. Here, the solo man is elevated; he alone decides his fate and determines his destiny. This nurtures a narcissism and can be observed in Enlightenment rationalism (as in Deism), in some pockets (not all) of capitalistic and libertarian politics (say in Ayn Rand’s objectivism), or in German naturalist philosophy (as in Nietzsche’s heroic individual who rejects the herd and establishes his own values).
Traces of this arrogant self-idolatry are observed everywhere and have been for hundreds of years. But it has become quite common to skewer individualism without thoughtful definitions and qualifications.
In our society today, we have problems that are somewhat inimical to individualism. For example, a woke-ish Marxism seeks to absorb individuals and natural rights into the social schemes of the State and its media institutions. Here, the individual, his will, conscience, and liberties (especially speech) are being lost to the neutered soul of an increasingly policed secular society. So, the problem here is not exactly individualism.
In the church, (among conservative Mennonites) hackneyed and tired concerns are sometimes repeated about the ills of individualism. Criticism is aimed against what is perceived as individual rebellion against the agreements or disciplines of a congregational body. The spirit of rugged American individualism is considered the villain. This is true in some sense, but needs more careful thought.
I have heard leaders appeal to the thought of the catholic, Charles Taylor (especially his Secular Age) to support their criticisms against the perceived nemesis of individualistic personal liberties in the church. I concur with some, but not all, of these criticisms, and I have read and think highly of Taylor. But still, methinks our attacks on individualism are not nuanced enough and are often overstated and misapplied. Individualism has become too much the bogeyman; there are plenty of others we might want to watch for (groupthink, for ex, with clone-like thinking from social media “communities;” or a pietistic ignorance of historic and doctrinal trajectories; maybe too, a lack of “individual” doctrinal conviction).
II. There is a Christian individualism that comes purely from Jesus and his call to every disciple. And Bonhoeffer is singling this out in his chapter. It is an individualism that is altogether wed with the call of Christ upon us. It differs greatly from the first kind of individualism; it comes from Christ himself. Hence, it is never utterly alone; Christ is always there beckoning. Yet he calls us in our solitude and in our private selves to follow him, and this comes to us first in isolation from friends and family.
Call of Christ to the Individual
note: the divisions here and below (in bold font) are not Bonhoeffer’s but my attempt to organize this analysis in ways that can assist the reader. It is mostly chronological following the train of thought in Chapter 5.
Bonhoeffer begins the chapter with this statement: “Through the call of Jesus, men become individuals.” He will stress this fact throughout. It is Christ that has called us as such. It is not man’s choice to be individuals; it is because Christ treats us this way.
Social Escape
“Every man is called separately, and must follow alone. But men are frightened of solitude, and they try to protect themselves from it by merging themselves in the society of their fellow-men and in their material environment.”
This statement profoundly states mankind’s co-dependency. What I mean by this term is what psychologists label the condition of a person who relies on the social connections and affirmations of others in order to function healthily. While psychologists call this a pathology, the natural man follows in this way normally. Adam took of the forbidden fruit, seeking an affirming nod from Eve (that is my read on Genesis 3), but by doing so, he lost the sublime and primary relationship with his maker. As his descendants, we find ourselves in conditions where our decisions are made, our priorities set, and our lives lived around the expectations and approval of others. Of course, this is quite normal, but it can make us slaves to men and their institutions. The fallen man follows fallen men rather than Jesus.
Bonhoeffer writes: men who are called “become suddenly aware of their responsibilities and duties and are loath to part with them. But all this is only a cloak to protect them from having to make a decision. They are unwilling to stand alone before Jesus and to be compelled to decide with their eyes fixed on him alone.”
This stings our sensitivities as we believe that we have duties and responsibilities on the hamster wheel of life. But by constantly relating, and doing, and performing and busying ourselves around the orders of our societies, we may just be postponing a decision to follow his call.
Bonhoeffer goads us to be careful of how relationships and institutions can rival the call of Christ.
“Yet neither father nor mother, neither wife nor child, neither nationality nor tradition can protect a man from the moment of his call. It is Christ’s will that he should be thus isolated, and that he should fix his eyes solely upon him.”
The Breach between the Disciple and the World: Christ’s Mediatorial Work
“We cannot follow Christ unless we are compelled to accept and affirm a break from the world as a fait accompli.” The called disciple must, of necessity, break his attachments to the world. He must think of this as a done deal, an accomplished fact. Bonhoeffer will also use the term “natural life” as synonymous with the “world” (this is most likely taken from the text here expounded: “ hate . . . yeah, and his own life also”). The disciple now has no immediate relationship to the world. From now on, his relation to the natural life is mediated.
Just as man has no direct relationship with God except through the Mediator, the disciple has no direct relationship with the world except through our Lord’s mediation. Christ “stands between us and God, and for that very reason, he stands between us and all other men and things.” Bonhoeffer gives proof for this by saying: “Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (John 1:3; I Cor. 8:6; Heb. 1:2), he is the sole Mediator in the world.”
This concept of man’s breach with the world and Christ’s mediatorial work between, both man and God and man and this world’s “reality,” is entrenched in Bonhoeffer’s definition of discipleship. It is essential for the disciple to realize that not only is he called to a new relationship to God through Christ, he also has a new relationship to the world mediated through Christ. The disciple is now detached from the world and the natural life (and even his own life). The disciple “has no immediate relationship of his own anymore to anything, neither to God nor to the world.”
This brings out a distinct definition of idolatry and the evil of the world: “of course, there are plenty of gods who offer direct access, and the world naturally uses every means in its power to retain its direct hold on men, but that is the very reason it is so bitterly opposed to Christ.”
