Haec tibi Scripsi (These things I wrote to you)


What is written often has a long-lasting impact, maturing with time: what begins as a silent sound roaming in the unconscious ends up engraved in ink. Not all that is expressed is welcomed nor desired, but, as pointed out by Bonhoeffer, “God does not fulfil all our desires, but all His promises.” Integrating this insight, it is difficult to speak of discipleship, ignoring Dietrich Bonhoeffer: his ‘Nachfolge’ (first published in 1937, translated as ‘The Cost of Discipleship’) sets the mode of this reflection. 

While questioning some of Bonhoeffer's biblical and theological notions, his witnessing the Magister and contributions to modern theological thought within a short time – he was hanged at the age of thirty-nine – remains much treasured. Hence, exploring Bonhoeffer’s insight concerning discipleship, we need to define it.

Bonhoeffer provides us with an insight by equating discipleship with ‘Following in the sense of coming consciously after the Magister’, which intends a maturing intimacy underlined by an ‘I-Thou’ inter-relationship, expressive of a practised commitment surpassing frivolity. 

Although tempting to ignore, this commitment demands a response to God’s continuing dialogue between the human person and the ‘Wholly Other’. Despite attempts to frame this dialogue in subjectivity, God directs its significance beyond, because “People look to the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16,7).

This challenging insight reminds us to experience dialogue as a key to God’s self-revelation. As this insight is explored, an understanding takes hold: it’s the Magister who gives meaning to our discipleship because His self-emptying lived out in His Incarnation, death, and resurrection, not only underlines but embraces faith’s truthfulness expressed in ‘committed love’. 

No hypothetical truth is intended. Rather, a renovated truth that speaks of love expressive of faith, strengthened by hope. Indeed, the Magister demands it: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14,6). Beyond this intended intimacy, discipleship is reduced to fantasy, limited to religious garbs, rituals, devotions and misinterpreted tradition, which entail misery as imposed illusions are integrated. When the charisma is no longer vivid, we try to retain it by writing about it: we presume its presence where none exists. 

Martin


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