Life Together

1939: The stimulus for the writing of Life Together was the closing of the preacher’s seminary at Finkenwalde. The treatise contains Bonhoeffer’s thoughts about the nature of Christian community based on the common life that he and his seminarians experienced at the seminary and in the “Brother’s House” there. Life Together was completed in 1938, published in 1939 as Gemeinsames Leben, and first translated into English in 1954.

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The Cost of Discipleship

1948: Bonhoeffer’s most widely read book begins, “Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.” That was a sharp warning to his own church, which was engaged in bitter conflict with the official Nazified state church, The book was first published in 1937 as Nachfolge(“Discipleship“). It soon became a classic exposition of what it means to follow Christ in a modern world beset by a dangerous and criminal government. At its center stands an interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount: what Jesus demanded of his followers—and how the life of discipleship is to be continued in all ages of the post- resurrection church.

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Christ the Center

1966: Translation of lectures given in Berlin in 1933. Originally titled as Christology.

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Ethics

1955: This is the culmination of Bonhoeffer’s theological and personal odyssey. Though caught up in the vortex of momentous forces in the Nazi period, Bonhoeffer systematically envisioned a radically Christocentric, incarnational ethic for a post-war world, purposefully recasting Christians’ relation to history, politics, and public life.

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Letters and Papers from Prison

In hundreds of letters, including letters written to his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer (selected from the complete correspondence, previously published as Love Letters from Cell 92), as well as official documents, short original pieces, and a few final sermons, the volume sheds light on Bonhoeffer’s active resistance to and increasing involvement in the conspiracy against the Hitler regime, his arrest, and his long imprisonment. Finally, Bonhoeffer’s many exchanges with his family, fiancée, and closest friends, demonstrate the affection and solidarity that accompanied Bonhoeffer to his prison cell, concentration camp, and eventual death.

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Von guten Mächten (“By Gracious Powers“)

This is a prayer he wrote shortly before his death. There are various English translations.

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