Looking through some old stuff from my seminary retirement hobby I found this paper on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was an assignment for the History of Christianity course taught by Dr. Mary Havens. Bonhoeffer is an especially interesting character because of the inherent contradiction of a minister with a reputation for pacifism both entertaining thoughts of suicide and conspiring to assassinate Hitler. The paper includes Bonhoeffer's views on self esteem and his provocative view that a member of a Christian fellowship "...is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him." The emphases of this paper are Bonhoeffer's theory and practice of Christian ministry, a practice that continued until the day of his hanging.
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DR. DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, MINISTER
DARRYL K. WILLIAMS
MARCH 27, 2002
HT-102
HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY
Bonhoeffer’s Life
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born February 4, 1906, in Breslau,
Germany, child of prosperous, intelligent, and prominent parents and brother to
seven, and died April 9, 1945, on the Nazi gallows at Flossenburg after
spending his last two years confined in the company of a small group of
prisoners and jail keepers of Hitler’s Third Reich. He lived an early life of comfortable
privilege surrounded by the love and support of his family and the friendship
and guidance of brilliant and influential mentors and associates but in a
political environment steadily advancing toward the crisis which was to result
in his imprisonment and youthful death.
Relatively unknown during his life and often misunderstood after his
death, perhaps because of the incompletion of his life’s work, Bonhoeffer has,
nevertheless, become one of the most widely read and studied and quoted
theologians of the twentieth century.
Bonhoeffer’s education started at home under the tutelage of
his father, Professor Karl Bonhoeffer, chair of his department at the
University of Berlin. Professor
Bonhoeffer was a man of dignity, self-control, objectivity, and clear speech
and taught his children the same disciplines.
Although the Church was not a priority for the Bonhoeffer family, Dietrich’s
mother, Paula, had a Christian education and took personal responsibility for
the religious and musical instruction of her children. Both parents taught the Bonhoeffer children
personal responsibility and concern and empathy for others and did so in a home
environment that developed their natural talents, built their self confidence,
and instilled in them senses of humor.[1] The fruits of those parental efforts are clearly
visible in the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
The Bonhoeffer family was severely impacted by World War I,
losing nephews and one son, Dietrich’s older brother, Walter, in military
action when Dietrich was twelve years old.
The war experiences may have influenced him to pursue a career in
theology because, at fifteen, he was studying Hebrew.[2] He entered university at seventeen and
pursued his studies vigorously without missing the opportunity to enjoy
university social life. He joined a
fraternity which he eventually had to leave when it inserted the Aryan clause
in its constitution.[3] That was perhaps the first of his public
anti-Hitler positions which were to become bolder and bolder eventually leading
to Bonhoeffer’s execution.
There were two dramatic spiritual turning points in
Bonhoeffer’s life. The first had to do
with his attitude toward the Church which was relatively unimportant to him
until he spent a university term in Rome and attended St. Peter’s during
Easter. That visit, recorded in his
diary as an experience which helped him begin to understand the Church, “made
him conscious how nationalistic, provincial, and narrow-minded were the
confines of his own church.”[4] The second turning point occurred in 1933 when
he, “discovered the Bible for the first time,” and concluded that he was,
“still not a Christian.”[5] By that time he had already served in his
first assistant pastorship under the direction of a minister who apparently
showed little interest in theology or religion.
There, Bonhoeffer seems to have gotten a good look at what the Church
should not be, strictly social and political in nature.
He had also studied at Union Theological Seminary, had become involved in ecumenism and had become more political, even as Germany had moved closer and closer to crisis. He had become a university lecturer, heavily involved in travel, seminars, church politics, and ecumenism. He had also met and had become a friend of Karl Barth. It was study, lectures, conversation with Barth, and self examination during those years that led Bonhoeffer to the second turning point. He later confessed that he had finally realized that, “the life of a servant of Jesus Christ should belong to the Church.”[6] From that time, Bonhoeffer belonged to the Church and was focused on Christian ministry and on renewal of the Church, placing him in diametric opposition to Hitler who, in the same year, had become Chancellor of the Third Reich and had immediately begun destroying the German democracy and eliminating the freedoms of the citizens. Bonhoeffer had ten years left before his arrest.
He had also studied at Union Theological Seminary, had become involved in ecumenism and had become more political, even as Germany had moved closer and closer to crisis. He had become a university lecturer, heavily involved in travel, seminars, church politics, and ecumenism. He had also met and had become a friend of Karl Barth. It was study, lectures, conversation with Barth, and self examination during those years that led Bonhoeffer to the second turning point. He later confessed that he had finally realized that, “the life of a servant of Jesus Christ should belong to the Church.”[6] From that time, Bonhoeffer belonged to the Church and was focused on Christian ministry and on renewal of the Church, placing him in diametric opposition to Hitler who, in the same year, had become Chancellor of the Third Reich and had immediately begun destroying the German democracy and eliminating the freedoms of the citizens. Bonhoeffer had ten years left before his arrest.
