You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Serving Jesus in the Severest of Trials’ category.
On the Sunday after Easter in 1945, a hastily assembled tribunal sentenced him to death. Hours later, in the predawn twilight, soldiers waited at his cell while he finished his prayers and removed his prison clothes. Then they led him to the gallows where he gave his life to the risen Lord.
Allied forces were rapidly approaching Berlin, and the Nazi’s were all but defeated. Only three weeks later, Hitler would kill himself and thus end the war. Regardless, the Fuehrer would have his revenge for Bonhoeffer’s part in the failed Valkyrie assassination attempt.
Some say that this fact disqualifies Bonhoeffer from the title of martyr. Pastors should not intrude into the political realm, they say. Most especially, they should not take up the sword. But those who say this misjudge both the nature of politics and the details of Bonhoeffer’s life.
Other notable German theologians, like Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, abandoned Germany for the safety of Switzerland and America, respectively. Bonhoeffer’s friends advised this, too, and arranged his passage to America. But when Germany made the first moves of war, he knew he could not abandon the German people to the Nazi regime.
“Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act,” said Bonhoeffer. Those who left their posts in Germany to criticize the Nazi regime from afar, gave up their birthright as German citizens. Bonhoeffer did not know what awaited him in Germany, only that he must be within its borders to live out his God-given vocation.
The speech and action that he had in mind was to train Lutheran pastors. However, that door was closed to him when he was conscripted into the Nazi army as an intelligence officer. Unable to escape this calling, his choice was narrowed by God. He could discharge his office faithful to God, or faithful to the Fuehrer.
Thousands of German officers were grappling with the same choice. Day in and day out, ordinary Germans who had been conscripted into the service of a madman were given hideous orders and forced to choose between God and man. Some disobeyed them and died. Others committed the atrocities under the cover of “duty” and “obedience to authority.” These, latter, bore the consequences of their actions as life-long scars on the conscience.
Bonhoeffer reasoned, “If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can’t, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.” This led to the choice of his life.
Generals and government ministers who understood their responsibility to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of a madman approached Bonhoeffer. They asked him to use his position to query the Allied forces secretly. The German officials wanted him to ask the Allies if they would spare the German people if the officials could remove Hitler from power to end his illegal war.
Simply by asking Bonhoeffer this question, they had placed him on the horns of a dilemma, and they had trusted their lives into his hands. His duty as a Nazi officer was to report this traitorous question to his superior officer. But what was his duty as a human being under God?
What would you do?
Today in History: German Foreign Office Warns about Dietrich Bonhoeffer
February 29, 1936: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who would later be executed by the Nazis for his involvement in the resistance, had already made a name for himself, stirring up trouble with his actions alongside the Confessing Church. He had broken with the (much) larger German Christians and already declared that they represented a false Christ to the world, in part due to their allegiance to the Nazi state.
Bonhoeffer was heavily involved in ecumenical movements, and had informed the Foreign Office that he would be traveling as the director of the Preacher’s Seminary at Finkenwalde to support ecumenical work in Sweden. Today in history, the Foreign Office sent a letter to the German Legation in Stockholm warning them about Pastor Bonhoeffer’s actions:
The Reich and Prussian Ministry for Church Affairs as well as the Church Foreign Office would like to warn you about Pastor Bonhoeffer because his activities are not conducive to German interests. State and church officials have serious objections to his trip abroad, which has only now become known.
I respectfully ask that you report back concerning his public activities and concerning possible reactions in the Swedish press.(From Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 14: Theological Education at Finkenwalde: 1935-1937[DBWE 14:146])
This message’s import should not be understated. It shows that Bonhoeffer was already being monitored both at home and abroad.
LETTER: Tutu’s anti-Semitic outbursts would have anti-Nazi hero ‘turning in his grave’
With reference to “Tutu foundation honours anti-Nazi hero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer” (Cape Argus, January 23):The article is about the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation honouring the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a German theologian.
Bonhoeffer was opposed to Hitler and the anti-Semitism of the Nazis. For his beliefs, he died in a concentration camp. Bonhoeffer must be turning in his grave.
How dare Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his Legacy Foundation have the audacity to have anything to do with an Honourable Christian who stood up for the Jews against Hitler?
In an article which appeared on 08/11/11 in Ynet News, an Israeli on-line news forum they stated, “Archbishop Tutu leads vile, racist campaign against Israel and the Jewish people”.
