Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Bonhoeffer was one of the greatest people of the 20th century, in my opinion. His willingness to speak out against Nazism and the treachery of the German Church, to return to Germany in 1939, to join the resistance, and to accept his resulting arrest and execution in the final days of the war set him apart as a man of outstanding integrity.
But this book was so dense and took me 5 months to slog through. Thus my 3-star rating. The whole section on the Sermon on the Mount was engaging and refreshingly radical, but I got lost after that.
Bonhoeffer takes a very absolutist stance in his interpretation of the sermon. I wonder if that's because of how young he was (31) when The Cost of Discipleship was published, in 1937. If he had lived into old age, I wonder if he would have tempered some of his views? He must have at least changed his staunch non-resistence views since he supported the 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler.
Some of my favorite quotes:
On the state of the Lutheran Church in the 1930s: "We confess that, although our Church is orthodox as far as her doctrine of grace is concerned, we are no longer sure that we are members of a Church which follows its Lord." (Chapter 1, Costly Grace)
On the Good Samaritan: “Neighbourliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves.” (chapter 2, The Call to Discipleship)
On relationships: "Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him." (Chapter 5, Discipleship and the Individual)
On not harboring anger against your brother (Mt 5:22): "In this context, 'brother' means more than 'fellow-Christian': for the follower of Jesus there can be no limit as to who is his neighbor, except as his Lord decides." (Chapter 9, The Brother)
On non-resistence (Mt 5:38-42): "The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a standstill because it does not find the resistance it is looking for." (Chapter 12, Revenge)
"The worse the evil, the readier must the Christian be to suffer; he must let the evil person fall into Jesus' hands." (Chapter 12, Revenge)
On loving your enemy (Mt 5:43-48): "In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility." (Chapter 13, The Enemy--the "Extraordinary")
"When we judge other people we confront them in a spirit of detachment, observing and reflecting as it were from the outside. But love has neither time nor opportunity for this. If we love, we can never observe the other person with detachment, for he is always and at every moment a living claim to our love and service... If the disciples make judgements of their own, they set up standards of good and evil. But Jesus Christ is not a standard which I can apply to others. He is judge of myself, revealing my own virtues to me as something altogether evil. Thus I am not permitted to apply to the other person what does not apply to me... Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love." (Chapter 18, The Disciple and Unbelievers)
"The Christian life is not one of gloom, but of ever increasing joy in the Lord." (Chapter 31, The Saints)
I read the paperback.
But this book was so dense and took me 5 months to slog through. Thus my 3-star rating. The whole section on the Sermon on the Mount was engaging and refreshingly radical, but I got lost after that.
Bonhoeffer takes a very absolutist stance in his interpretation of the sermon. I wonder if that's because of how young he was (31) when The Cost of Discipleship was published, in 1937. If he had lived into old age, I wonder if he would have tempered some of his views? He must have at least changed his staunch non-resistence views since he supported the 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler.
Some of my favorite quotes:
On the state of the Lutheran Church in the 1930s: "We confess that, although our Church is orthodox as far as her doctrine of grace is concerned, we are no longer sure that we are members of a Church which follows its Lord." (Chapter 1, Costly Grace)
On the Good Samaritan: “Neighbourliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves.” (chapter 2, The Call to Discipleship)
On relationships: "Between father and son, husband and wife, the individual and the nation, stands Christ the Mediator, whether they are able to recognize him or not. We cannot establish direct contact outside ourselves except through him, through his word, and through our following of him." (Chapter 5, Discipleship and the Individual)
On not harboring anger against your brother (Mt 5:22): "In this context, 'brother' means more than 'fellow-Christian': for the follower of Jesus there can be no limit as to who is his neighbor, except as his Lord decides." (Chapter 9, The Brother)
On non-resistence (Mt 5:38-42): "The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a standstill because it does not find the resistance it is looking for." (Chapter 12, Revenge)
"The worse the evil, the readier must the Christian be to suffer; he must let the evil person fall into Jesus' hands." (Chapter 12, Revenge)
On loving your enemy (Mt 5:43-48): "In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility." (Chapter 13, The Enemy--the "Extraordinary")
"When we judge other people we confront them in a spirit of detachment, observing and reflecting as it were from the outside. But love has neither time nor opportunity for this. If we love, we can never observe the other person with detachment, for he is always and at every moment a living claim to our love and service... If the disciples make judgements of their own, they set up standards of good and evil. But Jesus Christ is not a standard which I can apply to others. He is judge of myself, revealing my own virtues to me as something altogether evil. Thus I am not permitted to apply to the other person what does not apply to me... Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love." (Chapter 18, The Disciple and Unbelievers)
"The Christian life is not one of gloom, but of ever increasing joy in the Lord." (Chapter 31, The Saints)
I read the paperback.
