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    Life Together - new edition
    Life Together - new edition
    Life Together - new edition
    Ebook115 pages2 hours

    Life Together - new edition

    By Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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    About this ebook

    This short book is a reflection on life as an intentional Christian community, written by Bonhoeffer during his time as a head of the Illegal Seminary of the Confessing Church in Finkenwalde (Eastern Prussia).
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSCM Press
    Release dateMar 2, 2015
    ISBN9780334049784
    Life Together - new edition
    Author

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau in 1906. The son of a famous German psychiatrist, he studied in Berlin and New York City. He left the safety of America to return to Germany and continue his public repudiation of the Nazis, which led to his arrest in 1943. Linked to the group of conspirators whose attempted assassination of Hitler failed, he was hanged in April 1945.

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    Reviews for Life Together - new edition

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Amazing. One of the greatest presentations of true Biblical community. A must read for every follower of Christ.
    • 2/5
      This was nothing more than the author's personal fantasy; chocked full of speculation and bold assertions. Any person who claims to know what god knows/thinks/wants, is either lying or delusional. Some of the ideas expressed in this book seem innocente enough but there were some very dangerous ideas in here and to follow them could get you killed (or worse).
    • 5/5
      This is definitely in my re-read list. It's one that needs to be gone over again and again, to chew on.
    • 4/5
      This is a challenging book on Christian living. Bonhofer builds a solid, scriptural argument that will test your faith and challenge the reader to new levels of sanctification..
    • 5/5
      This is a six-star book. Heck, call it eleven stars. Absolutely classic.

      Life Together was young Dietrich Bonhoeffer's manifesto about the Christian community, written as he was leading an underground seminary for the confessing church under Nazi German rule. The members of the seminary knew that they would be executed if they were found; Bonhoeffer was martyred in the process.

      Still, the book deals with the everyday nature of conflict and falling short between one person and another; it drives us into deeper relationship and forgiveness and community.

      I'll teach from this book in academic and lay coursework around spiritual formation in communities and networks. It's a bit Lutheran and liturgical in some spots for some readers, but it's overwhelmingly powerful throughout.
    • 4/5
      "Reading Bonhoeffer is incredibly convicting." That was my friend's opinion when I mentioned this book, and he is absolutely right.

      Bonhoeffer was the German pastor convicted, imprisoned, and executed for speaking out against Hitler and eventually scheming to assassinate him. As with his opposition to Fascism, Bonhoeffer lived out each one of his beliefs. That biographical tidbit makes every one of his books more amazing; his strong rhetoric is not simply hopeful. Bonhoeffer walked the talk.

      In this book, Bonhoeffer explored the role of Christian community, which he imagines as a small, familial fellowship of believers. Christians, in Bonhoeffer's world, meet together morning and night, before and after their workdays. For that reason, Life Together includes strong opinions about how a community should do daily reading and prayer. Modern Christians may be put off by the depth of involvement Bonhoeffer expects from them, particularly in the chapter entitled "The Day with Others."

      The other chapters are devoted to the nature of Christian community, the need for silence and solitude, the role of ministry in community, and the need for confession and communion. Bonhoeffer's praise of solitude echoes Blaise Pascal, when he writes:

      "Many people seek fellowship because they are afraid to be alone. Because they cannot stand loneliness, they are driven to seek the company of other people. ... The person who comes into a fellowship because he is running away from himself is misusing it for the sake of diversion, no matter how spiritual this diversion may appear."

