Nazis' Christian Martyr
His Life
Beginnings
On the fourth of February, 6 years after the turn of the 19th to the 20th century the birth
of twins thrilled the new parents, the Bonhoeffers, in Breslau, Germany. The established
neurologist's family had added a daughter and a son, the latter they named Dietrich, and the former, Sabine. Eventually he would have eight siblings.
After some schooling in Tubingen, Dietrich attended for three years the University of Berlin
starting in 1924, and finally after his dissertation, Sanctorm Communio the twenty-one year old earned his
Doctorate -- with honors. He went to Barcelona in 1929 for year as curator and Student
pastor for the German congregation in Spain. His travels in Europe included a Roman adventure, as well. He was accepted to teach at this the University of Berlin in 1930 after finishing his qualifying thesis
(Habilitationsschrift) "Act and Being."
Halcyon School Days
The August of 1930 started a year when he did postgraduate work at Union Theological Seminary
in New York until he returned to his post lecturing theology at his alma mater in 1931.
While in New York he did regular work at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.
He also traveled to Mexico and Cuba. In his day, Bonhoeffer, despite his youth,
could more than ably communicate the intricacies and sophisticated ideas out of a German and
English theology.
Church Position
Dietrich became Pastor Bonhoeffer in an ordination at Saint Matthias Church in Berlin on
November of 1931. The same year he attended the World Alliance for Promoting International
Friendship Through the Churches -- which opened more his awareness of the global faith that he started
abroad. For that group he was named Youth Secretary for Germany and Central Europe.
He started his evangelical movement around this time that strove to deal with correct
doctrine for the Church. Nazi propaganda claiming that they were bringing moral and
spiritual renewal to Germany (and ultimately Europe and beyond) did not penetrate Dietrich
Bonhoeffer's true discernment of this movement as it did for so much of the world's
Christians having "itching ears."
Bonhoeffer published his winter semester of 31-32 lectures "Creation and Fall." Events of 1933,
namely the election by one vote of Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany, prompted his
continued criticism of National Socialisms' Aryanism and its hatred of everything
else, especially the Jews. He belonged to a group that openly rebutted the pro-Nazi German
Christians. By April he wrote that civil disobedience was correct when opposing unrighteous
political movements. His last seminar on G.W.F. Hegel and published lecture in Berlin
"Christ the Center," an example of his emphasis on Christology, was in that summer of
1933. Before he began to pastor at the Sydenham German Evangelical Church he helped
organize the Pastor's Emergency League in September 1933. This year he started to
question Christians' avoiding sin when obsessed with questionable politics. He authored
the Bethel Confession His belief in the planetwide brotherhood of the Body of
Christ needed forgiveness and responsibility. He, as a result of his life, is most
noted on this other focus -- ethics. He befriended the prominent George Bell, Bishop
in the Anglican Church while Dietrich assumed a pastorate at London's Reform Church
of Saint Paul. In 1934 he became a member of Bishop Bell's Universal Christian
Council for Life and Work (UCCLW).
Storm Clouds on the Horizon
More auspices of that year, 1933 proved evil -- by April Hitler's first official act was to
order a day's boycott of Jewish businesses. Factories and stores witnessed the pickets; but,
Julie Bonhoeffer, Dietrich's brave grandmother marched right passed the SS stormtroopers, and
bought strawberries in one of the Jewish department stores. An American visitor of the
Bonhoeffer's witnessed: "They didn't dare take this elderly woman. She was very alert
and walked elegantly. So nobody was going to stop her!" The next step was the removal
and banning of Jews in public office and even church posts, Christian or not.
Even though at this time until 1935, Bonhoeffer was still a pastor in England, he kept
in touch with the opposition, who would become the "Confessing Church" (Bekennende Kirche)
which included Karl Barth and was led by Martin Niemoeller. This "Confessing Church" would involve about a third of Germany's Protestant leaders. Also, theologically, Barth's neo-Orthodoxy would influence Bonhoeffer throughout his career.
