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selah
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 8/17/2004 9:32 AM (GMT -6) |   | | | |
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billzbob
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 82
| Posted 8/17/2004 11:24 AM (GMT -6) | | Quote from another site:
"But when once Christ had called him, Peter had no alternative he must leave the ship and come to Him. In the end, the first step of obedience proves to be an act of faith in the word of Christ. But we should completely misunderstand the nature of grace if we were to suppose that there was no need to take the first-step, because faith was already there. Against that, we must boldly assert that the step of obedience must be taken before faith can be possible. Unless he obeys, a man cannot believe." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1905-1945), The Cost of Discipleship | | Back to Top | | |
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billzbob
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 82
| Posted 8/17/2004 11:28 AM (GMT -6) | |
quote:
One of the most important theologians of the twentieth century illuminates the relationship between ourselves and the teachings of Jesus
What can the call to discipleship, the adherence to the word of Jesus, mean today to the businessman, the soldier, the laborer, or the aristocrat? What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today? Drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, Dietrich Bonhoeffer answers these timeless questions by providing a seminal reading of the dichotomy between "cheap grace" and "costly grace." "Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer wrote, "is the grace we bestow on ourselves...grace without discipleship....Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the girl which must be asked for, the door at which a man must know....It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life."
The Cost of Discipleship is a compelling statement of the demands of sacrifice and ethical consistency from a man whose life and thought were exemplary articulations of a new type of leadership inspired by the Gospel, and imbued with the spirit of Christian humanism and a creative sense of civic duty.
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billzbob
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Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 82
| Posted 8/17/2004 11:30 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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JEE
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 8/17/2004 1:15 PM (GMT -6) | | In light of the general trend on this board, I think the following quotes are timely and quite relevant:
quote:
Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. 45
Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. "All for sin could not atone." Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world’s standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin. That was the heresy of the enthusiasts, the Anabaptists and their kind…. 46
That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs.
http://www.rc.net/wcc/readings/heroe30a.htm
http://revivaltheology.net | | Back to Top | | |
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feelinahole
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 754
| Posted 8/17/2004 2:38 PM (GMT -6) | | I echo John, Ethics is quite possibly the worse book by a major theologian (and, as a consequence, Doctor Boyd joins him in the honor by basing much of Repenting on Religion on it) ever. He almost redeems himself with "Cost." (Almost I say...) | | Back to Top | | |
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JEE
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 8/17/2004 5:02 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Iconoclast
We can finally be free from our own judgment; safe in the knowledge that we are truly loved by God right here and right now.
I am safe in the knowledge that I am truly profoundly loved by God right here and now, and that I will be forever, regardless of my actions.
quote:
It is not about trying to be good in order to gain enough points to curry God's favor.
Who said it was? Raising an absurdity such as this does not support your argument. Let me be as clear as possible: We can NEVER earn God's favor. It's called GRACE.
quote:
We already have His favor and all we have to do is to actually believe this, to actually stop judging ourselves as though we are not worthy of God's love and to therefore stop judging others which is nothing but judging God Himself.
I sincerely doubt that those who advocate this "ethic" REALLY consistently apply it. (For instance, you folks regularly condemn folks like me as "Pharisees." How much MORE judgmental does it get than that? Jesus reserved his STERNEST rebukes for the self-righteous, hypocritical Pharisees. Pharisees are by definition NOT right with God, and thus are not even true Christians. And yet you folks don't think you're judging us. (shrug) ).
I also think you continue to cloud the issues by confounding discernment with condemnation. The fact is, Christ himself tells us many times to exercise judgment (righteously). What he forbids is ultimate condemnation of another, as if we were in the place of God as their FINAL judge.
quote:
I honestly think that the early church understood this implicitly. That is why they called it the gospel - the good news. Paul clearly gets this but most people read him with legal view glasses on and get almost the entirely opposite point that he is making.