      I commend this book to you, because it will challenge you to invest more time, energy, and prayer in your local Christian community. Bonhoeffer elevates Christ in all things, and he illustrates beautifully the role individual Christians play in proclaiming Christ. It will encourage you to pursue life together.
    • 3/5
      Written on the eve of WWII, by this Bonhoeffer, who was matyred by the Nazi's in 1945. A challenge to live in community
    • 4/5
      As a person living in Christian community, I find Bonhoeffer's advice to keep God's view of community in mind rather than one's own "wish dream" to be very helpful. "The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves." pp. 26-27Bonhoeffer goes on to give much helpful advice, particularly for servant leadership and healthy confession of sins one to another.
    • 5/5
      A book written with the authority of a man who not only spent much time in thoughtful community, but also died a martyr to his beliefs at the hands of the Nazi regime. He begins this book with a description of what a community is not. It is not the wish dream of a visionary, but rather the functioning of a group that centers on the truth of God's Word in the realistic setting of a broken world. He maintains, "Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world." He proceeds to our need to give the other person in the community the freedom of being who he was by God created to be and not what we may construct as our ideal for him to be. Judgmentalism is immediately flagged as crucial. "There is no time to lose here, for from the first moment when a man meets another person he is looking for a strategic position he can assume and hold over against that person." Other points for life in a fellowship include the ministry of holding one's tongue, meekness, listening, helpfulness, bearing, proclaiming and authority. The book ends with a very important chapter on confession. Bonhoeffer explains, "He who is alone with his sin in utterly alone...Sin demands to have a man by himself. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disatrous is his isolation. It shuns the light." A book of profound power brought from the life of a man dedicated to the truth even unto death.
    • 3/5
      It is some time since reading this - I lent my copy and haven't seen it for a while. It is a densely written and quite fervent exploration of communal christian living with a strong orthodox tone adapted to unorthodox times. I was surprised to see the passage on individual confession and impressed by its overall intensity. A kind of Imitation of Christ for the modern world - however I believe Bonhoeffer himself would move away from this degree of formal religiosity as his thought developed.
    • 3/5
      This story of a unique fellowship in an underground seminary during the Nazi years reads like one of Paul's letters. It gives practical advice on how life together in Christ can be sustained in families and groups. The role of personal prayer, worship in common, everyday work, and Christian service is treated in simple, almost biblical, words. Life Together is bread for all who are hungry for the real life of Christian fellowship.
    • 5/5
      I think this is one of the great Christian books and should be read by anyone interested in Christian community.
    • 5/5
      Incredibly convicting book by a true hero of the faith. As I live in community I find this book a resource that should not be shelved prematurely. If you are thinking about living in community, or are in one I recommend this book highly.
    • 5/5
      Another classic by Bonhoeffer. Although there is some cultural influence shown based on his life time, the book nonetheless puts so much to consider into so few pages overall. Wonderful.
    • 5/5
      Substantial, wholistic, all-encompassing of the Christian life together! Truly 1 of the best I have read!! Thankful!
    • 3/5
      Loved parts of this - Chp 1 and Chp 4 but got bogged down in others which were to dated and too prescriptive. Especially liked the emphasis on not judging people by my own dream and vision of what church should be but valuing people as they are. Also, liked the very practical approach to loving and serving others, e.g. through the discipline of listening and practical helps.
    • 3/5
      Bonhoeffer, interested in what defines a Christian community, created one within his seminary in Finkenwalde, a suburb near pre-WWII Berlin, Germany. Although the seminary was closed by a pro-Nazi bishop, the content of Life Together is applicable for any Christian community. The structure of this book includes Bonhoeffer's reflections on the Christian community and what sets it apart from other communities, the need for a Christ-centered daily experience, meditative prayer, service to others, and the healing power of confession. This book is ideal for group discussion and ends with a series of questions for self-reflection or group discussion.
    • 4/5
      Good reflection on what makes true Christian community. Bonhoeffer's sound biblical wisdom that has left me with some challenging thoughts which is a good place to be.
    • 5/5
      Life Together stands as one of the best theologies of community in modern church history. Focusing on life and ministry in community, Bonhoeffer’s work served as a sort of handbook for the underground church in Nazi Germany. The joy of community and the centrality of Christ are especially emphasized here. Bonhoeffer offers a particularly acute analysis of spiritual life in community, especially in light of Nazi persecution. A
    • 2/5
      Modern social definitions of community focus on geographical and political union, and this focus has contributed somewhat to a recession and reduction of a sound doctrine of the church (Ecclesiology). For the church and the world, the carnal has largely replaced the spiritual. Life Together (New York: Harper and Row, 1954) may be a panacea for this ill that will also cultivate a desire for Christian fellowship in the greater context of the communion of the saints. A man who was martyred for his faith, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's (1906-1945) conviction was forged in context of German dialectical theology and the fires of Nazi Germany. This context is essential to understanding Bonhoeffer’s emphases.The Introduction, written by the book’s Translator, John W. Doberstein, succinctly provides a historical background. The biographical history specifically germane to the topic is the period starting from April 1935, when, by invitation of the anti-Nazi Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer assists in the establishment of a seminary by the Baltic Sea at Zingst, where Bonhoeffer lived “a common life in emergency-built houses with twenty-five vicars.” (p. 11). Life together was moved shortly after to Finkenwalde in Pomerania, and it was Bonhoeffer’s experience and mediations during this time that led to the publication of Gemeinsames Leben in 1938. Another well-known book, The Cost of Discipleship, was also written during this period.Bonhoeffer’s understanding of life together under the Word (p. 17) is the subject of his relatively small treatise. He draws out his definition of community as being lived in the midst of one’s enemies and oppressors (Chapter I, Community); its commonality expressed in worship, the use of the Psalter, the reading of Scripture, prayer, and the fellowship we enjoy at meals (Chapter II, The Day with Others); its individuality in engaging in both solitude and silence as stillness before the Word (Chapter III, The Day Alone); mutual service and submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ (Chapter IV, Ministry); and, how sinners can and may exhibit the love of God in Christ to one another (Chapter V, Confession and Communion).Postmodern and post-Christian paradigms emphasize an ethos of getting together to do meaningful things, but meaning is derived from the experience, not principles that drive the events, and especially not from principles revealed to us in Scripture. Perhaps Bonhoeffer himself over-emphasized experience, but what makes Bonhoeffer compelling in this book is that he speaks—albeit without much citation—biblical truths that have gone largely by the wayside in evangelical circles: an emphasis on listening to God’s Word; spiritual, Christ-centered and other-focused love; self-denial; seeing Christ in others; an emphasis on union—we are members of one Body—and community; and suffering.Bonhoeffer’s writings, and seminally, his doctoral dissertation Sanctorum Communio (The Communion of Saints), are problematic for both what he does and does not say. For example, in his doctoral thesis he wrote that Christ is present only in the community of the church: “…Christ himself is the community…Christ is present only in the community.” (A Testament to Freedom, pp. 56-57). This is to this reviewer’s mind a con-fusion of Christ with the Body of Christ for which he gave himself: one could easily end up neglecting God’s transcendence by overemphasizing the Incarnation. In other words, as I read this book, I wondered if Bonhoeffer wasn’t having Humanity swallow Deity.Nonetheless, while it may be true that Bonhoeffer’s novel, neo-orthodox existentialism and his ecumenism are objectionable issues; that he was a theologian who espoused experience over theology; or that (reputedly) in following Barth he laid the groundwork for Death of God Theology: in reading Life Together I was often reminded that miserable sinners need mercy—from God and from one another—and as we walk our own Via Dolorosa with Jesus it is good to have the company of those who think of themselves as sinners getting sanctified. Whatever Bonhoeffer’s failings, identifying this basic truth wasn’t one of them.Some favorite quotations are:“Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases” (p. 33).“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” (p. 36).A discerning reader will glean from this book with the blessing of the Spirit: I recommend it with the previously stated caveats and observations.

