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Chapter 10

A Pastor and Theologian: Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(1906-1945)

      Through the dark days of the Third Reich, one man stood out – perhaps above all others – as a beacon of light.  Like many Germans, Dietrich Bonhoeffer refused to follow the unscrupulous evil leaders of the Nazi regime.  He paid a high price for his principled stand against the totalitarian government of his country. 

Early Life

Dietrich was the sixth of eight children.  His father Karl was Professor of Psychiatry and head of a clinic at Breslav.  His grandfather on his mother’s side was a professor of theology and had been a court preacher to Kaiser Wilhelm II.  Dietrich and his brothers and sisters were reared among the cultured elite of the German Reich.

Dietrich was the youngest of the four boys, and was different from his older brothers, who were more like their father, not only in looks but in scientific interest.  Dietrich had to continually fight for recognition from his somewhat austere father.  When Dietrich was six years old, the family moved to Berlin, where his father became Director of the Berlin Charité, a famous clinic.  He was recognized as an authority, and had access to the highest figures in the government.  Although Karl Bonhoeffer cared for his family, the way father and children encountered each other was strictly regulated.  Karl endeavored constantly to develop the values in his children that he thought most essential.  At family meals, children spoke only when spoken to.  After the evening meal he would often read aloud the classics—works such as Schiller.  He disparaged religion and had little use for the church.  Although he loved his family, he maintained an emotional distance from his children.  In upper-middle class circles in Germany, this was thought to be good form. 

Paula Bonhoeffer taught her children at home during in the first years of their schooling.  She had little use for the strictness and formality of Prussian education.  Paula was deeply religious, but like many pastor’s children, was rebellious.  She didn’t send her children to church.  Instead, she took over their religious education.  The Bible stories she taught her children made a deep impression on them—especially Dietrich.  He read His Bible regularly before going to sleep, sometimes under the surveillance of the governess who was a member of a pious religious sect.  Dietrich’s brothers smuggled adventure stories inside the covers of their Bibles.

      Of the boys, Dietrich was most like his mother: sensitive, interested in people and their stories, and musically inclined.  He was a handsome, blond youth with the manners of a German aristocrat.  Brought up in a protected, privileged environment, his life was easy.  He learned quickly and well, and he had a fertile imagination.  He liked sports and was a good sportsman.  Although his parents were only nominal Lutherans, Dietrich had a strong desire at an early age to search for the meaning of life.

Dietrich was eight years old when World War I began.  In 1917, the three older Bonhoeffer boys were called up.  They went to the infantry “because there the need is greatest.”  They could have avoided danger through their father’s contacts.  In April 1918, Walter Bonhoeffer was seriously wounded.  He dictated a noble letter three hours before his death, minimizing his personal suffering.  For ten years after this, Karl Bonhoeffer could not continue the traditional family diary.  Paula expressed her grief in an unusual way.  For weeks on end, she would go and stay with family friends who lived in their neighborhood.  The stability of their former life had proved deceptive.  For Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, the world order to which they were accustomed would never return. 

In Search of an Identity

Before finishing high school, Dietrich had decided to study theology.  Predictably, Karl was not happy with his son’s decision.  Theology didn’t enjoy a high reputation in Berlin academic circles during this time.  Karl had given up on religion, and he did not want Dietrich to waste his intellectual talent on this field.  “I do not understand any of it,” he is said to have remarked about religion.  For Karl, religion was a woman’s world.  Dietrich was told by his brothers that the church was a backward-looking organization.  “In that case, I shall reform the church,” Dietrich is said to have retorted.

As a theology student at Tübingen, Dietrich joined his father’s fraternity (his three older brothers had not—they thought fraternities were old-fashioned).  Despite this association, Dietrich was an outsider.  He didn’t fit the mold of the typical theological student because he didn’t have a church background.  His friend Eberhard Bethge said of him in retrospect:  “Because he was lonely, he became a theologian and because he was a theologian, he became lonely.”[1]

Although Bonhoeffer studied the history of religion, church history, and similar subjects, he didn’t find answers to the questions which preoccupied him.  During Holy Week of his first year at Tübingen (April 1924), he and his brother, Klaus, visited Rome.  The experiences of this trip gave him a new perspective of what a vital, living church is.