The Confessing Church
As a member of the UCCLW he toured Europe and tried to put those of the ecumenical movement
on a much needed "
guilt trip" in behalf of the beleaguered Confessing Church being maybe the
only ones with
orthodoxy and pacifism. The Confessing Church was born in Barmen, Germany in
May 1934. The Barmen Declaration of 1934 officially made complaint against the incursion of Nazism in the German Church. August of 1934 Bonhoeffer preached a dynamic message convincing attendees to
denounce the Church - State affiliation with
Fascism and promote peace at the youth
conference in
Fano, Denmark. Because the Nazis took over all of the theological
seminaries, in April of 1935
Zingst, on the
Baltic sea, became the new home for the
underground Preacher's Seminary for the Confessing Church until June when
Finkenwalde,
Pomerania provided the haven. It was here that the confessing community was emphasized
in his teaching. This coincides with the time Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in the
spring from Great Britain. This group eventually seemed to Dietrich to lean to much
in an overly apolitical, more militant, and especially with an overabundance of a
neutral outlook toward the Semitic
persecutions. But, he stayed involved with them
to 1939. Inspired by these heady days he wrote "Spiritual Care" and other
Pastoral
ministry pieces, and his two most famous books:
The Cost of Discipleship (1937)
and
Life Together (1938).
On August 5, 1936 the professor was no longer welcome to teach at the University of Berlin.
Deeper Underground
The
Gestapo raided
Finkenwald Seminary in 1937 arresting 27. Now, Bonhoeffer devised
"collective pastorates" where those learning the ministry hooked up with individual underground
pastors and he met with them for classes. He was rethinking his
Gandhi-like pacifism seeing
patriotism in treason. In February of the next year Bonhoeffer was introduced to the
resistance circle by his brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyl. This conspiracy of political and
military overthrow of Hitler and the Nazi regime was aborted with the
Munich agreement.
Around this time he wrote his
Ethics whereby he declared: "There is now no law
behind which the responsible man can seek cover." He expected believers to serve Jesus Christ
with moral responsibility guided by obedience to His ways even to the point of civil legal
disregard.
On the second of June 1939, Bonhoeffer went back to
New York's Union Theological Seminary to teach;
but the threats of war only caused this man with a great heart from God for his people, to
return to Germany and the resistance on July 27th of that year. His prophetic rationale:
I have had time to think and to pray about my situation, and that
of my nation, and to have God's will for me clarified. I have come to the conclusion I have
made a mistake in coming to America. I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction
of the Christian life in Germany after the war if I did not share in the trials of this time
with my people. Christians in Germany face the terrible alternative of willing the defeat of
their nation in order that civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation
and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose.
But I cannot make that choice in security.
The Nazis Clamp Down
1940 came offering more misery to Bonhoeffer's ministry when the police put a gag order on his
preaching, but
Dohnanyl arranged to get Dietrich a job with the staff of the Abwehr (military intelligence)
department. He could have gathered crucial data and used this courier position and his fame,
especially considering his outreach across denominational lines, to garner outside resistance
assistance in foreign journeys. Unfortunately the Main Security office was run by the SS and
they busted the Abwehr -- they thought was unnecessary competition. By March of 1941 Bonhoeffer
was not allowed to write, publish or distribute anything.
In 1943 the 37 year old
Dietrich, who in January just had become engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer, became involved
in Operation 7, which was the smuggling of Jews out of Germany into neutral Switzerland.
On April 5 of that year, Bonhoeffer continued his ministry -- in Berlin's Tegel prison --
joining Dohnanyi and sister Christine, where inmates and guards as witnesses told of his
giving counsel and soul nourishment. He was still allowed to see family and comrades,
and to write. How much this paralleled the Apostle Paul. We have the opportunity to glimpse into his intermittent experiences with
correspondence including love letters from his fiance. One would think that all this
disappointment would have embittered the pastor, who could have felt like the Hebrew
Joseph, instead he reminded:
We in the resistance have learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the
perspective of the excluded, the ill treated, the
powerless, the
oppressed and despised .... so
that personal suffering has become a more useful key for understanding the world than personal
happiness.
