SØREN KIERKEGAARD, DIETRICH BONHOEFFERR

 

And the Problem of Inauthentic Christianity

For both Søren Kierkegaard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the deepest problems of Christianity is the possibility of claiming the Christian faith without allowing it to become a way of life. Their criticism is therefore directed less at occasional religious practice as such than at the separation between religious profession and existence: the person who invokes God, speaks in the language of faith, or identifies as Christian while remaining largely untouched by the demands of discipleship.

For Kierkegaard, this problem is inseparable from what he called “Christendom.” He distinguished Christianity from a society in which Christianity has become a cultural institution, a social identity, or an inherited convention. In such a society, almost everyone may consider himself Christian, while the existential difficulty of becoming a Christian has effectively disappeared. Kierkegaard's Practice in Christianity is explicitly concerned with the accommodation of Christianity to culture and with the misuse of grace by both individuals and institutions.

This distinction is fundamental. To be Christian is not, for Kierkegaard, primarily to possess the correct beliefs or to belong to the correct institution. It is to exist in relation to Christ. Christianity therefore cannot remain merely something one knows, professes, or occasionally invokes. It has to enter into one's concrete existence. The Christian ideal is consequently demanding precisely because it involves imitation (imitatio Christi): one's relation to Christ becomes visible in the way one lives.

This explains the severity of Kierkegaard's attack on conventional Christianity. The danger is not simply hypocrisy in the ordinary sense of deliberately pretending to believe something one does not believe. There is a subtler and perhaps more disturbing possibility: a person can sincerely regard himself as Christian while never confronting what Christianity actually demands of him. Social convention makes this possible because the surrounding culture has already declared him Christian.

Kierkegaard therefore shifts the question from “Do you believe?” to something closer to “What does your belief make of your existence?” Faith becomes an existential category. It is not exhausted by a proposition about God; it concerns the individual's relation to God and therefore the individual's way of existing.

Bonhoeffer develops a remarkably parallel criticism, although in a different historical and theological context. In The Cost of Discipleship (1937), he formulates the distinction between “cheap grace” and “costly grace.” Cheap grace is Christianity reduced to its benefits: forgiveness, consolation, religious reassurance, and membership, without the corresponding demand of discipleship. Bonhoeffer explicitly describes it as grace without discipleship, without the cross, and without the living Christ.

The crucial point is that Bonhoeffer does not oppose grace to obedience. On the contrary, he thinks that genuine grace produces discipleship. Grace is not something that allows the believer to remain exactly as he was; it is the gift that calls him into a transformed existence. Hence his famous distinction: cheap grace costs nothing because it demands nothing; costly grace is costly because it involves the whole person.

This gives Bonhoeffer's argument a strong ethical dimension. Religious language becomes suspect when it is detached from action. To speak about forgiveness while refusing repentance, to speak about Christ while refusing discipleship, or to invoke God's grace while treating grace as permission to remain unchanged is to turn Christianity into a kind of religious consolation system.

There is therefore an important similarity between the two thinkers. Kierkegaard asks whether Christianity has become a social convention; Bonhoeffer asks whether grace has become a commodity. Kierkegaard is concerned with the illusion produced by Christendom; Bonhoeffer with the illusion produced by cheap grace. In both cases, Christianity becomes easier by becoming less demanding.

And this is perhaps the most interesting point: neither thinker would define the problem simply as hypocrisy. Hypocrisy suggests that someone consciously knows he is pretending. Kierkegaard's and Bonhoeffer's criticism is deeper. A person may genuinely believe in God and still live in such a way that his Christianity has little existential significance. The danger is not merely lying about one's faith; it is turning faith into something that does not have the power to contradict, transform, or judge one's ordinary existence.

Kierkegaard would consequently be suspicious of a Christianity that appears mainly when it is socially convenient. Bonhoeffer would be suspicious of a Christianity that appears mainly when its consolations are needed. Both would insist that the decisive question is not simply whether God is mentioned, believed in, or invoked, but whether faith entails a form of life.

In that sense, their criticism can be condensed into a single question:

What happens to a person's life if his belief in God is actually true?

For both Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer, that question is considerably more demanding than asking whether someone believes in God. It moves Christianity from identity to existence, from profession to practice, and from consolation to discipleship.