It was during his university years that he became interested in the debate which was taking place within the Lutheran Church.  One faction was led by the extremely liberal Adolf Von Harnack; the other faction was led by Karl Barth.  Bonhoeffer did what many students do in situations like this: he tried to find the middle ground via a third way.  For his doctoral dissertation, he wrote Sanctorum Communio—A Dogmatic Investigation of the Sociology of the Church.  He had difficulty finding a publisher for the work.  His cousin—a theological student—told him that not many people would understand it.  This didn’t discourage Bonhoeffer.  He was not only exploring the role of the church; he was seeking his identity.  His theology would later be called “theology in the doing.”  While many students were drawn to him, he didn’t let anyone get close to him.  He had no close friend and no girlfriend.

In taking university exams, Bonhoeffer had to produce a trial sermon.  It didn’t go down well.  The evaluator’s report suggested that he study model sermons of the experts.  Bonhoeffer struggled with sermons all his life, because he wanted to stand behind every statement.

In February 1928, Bonhoeffer began work as a probationary minister in Barcelona.  He rented a room from two impoverished German ladies.  The German community there consisted mainly of merchants and their families.  Most of them considered the support of the Church a low priority.  It was a shock for Bonhoeffer to find that his church work consisted mainly of making social rounds; no one was interested in discussing theology.  However, Bonhoeffer always had a way of getting something out of every experience.  Being a good listener, he became interested in the life stories of members of his congregation—some of whom were vagabonds, criminals-on-the-run, foreign legionnaires and German dancers.  They were willing to tell their life histories to this young pastor who had never been exposed to people of this kind.

By early 1929 Bonhoeffer was back in Berlin, and began work on his thesis, “Act and Being.”  Later, he wrote this about himself:

I plunged into work in a very un-Christian way. An ambition, which some noticed in me, made my life difficult and robbed me of the love and trust of my fellow human beings.  At that time I was terribly alone and left to myself.  I know that at that time I turned the doctrine of Jesus Christ into something of personal advantage for myself for my crazy vanity….[2]

Bonhoeffer’s “Watershed” Spiritual Experience

On 31^st July 1930, Bonhoeffer gave his inaugural lecture at Berlin University.  At 24, he was now the youngest assistant lecturer in theology, but he was too young to be an ordained pastor.  (Twenty-five was the prescribed age and the authorities would not make an exception.)  He received a grant to go to Union Theological Seminary in New York—which, as his earlier trip to Rome, turned out to be a true blessing.

Shortly after arriving in New York, he wrote home, “There is no theology here.”[3]  Up until this time, Bonhoeffer had thought of theology as only an exercise of the mind.  However, in the United States, he met, for the first time, people who embodied a social and political Christianity.  These people believed that a person’s theology, if it is genuine, must necessarily be expressed in the way that that person lives. 

Initially Bonhoeffer was shocked by the racial segregation in American society, and its acceptance by the majority of white churches.  At Union Seminary, people shared Bonhoeffer’s sentiments.  Fellow student, Paul Lehman, and his wife, Marian, became his friends and showed him the “other America” which included the political and social commitment of the church as experienced by those who were from “down below”—those in the midst of economic depression.  Union Seminary was next door to Harlem, an African-American ghetto.  Through an African-American student, Frank Fisher from Harlem, Bonhoeffer got to know the ghetto at close quarters and the storefront churches in the slums.  Soon he was going every Sunday to the Abyssinian Baptist Church on West 138th Street.  He said, “I have heard the gospel preached in the Negro churches.”[4]

A process was beginning in Bonhoeffer, which he later described in this way:

For the first time I discovered the Bible…. I had preached, I had seen a good deal of the church, and talked and preached about it—but I had not yet become a Christian, but was my own master in a quite wild and unrestrained way….for all my loneliness, I was quite pleased with myself.  Then the Bible, and above all the Sermon on the Mount, freed me from all that.[5]

Later in the same letter he said, “I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions….that is because, in the Bible, God speaks to us.”

