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Complete 8 pages APA formatted article: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together

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Complete 8 pages APA formatted article: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together. Bonhoeffer intends to mean that not only should the Church be united in God’s love, but that it owes its allegiance to God alone (not any government).

Opening his discourse with a quote from Psalm 133:1, Bonhoeffer uses the Church, the community of believers to discuss the essence of Christian brotherhood, and the responsibility that proceeds therefrom. This is seen in Bonhoeffer’s assertion that without Christ, a discordant relationship between man and God and man and his fellow man would prevail since Christ is the initiator of brotherhood. Detailing the reality of the functions of the Church as a living and virile organism which he christened a community of love, Bonhoeffer as a pastor discusses the meaning and needs of the Body of Christ, in light of disparity between it and the Church in the Acts of the Apostles and the way the world esteemed the Church. Bonhoeffer uses three facets to discuss these matters that relate to the Church: the centrality of Christ, the divine reality of the Church, and the Church as a community of God’s love (Bonhoeffer, 1978).

Throughout the discourse, Bonhoeffer sees the Church as the place of meeting for Christianity. Bonhoeffer is categorical that as the body of the Church, Christians are to exercise spiritual gifts for the edification and to reach out through the Church, those who have not yet come to Christ. Bonhoeffer is poignant that Christians must remain united, despite their liturgical differences.

Bonhoeffer says that there is an empirical experience that characterizes the assembling of believers to commune with Christ. He asserts that the Church is not a theological or philosophical system of thought, but instead, God’s final revelation about His divine Self, as Christ Himself existing in the community. To Bonhoeffer, the import of this is that Christians should confess their sins one to another and that instead of waiting for a revelation before embarking on something, they should prayerfully and continuously consider that which is right. This is because, many a time, God has revealed His will to His people who only need to muster their courage and work their faith into action.