Life Together: A Discussion of Christian Fellowship
The book was written in 1935 in Finkenwalde near Stettin, where he shared a common life in emergency-built houses with twenty-five vicars. Originally published in 1938 as Gemeinesames Leben. It was here that he also wrote The Cost of Discipleship and The Prayer Book of the Bible: An Introduction to the Psalms which more fully explores the themes in chapter two of Life Together. Shortly after this last publication the Gestapo shut down the underground seminary.
Plan
Session 1
Introduction and I Community 33 pages
Session 2
II The Day with Others 36 pages
Session 3
III The Day Alone 14 pages
Session 4
IV Ministry 20 pages
Session 5
V Confession and Communion 12 pages
Introduction/Biography
“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church” Tertullian 160-220 AD
Dietrich Bonhoeffer -1-
Born - February 4, 1906in Breslau, Germany
Died - April 9, 1945 (age 39) in Flossenbürg concentration camp
Church - Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union Confessing Church
Education - Doctorate in theology
Writings - Author of several books and articles (see below)
Congregations served Zion's Church congregation, Berlin German-speaking congregations of St. Paul's and Sydenham, London
Offices - held Associate lecturer at Frederick William University of Berlin (1931-1936)
Student pastor at Technical College, Berlin (1931-1933)
Lecturer of Confessing Church candidates of pastorate in Finkenwalde (1935-1937)
Title - Ordained Pastor
Family - Father was a noted physician and first to occupy a Chair in Psychiatry in Germany. One of seven children who were always close and played with the VonHarnack and Delbrueck children (Famous scholar and historian)
As Hitler rises to power in Germany and the church ‘cooperates’ with the Third Reich, Bonhoeffer leaves the country to serve in England and to study in New York City. It was there that he gained a great appreciation for African American Gospel music as he worshiped in Baptist congregations. Preparing to visit Gandhi, in India in order to pursue an interest in pacifism, he is contacted to lead a group of men from the “confessing” church in their studies at an unapproved, “illegal” seminary which was at Zingst and then moved to Finkenwalde.
Now immersed again in the world which was Nazi Germany, and in which many of his family were involved in the resistance, he too became involved in the plot to over through Hitler being led by Genera Beck and others. Thus, “The man who felt all the force of the pacifist position and weighted the “cost of discipleship” concluded in the depths of his soul that to withdraw from those who were participating in the political and military resistance would be irresponsible cowardice and flight from reality. “Not,” as his friend Bethge says, “That he believed that everybody must act as he did, but from where he was standing, he could see no possibility of retreat into any sinless, righteous, pious refuge. The sin of respectable people reveals itself in flight from responsibility. He saw that sin falling upon him and he took his stand.” -2-
April 5, 1943 he was arrested, along with his sister Christel and her husband Hans von Dohnanyi, and sent to Tegel, a military prison. During his time there the guards recognized him as a strong pastor and secretly arranged for him to minister to other prisoners despairing in their cells. They preserved his papers, essays and poems and even established a courier system to get these to his family and friends outside the prison.
After the Putcsch of July 20, he was transferred from one prison to another including Berlin, Buchenwald, Schoenberg, and finally Flossenburg, when all his contacts to the outside world were severed. His last weeks were spend with Russians, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians and Germans. On April 8, 1945, the day before his execution, he gave his last sermon to them, the text of which was based the words ‘With his stripes we are healed.” He was taken from them by guards as he finished his last prayer and was never seen by them again.
Chapter One: Community
“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” Ps 133:1
“It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians." -3-
1. This, the second, non-scriptural, sentence of the book, is quite amazing, considering the title, Life Together, would seem to speak of some sort of community of believers. Why would it be important for Bonhoeffer to start off his book with this phrase?
Bonhoeffer shows the example of Christ right at the start (17). Jesus did not hide from those he disagreed with nor from those who were clearly leading people away from God. He says Christ was “in the thick of foes.”
