Church as a community and source of spiritual discipline

📎 To Bonhoeffer the Church as a community is a must and is a key source of spiritual discipline, together you can meditate on God's will and fulfill God's duty.

Influence of Nietzsche on Bonhoeffer

Nietzsche was a secular critic of Christianity who believed that Christianity was a toxic influence on humanity and something that we should get past.

Bonhoeffer agreed with Nietzsche in regards to Christianity becoming toxic.

Bonhoeffer's solution

Religionless Christianity

• Aim of religionless Christianity: Making a religion work in the new secular age
• Bonhoeffer lived in an era where secularism had replaced Christian understanding of reality, with the rise in science.
• Consequence of the "world coming of age", no longer needs reliance on legalism.
• Religionless Christianity is Christianity without irrelevant principles, cheap grace, and rusty swords.
• Would allow us to focus on what it means to live like a disciple of Jesus and follow God's will. However:

Bonhoeffer, by replacing some of the key belief systems emphasized in the bible is stripping Christianity of its core values and principles.

Has Bonhoeffer stripped Christianity of its core values and principles?

Religion is no longer necessary to maintain social order.

Hauerwas: without God, we lack meaning, purpose, and moral guidance. Its loss of void and uprose leads to a state of utopia and lack of freedom. Church as a sort of moral compass