    Book preview

    Life Together - new edition - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Contents

    Title

    Foreword to the 2015 edition by Samuel Wells

    I     Community

    II    The Day with Others

    III   The Day Alone

    IV   Ministry

    V    Confession and Communion

    By the Same Author

    Copyright

    Foreword to the new edition

    Samuel Wells

    The most significant words in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together are these:

    In a Christian community everything depends upon whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain. Only when even the smallest link is securely interlocked is the chain unbreakable. … Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the fellowship. (p. 72)

    Life Together was published in 1939. In 1939 Germany was ruled by a regime that had no time for the weak. And those who opposed the regime had to think carefully about the resources they had for resistance. For Bonhoeffer, what the resistance had was the body of Christ – a securely interlocked chain, where weak and strong were unbreakably joined by the unity of Christ Jesus. How to grow such solidarity? What habits of life and mind and community are required to make such unbreakable bonds? That is what Life Together is about. It is written in a timeless style that makes it readable alongside the Rule of St Benedict among the archetypes of Christian community; but it is not a timeless rule. It is written in the face of pressing, poisonous and pernicious evil. And it is about overcoming evil with good, in practical, purposeful and proven ways.

    Bonhoeffer is quick to dismantle sentimentality about communal life. Disillusionment is inevitable – and good. ‘God hates visionary dreaming’; nothing destroys a Christian community more readily than a person who allows their visionary ideal to become a governing principle against which God, the community and themselves may be judged. True community, by contrast, ‘is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate’ (p. 18). Sin need not destroy community, but can provide the occasion for deepening one’s awareness that no member of the community can live by their own words and deeds, but only by Christ’s forgiveness. Likewise Bonhoeffer is not interested in calls for godly leaders, noble authority figures or charismatic sources of inspiration: such desire springs from ‘a spiritually sick need for the admiration of men, for the establishment of visible human authority, because the genuine authority of service appears to be so unimpressive’ (p. 84). Again one must recall the backdrop of Nazi Germany.

