Essay 108 (2-4-06)

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER AT 100

I have delayed this essay so that I could send it out on his l00th birthday anniversary as a memorial tribute. Having been born on Feb. 4, 1906 in Breslau, Germany, he would be, if still living, 100 on Feb. 4, 2006. He was executed by the Nazis on April 3, 1945 for being part of a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. He was only 39, but at the time a biblical scholar of some reputation.

If Protestants made "saints" as does the Roman church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer would be a "saint."

A pious Lutheran minister, he was an ardent pacifist. It must have taken painful soul-searching for him to become part of a conspiracy to take the life of any person. But Nazism had become so monumentally evil that he resolved that in the case of Hitler the end would justify the means.

When several attempts on Hitler’s life failed, the Nazis found records that implicated the conspirators. Hitler delayed the execution of some in hopes that they might be compelled to reveal still other names. Bonhoeffer went to the gallows only a month before the War’s end.

A German camp doctor witnessed the execution, and afterward wrote of it: "In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly seen a man so entirely submissive to the will of God." He recorded this account:

Through the half open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was deeply moved by the way this lovable man, so devout and so certain that God would hear his prayer. At the place of execution he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds.

Born of gifted parents – his father was a professor in a German university – he was exposed to excellence in his youth. Noted scholars, including Adolf von Harnack, were frequent guests in his home. Yet his home was not all that religious. When he decided on the ministry, his parents and siblings objected, saying he would waste his life with a vacuous and ineffective church. His response was, ‘If the church is feeble, I shall reform it." It was perhaps an audacious remark for a youth, but it presaged his stormy and tragic life in the church.

He went through Tuebingen and Berlin universities in a breeze, He submitted his doctoral thesis at Berlin when only 23, which noted theologian Karl Barth described as "a theological miracle." He was for sometime a professor at Berlin. He also served as pastor to a German speaking church in Spain, where the congregation doubled in size. Even though highly erudite he related well to the rank and file. He came to be known as "a man for others," which was his way of describing Jesus.

He studied for a year at Union Theological Seminary in New York, which left him unimpressed with American theology. But he was impressed with the American church’s concern for racism, and became involved in that cause, attending a black church in New York for a time.

While in New York he was asked a question – not by a professor but by another foreign student – that was to redirect his life: "Do you believe in the Holy Catholic Church and in the Communion of Saints?" The student insisted that no one can be a nationalist and a Christian at the same time. From that time on Bonhoeffer became passionate about the church universal. Once critical of the World Council of Churches, he now became involved. He is today honored as a "Man of Unity" by the World Council.

His friends urged him to remain in America where he would be free from the rising threat of Nazism. That must have been tempting, but he saw it as a moral duty to return and take part in the witness of the underground church, even if it meant death.

Back in Germany he returned to his teaching post, and was involved in reforming the church. His lecture on "The Church Is Dead" called for renewal, commitment, and discipleship. He also called for the church to be "worldly"—involved in the world – which meant it might have to become the suffering church. Costly discipleship thus became his theme for renewal. He decried "cheap grace." Those who followed this teaching became "the witnessing church," – the German Christians who actively opposed the Third Reich, even unto imprisonment and death.

There were thus two churches in the time of Nazism. The "German Christians" were those who supported Hitler. The "confessing church" were those who insisted that they had but one Fuehrer, Jesus Christ, and opposed Hitler’s evil designs. It is appropriate for history to recognize that millions of Jews were killed by the Nazis, but it is generally ignored that millions of Christians were also murdered. The story of the "witnessing church" in Germany became one of the glorious chapters in the history of the church. After Hitler had blown out his brains in his fortress bunker, "the faith of our fathers" lived on in the hearts of millions of Germans, many of whom prayed for their persecutors. We can believe that among Bonhoeffer’s last petitions to the Father was, like his Lord’s, for the forgiveness of those who murdered him.

He spent two gruesome years in prison awaiting execution, but it was here that he produced some of his most impressive theological works, smuggled to the outside world, such as his Letters From Prison. He was engaged to be married at the time of his imprisonment. His fiance visited him monthly. It was months after the war before she and other of his loved ones learned of his fate.

In my reading of the great souls of the church I watch for the Scriptures that most impressed them. One of Bonhoeffer’s was Isaiah 55:11: "So shall my word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it."

He lived in full confidence that God’s will would triumph in the end. That was his faith when the guard called at 5 a.m. that fateful day, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, get ready to come with us." All the prisoners knew what that meant. He passed a note to a fellow prisoner, to be given to a close friend, that read, "This is the end; but for me it is the beginning."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s word for us today – on his 100^th birthday anniversary – is that while God’s grace is free, it is not cheap. There is a cost to discipleship. It may even cost us our lives. He learned in the cauldron that was Nazi Germany that he who loses his life shall find it.

Note: All the previous essays are available at www.leroygarrett.org, along with other of his writings.