It was about this time (1931) that Bonhoeffer fully surrendered himself to God.  He said, “Something new entered, something which.…has changed my life and turned it upside down.”  By the end of his year in New York, Saul had become Paul.  He had made a liberating personal breakthrough.  This breakthrough did not come, however, from Union Seminary itself.  Bonhoeffer said that he never heard the gospel of Jesus Christ—of the Cross—of sin and forgiveness—from his seminary professors.

Abandoning Nationalism;

Confronting the Church Back Home

      While in New York, Bonhoeffer was influenced by a young pastor from France, Jean Lasserre.  At this time, Bonhoeffer, like most of the German middle-class, was patriotic; certainly he was no pacifist.  German Protestantism had watered down and rationalized Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount to such a degree that there seemed to be no conflict between the words of Christ and nationalistic views.  However, Jean Lasserre had convinced Bonhoeffer that it is impossible to be both a Christian and a nationalist.  Thus, Bonhoeffer began to abandon his image of the “good German.” 

      By the time he had returned to Berlin in 1931, Bonhoeffer had acquired a new political awareness.  He was also convinced that the essential nature of the Church could be understood only on the basis of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Further, this gospel must be understood as an absolute and unchangeable event, the significance of which does not depend on a cultural interpretation.  He confronted the liberals in the church head on.  “The question,” he said, “is not whether we have a use for God in an advanced society.  God and the Church exist.  They are questioning us.  Are we ready for God to use us?”  In the years to come, Bonhoeffer was to become one of the few Germans who maintained an uncompromising attitude against the rationalizations of the German government when Germany was engaged in pillage and warfare around the world.

Clashes with the Third Reich

      On January 31, 1933, immediately after Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany, Bonhoeffer spoke over the Berlin radio on “leadership.”  He questioned whether the new leadership was healthy.  He was abruptly cut off the air.  Shortly after this, Hitler’s order to purge the Jews from civil service was issued.  It also forbade anyone of Jewish blood from a church appointment.  Because Bonhoeffer’s twin sister was married to a Jew, and because one of his closest friends—a Lutheran pastor—was a Jew, those “Aryan restrictions” aroused Bonhoeffer’s sensibilities.

      As Hitler moved to control the Church (both Catholic and Lutheran), the Lutheran church split.  Those loyal to the government were called “German Lutherans.”  Those who could not accept “Aryan restrictions” and state control over the Church formed their own free synod, which called itself the “Confessing Church.”  They proclaimed that “Jesus Christ, as He is testified to in Holy Scripture, is the One Word of God, which we have to hear and to trust and obey in life and death.”  They refused to accept any doctrinal or other concessions to Hitler’s ideology.  Initially about thirty percent of Lutherans became “Confessing Christians.”  Bonhoeffer was greatly troubled by what he considered to be the indecision and confused thinking of many of his fellow pastors who stayed in the German Lutheran church. 

      Bonhoeffer was given the task of establishing one of several theological schools for the Confessing Church.  In the fall of 1935, Bonhoeffer set up classes in an old house near the small village of Finkenwald.  He is remembered as a hard but warm taskmaster.  He continually reminded his students that they were bonded together in love and that they must be committed to “outgoing service.”  From 1936 to 1945, there was never a time when some of Bonhoeffer’s students or former students were not in prison.  They lived in constant danger.

      From the mid-1930’s to the end of the war, there were numerous fruitless plots to kill Hitler.  At first, Bonhoeffer was not sure what action he should take against the Nazi regime.  He knew he could never compromise with the Nazis.  In 1934, Bonhoeffer delivered a powerful address at the Fanö ecumenical conference in which he expressed this view:

      Which of us can say he knows what it might mean to the world if one nation should meet the aggressor not with weapons in hand, but defenseless, praying, and for that very reason protected by a “bulwark never failing.”

