Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) could have made different — yet acceptable for a Christian, even a Christian pastor — decisions for his life that would have surely spared him from Nazi prisons and execution. Yet he resolutely made his choices and believed he could not do otherwise.
One of the most brilliant theologians and writers of the 20th century, it was Bonhoeffer’s call to wrestle with some of the most difficult, pressing questions for a Christian living in our world during some of its most evil times. Bonhoeffer was no ivory-tower academic – he sought at his deepest level to live as a Christian faithfully and fully in this broken world, yet glorifying God in the weakness of our humanity. His life and writings provide rich contributions to the Christian themes of the gospel, a biblical church, grace, discipleship, community, justice, and obedience. His life teaches much about living for Christ when one is more motivated by advancing God’s kingdom than desire for personal comfort and happiness. Eric Mataxas’ biography, Bonhoeffer – Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2010, 2020; Nelson Books), is comprehensive and captures the drama and tragedy of his life and times, as well as the fascinating inner workings of his piercing, obedient, and faithful mind.
The book raises a puzzle: How could the horror and evil of Nazism rise in Germany, in the heart of civilized and cultured Europe, home of Luther, a nation ostensibly steeped in Christianity? Bonhoeffer loved Germany, but he came to see that the church in his country had been infected by what he called “cheap grace.” The progressive theological project was making great headway throughout the West. To Bonhoeffer, the prevailing theological winds were reducing the church to something unrecognizable. (And not just in Germany – Bonhoeffer spent time at New York’s most celebrated seminary in the early 1930s and came away bemused and exasperated at its theological shallowness.) Bonhoeffer believed in costly grace. Christ had paid an unimaginable price to redeem us. All Christian thought and life started there and was sustained by continually returning to it. Such costly grace restored not only our relationship to God but all our relationships. It naturally required a response that we live sacrificially for others out of gratitude for the gospel. In contrast, cheap grace took the spotlight off Christ and his cross and resurrection. Christianity was often reduced to a teaching that we are loved and accepted as we are.
To Bonhoeffer, the day’s theological progressives had elastic, unbiblical ideas about God. At root, God (or the idea of God) was there for our benefit, and He wasn’t particular about how we thought of him (or if we even believed in him). Bonhoeffer graciously yet forcefully and effectively stood directly against such notions. For example, in his letter to his theologically liberal brother-in-law, he outlines his views on revelation and man’s relationship to God:
“If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible …”
Perhaps no question pursued Bonhoeffer more than, “What is the church?” His heart was often broken by the German church’s response to the rise of National Socialism. Given the catastrophe, from the German perspective, of the resolution of The Great War (WW1) and the resulting deprivations and national insults, Germany was fertile ground for a nationalistic uprising, even twisted nationalism that scapegoated the Jews. But Bonhoeffer was blindsided and increasingly dismayed by the feeble resistance and eventual capitulation of the official German church. A big part of the answer to, “What is the church?”, for him, was the new covenant enabling all people, Jew or Gentile, male or female, to stand as brothers at the foot of the cross. Bonhoeffer had Jewish relatives by marriage who were also practicing Christians, even theologians. Yet the German church’s response to the Nazi’s ever-ratcheting persecution of the Jews was bewildering and heartbreaking for Bonhoeffer, forcing him to wonder whether the church was rotting at its core.
As the Nazis introduced their program, the German church was forced to respond. An early, dismaying indicator was the church’s reaction to a certain Nazi proclamation. Ominously named the Aryan Paragraph, it was a series of laws preventing Jews from working in government, including the state church. By and large, the Protestant Christian leaders were willing to entertain the Aryan Paragraph, reasoning that Jews who were baptized Christians could form their own church.
The belief that races could be separate but equal was prevalent and popular among whites in America’s Jim Crow South. Bonhoeffer had seen it firsthand in his travels during the late 1920s. He had also seen the church up close in several countries and cultures, including worshiping with African Americans in Harlem (for whom he had great admiration and kinship). The Aryan Paragraph in his own country prompted him to think even deeper on the ever-nagging question, What is the church?
As always, he attempted to approach the question with complete fidelity to Scripture and his theological convictions. There would be no compromise despite the obvious dangers. God and truth were more real to him than the world’s pseudo-security. His was often a lonely voice, a modern-day Jeremiah, misunderstood but resolute in obedience.
He published his essay, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” and in the process put himself ever after in the Gestapo’s sights. What was the proper relationship of the church to the state in Germany? Three things, he said: (1) The church was to question the state regarding its actions and their legitimacy—to help the state be what God had ordained. (2) “To aid the victims of state action.” The church “has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society,” and here he took a bold leap, “even if they do not belong to the Christian community.” (On hearing this, some pastors walked out of the conference where he first read the document.) (3) It is sometimes not enough to help those crushed by the evil actions of a state; at some point the church must directly take action against the state to stop it from perpetrating evil. This was allowed only when the church sees its very existence threatened by the state, and when the state ceases to be the state as defined by God.
Bonhoeffer saw early in the Nazi horror, in the spring of 1933, that the church had to stand with the Jews. This was a radical idea to almost all, including his allies. But for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he could not do otherwise, and he soon enough would live true to his radical words, no matter the cost.
To Bonhoeffer, obedience to God required action. He could not stand by, observe evil, and do nothing. The Nazis coopted the church, so Bonhoeffer helped start what was called The Confessing Church (since they confessed Christ), a group of non-official churches that tried to stay one step ahead of Nazi regulation and persecution.
As often has happened in Christian history, out of persecution came some fruit. The Confessing Church had need to train pastors to staff their churches. Bonhoeffer’s deep desire was to see a church that had intimacy with Christ and was committed to hearing God and joyfully obeying, come what may. But how could this be accomplished when prayer and meditating on the Scriptures were not taught in German seminaries? Bonhoeffer would teach that and more in the under-the-radar seminary he would run.
Bonhoeffer wanted his seminary to have deep Christian community, with the aim of living the way Christ instructed in the Sermon on the Mount, not just as a member of a seminary, but as a disciple of Christ. The seminarians would try to live as the new church did, documented in the book of Acts. Bonhoeffer’s graduates would not be out-of-touch theologians, unconcerned with how to live an authentic Christian life and helping others live that life. Nothing quite like this experiment had been attempted in Protestant circles. The story of that experiment is documented in Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, perhaps the classic text on Christian community.
By early 1943, the Gestapo had finally caught up to Bonhoeffer and his involvement in the plots to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer was imprisoned from April 1943 until his execution two years later, a few weeks before the war ended. His remarkable letters from prison and the testimony of guards and fellow prisoners show a man who trusted completely in his God, continued to think deeply about Christian life and the church, forgave and even ministered to his enemies, and concerned himself more with the welfare of those he loved than his own fate.
In prison he penned a famous poem, Who Am I?, that wrestled with the idea of Christian identity. The last stanza:
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!
After hearing of the conspiracy’s latest failed assassination attempt, knowing the likely ramifications for his future, Bonhoeffer wrote this:
“…I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world—watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is repentance, and that is how one becomes a man and a Christian. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?…I’m glad I’ve been able to learn this, and I know I’ve been able to do so only along the road that I’ve travelled. So I’m grateful for the past and present, and content with them… May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.”
The camp doctor who witnessed his execution, and who had not previously known Bonhoeffer, described him in his final moments in this life: “I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”