Dietrich Bonhoeffer

From New World Encyclopedia
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (born February 4, 1906 in Breslau, now Wrocław, Poland; died April 9, 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp) was a German religious leader and participant in the resistance movement against Nazism. A Lutheran pastor and theologian he played a key role in the leadership of the Confessing Church that resisted Hitler's attempts to co-opt mainstream Protestantism. Bonheoffer also took part in plots by members of the Abwehr (Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Hitler. He was arrested and imprisoned for his outspoken opposition to Nazi policy and eventually hanged following the failure of the July 20 1944, assassination attempt after his participation in the plot was discovered.

Bonhoeffer's writings, especially his book The Cost of Discipleship have become classics of Christian literature, criticizing what he called "cheap grace" and emphasizing that salvation by grace in no way excuses Christians from loving their neighbors or from "taking up the Cross" and following Jesus.

Youth

File:Dietrich Bonhoeffer.jpg
German commemorative stamp of Dietrich Bonhoeffer from 1995

Born into a large family Bonhoeffer had seven siblings, including a twin sister, Sabine. His father was a prominent German psychiatrist in Berlin. His mother homeschooled the children. Though he was initially expected to follow his father into the field of psychology, he decided to become a minister at a young age. His parents supported this decision, and when he was old enough he attended college in Tübingen. He received his doctorate in theology from the University of Berlin, and was ordained as a Lutheran minister. He then spent a post-graduate year abroad studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. During this time, he grew disillusioned with what he felt was Liberal Christianity's failure to preach personal salvation through faith in Jesus' atoning sacrifice. However, he found inspiration in his many visits to the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem, where he heard Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. preach the message of the Social Gospel. He thus developed a passionate commitment to the social injustice experienced by minorities and became concerned about the ineptitude of the church to bring about racial integration. He also became enthralled with the power of Black Gospel music and amassed a substantial collection of recordings of these spirituals, which he took with him back to Germany and shared with acquaintences.

Career in Germany

Bonhoeffer with several of his seminary students in 1932

He returned to Germany in 1931, where he lectured on theology in Berlin and wrote several books. A strong opponent of Nazism, he was involved, together with Martin Niemöller, Karl Barth and others, in setting up the future "Confessing Church," which resisted Hitler's attempts to co-opt mainstream German Protestantism. Shortly after Hitler was installed as Chancellor in January 1933, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he attacked Hitler and warned Germany against slipping into an idolatrous cult of the Führer. He was cut off the air in the middle of a sentence, though it is unclear whether the newly elected Nazi regime was responsible. In April 1933, he raised the first public voice for German church resistance to Hitler's persecution of Jews, declaring that the church must not simply "bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam the spoke in the wheel itself." However, in September, the national church synod at Wittenberg approved the pro-Nazi Aryan Paragraph prohibiting non-Aryans, such as Christian of Jewish background, from holding jobs as clergy. When Bonhoeffer himself was offered a parish post in Berlin, he refused it in protest of the racist policy.[15] Between late 1933 and 1935 he served as pastor of two German-speaking protestant churches in London where he was relatively free to speak out and help coordinate international opposition to Nazi policies. In 1934 he assisted his mentor Karl Barth in drafting the Barmen Declaration, which declared that the Confessing Church was the true Evangelical Church of Germany, refused to recognize Hitler as the head of the German Church, and affirmed that any State's authority ends when it violates God's commandments.

In 1935 Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to head an underground seminary for Confessing Church pastors, first in Finkenwalhde and then at the von Blumenthal estate of Gross Schlönwitz. As the Nazi suppression of the Confessing Church intensified, Bonhoeffer's authorization to teach at the University of Berlin was revoked in Augusd Niemöller was arrested in July 1937. By August 1937, Heinrich Himmler decreed education and ordination of Confessing Church ministers to be illegal. The Gestapo closed the seminary at Finkenwalde and by November it had arrested 27 pastors and former students. It was around this time that Bonhoeffer published his best-known book, the The Cost of Discipleship, a study on the Sermon on the Mount, in which he attacked "cheap grace" as a cover for ethical laxity and encouraged Christian to accept "costly grace" by following Jesus' example of sacrificial love for one's fellow man.

Bonhoeffer spent the next two years secretly traveling from one eastern German village to another to supervise and further instruct his students, most of whom were working illegally in small parishes within the old-Prussian Ecclesiastical Province of Pomerania. In 1938, the Gestapo banned Bonhoeffer from Berlin. In summer 1939, the seminary, operating essential underground, was able to move to Sigurdshof, an outlying estate (Vorwerk) of the von Kleist family in Wendish Tychow. In March 1940, the Gestapo shut down the seminary there following the outbreak of World War II.[1] Bonhoeffer's monastic communal life and teaching at Finkenwalde seminary formed the basis of his books, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together.

Meanwhile, in 1939 Bonhoeffer had joined a hidden group of high-ranking military officers based in the Abwehr, or Military Intelligence Office, who wanted to overthrow the Nazi regime by killing Hitler. In 1943, after money used to help Jews escape to Switzerland was traced to him, he was charged with conspiracy and imprisoned in Berlin for a year and a half. Then, in the wake of the unsuccessful July 20 Plot in 1944, authorities uncovered evidence of Bonhoeffer's connections to the conspirators. He was moved to a series of prisons and concentration camps, ending at Flossenbürg. Here, Bonhoeffer was executed by hanging at dawn on April 9 1945, just three weeks before the liberation of the city. Also hanged for their parts in the conspiracy were his brother Klaus and his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher. All four men were forced to strip down completely in their cells before walking totally naked to the gallows.