The article went on to state that Tutu convinced the University of Johannesburg to end its relationship with the Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, Israel, as part of a boycott against Israeli Academic Institutions resembling the dark times when German Universities banned Jewish intellectuals.
Tutu has also demonized the “Jewish lobby” as “too powerful and scary”.
The list of Tutu’s anti-Semitic outbursts could fill this page.
I have no doubt Dietrich Bonhoeffer…
C.S. Lewis lecturer Brown to focus on martyred pastor
This year’s C.S. Lewis Legacy Lecture will focus on the legacy of martyred German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.Jan. 15 2020 @ 8:38pm
This year’s C.S. Lewis Legacy Lecture will focus on the legacy of martyred German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Storyteller the Rev. Larry Brown, of Columbia, will deliver Westminster College’s eighth annual lecture at 11 a.m. Feb. 6. in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury. Brown is famous for infiltrating and writing about racist, white nationalist groups throughout the United States. He frequently appears on PBS.
Bonhoeffer famously opposed Adolf Hitler and vehemently protested Nazi treatment of the Jews during World War II.
Brown’s lecture will commemorate the 75th anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s death: He was executed April 9, 1945, at Flossenburg, a Nazi concentration camp in Flossenburg, Germany.
For the rest of the post…
President Donald Trump is often compared to Hitler. And American Evangelical Christians are compared to the German Christians who supported Hitler and saw him as a savior for the nation. Sad to say, it seems that many Christians in America are placing more faith in Trump than Jesus. Leaders come and go, but the worship of Jesus will last forever. As far as Trump’s faith, I don’t know! I am a Trump supporter. Is he a brother in the Lord? I don’t know.
~ Bryan
Stephen Haynes is the Albert Bruce Curry Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is a Dietrich Bonhoeffer scholar and author of The Battle for Bonhoeffer: Debating Discipleship in the Age of Trump (Eeerdmans, 2018). In this book, Haynes examines “populist” readings of Bonhoeffer, including court evangelical Eric Metaxas’s book Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
Today Eerdmans has published the postscript to The Battle for Bonhoeffer. It is titled “An Open Letter to Christians Who Love Bonhoeffer but (Still) Support Trump. Some of you may recall that Eric Metaxas recently published an op-ed at The Wall Street Journal under the title “The Christian Case for Trump.”
Here is a taste of Haynes’s piece:
Your embrace of Trump is eerily reminiscent of German Christians’ attachment to Hitler in the early 1930s. I make this point not to convince you that Trump is Hitler but to remind you of the troubling ways Christians have compromised themselves in endorsing political movements in which they perceived the hand of God. I developed a scholarly interest in the churches’ role during the Nazi era in part so I could help ensure that Christians would never repeat the mistakes they made under Hitler. Similarly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is one of my heroes in part because he was able to resist the wave of Hitler worship that swept up many German Protestants.
Being familiar with this history, I have been struck by how reminiscent many of your responses to Trump are of the way Christians in Germany embraced a strong leader they were convinced would restore the country’s moral order. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, many Christians in Germany let themselves be persuaded that Hitler was a deeply pious man, placed in power by God through a graceful act of intervention in German history. Hitler encouraged these ideas not by claiming any allegiance to Christ but by employing vague religious language, promising a return to the “good old days,” and posing for photographs as he left church, prayed, and entertained ecclesiastical leaders.
Here are a few examples of how Protestant Christian leaders in Germany spoke about God’s role in Hitler’s accession to power:
• “With National Socialism an epoch in German history has begun that is at least as decisive for the German people, as for example the epoch of Martin Luther.”
• “No one could welcome January 30, 1933 more profoundly or more joyfully than the German Christian leadership.”
• “Adolf Hitler, with his faith in Germany, as the instrument of our God became the framer of German destiny and the liberator of our people from their spiritual misery and division.”
• “[Hitler is] the best man imaginable, a man shaped in a mold made of unity, piety, energy and strength of character.”
Lately I have been reading a great deal of primary and secondary literature about Christian ethics—beginning with the ancient church fathers. (In my opinion, Richard Hayes’s The Moral Vision of the New Testament more than adequately covers New Testament ethics, so my book will begin with the second century church fathers.) I have run into some very startling ideas about the right way to live the Christian life—in the church fathers and in Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Luther and Bonhoeffer and other, later, great Christian ethicists.