    Community is fundamentally a privilege. Bonhoeffer never underestimates the challenge of living with others, but he is overwhelmed by the joy of sharing the precious gifts of faith with others who treasure it like one does oneself. To share the ‘physical presence of other Christians’ (p. 9) is a ‘gracious anticipation of the last things’ (p. 8) – an opportunity denied to the prisoner, the sick person and the Christian in exile. Martin Luther insisted that the kingdom of God meant being in the midst of your enemies; so the opportunity to be in community with other Christians, occasionally or permanently, is ‘grace upon grace’ – the ‘roses and lilies of the Christian life’ (p. 10). Pastors and zealous members of congregations can be apt to forget this great privilege. But Bonhoeffer is uncompromising in his castigation of their ingratitude: if such a person is simply finding their wish-dream is being shattered by God, they should either be thankful for being divested of their dream or penitent for their own failure and unbelief (p. 17–p18).

    What community offers is the gift of discovery about the self, about others and about God. If you can’t be with yourself, being with others isn’t going to help you. There’s no getting away from the dimension of faith that has to be faced alone: ‘Alone you stood before God when he called you; alone you had to answer that call; alone you had to struggle and pray; and alone you will die and give an account to God’ (p. 57). Any kind of community living that isn’t based on being able to face such things alone is little more than a distraction.

    These are sobering words. But some of Bonhoeffer’s most salutary remarks regard what it means to be with one another. He is under no illusion about these things: ‘From the first moment when a man meets another person he is looking for a strategic position he can assume and hold over against that person’ (p. 69). But there are seasoned ways to withstand such human shortcomings. One such is custody of the tongue. ‘It must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him. … To speak about a brother covertly is forbidden, even under the cloak of help and good will.’ How then to discern about a troublesome brother? Speak to God instead. We should ‘speak to Christ about a brother more than to a brother about Christ’ (p. 23). Thus one may ‘cease from constantly scrutinizing the other person, judging him, condemning him, putting him in his particular place where he can gain ascendancy over him and thus doing violence to him as a person’ (p. 71). Only if one lets go the exasperation that ‘God did not make this person as I would have made him’ and realizes that God gave me this person not to dominate and control but as a way to find divine love, can one find the other person an occasion of joy rather than a nuisance and an affliction. The difficult part is to accept that God did not create every person in my image; instead it turns out every person is made in God’s image. The sooner we realize this, the better for us. The world is turned from a burden into a gift. And this truth crystallizes in the practice of intercessory prayer.

    A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses. I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto might have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed in intercession into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner. (p. 65)

    In intercession we see our brother under the cross of Christ. ‘Then everything in him that repels us falls away; and we see him in all his destitution and need. His need and his sin become so heavy and oppressive that we feel them as our own, and we can do nothing else but pray: Lord do thou, thou alone, deal with him according to thy severity and thy goodness’ (pp. 65–6). But this is not done from magnanimity. It is done from repentance. The only way to forebear the sins of others is to consider oneself the greatest of sinners. One can find extenuations for the sins of others; but for one’s own sin, there is no excuse. One cannot truly serve another unless one regards one’s own sin as worse than theirs (p. 74).

    Thus do we discover that all true being with the self and being with one another is a way of being with God. Every relationship, every interaction with another is mediated by Christ. ‘Human love constructs its own image of the other person, of what he is and what he should become. … Spiritual love recognizes the true image of the other person which he has received from Jesus Christ; the image that Jesus Christ embodied and would stamp upon all men’ (p. 23). This is how we meet God in community. Direct experience of God is something that may or may not be granted: but such experiences are not what Christian community is about – for the community lives by faith, not by experience.

    Life Together may seem a book locked in its time. If you assume a treatment of community should have a finer awareness of gender, and not assume male singleness as the norm; if you are quick to pick up assumptions of class and leisure; if community seems a cover for sublimated urgings of sexuality, in ways Bonhoeffer is ignorant of or chooses to ignore; then this may not be the book for you. But if you are looking for knowledge of God rooted in deep knowledge of the self; for paths in which other people can be invitations into grace rather than obstacles to holiness; and for a way to build Christian community that is true enough to withstand the onslaughts of persecution, terror and destruction, then you are about to read possibly the finest handbook available to Christians of how to live as the body of Christ. It is perhaps the most succinct legacy of Bonhoeffer’s remarkable witness.

    I

    Community

    ‘BEHOLD, HOW good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!’ (Ps. 133.1). In the following we shall consider a number of directions and precepts that the Scriptures provide us for our life together under the Word.

    It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. ‘The Kingdom

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