Legacy

The memorial of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Wrocław, Poland

Bonhoeffer's life as a pastor and theologian who lived as he preached exerted great influence and inspiration for Christians across broad denominations and ideologies, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the anti-communist democratic movement in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa. Although he was not formally absolved of his supposed crimes by the German government until the mid-1990s, today he is celebrated in Germany as a fine example of the true German spirit and is widely recognized as a martyr for his faith. The Deutsche Evangelische Kirche in Sydenham, London, at which he preached between 1933 and 1935, was destroyed by bombing in 1944. A new church was built there in 1958 and named Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Kirche in his honor.[2]He is commemorated as a theologian and martyr by the United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and several church members of the Anglican Communion including the Episcopal Church (USA), on the anniversary of his death, April 9.

Gallery of 20th Century Martyrs at Westminster Abbey. From left, Mother Elizabeth of Russia, Martin Luther King, Jr., Oscar Romero and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer also left an important legacy in this theological writings. Central to Bonhoeffer's theology is Christ, in whom God and the world are reconciled. He speaks of God as a suffering God, whose manifestation is found in love for all people. Bonhoeffer believed that the Incarnation of God in flesh made it unacceptable to speak of God and the world "in terms of two spheres"—an implicit attack upon Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms. He stressed both personal and collective piety and revived the idea of imitation of Christ. He argued that Christians should not retreat from the world but act within it. He believed that true faith consists of two elements: the implementation of justice and the acceptance of divine suffering.[3] He thus insisted that the church, like the early Christians, "had to share in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world" if it is to be a true church of Christ. Echoing the Letter of James, he emphasized that "faith without works is dead," urging Christians to avoid what he called "cheap grace" but instead to seek to take up the Cross of Christ by loving their neighbors even at the cost of their lives if necessary.

The theological and political reasons behind his shift from Christian pacifism, which he espoused in the mid-1930s, to participation in planning the assassination of Hitler are much debated.

An oft-quoted line from one of his more widely read books, The Cost of Discipleship (1937), foreshadowed his death. "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." His books Ethics (1949) and Letters and Papers from Prison (1953) were published posthumously.

Works by Bonhoeffer

  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Letters and Papers From Prison, New Greatly Enlarged Edition. ed. by Eberhard Bethge. New York: Touchstone Simon & Shuster (1997).
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke (18 Bände), ed. by Eberhard Bethge. Gütersloher Verlagshaus (1986-1999); English edition (as yet incomplete): Minneapolis: Fortress Press (1995-).
  • The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Translated from the German Nachfolge first published 1937 by Chr. Kaiser Verlag München. New York: SCM Press Ltd. (1959).
  • Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community by Dietrick Bonhoeffer. Translated from the German Gemeinsames Leben. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. (1954).
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Works about Bonhoeffer

    • Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Man for His Times: A Biography Rev. ed. (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2000).
    • Audrey Constant, No Compromise: The story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Faith in action series. ISBN 0-08-029272-0 (non-net) ISBN 0-08-029273-9 (net)
    • Gillian Court, Heart of Flesh: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a study in Christian prophecy (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, 2007). ISBN 0-85169-330-X
    • Michael P. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer's Theological Formation: Berlin, Barth, and Protestant Theology (Oxford University Press, 2012) ISBN 0‐19963978‐7
    • Peter Frick, (editor), Bonhoeffer's Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought (Mohr Siebeck, 2008) ISBN 316149535‐7
    • Stephen R. Haynes,The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Post-Holocaust Perspectives (Fortress Press, 2006). ISBN 0-8006-3815-8.
    • Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Knopf, 2014) ISBN 978-0-307-26981-2
    • Michael J. Martin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Champion of Freedom series. (Morgan Reynolds Publishing, 2012). ISBN 978-1-59935-169-8. Winner of 2013 Wilbur Award for Best Book, Youth Audiences.
    • Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (Thomas Nelson, April 20, 2010). ISBN 978-1-59555-138-2
    • John A. Moses, The Reluctant Revolutionary: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Collision with Prusso-German History (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2009).
    • Stephen Plant, Bonhoeffer (Continuum International Publishing, 2004). ISBN 0-8264-5089-X.
    • Dallas M. Roark, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Makers of the Modern Theological Mind. (Word Publishing Group, 1972) ISBN 0-8499-2976-8
    • Robertson, Edwin (1987), The Shame and the Sacrifice: The life and teaching of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-41063-9 .
    • Robertson, Edwin (1989), Bonhoeffer's Legacy: The Christian Way in a World Without Religion, Collier Books, ISBN 0-02-036372-9 .
    • Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906–1945: martyr, thinker, man of resistance (T & T Clark, 2010). ISBN 978-0-567-03400-7
    • Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern, No Ordinary Men, NYRB (2013). (Bonhoeffer and von Dohnanyi)
    • Craig J. Slane, Bonhoeffer as Martyr: Social Responsibility and Modern Christian Commitment (Brazos Press, 2004).
    • Reggie L. Williams, Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance (Baylor University Press, 2014). ISBN 978-1-60258-805-9

Films

External links

Credits

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  1. Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1996, p 51
  2. Homan, Roger (1984). The Victorian Churches of Kent. Chichester: Phillimore & Co.. ISBN 0-85033-466-7. 
  3. Edward Craig, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, p 835