      During this period of his life, he was strongly influenced by the passive resistance concepts of India’s Mahatma Gandhi.  He made plans to visit Gandhi but had to cancel them.  In the years to come, as the Nazi atrocities came to light, Bonhoeffer was forced to re-evaluate this pacifist position. 

      Bonhoeffer visited England for a second time in 1938 and from there went to New York, where his American friends urged him to stay.  He was offered the position of pastor to German Christian refugees, but he felt he could not accept the position—that it was his duty to spend this difficult period with Christians in Germany.  He said he would have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in his country, after the war, if he did not share this time with his people. 

      As he was returning to Germany in 1939, Bonhoeffer felt he had made a mistake in going to America.  He returned to his seminary in Finkenwald which, by this time, had been declared illegal.  He and his students secluded themselves in an isolated hunting lodge in the Pomeranian forest.  He was at this lodge when the first stories of German brutalities in Poland began to filter back to Germany.  By this time, Bonhoeffer had to question whether it was enough just to pray and care for the afflicted.  Was it not a time for bold action?  He and his fellow clergymen in the Confessing Church faced an agonizing dilemma.  Essentially they had two choices.  They could continue to secretly teach and witness to their Christian faith, or they could do everything possible to topple their own government so that the war could be ended.  Most, including Bonhoeffer, chose the latter.  He felt that it was better to consent to the bad, knowing full well it is bad, in order to avoid what is worse. 

      It was about this time (1940) that Bonhoeffer became involved in Abwehr—an organization which ostensibly functioned as a counter-intelligence espionage unit for the benefit of the German government.  In actuality, this organization was created as a cover by German military officers who worked secretly in the resistance movement.  They organized Abwehr as a cover for their resistance activities.  Bonhoeffer had access to this organization through his brother-in-law, Hans Dohnanyi, who worked as a lawyer with Dietrich’s brother, Klaus, in the legal section of the airline company, Lufthansa.  Both were active in Abwehr.  By 1940, the Confessing Church had been slowly silenced and neutralized by ordinances which did not allow unauthorized religious meetings.  The ostensible rationale for using Bonhoeffer was that through his ecumenical movement contacts in other countries, he could pick up intelligence valuable to the German government.

      Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the assassination plot on Hitler developed while he was staying at a Benedictine monastery at Ettal in 1942.  When he agreed to take part in the plot, he said, “I can never again serve as a pastor.”  Bonhoeffer was never at ease with this decision.  He felt that breaking the sixth commandment would require punishment by God.

      Bonhoeffer traveled back and forth between Germany and the neutral countries of Sweden and Switzerland as a member of Abwehr, which gave him a cover for what he considered his real work as a leader in the underground Confessing Church.  He told the church leader in Stockholm that if we claim to be Christians, there is no room for expediency.  Like many others, Bonhoeffer felt that Hitler was anti-Christ.  What he hoped to accomplish was to open up communications with England for peace negotiations and to plan for the future of Europe.  During this time, he was active in helping Jews escape into Switzerland.

Arrest and Imprisonment

      Because of his well-known feelings about the Nazis, Bonhoeffer was closely watched.  On April 5, 1943 a Gestapo official arrested him, and without a trial or explanation he was thrown into a single cell in Tegel Military Prison where he spent the months from April 1943 to October 1944.  This is the way he described his arrival at the prison:

For the first night, I was locked up in the admission cell.  The blankets on the camp bed had such a foul smell that in spite of the cold it was impossible to use them.  Next morning a piece of bread was thrown into my cell; I had to pick it up from the floor.  The sound of the prison staff’s vile abuse of the prisoners who were held for investigation penetrated into my cell for the first time; since then, I have heard it every day from morning to night.  The first night in my cell I could sleep very little because in the next cell a prisoner wept loudly for several hours.  Nobody took any notice.