3.5 - this book was super dense but very worth the read! You definitely had to work at truly understanding every bit of what was being said but when you did the hard work, great truths and insights into the Christian life came out. There were some clear times where it felt somewhat scattered and I had a hard time following with his writing style but very glad I read the book.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
The criticism of this book is that it's disorganized and non-systematic. The response to that and defense of this book is that it's not a book about What Bonhoeffer Thought but about what the bible says about the Christian life. As such, there is no strong thesis here but rather a long series of short expositions on scripture.
Bonhoeffer manages to be at once focused and various in this presentation. The constant theme is discipleship, the process by which a believer lives in faith, and the many aspects of this are covered no more than how scripture covers them, which is a testament to his desire to derive meaning from the text.
The title comes from Luke 14, where Jesus says that counting the cost of a task is essential to finishing that task:
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:25-33 ESV)
TCOD is at once about counting the cost of the task of discipleship and about finishing the task itself. Read it if you enjoy scriptural explication and personal-existential challenge. Lack of grand organization and short sections make this a great read for a fits-and-starts reader.
Bonhoeffer manages to be at once focused and various in this presentation. The constant theme is discipleship, the process by which a believer lives in faith, and the many aspects of this are covered no more than how scripture covers them, which is a testament to his desire to derive meaning from the text.
The title comes from Luke 14, where Jesus says that counting the cost of a task is essential to finishing that task:
Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:25-33 ESV)
TCOD is at once about counting the cost of the task of discipleship and about finishing the task itself. Read it if you enjoy scriptural explication and personal-existential challenge. Lack of grand organization and short sections make this a great read for a fits-and-starts reader.
I find rating books on Goodreads nigh impossible. Like, yes, I dedicated a chunk of time to reading this and it's definitely a book worth reading, but also the majority of it was pastoral insights into the Sermon on the Mount that feel largely pretty familiar, and some discussion of systemic theology that I really am not that invested in. That said, the most notable sections to me were the ones where Bonhoeffer discusses the Christ community and the radical sacrificial love of unity towards which we are called, as well as chapters in which he draws out Jesus' teachings on judgment and forgiveness. Which is to say, this is definitely a great resource and there are quite a number of compelling thoughts here, but it's perhaps not the most exciting introduction to Bonhoeffer in the world.
Years ago a few friends and I started a book club discussing topics of Christian ideologies, and after hearing my professor's recommendation for Bonhoeffer, we embarked on a six-month odyssey through The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer's life story is a living testament to the dynamic words on the pages urging Christians to seriously consider and take up the great commission of following Jesus, that Christianity is an active employment, and though good works do not earn salvation, they are vital to those who have been sanctified. Bonhoeffer beautifully illustrates the body of Christ, His living presence, emulated and lived in the Church, His congregation of sinners "worthy of the gospel of forgiveness," the nature man before and after the Fall, and the outer garment of Christ which we wear, including His suffering, which was all for our sake.
It was a privilege reading this eye-opening book, the evocative sermon of a persecuted German pastor, himself a martyr (the highest calling to suffering, as he writes), and I enjoyed every minute of spiritual growth with the turn of each page. I was a witness to the spiritual growth of my dear friends, and I will always cherish the intimate discussions and self-revelations made over The Cost of Discipleship.
It was a privilege reading this eye-opening book, the evocative sermon of a persecuted German pastor, himself a martyr (the highest calling to suffering, as he writes), and I enjoyed every minute of spiritual growth with the turn of each page. I was a witness to the spiritual growth of my dear friends, and I will always cherish the intimate discussions and self-revelations made over The Cost of Discipleship.