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The Call to Discipleship: Reflections on Bonhoeffer's Theme 50 Years on
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
InThe Cost of Discipleship Bonhoeffer reflects on the nature and consequences of being called by Christ. He presents the call as bringing the individual into an immediate relationship with Christ, which effects a reconstitution of the individual. This reconstitution is not, however, a solitary and exclusive form of individuality, but a new way of being in all one's relationships, a new form of punctuation operated between oneself and others, God and reality as a whole, as all one's relations are mediated, and one's individuality therefore constituted, by Christ, (pp.84, 87, 145) The disciple is excentrically constituted. Following Christ means moving towards the reality of God, others and the world.
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References
1 The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1959)Google Scholar. Page references given in brackets within the text refer to this work.
2 Saint Mark (Middlesex: Penguin Books Ltd., 1969), p. 71Google Scholar. Italics in original.
3 Ibid.
4 Cf. Schweizer, Eduard, Lordship and Discipleship (London: SCM Press, 1960), p. 13Google Scholar.
5 Cf. Barth's, comments concerning election in Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Ltd., 1936–1961) II/2, p. 321Google Scholar.
6 This is emphasised by the use proskaleo. See, e.g., Mk. 1:30, 3:13; Acts 2:39, 13:2.
7 Jn. 1:38. The meaning of the words is derived from their more specific use at 5:44, 7:18 and elsewhere.
8 Manson, T. W., The Sayings of Jesus (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1957), p. 73Google Scholar.
9 Taylor, John V., The Go-Between God (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1976), pp. 3fGoogle Scholar. See also Jn. 20:21f.; Acts 1:2.
10 See, e.g., Mt.13: 45f.; Mt. 22:1–8/Lk. 14:16–21; Lk. 14:33.
11 Mk. 5:18–20/Lk. 8:39. Legion is instructed to publish the Good News in his home environment despite his own wish to be with Jesus. Lazarus may also have been a sedentary follower of Jesus (see Jn. 11:1, 11). It must certainly be said that membership of the band of disciples physically following Jesus was not a condition of salvation. Jesus' effect was much wider than this small group. Many more believed and ‘followed’ in their own way. See Küng, Hans, On Beinga Christian (Glasgow: Wm. Collins Sons & Co., Ltd., 1978), pp. 280fGoogle Scholar.
12 This does not only indicate the linguistic mediation of the call in recognisable forms of human speech, but the symbolic context which a social meaning-frame or communication code creates. Acts such as the choosing of the twelve, feasting with outcasts, footwashing, etc. can only be understood with reference to this socially relative communication context. The priority of the mission to Israel (see, e.g., Mt. 15:21–28/Mk. 7:24–30) may be interpreted as the determinacy of Jesus' and his followers' ministry to their specific situation.
13 Because personal redemption is a subjective form of intending others and relating to them, it is properly understood as a form of intersubjectivity. The redemption of individuals brings them into a newform of intersubjectivity (Church) which is not the product of individual intentions but the socially encoded community within which such intentions and subjectivity have meaning. In fact the subjective and in tersubjective are reciprocally and mutually determining. The Church can only exist through the existences of redeemed individuals whose redemption is, in turn, dependent upon the co-intentionalities, or intersubjective form, of the Church. Cf. Farley, Edward, Eulesial Reflection (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), pp. 230–234Google Scholar.
14 Küing, , On Being a Christian, p. 281Google Scholar.
15 Barth, , Church Dogmatics II/2, p. 444Google Scholar.
16 Cf. Feil's discussion of abstraction and concretion in Bonhoeffer, in his The Theobgy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), pp. 36, 39–43Google Scholar.
17 cf. Bonhoeffer, , Ethics (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1955), pp. 23ffGoogle Scholar.
18 See Feil's, precise and careful presentation in The Theobgy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 59–95Google Scholar.
19 This is Bonhoeffer's understanding which depends upon the Lutheran interpretation of sacrament as intrinsically communal, an activity of the congregation. The Word then becomes concrete only in spiritual and material community.
20 Cf. Bonhoeffer, , Christology (London: Collins, 1978), p. 50Google Scholar.
21 Ibid., p. 60.
22 Cf. Bonhoeffer, , Act and Being (London: Collins, 1962), pp. 126fGoogle Scholar., Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Ltd., 1936–1961) III/4, pp. 335, 386fGoogle Scholar.
23 Cf. Barth, ChurchDogmatics l/2, pp. 696f.; 11/1, pp. 25f., 31f.; III/4, p. 73. This is not a principle of concretion in Barth's theology as it is in Bonhoeffer's. Bonhoeffer equates concretion with specificity and therefore holds that God's Word becomes concrete only in specific acts of obedient human response. For Barth, however, the Word is concrete already by virtue of the preordinate activity of God. It may receive specific application in human response but this can only be an analogy, symbol or even playful repetition of what is already concrete, real and complete.
24 See, e.g., Capra, FritjofThe Turning Point (London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1983)Google Scholar; Prigogine, IIya & Stengers, Isabelle, Order out of Chaos (London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1985)Google Scholar and Wilden, Anthony, System and Structure (London: Tavistock Publications, 1980)Google Scholar.
25 Moltmann has tended to do this and too easily to equate the Spirit's operation in the natural and social worlds. For instance, he makes the unsubstantiated and extraordinary claim that everything ‘exists, livesand moves notonlywith and “in”, but also forone another’. (Creation in God [London: SCM Press Ltd., 1985], p. 11; italics mine.) He explicitly confounds language appropriate only to the social community with that of the biological interconnectedness of creation.