Really? It seems to me that Paul is quite clearly against the antinomian philosophy you advocate...Shall we continue in SIN, that grace may abound? God forbid!
quote:
I certainly did. I grew up in the church and came away strongly blinded with the legal view. I basically lived in bondage to guilt, believing that I had to try harder to be good in order earn enough "points" to get to heaven.
I certainly agree with you that such an obviously legalistic approach as you have described in the above quote is clearly incorrect, unscriptural, and doomed to defeat. However, we should not make the mistake Luther made when he came out of the bondage of his Roman Catholic legalism. Luther advocated such clearly antiscriptural ideas as "sin boldly," and is well known for his hatred of the Epistle of James (no doubt because it convicted him and contradicted his beloved, self-serving antinomianism).
Legalism is certainly not the way of righteousness. But, antinomianism isn't righteous, either.
quote:
Maybe the problem was that I simply wasn't very good at being "good". Perhaps this is why Bonhoeffer's articulation of the good news of Jesus Christ is so powerful to me. Maybe if someone IS really good at being "good" then Bonhoeffer's articulation of the good news isn't really very good at all because it invalidates the very system that confers "points" to begin with. I guess if I felt like I had worked really hard storing up thousands of points I wouldn't really want to hear that.
Again, this either/or way of thinking simply misses the entire point of New Testament holiness--God says that He will write his law on our hearts and minds, and that He will put his Spirit within us, and we shall walk in his statutes. It has NEVER been about trying to "earn points" with God. If ONE sin deserves hell (and it does), and no amount of good works can EVER make up for even one sin, then it necessarily follows that NO ONE can EVER "merit" or "earn" extra credit sufficient to make up for his past sins, and certainly can never do enough to atone for his own past sins.
By grace are ye saved, through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast.
The righteous life is the result, not the cause, of the new life one receives BY FAITH from Christ.
P.S.: The early church taught some things that would make you recoil in horror; for instance, most taught that there was no forgiveness for postbaptismal sins, and as a result, most people postponed baptism until their deathbed.
http://revivaltheology.net | | Back to Top | | |
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1Heart
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2004
Total Posts : 1128
| Posted 8/17/2004 6:28 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Semeia
Sahid,
First read the the first fourth of Bonhoeffer's Ethics. Then read the first two pages of Creation and Fall five times. Set aside any despair brought on by incomprehension, and finish Creation and Fall. Then go back to Ethics. Reread from the beginning. By no means try to synthesize with any other theology you've ever read, including other works by Bonhoeffer himself. In fact, if this doesn't cause you to reject most of what you've learned elsewhere, then start over. 
Thanks,
Semeia
Semeia,
What, pray tell, are the benefits of reading Bonhoeffer?
 (a face I've never used...what is that anyway?)
Jo-Anne 
"Sometimes all we can do is go back to the character of God, and drop anchor there."
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billzbob
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 82
| Posted 8/17/2004 7:13 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Iconoclast
Ethics is Bonhoeffer's final work. In fact, it wasn't quite finished.
The site with lots of good "Cost" quotes has this to say:
quote:
Because of a recent controversy concerning Bonhoffer's beliefs, I hope to add some key quotes from his prison letters. His words have been grossly misunderstood. Bonhoffer dared to criticize the cultural "Christianity" of Hitler's Germany (primarily the unbiblical "religious" legalism and compromise). He was not, as some have said, a liberal Christian opposing genuine Christianity. Unfortunately, the English-speaking translators and interpreters of his German letters have unjustly distorted his message.
Then, whatever ANY theologian has to say MUST be measured By "Christ Crucified according to the scriptures." (St. Iraneous)
Take ANY statement, properly or improperly translated or interpreted -- regardless of being familiar or something on the verge of being 'onto something', and measure it by the standard of the CROSS!!!
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feelinahole
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 754
| Posted 8/17/2004 8:43 PM (GMT -6) | | If Ethics was DB's final work, perhaps we should thank God he never finished it.
Really, John, you hit on a good point (very good). Jesus calls on us to righteously judge. We couldn't get through our lives without judging. But "judging" to many is just not loving.