      Bonhoeffer was allowed no contact with the outside world for the first few weeks he was in solitary confinement.  Guards could not talk to him and he was given no reason for his detention.  The only possession he was allowed to keep was his Bible—which gave him comfort.

      Fortunately for Bonhoeffer, many of the stringent restrictions at Tegel were later relaxed.  He was allowed to receive books that he wanted.  This relaxation of restrictions was not the case at other Nazi prisons. 

      He wrote of his weariness and his doubts, but his faith in God never wavered.  He felt that in every event, there is access to God.  His strength can be seen as a gift from God through prayer, which had become the foundation of his life in the years of his success and freedom, and which did not fail him now.   He continued the steady discipline of Bible reading, meditation, and “praying” of the Psalms.  He wrote to Eberhard Bethge in November 1943 that he had already read through the Old Testament 2½ times.  In addition to his reading and writing activities, he made friends among the jailers and prisoners as opportunities permitted.  He said that the eighteen month period he spent as a prisoner in Tegel Prison was spiritually the richest and most fertile of his life.  It was here that he wrote Letters and Papers from Prison, a work which many have found helpful in confronting the spiritual dilemmas of our time.

The Plot to Assassinate Hitler

      The Normandy invasion, June 6, 1944, was a clear sign to the resistance leaders that the end of the war was approaching.  Their stated goal had been to cut short the war by seizing power before a total Allied victory.  The man designated to take action was Count von Stauffenberg.  A man of rare nerve and inspiring fortitude, he decided single-handedly to murder Hitler.  He was a full Colonel and had an advantage over all other members of Abwehr—he had access to Hitler’s staff conferences.

      The date was July 20, 1944.  Colonel Stauffenberg carried his briefcase equipped with bomb and timing mechanism into Wolf lair—Hitler’s conference center in East Prussia.  Pretending to make a telephone call, the Colonel left the room; he heard a loud explosion a few minutes later.  He rushed back to Berlin to alert his men to take control of central communications and eventually, the army, but all in vain.  Hitler survived and moved quickly to destroy the resistance movement.

      The purge that followed was bloody and reckless.  By midnight, von Stauffenberg and others involved in the plot were shot.  In the months that followed, the older roots of the assassination attempt were uncovered—which implicated Bonhoeffer.  When he heard that the plot of July 1944 had failed, he realized that Hitler would be merciless in liquidating the conspirators.  He knew that the cause was lost; however, Bonhoeffer wrote the following which expressed his conviction that in the plot’s failure lay his triumph—that in losing his life, he would gain it:

I have never regretted my decision in 1939 to return to Germany, for I am firmly convinced – however strange it may seem—that my life has followed a straight and unbroken course, at any rate in its outward conduct.  It has been an uninterrupted enrichment of experience for which I can only be thankful.  If I were to end my life here in these conditions, that would have a meaning that I think I could understand.[6]

      In October 1944, Bonhoeffer was moved to the cellar of the Gestapo prison in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin.  By now his brother Klaus and two of his brothers-in-law (both lawyers) were also in prison.  All three would later be executed.

His Engagement to Maria

      Bonhoeffer had become engaged to be married to Maria von Wedemeyer shortly before his arrest in April 1943.  She visited him in prison the few times it was permitted.  The last letter she received from Dietrich was for Christmas 1944:

These will be quiet days in our homes, but I have had the experience over and over again that the quieter it is around me, the clearer do I feel the connection to you.  It is as though in solitude the soul develops senses which we hardly know in everyday life.  Therefore I have not felt lonely or abandoned for one moment.  You must not think that I am unhappy.  What is happiness and unhappiness?  It depends really only on that which happens inside a person.  I am grateful every day that I have you, and that makes me happy.

