Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the now famous theologian who was martyred by the Nazis in 1945, wrote this book on the eve of World War II. It resulted from his experience as head of a seminary of the German Confessing Church at Finkenwalde near Stettin. Here many of the pastors who witnessed against Hitler received their inspiration. It was, as Professor John D. Godsey points out in his study of The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a kind of theological education that was startlingly new in Germany: a communal life in which Jesus Christ's call to discipleship was taken seriously.