Some are just very confused and this confusion keeps them from viewing life correctly.
"judging others which is nothing but judging God himself." Please. If you have a problem with judging Icon, fine. But leave the rest of us out of it.
Making judgements about people who judge...hmmm, how do we know if people are judging others? By making a judgment about them.
BTW, Icon, simply believing your view is "above" most people doesn't make it right. It simply makes it arrogant.
DB was on to something big? Bigger than the gospel? Hmmm | | Back to Top | | |
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Iconoclast
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227
| Posted 8/21/2004 7:53 PM (GMT -6) | | JEE
I am safe in the knowledge that I am truly profoundly loved by God right here and now, and that I will be forever, regardless of my actions.
Iconoclast
I agree.
JEE
quote:
It is not about trying to be good in order to gain enough points to curry God's favor.
Who said it was? Raising an absurdity such as this does not support your argument. Let me be as clear as possible: We can NEVER earn God's favor. It's called GRACE.
Iconoclast
Why do you think I was making this statement as though I think that this is what you believe? I wasn't. I believe that this is the essence of fallen man. This is what the knowledge of good and evil does to us.
JEE
quote:
We already have His favor and all we have to do is to actually believe this, to actually stop judging ourselves as though we are not worthy of God's love and to therefore stop judging others which is nothing but judging God Himself.
I sincerely doubt that those who advocate this "ethic" REALLY consistently apply it. (For instance, you folks regularly condemn folks like me as "Pharisees." How much MORE judgmental does it get than that? Jesus reserved his STERNEST rebukes for the self-righteous, hypocritical Pharisees. Pharisees are by definition NOT right with God, and thus are not even true Christians. And yet you folks don't think you're judging us. (shrug) ).
Iconoclast
Of course those who espouse this ethic don't consistently apply. Does anybody consistently apply any ethic they espouse? Certainly not in my experience. This is why it is such good news that we are unconditionally loved.
JEE
I also think you continue to cloud the issues by confounding discernment with condemnation. The fact is, Christ himself tells us many times to exercise judgment (righteously). What he forbids is ultimate condemnation of another, as if we were in the place of God as their FINAL judge.
Iconoclast
I have always espoused the view that there are two kinds of judgment.
That one is condemnation (a separation of persons) and one is action (a separation of things that IS action itself).
It is perfectly appropriate to not hire a babysitter who has a reputation for molesting children. But it is inappropriate to say about this person, "thank God that I am not a sinner like this person".
Do we just disagree on the meaning of these categories?
JEE
quote:
I honestly think that the early church understood this implicitly. That is why they called it the gospel - the good news. Paul clearly gets this but most people read him with legal view glasses on and get almost the entirely opposite point that he is making.
Really? It seems to me that Paul is quite clearly against the antinomian philosophy you advocate...Shall we continue in SIN, that grace may abound? God forbid!
Iconoclast
Why do you think I espouse an antinomian philosophy? Can you spell out exactly what that means to you so that I can either confirm or deny it? I can certainly confirm that I agree with Paul in your above quote. In fact, I can't think of anything that I disagree with Paul about, except, of course, the business about how women should behave in church - you know the hat thing and all.
JEE
quote:
I certainly did. I grew up in the church and came away strongly blinded with the legal view. I basically lived in bondage to guilt, believing that I had to try harder to be good in order earn enough "points" to get to heaven.
I certainly agree with you that such an obviously legalistic approach as you have described in the above quote is clearly incorrect, unscriptural, and doomed to defeat. However, we should not make the mistake Luther made when he came out of the bondage of his Roman Catholic legalism. Luther advocated such clearly antiscriptural ideas as "sin boldly," and is well known for his hatred of the Epistle of James (no doubt because it convicted him and contradicted his beloved, self-serving antinomianism).
Legalism is certainly not the way of righteousness. But, antinomianism isn't righteous, either.
Iconoclast
If by antinomianism you mean calling good evil like the Pharisees did then I totally agree with you.
