Answering Accusations Against Bonhoeffer's Christianity

This is from Berit Kjos, as she has taken the time to continue to address accusations about Bonhoeffer's faith. She admits that there is nothing she feels she can say to people who have already made up their minds and are not willing to realize they have been wrong about Bonhoeffer due to misinformation on the Internet. Here is her last rebuttal. (More can be found on her web site here.)


The next three accusations are followed my answers and quotes from Bonhoeffer's books, which show the true context. But first, prayerfully read this section from The Cost of Discipleship. It actually answers the last point, and it reveals Bonhoeffer's heart: his love for God's Word, his emphasis on the true gospel, his understanding of the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ, his concern for the Church with its tendency to trade Biblical grace for shallow counterfeit that he calls "cheap grace."

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.... Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.... Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.[45, 47]

"Costly grace... calls us to follow... It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God."[48]

"The Son of God becomes man. The Word is made flesh. He who had existed from all eternity in the glory of the Father, he who in the beginning was the agent of creation (which means that the created world can be known only through him and in him), he who was very God (I Cor. 8.6; II Cor 8.9; Phil. 2.6 ff; Eph. 1.4; Col. 1.16; John 1.1 ff; Heb. 1.1 ff) accepts humanity by taking upon himself our human nature, 'sinful flesh' as the Bible calls it, and human form (Rom.8.3; Gal. 4.4; Phil. 2.6 if).

"God takes humanity to himself... in the Body of Jesus. Of his mercy God sends his Son in the flesh, that therein he may bear the whole human race and bring it to himself. The Son of God takes to himself the whole human race bodily, that race which in its hatred of God, and in the pride of its flesh had rejected the incorporeal, invisible Word of God. Now this humanity, in all its weakness, is, by the mercy of God, taken up in the Body of Jesus in true bodily form."[264]
"God sends his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. 8.2 f). God sends his Son—here lies the only remedy. It is not enough to give man a new philosophy or a better religion. A Man comes to men.... The Incarnation, the words and acts of Jesus, his death on the cross, are all indispensable parts of that image.... Here is God made man." [340]