The Beginning of the End

(For Bonhoeffer, the End of the Beginning)

      On February 7, 1945 Bonhoeffer and several other celebrity prisoners were transferred to Buchenwald.  On Saturday April 7, Bonhoeffer and a few others were taken to Flossenburg Prison.  When they arrived they could hear American artillery in the distance (only a few days later the prison camp would be liberated).  The next day was Easter Sunday, and some of the prisoners tried to persuade Bonhoeffer to conduct a service.  He hesitated because some of the prisoners were Roman Catholic, but finally agreed to do so, and took as his text, “With his stripes we are healed” and, “Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.  By His great mercy, we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  They sang together Eine Feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress).  An English officer and survivor said that the service was an incomparable experience which carried them all to great heights of spirituality.  Bonhoeffer told this English officer, “This is the end, but for me it is the beginning.”[7]

      That evening Bonhoeffer was summarily tried and condemned to death.  The next morning, Bonhoeffer, two generals and an admiral were marched to the place of execution.  Just before going to the scaffold, Bonhoeffer knelt to pray once more.  Then this noble disciple of Jesus Christ courageously climbed the steps to the gallows and was hanged.  Like his Master, Bonhoeffer died on a scaffold.  There was no funeral; nor is there a gravestone to mark the final resting place of this brilliant theologian. 

Many years later the Flossenburg Prison doctor wrote:

Through the half-open door of a room in one of the huts, I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer… kneeling in fervent prayer to the Lord his God.  The devotion and evident conviction of being heard that I saw in the prayer of this intensely captivating man moved me to the depths.[8]

Three weeks after Bonhoeffer’s death, the Allies were moving into Berlin, and Hitler swallowed poison, after giving instructions to burn his body.

Epilogue

      On July 27, 1945, almost four months after Bonhoeffer’s death, a congregation gathered in Holy Trinity Church in war-scarred London for a memorial service.  The service was broadcast by BBC:

Let us pray. We are gathered here in the presence of God to make thankful remembrance of the life and work of his servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer…

This broadcast was the first news his family had of his death.  Among the congregation at the memorial service were members of the Lutheran church in Sydenham, London, where Bonhoeffer had served as pastor. Bishop Bell of Chichester, who had worked with Bonhoeffer in the underground movement, delivered the memorial service address.  He concluded the address with this tribute:

So now Dietrich is gone. Our debt to him and to all others similarly murdered, is immense. He made the sacrifice of human prospects, of home, friends and career because he believed in God’s vocation for his country, and refused to follow those false leaders who were the servants of the devil. Our Lord said, “Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.  He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hatest his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” To our earthly view, Dietrich is dead.  Deep and unfathomable as our sorrow seems, let us comfort one another with these words.

      Bonhoeffer is one of a long line of Christian martyrs.  The leaders of the Third Reich were mistaken in thinking they could silence such a man of God.  His unfaltering faith was convincingly communicated by his example and his writing—both of which are a legacy to the Church Universal.  Truly, Bonhoeffer was a bright light in a dark time.

The Influences Which Shaped Bonhoeffer’s Thinking:

From Nationalism to Pacifism to Resistance

      After the fall of France in 1940, Eberhard Bethge asked Bonhoeffer, “Would he assassinate Hitler if he had the opportunity?”  Bonhoeffer thoughtfully said yes, he would.  Although this was a purely hypothetical question, Bonhoeffer’s answer would have shocked those who had known him earlier.  Understanding his change of thinking during the 1930’s will give insight into Bonhoeffer’s character:

·        First, there was his previously mentioned friendship with French pacifist, Jean Lasserre, at Union Theological Seminary.  Up until that time, Bonhoeffer’s thinking was typical of an upper middle-class German nationalist.  Lasserre made him see the incompatibility between Christianity and nationalism.

·        The next influence was the witness of Mahatma Gandhi and his non-violent methods of accomplishing a goal.  Bonhoeffer saw in Gandhi—more than in Lasserre—the significance of pacifism on a social scale.  To Bonhoeffer, Gandhi represented an indication of Christ’s will for the present.