Bonhoeffer seems to be saying: it is Christ as mediator who must be with us always in that role; it is he alone through whom we relate and know the things of both God and the world. Becoming his disciple redefines these relationships. They are now to be altogether Christ-directed. The natural man (the non-disciple) ignores this and seeks out the natural life without Christ’s mediation. When a man goes into the world without Christ, the world becomes an idol to him.
The Call of Jesus is Not Merely an “Ideal”
Bonhoeffer puts his finger on a deeply deficient but commonplace conception. He repeats the imperative of the recognition of Christ’s mediation as a fait accompli. But this is not to be understood as an “Ideal.” It is rather to be understood as “the word of a Mediator” that brings about the disciple’s wrenching away from the world. He goes on: “if it were only a question of weighing one ideal against another, we would naturally hanker after a compromise.”
Here, Bonhoeffer chastises us if we are prone to think like this. And we assuredly are. It is natural for the man of this world (and sometimes in the church) to look at the ideal of Christ and the reality of the world and negotiate a compromise, thus appeasing his conscience and thinking that he has satisfied the requirements. Bonhoeffer will even say: in the case of a compromise, “the Christian ideal might come out on top,” but he goes on to warn: “but its claim could never be absolute.”
To see Christ as an Ideal and the world as a lesser responsibility (which is the way many see it) would never enable a man to break from the grip that the world and its institutions place upon him. He would not be enabled to really prioritize the ideal of Christ amidst his duties and responsibilities—that is his societal obligations. Here, Bonhoeffer will write pejoratively about how a Christian ethic of duty and conscience cannot cut through this difficulty of how to follow Christ’s call amidst the abundance of man’s roles and responsibilities.
Bonhoeffer shows what I believe is a prelude for work he will write almost a decade later in prison. When Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Nazis and awaiting execution, he wrote a series manuscripts that were posthumously compiled. The incomplete work is called Ethics; I have it and have been impressed with this part. He ironically makes the case that there may be no such thing as a Christian ethic. And this is because of mankind’s fall and then his relational restoration made possible through the mediatorial work of Christ.
To speak of responsibilities and duties along with the sophistry of moral assessments about what is right or wrong in a given situation is, to Bonhoeffer, legalistic casuistry. It is simply dealing with man’s moral nature after the fall, in which he partook of the forbidden fruit—the knowledge of good and evil. The task of a Christian ethicist is to first undo this knowledge (which is inexorably legalistic) and to find one’s way back to God in relationship where moral questions are subsumed in a renewed and communal relation with God.
Here in The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer is similarly skeptical of defining Christian discipleship as a hierarchy of duties where our discipleship role lies in one world and our obligations to this world in the other, the two being just part of a continuum of responsibilities. This kind of thinking would substitute our ultimate duties before God (and our discipleship to our Master) for ethical quibbles, or, as discussed above, for negotiated values.
Bonhoeffer insists that Christ’s mediatorial work transcends a taxonomy of duties. All our labors in this world must be mediated by Jesus our master, and we must understand this as a fait accompli. We have no direct access to relationships without them being mediated through our Lord. When we understand our lives, our duties, and relationships this way, only then can everything become rightly known, and ordered, and lived.
Knowing Others without Christ is an Illusion
“The call of Christ teaches us that our relation to the world has been built on an illusion.” He explicates this further by saying that we thought all along we knew one another in a direct relationship, but once Christ calls us and says, “follow me,” then we see that all of our past relationships must be redefined, that of father, mother, children, and wife. We can only know one another and the world through the presence and mediation of Christ. It is this way that we order our loyalties to others. To do or think otherwise is to hate Christ, and “this is especially true where such relationships claim the sanction of Christian principles.”
The Individual Call is not anti-Church
We usually think of individualism as in tension with a high view of the Church. Not so with Bonhoeffer. He writes several chapters on the place for the Visible Community.
But even in this chapter (5), Bonhoeffer closes with Peter’s response to Jesus after he admonished the disciples on the danger of riches (Mark 10). Just before this, the account of the rich young ruler was given. In this context of Jesus’ hard statements on possessions, Peter says: “Lo, we have left all and have followed thee.”
Jesus then says: “Verily I say unto you there is no man that has left house or brethren or sisters or mother . . . but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time houses and brethren and sisters and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the world to come eternal life” (10:28-31).
Bonhoeffer explains: “Jesus is here speaking to men who have become individuals for his sake who have left all at his call . . . They receive the promise of a new fellowship.” He concludes: “Though we all have to enter upon discipleship alone, we do not remain alone. If we take him at his word and dare to become individuals, our reward is the fellowship of the church. Here is a visible brotherhood to compensate for all we have lost.”
As if he knew he was called to suffer, Bonhoeffer underscores the last of the rewards received before eternal life: “Yes, for we now have everything through the Mediator, but with this proviso — ‘with persecutions.’”
Postscript: Dietrich Bonhoeffer published The Cost of Discipleship (originally Nachfolge) in 1937. On April 9, 1945, he was executed by the Nazis in Flossenburg, only a couple of days before it was liberated by the Allies.
Bonhoeffer deserves to be read and absorbed. But recommending him doesn’t mean that his theology was altogether orthodox. He studied under Adolph Harnack and was influenced by Ernst Troeltsch, both well-established German liberals. He rejected much of the liberal project but was undoubtedly influenced in some ways. As with all great icons (even with heroes of the faith), one still needs to be thoughtful and discerning when reading them.