There is a media company that sends me books to review. I choose from titles they make available. Recently they made Costly Grace: A Contemporary View of Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship by Jon Walker available. I’ve read The Cost of Discipleship a few times, and I was curious to see what he had done with it. I have not yet completed the book (I have less than 100 pages to go), but the deadline looms. I don’t think anything in the rest of the book will fundamentally change the review.
First an observation. With the downturn in the economy, editors must have been on the low priority list. The text was laden with errors leading me to believe it hadn’t been proofed. This is a trend I’ve noticed lately. This goes beyond the misuse of apostrophes. Wrong words are used or words are repeated. Note to publishers- the computer won’t help you find and correct many errors. Hire someone who can read!
Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming. The whiny man on the grammatical soapbox has been sacked.
Walker follows the pattern of Bohnoeffer’s classic book. He starts off with a quote from Bonhoeffer’s chapter, the passage of Scripture used and then interacts with Bonhoeffer. He’s not critical of Bonhoeffer, at least in any significant way. He’s trying to make it more accessible, and in touch with contemporary concerns.
At the end of the chapter he has some helpful bullet points. He has a summary statement followed by examples of “fallen thinking” & “kingdom thinking”. It ends with the call to choose, a way to apply the truth covered in the chapter.
It is a readable (aside from textual errors) (the one responsible for sacking those responsible has also been sacked), updated treatment of Bonhoeffer’s book. It doesn’t add anything significant. It isn’t concerned with wrestling with the validity of Bonhoeffer’s conclusions or arguments. In other words this is not a critical treatment of Bonhoeffer’s book (both positive or negative).
After reading Walker’s book, I am interested in 2 things: re-reading The Cost of Discipleship, and seeing if there is a reliable critical treatment of the book.
I want to re-read it to see if the areas of disagreement I found were in Bonhoeffer, or Walker. It has been a few years since I’ve read it. I don’t re-read books very often because my ADD goes into full assault mode when I do. But here are some thoughts I did have as I read:
You get the sense he plucks Bonhoeffer out of his historical context (with the exception of his issues with Nazism). Bonhoeffer was battling an issue that had arisen in German Lutheranism. Similar problems erupt in American evangelicalism, but they are not typically rooted in academia and externalizing theological systems. Bonhoeffer was not what we’d consider and evangelical (regardless of how wide a category that is becoming). Like Barth and the Niebuhrs he falls into the camp of neo-orthodoxy. He said many things that American Evangelicals like, but he wasn’t one and had different theological pre-suppositions.
Bonhoeffer was arguing against a credal understanding of grace that did not touch the heart. Walker, building on this seems to be anti-doctrinal. Doctrinal “systems” can save us from a host of heresies. But we must live our theology, not just intellectually accept a theology. Paul commanded Timothy to teach sound doctrine, and to watch his life and doctrine closely. You get the idea from the book that doctrine is not what matters- how you live is what really matters. This can result in “following Jesus” but without first entering the narrow gate (this illustration was used by Greg Gilbert in his chapter in Proclaiming a Cross-Centered Theology). Doctrine is not our enemy.
There seems to be a very unclear relationship between the Christian and the Law expressed in Walker’s book. I’m not sure if that is his, or also Bonhoeffer’s. Bonhoeffer, coming from a Lutheran background, would have a different view of law and gospel than I do as a Reformed Christian. I’m not sure if Walker embraces a Lutheran view though he’s Baptist, or hasn’t really thought these matters out.
Perhaps it is because I recently read The Marrow of Modern Divinity, and listened to Sinclair Ferguson’s lectures again, but some of statements came across as “conditional grace” to me. This is the primary reason I want to re-read Bonhoeffer again. Often, in counteracting an error we can err in the opposite direction. He was counteracting a form of license rooted in a misunderstanding of justification (and its connection to sanctification). The response sounds, at times, like “conditional grace” not free grace. Conditional grace is a form of legalism in which grace is granted on condition of our obedience.