·        A third and more fundamental influence was Christ and His admonitions on peace.  Bonhoeffer considered the Sermon on the Mount to be the most relevant statement of the Gospels for the present.  Above all, Bonhoeffer wanted to follow Christ.

·        A fourth influence was the personal contacts he had in France, England and Norway in connection with his combined ecumenical/counter-intelligence work.  He could not accept the idea of Germany going to war against those countries.  But how could it be prevented?  He felt that pacifism could never be absolute.  He saw in pacifism its incapacity for action at a time when action was imperative.  More specifically, he saw to what extent the German nation had been led into a craving for war.  His writings about this time often used Don Quixote as an example of a figure who symbolized the ineffectiveness of fighting battles which had long been won or lost.  How could pacifism be effective, he reasoned, in a Germany that was plunging headlong into war?  At this late juncture, he realized that promoting pacifism would be irrelevant and hopelessly inadequate because German militarism had gone too far.  Bonhoeffer believed in relating to the present—identifying the concrete needs of the moment.  He was no ivory tower thinker; he was pragmatic—which is why he came down on the side of resistance to his government.

Bonhoeffer’s Theology

      Two concepts are central to Bonhoeffer’s theology:

1.      Our Christian beliefs require us to act.  We must live out our faith in accordance with our beliefs.  Theology is not an abstract, speculative affair; it relates to real life situations.

2.      God’s grace is bestowed upon those who are His true disciples.  Bonhoeffer protested against “cheap grace”—meaning the kind of grace expounded by an official set of doctrines, institutions and rites.  He claimed that cheap grace was the enemy of the church.  Instead, he made the case for “costly grace”—which he likened to treasure hidden in the field—for which man will gladly go and sell all that he has.  It is costly because it demands genuine discipleship, i.e., an obedient following of Christ, and a wholehearted attachment to Him.  It is grace because as a result of such obedience, man becomes the “new man” and receives his true life.[9]  In his book Ethics he makes clear that he doesn’t mean that we can “become like Jesus” by sheer effort; rather it is achieved only when the spirit of the historical Jesus acts upon us in such a way that it shapes and molds us into a likeness of Christ.

Was Bonhoeffer an Effective Christian?

      Bonhoeffer risked—and lost—his life in an effort to do what undoubtedly would have been, at that time, the most desirable thing for the world, namely, to bring an end to the bloodiest and most destructive war of all time.  Had the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 against Hitler been successful, the war probably would have ended shortly after that.  After the Normandy invasion of June 1944, the German high command knew that Germany would be defeated.  At that point, only a madman would opt to fight to the bitter end.  As it happened, the “madman” did just that.  Hundreds of thousands of lives—civilians as well as soldiers—would have been saved, and untold billions of dollars of property destruction would have been avoided if the war had ended in the summer of 1944.  Unfortunately, it was not to be; the assassination plot failed, and the war continued for almost ten months. 

      Aside from the fact that the assassination plot did not bring an early end to the war, the death of Bonhoeffer at age thirty-nine was a tragic loss—both to Germany and to the Christian world.  The role he could have played in the reconstruction and revitalization of the Church in Germany was not to be.  Yet it is possible that Bonhoeffer’s actions in a failed effort may have resulted in a more effective witness than if the assassination attempt had been successful.  Like his Master, he was faithful unto death.  A famous Roman, converted to Christianity in AD 192 said, “The blood of the martyrs[10] is the seed of the Church.”  Like Job of old, Bonhoeffer came through the refiners fire as gold.

      Was Bonhoeffer an effective Christian?  I am convinced—without reservation—that, by any standard, he was.

A Chronology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life

Principal Works by Dietrich Bonhoeffer available in English

Act and Being, Harper, 1962

Christology, Collins, 1966

Communion of Saints, Harper, 1964

The Cost of Discipleship, Macmillan, 1960

Ethics, Macmillan, 1965

I Loved This People, John Knox, 1965

Letters and Papers from Prison, Macmillan, 1961

Life Together, Harper, 1954

No Rusty Swords, Harper, 1965

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