Bonhoeffer became a parish minister in London in 1933 but
returned to Germany in 1935 to lead an underground illegal seminary. His experiences at the seminary are the
subject of Life Together, [7] published in
1938. After an unsatisfying attempt to
escape the German situation by a move to NY, he returned to Germany in 1939 to,
“share the tribulations of this time with my people,”[8]
and joined the resistance against Hitler, eventually becoming involved in a
plot to assassinate the German ruler. He
was arrested and imprisoned in 1943 and, after discovery of the assassination
plot, was condemned and hanged in 1945.
Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Ministry
In Life Together, Bonhoeffer
outlined his concept of ministry, linking the gift of ministry to the gift of
justification by grace. He argued that
self justification forces us to compare ourselves to others and results,
because of our self centeredness, in criticism of the others. By so doing, according to Bonhoeffer, we
justify ourselves. If only we realize that
we already have the gift of justification by grace, we no longer have to
justify ourselves by comparing ourselves with others and can accept others as
creatures of God. Only then can we
minister to them without judging.
Bonhoeffer listed seven essential elements of ministry, two
that were inward focused and five that had to do with interaction with
others. The first essential element of
Christian ministry, according to Bonhoeffer, is control of the tongue. His strongest statement on the tongue is
that, “…it must be a decisive rule of every Christian fellowship that each
individual is prohibited from saying much that occurs to him.”[9] The prohibition applies not to kind words
spoken in private and in love to Christian brothers but to criticism spoken in
public and behind the backs of the criticized.
Scriptural support is found in Psalms 50:20-21, Ephesians 4:19, and,
perhaps most directly, in James 4:11-12:
“Speak not evil one of another, brethren…who are thou that judgest
another?”[10] According to Bonhoeffer, if that philosophy
is adopted, “diverse individuals in the community are no longer incentives for
talking and judging and condemning, and thus excuses for self justification.” [11]
Meekness is Bonhoeffer’s second, inward focused, essential
element of ministry. To put his advice
in modern terms, those who would minister should give up self esteem. Bonhoeffer’s actual words were that such a
person should, “think little of himself.”
Romans 12:3 was cited as a scriptural basis: “…I say to everyone among
you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think…” [12] The purposes of meekness are to avoid the
“sin of resentment”[13] and to be able to
humbly serve others. As Bonhoeffer asks,
“How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously
regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?”[14]
Then Bonhoeffer turns to three specific things Christians
should do in personal ministry to each other: Listening attentively, resisting
the temptation to interrupt and take the center of attention, helping in even
trivial matters, always being willing to be interrupted, and bearing each
others burdens, never sidestepping what
others may impose upon us. All three
require a total selflessness and seem almost impossible. How can one make a living and take care of
personal responsibilities if always ready to listen to concerns of others, to
be interrupted to help with menial tasks, and to share concern with whatever
anyone else may be concerned about? Such
is possible only by the Grace of God.
Bonhoeffer further states that Christians are to proclaim
the gospel and speak openly of Jesus Christ to each other. Bonhoeffer is speaking of, “free
communication of the Word from person to person, not by the ordained ministry
which is bound to a particular office, time, and place.”[15] In spite of our concerns about confrontation
of Christian friends with the Gospel, we must do it because we are all sinners
and, “have only God to fear.”[16]
Finally, according to Bonhoeffer, if we truly serve one
another as ministers, we have the ministry of authority. Believers should not confer authority on
persons because of their physical or mental traits and characteristics and
abilities but only because of their humble service. He states, “The Church does not need
brilliant personalities but faithful servants of Jesus and the brethren.”[17] These statements were not just intellectual
affirmations but were intensely personal for Bonhoeffer, who in fact was a
brilliant personality, charismatic, influential, and gifted, and who later
confessed that personal ambition had once been a problem for him and that he
had, “turned the doctrine of Jesus Christ into something of personal
advantage.” Certainly during the latter
years of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life he qualified as a faithful servant giving
humble service.
Bonhoeffer’s Practice of Ministry
The student of Bonhoeffer has the advantage of being able to
assess the actual ministry of the always great and eventually humble theologian
against his simple theory. The
personality and discipline required of a person making his or her mark as a
theologian, ministering through writing and teaching and across distance and
time, are different from those required of a person focused on face-to-face personal
and immediate ministry to others.
Bonhoeffer excelled in both areas.
His writings are ample evidence of his significance as a theologian and
have also become an ongoing ministry of great impact. A Rabbi wrote to Bonhoeffer’s friend,
Eberhard Bethge, that Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison had, “made
him understand for the first time how one might be able to worship Jesus
Christ.”[18] But it is not just his writing. Bonhoeffer’s life story includes many
examples of selflessness in the practice of personal ministry.
Even as a student responsible for a childrens’ service at
the Grunewald church, Bonhoeffer’s talent for personal ministry was
foreshadowed in his invitations of the children to his home and in his
initiation of discussion groups with the older children.[19] Later he took charge of an unruly confirmation class whose
confidence and respect he won through personal involvement in their lives and
through opening his home to them, even in his absence.[20] His personal ministry matured during his
leadership of an underground seminary at Finkenwalde from 1935 to 1938. The seminary was an establishment of the
Confessing Church, regarded as illegal by the Reich church government. In Spartan surroundings, Bonhoeffer opened
himself completely to the seminarians, installing his treasured library and
piano in a common area for use by all and reading to them from his works in
progress. Initial German patriotism of
the seminarians was overcome by Bonhoeffer’s teaching on pacifism. Finally in 1935, when the seminary itself was
officially declared illegal, Bonhoeffer called all the ordinands together and
released them from their obligations to the seminary. None left.[21] It was of his experiences at Finkenwalde that
Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together.
