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Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) Bonhoeffer's father was a well-known psychiatrist who taught at Berlin University. His now-famous son grew up as part of a large family, including a twin sister. Somewhat to the surprise of his scientifically-minded parents he decided at only fourteen years old to study theology. He trained at Tubingen and Berlin universities and was soon identified as an up-and-coming theologian. He was strongly influenced in the early years by the theology both of Karl Barth and Adolf Harnack. After ordination he worked first in Spain and then at the Union Theological Seminary of New York. A brief spell in Berlin preceded a time as Chaplain of the Lutheran congregation in London. He then returned to head up an "emergency seminary" for the Confessing Church at Finkenwalde in Pomerania. There he put into practice some ideas he had come across in England while visiting the theological colleges of the Society of the Sacred Mission at Kelham, and the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield. Perhaps in part because he had travelled abroad, Bonhoeffer quickly recognised the racist, totalitarian policies of the Nazi government for what they were. Before going to London in 1935 he had already signed the 1934 Barmen Declaration. This was drawn up at the first synod of the Confessing Church. It refuted the Nazi claim to have superseded or fulfilled Christian revelation and criticised the way the hierarchy of the Lutheran Church had allied themselves to the new movement. Within two days of Hitler becoming Chancellor of the Third Reich, Bonhoeffer had delivered in February, 1933, a radio broadcast warning against the danger of a "Fuhrer-principle". He was banned from teaching and lecturing because of his support for the Confessing Church. The seminary was closed and he lost his lectureship at Berlin University. When war was declared in 1939, Bonhoeffer was lecturing in America, having been got out of Germany by friends. He wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr at the time that
He returned to Germany under the watchful and suspicious eye of the authorities. It was he who communicated details of the German resistance to the Allies, traveling at considerable risk in 1942 to Sweden to meet the Bishop of Chichester, G K Bell. Bonhoeffer was finally arrested in 1943. He remained in various prisons until he was hanged by the Gestapo in April, 1945 [2]. Perhaps because of his early death, Bonhoeffer's relatively undeveloped writing has been extensively published. His letters, lectures and notes have seen print in two English volumes - No Rusty Swords (Collins, 1965) and The Way to Freedom (1966). Even his academic dissertation of 1931, Act and Being (Collins, 1962) was published. Best-known is the collection of his letters entitled Letters and Papers From Prison (SCM, 1953). His Ethics (1949) consists of preliminary drafts and incomplete sections. Some were hidden from the police and some rescued from Gestapo files for publication in 1949. His only substantial work, published in 1937, is The Cost of Discipleship. In it he protests against what he calls "cheap grace". This is the "grace" purveyed by religion through its teachings, worship and ministry. "Costly grace", in contrast, entails genuine discipleship. This is obedient following of Jesus. Through dedicated attachment to him, the disciple receives abundant life. The result is a "new man". About cheap grace he wrote:
In the 1960s - partly because of his increasingly high profile as a Christian martyr - Bonhoeffer's work received considerable attention and achieved some notoriety. Many at the time claimed that he had put forward the idea that Christianity should be religionless and that the Church was, by implication, an institution which would soon give way to secularisation. This version of Bonhoeffer's thinking is somewhat distant from the truth. He was a subscriber to the so-called "kenotic" approach to God. The theory followed Philippians 2.6-7. God is perceived as having become human by being "emptied" (kenosis in common Greek) in the person of Jesus. In this, Bonhoeffer was very much in the theological mainstream of German Lutherans. His emphasis was, however, more concrete than abstract. He insisted that the Christian faith must be relevant to ordinary society and its ordinary members. So no matter what orthodox theology was, it should in his view never cease to take the world seriously. In this one needs to realise that the liberal theology which preceded Bonhoeffer was usually based upon the notion that people are naturally religious. Christianity was perceived as a religion to which people gravitated as part of being human. He protested against this, holding that faith is based upon God's self-revelation and has nothing essentially to do with religious practices. Hence what later became known as "religionless" Christianity. It is natural to seek out others of the same or similar lifestyle. This explains the Church. But neither it nor its religious practices are necessary to the Christian way of life. The problem with religion, thought Bonhoeffer, is that it fails to relate faith (and therefore Christian concepts) to social factors. This is because religion in Germany tended, as he perceived it, to appeal either to an individualistic "God within us" or to a metaphysical "God beyond us". People are wholes as part of their society, he said. Their God does not hover just beyond consciousness in some sort of secret "spiritual" place, nor just beyond reality in some sort of "supernatural" dimension. God is present in life itself. The Cost of Discipleship is more like long meditation than a reasoned analysis. Drawing upon various New Testament quotations, Bonhoeffer says that the Church is Jesus on earth, and as such "takes up space". But it is as it were powered by truths and doctrines which "need no space for themselves". The Bible as "the word of God" urges us not to become slaves to men.
Neither "revolution nor false submission" is the way ahead.
Christians can and should involve themselves in national affairs.
In this involvement the Christian may make mistakes. But if that happens
Eberhard Bethge (imprisoned at the same time as Bonhoeffer), in his Foreword to the English edition of Letters and Papers From Prison (SCM, 1953), remarks that when Bonhoeffer wrote Discipleship he was
In this context, an abstract, other-worldly faith has no power because the only relevant God is one who "allows himself to be pushed out of the world and onto a cross". In other words, a Christianity which does not focus on Jesus crucified is false. In this latter emphasis, Bonhoeffer was distinctly Pauline. Jesus operated at the heart of mankind's ordinary affairs and the sometimes daunting life-and-death challenges we face. That is precisely where we all will discover him today and in any age. It was in this sense that Bonhoeffer thought Christianity should and would become "religionless". His embryonic vision, in hindsight, located and focused on the increasingly secular character of Western European society. If, therefore, the Gospel is to remain relevant to a secular society then the liberal religion of the time had to give way. God was a God of society, not a private possession of the individual or an abstract metaphysical concept to be understood only by an elite few. In a similar sense, Bonhoeffer perceived that humanity has "come of age". This too is an idea frequently misunderstood. Bonhoeffer did not either infer or mean that somehow people in the 20th century had progressed from spiritual adolescence to maturity. It was not as though we now stand alone and no longer need God. He seems to have been referring instead to the nature of religion in his day. Because of its false or incomplete teaching, it perpetuated a childlike dependence upon ecclesiastical structures and prohibitions. Humans "come of age", he thought, would be able to explain the universe without reliance on tales or myths. When things in society went wrong and needed to be put right, they would not rely on miracles for remedies. Nor would they be motivated in social action by promises of eternal bliss. Dedication to Jesus and obedience to God would motivate them. One of the most important reasons why Bonhoeffer as it were hit the nail on the head with post-World War II thinkers was his realisation - albeit somewhat incoherent and incomplete - that he was participating in a fundamental and radical social discontinuity. A break between the past and the 20th century was taking place. It required not just modifications of Christian faith and teaching, but radically new responses to society such as young people experience when they come of age. As Bonhoeffer wrote in Letters and Papers From Prison:
Thus the Church does not necessarily have any sort of special
competence in proclaiming and safeguarding the Gospel. (We
should remind ourselves that, in terms of Christian teaching, Bonhoeffer was
solidly orthodox.) Religion it its ecclesiastical
form is not in some way protected by the Holy Spirit. Merely proclaiming that
the Church cannot make mistakes simply because it is gathered
"in council" is too facile a liberation from error. |