So, I have some concerns about the theology of the book. This is important since it is written for the layperson, not the theologian. It could more quickly and easily lead people astray through either confusion or misunderstanding the things I noted above. Walker does make some very helpful statements, and we need to know that Christ does bid us to die (to quote Bonhoeffer). If Paul David Tripp we reviewing this, he’d probably say this book is deficient in the comfort of the gospel and over-emphasizing the call of the gospel. That’s how I sometimes felt as I read.
Cavman Considers 
Your comment about Luther and your position as a reformed Christian in the context of “law and gospel” was unclear to me. According to your understanding of what it means to be a reformed Christian, who would place greater emphasis on the role of the moral law and obedience to God’s commands in the life of the Christian – the Lutheran or the reformed Christian?
I didn’t actually mention Luther, but the view of Lutheranism (as I understand it). Luther, in his treatise on Good Works, upheld the law as a ‘rule for life’. However, I find Reformed Theology banging that drum more consistently.
I don’t read many Lutheran writers, but the Law & Gospel discussion (regarding justification) can be pushed so hard at times that the law is excluded. This was the problem Bonhoeffer was fighting- justification w/out sanctification.
Some smaller Reformed groups, the Trinity Foundation for instance, seem to have done this in pushing justification by faith alone so hard they forgot that such a faith is not alone, but will produce works.
What is clear to me, however, is that the relationship between the Christian & the Law is NOT clearly expressed in this particular book.
Thanks for the reply. This discussion touches on truths so vital to the Christian life. The free grace extended to us when God adopts us into his family in no way contradicts, and in fact perfectly corresponds with, our duty to live in obedience to God’s commands. In the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the grace of the gospel and the moral law of God “do sweetly comply.” (WCF, Chapter 19.) As Christ “subdues and enables” our wills, we can “do that freely, and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law, requires to be done.”
Gospel obedience leads to two questions. As we obey God by grace through faith, what will be the end (or goal) of such obedience, and, what will be the cost? A couple of recent readings from Calvin are helpful. First, in the “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life,” Calvin said: “The goal of the new life is that God’s children exhibit melody and harmony in their conduct. What melody? The song of God’s justice. What harmony? The harmony between God’s righteousness and our obedience.” Perhaps we worry too much about our righteousness, especially whether we or others are being “self-righteous.” Such worry stems from the wrong focus, I think. We should concern ourselves with our duty, which is to live obediently to our Lord’s commands. After all, there really is no one who is truly righteous, except for the Lord.
Second, and more to the point of your post about costly grace, there is a condition that follows, rather than precedes, the receiving of God’s grace. In Romans 8:17, Paul says, “And if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” Calvin explains the condition is this verse as follows: “Nor is that (conditional “proviso”) to be dreaded which some fear, that Paul thus ascribes the cause of our eternal glory to our labours; for this mode of speaking is not unusual in Scripture. He denotes the order, which the Lord follows in dispensing salvation to us, rather than the cause; for he has already sufficiently defended the gratuitous mercy of God against the merits of works. When now exhorting us to patience, he does not show whence salvation proceeds, but how God governs his people.” In other words, by his grace freely and unconditionally given, God made me a partaker of Christ’s life. However, as I live in Christ and follow his life pattern, I will find that the grace first freely given will cost me as I continue in it. Christ’s life included suffering, and so will mine if I follow him. That is the cost of discipleship; that is costly grace. I will experience suffering as I mortify my old nature and walk in my new life in Christ, more and more, particularly as my efforts touch and concern those who are offended by Christ (including many who name Christ). Regardless, I have every assurance that this grace, though costly, will be neither hard nor heavy.
I don’t know if this helps clarify things, but I spoke with an LCMS minister this week and looked through some of the Lutheran confessions. He said that confessionally, Lutherans hold to the threefold use of the Law as Reformed do, but there is a tendency to emphasize the Law’s condemnation of sin more than the other aspects. I don’t think any Lutheran would deny that the Law is a guide to Christian life.
I’m now lost.
Yes, grace will be costly in that I will leave things I, as a sinner, loved. There is the reality of self-denial as a response to grace.
The problem is, was Bonhoeffer teaching a conditional grace (aside from faith as an instrumental cause)? I’ll have to re-read him. At times Walker sounds like he teaches a conditional grace. That would be a problem.