Bonhoeffer on Cheap Grace

Is Bonhoeffer right about “cheap grace”?   I do believe that “cheap grace” is a problem.   In the context in which Bonhoeffer wrote I am not sure that “cheap grace” was the principle enemy.   I am not sure that “cheap grace” is what drove the Nazi ideology as much as it was a different gospel.   The adherents of the Nazi program were as committed and willing to sacrifice for Hitler as Bonhoeffer was for Christ.   Having said that I do believe that “cheap grace” is a widespread problem in American Christianity and have no doubt that it was in Germany as well.   Many Germans may have believed that their faith did not require or compel them to resist the state.   Bonhoeffer’s insistence on returning to Germany rather than staying in the U.S. is a testimony to his radical devotion to the costly discipleship.   Cheap grace in Bonhoeffer’s view is grace that demands nothing from the recipient.   Bonhoeffer argues that it has ruined more Christians than “any commandment of works” (55).   This seems to me to be a bit of an overstatement, but I would agree that it is a major problem within the Christian church.   The church I grew up in struggled more with legalism than cheap grace so I am hesitate to agree entirely with Bonhoeffer.   Bonhoeffer both writes within a different era and within a different cultural environment than I.   The segment of the church I grew up in was a product of a mix of the puritan tradition and Calvinism.   This segment of the Christian tradition operates within the law model and struggles with legalism more than with grace abuse.[1]   I believe both are abuses and distortions of the Gospel and that both are ways of cheapening the call to discipleship.[2]   In many ways the greater and deeper problem may be anti-intellectualism.   There is little cheaper than that which you don’t have to think too long or deeply about.   There is little to no struggle at either end of the spectrum.   William Muehl illustrates the naive simplicity with a story about man who...