Confessing Evangelical

I've just started reading The Cost of Discipleship, after Pete mentioned Bonhoeffer in the comments to my previous post. I've previously tried to read this but failed to finish, partly because it is very strong meat indeed, partly because I was baffled by a lot of the specifically Lutheran background and terminology.

The first chapter, with its attack on "cheap grace" ("grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate") certainly makes a lot more sense now I've been a Lutheran for a couple of years. Take, for example, a paragraph like this:

So long as our Church holds the correct doctrine of justification, there is no doubt whatever that she is a justified Church! So they said, thinking that we must vindicate our Lutheran heritage by making this grace available on the cheapest and easiest terms. To be "Lutheran" must mean that we leave the following of Christ to legalists, Calvinists and enthusiasts - and all this for the sake of grace. We justified the world, and condemned as heretics those who tried to follow Christ.

Ouch.

But what I really wanted to quote from that first chapter was Bonhoeffer's thoughts on Luther's phrase "sin boldly" (pecca fortiter), as mentioned in my last post (and which I have posted on before). This phrase is often misunderstood (by people who have clearly never read another word of Luther!) as demonstrating Luther's belief that Christians are free to sin with impunity, as the ultimate in cheap grace. As Bonhoeffer puts it, summarising these objections:

Is this the proclamation of cheap grace, naked and unashamed, the carte blanche for sin, the end of all discipleship? Is this a blasphemous encouragement to sin boldly and rely on grace? Is there a more diabolical abuse of grace than to sin and rely on the grace which God has given? Is not the Roman Catechism quite right in denouncing this as the sin against the Holy Ghost?

Bonhoeffer's response is that it all depends on whether we regard pecca fortiter as a founding principle for the Christian life, or as the final answer to which we find ourselves forced at the end of our attempts to obey Christ; that is, whether we see it as "the data" or as "the answer to the sum":

Taken as the premiss [for our doctrine of grace], pecca fortiter acquires the character of an ethical principle, a principle of grace to which the principle of pecca fortiter must correspond. That means the justification of sin, and it turns Luther's formula into its very opposite.

For Luther "sin boldly" could only be his very last refuge, the consolation for one whose attempts to follow Christ had taught him that he can never become sinless, who in his fear of sin despairs of the grace of God. As Luther saw it, "sin boldly" did not happen to be a fundamental acknowledgement of his disobedient life; it was the gospel of the grace of God before which we are always and in every circumstance sinners. Yet that grace seeks us and justifies us, sinners though we are.

Take courage and confess your sin, says Luther, do not try to run away from it, but believe more boldly still. You are a sinner, so be a sinner, and don't try to become what you are not. Yes, and become a sinner again and again every day, and be bold about it.

But to whom can such words be addressed, except to those who from the bottom of their hearts make a daily renunciation of sin and of every barrier which hinders them from following Christ, but who nevertheless are troubled by their daily faithlessness and sin? Who can hear these words without endangering his faith but he who hears their consolation as a renewed summons to follow Christ? Interpreted in this way, these words of Luther become a testimony to the costliness of grace, the only genuine kind of grace there is.

The contrast is between "grace interpreted as a principle, pecca fortiter as a principle, grace at a low cost", which amounts simply to "a new law, which brings neither help nor freedom"; and grace as "a living word, pecca fortiter as our comfort in tribulation and as a summons to discipleship".

Labels: bonhoeffer, luther, sinning boldly