Baptism

At a glance

Summary

Bonhoeffer opens by naming a real difference in New Testament vocabulary that Part IV must reckon with: the Synoptic Gospels speak of discipleship almost entirely as following a visibly present Jesus, while Paul, writing after the resurrection and ascension, rarely uses that language at all, preferring to describe the Christian's relation to Christ through dying, being buried, and being raised with him — imagery centred on baptism rather than on physically walking behind a teacher.

Rather than treating this as a problem to be resolved by preferring one writer over the other, Bonhoeffer insists the two vocabularies describe a single reality from two different vantage points in salvation history. Following was the appropriate way to describe total, costly commitment to Christ while he still walked visibly among his followers; once the risen and ascended Christ is present to the whole church everywhere rather than to a few companions on the roads of Galilee, baptism becomes the necessary and equally total way of describing the same all-encompassing transfer of a life into his death and resurrection.

This lets Bonhoeffer draw baptism directly into everything Parts I and II already established: baptism is not a symbolic ritual added onto a private decision, but the point at which the old self genuinely dies and a new self, united with the risen Christ, actually begins. It is, in that sense, exactly as costly and exactly as much a gift as the call to leave one's nets ever was — the same costly grace, now given its full, ecclesial shape rather than its individual, first-century one.

He closes by insisting baptism gives the disciples' new life a finality nothing afterward can casually reverse: having died with Christ and been raised, the baptised no longer live under sin's old claim, whatever their ongoing struggle with it. This is the gift, Bonhoeffer says, given to the very first disciples in a form suited to a Church that would soon span the whole world rather than a handful of Galilean towns.

Key points

• The Synoptic Gospels describe discipleship as following a visibly present Jesus; Paul, writing after the resurrection, describes it mainly through dying and rising with Christ in baptism.
• Bonhoeffer treats these as two descriptions of one reality from different points in salvation history, not competing or contradictory accounts.
• Baptism is the point where the old self genuinely dies and a new self, united with the risen Christ, begins — not a symbolic add-on to a private decision.
• This makes baptism as costly and as much a gift as the original call to leave everything and follow Jesus in Galilee.
• Bonhoeffer stresses baptism's finality: the baptised no longer live under sin's old claim, whatever their ongoing struggle with it in practice.

Related Scripture

• Romans 6:3–6
• Colossians 2:12
• Galatians 3:27
• 1 Peter 3:21

For reflection and discussion

1. Does thinking of baptism as costly — the same total transfer of life that ‘leaving your nets’ once meant — change how you think about your own baptism?
2. Bonhoeffer refuses to rank Gospel and Pauline vocabulary against each other. Where else in your reading of Scripture have you been tempted to pit one biblical author's emphasis against another's, rather than holding both together?
3. Practically, what would it look like this week to live as someone Bonhoeffer says no longer lives under sin's old claim, even amid an ongoing struggle with it?