On July 20, 1944 a suitcase bomb placed under the conference table by conspirators, including
some of the Abwehr group, exploded, but failed to kill Hitler. Initially Bonhoeffer, who was
moved on February 7, 1945 to Buchenwald Concentration Camp, was not tied to them, but the
Gestapo found Admiral Canaris' diary in April that evidenced his connection, and now, along
with others, were sent to Flossenburg. Exactly two years after his first arrest, he was
ordered to be annihilated by Hitler. On the same day that his brother-in-law was killed at
Sachsenhausen Camp, April 9, 1945, at Flossenburg, a stripped naked Bonhoeffer, only thirty-nine years of age, knelt for his
last prayer before being hanged from a gallows that could be called a "Twisted Cross."
Writings
- (Poem from Prison--published in 1946)
Who Am I?
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell's confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a squire from his country-house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equally, smilingly, proudly,
Like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really all that which
other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like
a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though
hands were
compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for
the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for
neighborliness,
Tossing in expectation of great
events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at
an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at
thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to
it all?
Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and
tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite
before others,
And before myself a contemptibly
woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like
a beaten army,
Fleeing in disorder from victory
already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these
lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O
God, I am Thine!
(1943-45) Letters and Papers from Prison -- last years writings of his life
were compiled and published posthumously in 1951 by associate Eberhard Bethage. These were the
primary post-war source of initiating his Western popularity.
(1943-45) Love Letters from Cell 92 -- are the published letters of
fiance, Maria von Wedermeyer.
His Scholarly Work (bypassed by contemporaries)
-
(1930)Sanctorum Communio
- (1931) Act and Being
- (1933) Creation and Fall
His Tracts (were more popular in his lifetime)
(1937) The Cost of Discipleship
This is where he discusses 'costly grace' versus 'cheap grace.'
(1939) Life Together
He emphasizes balance in the communities Christian discipline.
(1939) Ethics -- published in 1949
Collected Works -- the comprehensive compilation whose 1958-1974
German publication
is yet to be completely translated into English.
Theological Contributions
Some of his theological assertions concerning man's independence, even from God, which were taken more liberally in the 60's. These perhaps misunderstood ideas like "Religion-less Christianity" unfortunately were not more elaborated upon more fully due to the premature death of this great Christian.
The intellectual community is aware of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ethical musings, but they stem
from
an intense Biblical perspective scanned here:
- Separation of the Church from the World
Whether a pacifist or resistance sympathizer, Bonhoeffer was consistent with his strong
feeling
of the Churches not conforming to the popular worldview, but following the Mind of Christ.
- Costly Grace versus Cheap Grace
He was fighting the good fight against what is called, also, Easy Believism,
that is taking advantage of God's ultimate forgiveness on the cross. Sometimes known as pietism, or an
holiness movement was an answer to the problem of Calvinism's teaching in layman's terms: "One
Saved, always Saved." The cavalier attitude that leads to willful sinning is the opposite
of what that unearned, undeserved sacrifice in our stead giving us freedom and power
to live sanctified lives.
Religion-less Christianity
-
He saw in history a drifting since the 1200's regarding man's relationship, individually and
corporately as becoming a set of
rituals, rules and philosophies "winning" recruits that run into escapism -- the very opposite of participating and or
relieving suffering fellowmen.
Jesus the Man for others
He wants us to follow the template set down by Jesus himself, one interactive in people's lives
in the good times and bad.
The Church for Others
Contrary to some modern interpreters, Bonhoeffer did not want to completely secularize the
institution, but he continued to promote the ordinances, fellowship and the worship with the
congregants. The separation from the cosmos (Plato's world system) was while we are in the midst of
mankind, striving to reeducate modern error of total (or even partial) independence from the
Almighty and His Word.
Besides the works of fiction, of which we are eagerly awaiting translation, Bonhoeffer was a musician; and
it would have been interesting to know what else this giant of a man would have done if he
hadn't demonstrated so dramatically (and literally) that there is "...no greater love than when a man lays
down his life for others..."
Source: Great Leaders of the Christian Faith, Moody Press
Evangelical Dictionary of Theology; ed. Walter A. Elwell, Baker: (1984).
The Moody Handbook of Theology; Paul Enns, Moody Press: (1989).
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