Finally it was the prison experience from April 1943 until
his death which was the ultimate test of Bonhoeffer as a minister. Initially in solitary confinement, forbidden
conversation even with the guards, and without amenities even for personal
cleanliness, he entertained thoughts of suicide, not only to avoid the risk of
betraying his family or associates in conspiracy but, “because basically I am
already dead.”[22] However, after an initial interrogation
period, Bonhoeffer was allowed to convert his cell to a study including minimal
comforts from home and books and paper.
He gained the respect and assistance of his jailers and was eventually
able to smuggle out his writing uncensored.
Throughout his imprisonment, Bonhoeffer worked and worshiped
and ministered, always maintaining a personal discipline and serenity that
could not be ignored by his fellow prisoners and prison keepers. It was not only in matters of faith and
religion that Bonhoeffer helped. Bethge
reported that he drafted letters, provided money, helped with legal matters,
and assisted in cases of illness and injury.[23] Rene Marle[24]
quoted the comments of one of Bonhoeffer’s fellow prisoners, a British
Intelligence Service officer:
Bonhoeffer…was all humility and sweetness; he always seemed
to me to diffuse an atmosphere of happiness, of joy, in every smallest event in
life, and of deep gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive…He was one of
the few men that I have met to whom God was real and close.[25]
Another prisoner, one who occupied the cell next to
Bonhoeffer’s, reported that, “…often he would slip into my hand a scrap of
paper with a few words of comfort and faith from the Bible written on it.”[26] Bethge reported that, at Christmas, he wrote
prayers for distribution throughout the prison by the chaplain.[27] In prison, it was not only middle class
Christian church members with whom Bonhoeffer was associated. There were people from all walks of life, and
he was often impressed with the contributions to the community of those from
outside the Church.[28] Certainly it was no exaggeration for Renate
Wind to write that, “In the emergency community of Tegel he gave and
experienced solidarity.”[29]
Bonhoeffer was also active in leadership of worship among
the prisoners including celebrations of weddings and christenings. On his last day of which there is any record,
he was locked in a school in Bavaria on the journey to the extermination
facility at Flossenburg. At the request
of the other prisoners, Bonhoeffer conducted a service of the Word. He was about to begin a service with a second
group when he was taken away for his execution.
The inscription placed on Bonhoeffer’s memorial tablet at the church in
the town where his execution took place said, “A witness to Jesus Christ among
his brothers.”[30]
Thanks be to God for the life and witness and ministry of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bethge, Eberhard. Costly Grace: An Illustrated Introduction
to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Translated by Rosaleen Ockenden. San Francisco: Harper
and Row, 1979.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together: A Discussion of
Christian Fellowship, Translated by John W. Doberstein. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1954.
Marle, Rene. Bonhoeffer: The Man and His Work, Translated by
Rosemary Sheed. New York: Newman Press,
1967.
Mohan, T. N. Hanged
on a Twisted Cross, Written by Eberhard Bethge. 120 min.
Lathika International Film and Entertainment, Inc., 1996.
Videocassette.
Robertson, E. H. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Richmond, VA: John
Knox Press, 1966.
Wind, Renate. A Spoke in the Wheel: The Life of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Translated by John Bowden. London: SCM Press Ltd., 1991.
[1] Eberhard
Bethge, Costly Grace, trans. Rosaleen
Ockenden (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), 17. Most of the biographical details are taken
from this source.
[2] Ibid.,
26.
[3] Ibid.,
31.
[4] Ibid.,
34.
[5] Ibid., 57.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Life Together, trans. By
John W. Doberstein (San Francisco :
HarperSanFrancisco, 1954.
[8] Bethge,
99.
[9]
Bonhoeffer, 92.
[10] NRSV
[11]
Bonhoeffer, 93.
[12] NRSV
[13]
Bonhoeffer, 96.
[14] Ibid.,
97.
[15] Ibid,.
103.
[16] Ibid.,
106.
[17] Ibid.,
109.
[18] Rene
Marle, Bonhoeffer: The Man and His Work,
trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: Newman Press, 1967), 39.
[19] Bethge,
36.
[20]T. N. Mohan, Hanged on a Twisted Cross, Written by
Eberhard Bethge. 120 min. Lathika International Film and Entertainment, Inc.,
1996. Videocassette.
[21] Bethge,
82.
[22] Ibid.,
116.
[23] Ibid.,
137.
[24] Marle,
39.
[25]
According to Marle, this quote was reported by Eberhard Bethge in his forward
to an edition of Letters and Papers from Prison.
[26] Marle,
38.
[27] Bethge,
137.
[28] Wind
115
[29] Renate
Wind, A Spoke in the Wheel: The Life of
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1991),
115.