​Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote this book while spending several years running an “illegal” seminary in Germany (~1935-1938). He describes what life in a Christian community ought to be. The influence of Martin Luther weighs heavily throughout the whole book, and those not familiar with the Lutheran tradition (including myself) will likely be struck by some of the themes and ideas Bonhoeffer presents of a strongly Lutheran character. Life Together contains five chapters: Community, The Day with Others, The Day Alone, Ministry, Confession and Communion. I’ve been challenged and inspired and convicted by what Bonhoeffer says.
 
Chapter 1: Community

Bonhoeffer begins the chapter on Community by noting the amazing blessing of being able to gather with other believers. Many Christians, he claims, walk a lonely road whether on the mission field, in prison, under persecution, or in the isolation of infirmity and age: “Let [the Christian] thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.”

Bonhoeffer, like Luther, also takes a strong stand against isolated monastic life removed from the cares and concerns of the world:  “So the Christian, too [like Christ], belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes.” Bonhoeffer also emphasizes that Christ is at the center of Christian fellowship. It is for Christ’s sake that we need others, and it is in Christ alone that we approach others. The centrality of Christ in Christian fellowship, while seemingly obvious, takes on a striking severity for Bonhoeffer: “What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done for both of us.”

Desiring more from community than fellowship in Christ detracts from a truly Christian fellowship:

“One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood….In Christian brotherhood everything depends upon its being clear right from the beginning, first, that Christian Brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality. Second, that Christian brotherhood is a spiritual and not a psychic reality.”

Bonhoeffer highlights the common pitfalls of unrealistic and unrighteous expectations of the church. He talks about the “wish-dream” that people have about other believers and the Christian community. In the ideal church people would (fill in the blank): “invite me over,” “help me get a job,” “provide me with friendship,” “affirm my choices or lifestyle,” “give me a spouse,” etc. Bonhoeffer emphasizes that the church exists for Christ and by his will. It exists as it is – with a spiritual existence – not to satisfy our various dreams, desires, or hopes. As he notes:

“The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly.”
Throughout the book, Bonhoeffer is concerned about the pollution of impure desires, the risk of domination/manipulation, and unrealistic hopes and expectations of Christian fellowship. He also contrasts Christian community with human community. He writes:

“Christian brotherhood is not an ideal we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate….[But] [t]he basis of all human reality is the dark, turbid urges and desires of the human mind. The basis of the community of the Spirit is truth; the basis of human community is desire.”

And later he writes:

“Human love lives by uncontrolled and uncontrollable dark desires; spiritual love lives in the clear light of service ordered by the truth. Human love produces human subjection, dependence, constraint; spiritual love creates freedom of the brethren under the Word.”

I find it interesting that Bonhoeffer seeks to exorcise human desire from Christian community – and I am unsure whether I can go along with such a sentiment. It seems to me that he is reacting both to Romanticism (which had a particularly strong and powerful legacy in Germany – think Richard Wagner) and to an increasingly psychological view of the world (think Sigmund Freud).

Bonhoeffer also worries about the will to dominate others and the exercise of power. He talks about how, in contrast to Christian community where “God’s Word alone is binding,” in human community “men bind others to themselves.” Instead of relying on the work of the Spirit, “in human community, psychological techniques and methods” are used to govern or manipulate others.

As he discusses this further, Bonhoeffer sounds remarkably like C. S. Lewis in his works Till We Have Faces and The Screwtape Letters, which talk about the corruption of love – or really a kind of love that has become a demon (as Lewis describes Eros in The Four Loves) and attempts to dominate, control, or even absorb others into oneself. In fact, Bonhoeffer writes:

“Thus there is such a thing as human absorption” because “human community expresses a profound, elemental, human desire for community, for immediate contact with other human souls, just as in the flesh there is the urge for physical merger with other flesh. Such desire of the human soul seeks a complete fusion of I and Thou, whether this occur in the union of love or, what is after all the same thing, in the forcing of another person into one’s sphere of power and influence.”

This brings us back to the emphasis on Christ. He is the mediator of Christian community. Our unity is not one of dominating others or “absorbing” them to be like us. Rather, we are all being brought into Christ, being transformed into his likeness. Since Christ is the head of the Church, and the only source of authority, we are all on equal footing. And our community is governed by Him, not by merely human sentiment, emotion, or desire. As Bonhoeffer describes it:

“Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ’s sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means; it uses force. It desires to be irresistible, to rule.”

Although I have some hesitation about this view, it explains nicely why what parades as human love quickly turns to hate when the object of human love either refuses to go along with our wishes or disappoints us through sin or through being drawn to some other person or object other than ourselves. Bonhoeffer says:

“This is why human love becomes personal hatred when it encounters genuine spiritual love, which does not desire but serves. Human love makes itself an end in itself. It creates itself as an end, an idol which it worships, to which it must subject everything. It nurses and cultivates an ideal, it loves itself, and nothing else in the world. Spiritual love, however, comes from Jesus Christ, it serves him alone; it knows that it has no immediate access to other persons. Jesus Christ stands between the lover and the others he loves.”

Again, for those of you familiar with Lewis’ work, this sounds exactly like his description of Eros in The Four Loves. His novel, Till We Have Faces, dramatizes this whole process of love, possession, and hatred. The biblical story of Amnon and Tamar also illustrates this idea.

Bonhoeffer concludes his first chapter:

“It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together….For Jesus Christ alone is our unity. ‘He is our peace.’ Through him alone do we have access to one another, joy in one another, and fellowship with one another.”