JEE
quote:
Maybe the problem was that I simply wasn't very good at being "good". Perhaps this is why Bonhoeffer's articulation of the good news of Jesus Christ is so powerful to me. Maybe if someone IS really good at being "good" then Bonhoeffer's articulation of the good news isn't really very good at all because it invalidates the very system that confers "points" to begin with. I guess if I felt like I had worked really hard storing up thousands of points I wouldn't really want to hear that.
Again, this either/or way of thinking simply misses the entire point of New Testament holiness--God says that He will write his law on our hearts and minds, and that He will put his Spirit within us, and we shall walk in his statutes. It has NEVER been about trying to "earn points" with God. If ONE sin deserves hell (and it does), and no amount of good works can EVER make up for even one sin, then it necessarily follows that NO ONE can EVER "merit" or "earn" extra credit sufficient to make up for his past sins, and certainly can never do enough to atone for his own past sins.
Iconoclast
I have no idea what you mean by "this either/or way of thinking" but I certainly agree with the rest.
JEE
By grace are ye saved, through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast.
The righteous life is the result, not the cause, of the new life one receives BY FAITH from Christ.
Iconoclast
I agree.
JEE
P.S.: The early church taught some things that would make you recoil in horror; for instance, most taught that there was no forgiveness for postbaptismal sins, and as a result, most people postponed baptism until their deathbed.
Iconoclast
Yep, that makes me recoil all right. I stand corrected.
thanks,
Iconoclast
"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson | | Back to Top | | |
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JEE
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 8/22/2004 12:35 AM (GMT -6) | | Hi Icon,
JEE
quote:
I honestly think that the early church understood this implicitly. That is why they called it the gospel - the good news. Paul clearly gets this but most people read him with legal view glasses on and get almost the entirely opposite point that he is making.
Really? It seems to me that Paul is quite clearly against the antinomian philosophy you advocate...Shall we continue in SIN, that grace may abound? God forbid!
Iconoclast
Why do you think I espouse an antinomian philosophy? Can you spell out exactly what that means to you so that I can either confirm or deny it? I can certainly confirm that I agree with Paul in your above quote. In fact, I can't think of anything that I disagree with Paul about, except, of course, the business about how women should behave in church - you know the hat thing and all.
John:
Do you believe that a Christian can live holy (stop sinning) by the power of Christ in this life? Do you view holiness is optional for the Christian? Do you believe that sinning in any form is merely winked at by God?
Iconoclast
If by antinomianism you mean calling good evil like the Pharisees did then I totally agree with you.
John
From Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: an·ti·no·mi·an
Pronunciation: "an-ti-'nO-mE-&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Medieval Latin antinomus, from Latin anti- + Greek nomos law
1 : one who holds that under the gospel dispensation of grace the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation.
JEE
By "either/or way of thinking" I'm referring to your apparent comparison and contrast between "working to try to curry God's favor," and "resting in his favor," if by "resting in his favor" you mean that the regenerate person lives no differently than he did prior to his conversion (i.e., continuing in sin, that grace may abound). It is my contention that there is a via media that is actually the correct route between the two pitfalls of legalism and antinomianism--transformation by grace of the sinner into a saint, a new creation, a person renewed in the image of Christ. When this happens, "the righteousness of the law" is fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:2). This DOES all come by faith in Christ, but it also very much DOES change the way a person lives, from that of continuing in sin to that of continuing in holiness and righteousness.
http://revivaltheology.net | | Back to Top | | |
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feelinahole
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2004
Total Posts : 754
| Posted 8/22/2004 7:28 AM (GMT -6) | | Icon: I would like to apologize for the tone of my post. While I strongly disagree with you in this area, my post was not representative of Christ's love. No  , I am not suggesting anything about Hitler. It was simply a positive byproduct of a horrible event. Ethics is a terrible misstep by Bonhoffer and shows that even theologians are human.
And, of course, as an open theist, I don't believe God controls all things, so I don't hold God responsible for what Hitler did or didn't do. | | Back to Top | | |
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