Throughout Life Together, Bonhoeffer defines the Church as the meeting grounds of Christianity. He struggled with the moral dilemma of obeying the authorities or following the higher laws of Christ. He found it hard to accept that most pastors considered the way the Nazis treated the Jews to be acceptable, which they expressed through inaction. Because this gave him an inside view to the needs of the Body of Christ, he was able to articulate what he saw as the gap in reality between what the Church should look like according to the Book of Acts, and what the Church actually looked like before the eyes of the world. In the work, he detailed the necessity of the church functioning as a living and vibrant organism, what he called a "community of love". He writes that community is not something to be taken for granted.
He opens with the quote from Psalms 133:1: "Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." He then gives several examples of times when we are to come together through praise. Christ opened up the way to God and to our brother". In his writing he expounds upon his premise, "Without Christ there is discord between God and man and between man and man. He believed that God bestows human solidarity because people are in fact their "brother's keeper," paraphrasing Genesis 4:9. Other works of Bonhoeffer include The Cost of Discipleship and a compilation of letters that he wrote while imprisoned by the Third Reich.Īt a time when hatred and suspicion were on the rise due to the world wars, Bonhoeffer expounded to the reader on love and living in harmony. Life Together ( German: Gemeinsames Leben) is a book by the German Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written while he taught at an underground seminary.
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