2. Who/what might our spiritual foes be? What does it look like for us to be “in the thick” with them?
3. Contrast our times and our setting with 1935 national socialist Germany; though we and the church are protected by our government through the First Amendment, what other pressures do we as the Church face today?
The “confessing” church was a group of believers who could not, by conscience, participate in the “German Christian” church which the Nazi’s had orchestrated and by which most protestants had followed into. This made them easy targets for arrest and harassment.
4. When we make decisions to join one church or another, what “confessions” do we make? What consequences do these confessions bring?
“Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ.” -4-
5. As Lutherans (and Bonhoeffer was Lutheran) we believe in the solas: Grace alone, Faith alone, Christ alone, Scripture alone. So, how can/do we arrive at a place where we can agree with the quote above?
Bonhoeffer explains this statement in three parts (21)
6. “First, a Christian needs others because of Christ.” In what/where do we meet and discover that need?
7. “Second, a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ.” Why is this true?
8. “Third, in Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.” How are we united with Christ? With others?
Note: Bonhoeffer’s comments on what makes us brothers and sisters in Christ (25) is not our “Christianity” but what we are in/to Christ.
“The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes (in Christ, remember) the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us. We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternity.” -5-
9. What can we expect if we grow closer to each other in community?
10. And how is this closeness in community realized? Or, is it just a pipedream? (see ital. at end of second para. Pg. 26)
“By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world…Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial” -6-
11. What are some of the ‘Wish Dreams’ we might get caught up in as an organized church?
12. What are some of the personal ‘Wish Dreams’ we might try to inject into our Christ-centered community?
13. When our ‘dreams’ don’t come true, who do we blame? Where does the blame lie?
14. How do we then ‘plan’ for ministry? What is our guide?
“We enter that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients.” -7-
15. How does this statement then organize us as a community?
16. How does this statement inform our interactions with each other--especially when we are at odds with one another? (bottom 28)
17. How does being thankful affect the community? How does God respond? (top 29, bottom 30)
“Because Christian community is founded solely on Jesus Christ, it is a spiritual and not a psychic reality. In this it differs from all other communities. …The basis of the community of the Spirit is truth; the basis of human community of spirit is desire. The essence of the community of the Spirit is light, for “God is light and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5) and “if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another”(1:7)-8-
18. In this line of reasoning where the community of the Spirit in truth seeks light, which is God, what might a human community of spirit seek? i.e. what is at the center of community based upon the human ‘spirit’ as the world defines it? (top 33)
19. How are spiritual love and human love at odds with each other? (35)
We sometimes think that in order to show ‘Christian love’ we need to make them love us back if they are to be saved. But Bonhoeffer says, “I dare not desire direct fellowship with them.” -9-
20. How, then, can we be community, if we are not desiring fellowship with each other? (bottom 35)
21. In whom is our fellowship based, and thereby are we joined to each other?(36)
22. Therefore, spiritual love proves itself in __________. (middle 36)
23. Which is more profitable, to speak to a brother or sister about Christ, or to speak to Christ about a brother or sister?
24. So, then, our love for others is completely bound up in what truth about them? (top37) (see also III John 4)
25. What is Bonhoeffer’s caution about failing to project our human relationships and communities into our Spiritual community? (bottom 38)
“It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together.” -10- And that faith is built on our brotherhood with Christ, the hub of community.
End notes:
-1- “Born” through “Title” taken from table found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer as of 2/18/2010.
-2- Bonhoeffer, Deitrich, Life Together: A Discussion of Christian Fellowship. New York, Harper and Row, 1954
p. 11
-3- Bonhoeffer, D p. 17
-4- Bonhoeffer, D. p. 21.
-5- Bonhoeffer, D. p. 26
-6- Bonhoeffer, D. p. 27
-7- Bonhoeffer, D. p. 28
-8- Bonhoeffer, D. p. 31
-9- Bonhoeffer, D. p. 35
-10- Bonhoeffer, D. p. 39
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