First, most of the church fathers and Erasmus and Luther (and to some extent Thomas Aquinas) regarded money as spiritually toxic. They heaped scorn on wealthy people while cautiously admitting that one could be wealthy and a good Christian if one used one’s excess wealth for the benefit of the poor. Their statements are very strong. John Chrysostom condemned wealth and luxury and advocated a kind of communism in which property would belong to all people. Erasmus and Luther also advocated, as an ideal, a “common purse” not only within the church but in society in general. However, they did not think that was practical. Nevertheless, they condemned hoarding wealth when people were hungry and homeless.
Second, nearly all the church fathers except Augustine, plus Erasmus and Luther, considered violence evil and urged Christians to avoid it whenever possible. Basil the Great and John Chrysostom banned Christian soldiers from partaking of communion for one year if they killed someone in battle. Luther, of course, notoriously argued that one can kill for a righteous cause in love, but he strongly discouraged Christians from practicing violence in self-defense. It was only justified in defense of another.
Third, many great Christian thinkers easily made exceptions to revealed rules of conduct—as traditionally interpreted by Christians. This exceptionalism might be called “occasionalism” or “contextualism” to avoid the stigma of “situation ethics.”
Luther condoned polygamy (or at least bigamy) in some cases and also said that if a wife discovers her husband is impotent she is justified in having sex with his brother in order to have children. Bonhoeffer justified lying and said that the Christian must only tell the truth when the person deserves the truth. Often, he more than implied, the person being spoken to does not deserve the truth and then it is okay to lie.
Letter: Like rose petals sharpen rose
petals
Your life characterized by rose petal strewn paths? Do you spend endless summer days among rainbows and unicorns, daisies woven throughout braids of hair, dancing somewhat aimlessly in a circle hand-in-hand with other like – and-empty- minded, flipped-out folks?
Rose petals don’t sharpen rose petals. Iron does. That’s the truth of an ancient proverb of which one commentator said that what is envisioned is someone who cares enough – you might say ‘gives a rip’ enough – to confront his neighbor, thus “influencing his manner, appearance, deportment, and character, sharpening his wit, controlling his conduct.”
In contrast, G.K. Chesterton describes our current age as “a miserable truce,” wherein “everyone is walking on eggs, afraid to offend and suppressing the truth on account of this fear.”
Like this iron-sharpens-iron truth is this similar ancient Hebrew proverb which is usually – and wrongly – translated:
“A man that has friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother.”
Wrong. At least the first half.
The implication is amiableness; get-alongness; a smiley-face, best-foot-forward likeableness that certainly offends no one but rather is found by everyone as, well, friendly.
A good ol’ Joe.
Forever smiling, sun always shining, the number of Facebook friends stupefying – surely this guy epitomizes what it means to be a friend.
Wrong.
Observes one commentator, “the maxim means that the man of many friends, who lays himself out to make friends of bad and good alike, does so to his own ruin.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a friend.
“Facing the greatest evil of the 20th century” – Hitler’s Germany – Bonhoeffer was repeatedly assailed by the pressure from friends and foes alike, “mayn’t we all get along?”
Bonhoeffer’s answer: ‘mayn’t.’
In fact, Bonhoeffer would write, “I find myself in radical opposition to all my friends.”
“As the shadow of the Third Reich fell across Germany,” as described in “Bonhoeffer – Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy” by Eric Metaxas, Hitler’s intentions became crystal clear to Bonhoeffer, but the ingratiating, fawning, blurring, co-opting and conceding compromises of his friends to Hitler’s advances began paring the list of those Bonhoeffer believed could truly be counted on.
One who made the cut and joined Bonhoeffer as a traveling companion – in fact became Bonhoeffer’s best friend – on his “long and lonely road” was Franz Hildebrandt who, within the first five minutes of the two meeting for the first time, began to argue and according to Hildebrandt “we never stopped arguing from that day (December 16, 1927) until we were separated by exile and war.
“You could not be a friend of Dietrich’s if you did not argue with him.”
Got a friend like that?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who was executed in 1945 for his involvement in a plot to overthrow Adolf Hitler. His (book, The Cost of Discipleship) was published after his death, and includes a section on what he calls “cheap grace”.
Cheap grace is the idea that we can obtain salvation and forgiveness of sins without any personal cost to ourselves. Faith in God becomes merely “fire insurance”, and there is no compelling reason to change the way we live. We’re saved and forgiven, therefore we can do as we please without another thought.
I read an account of a man who visited a country where it is illegal to practice Christianity. Early one morning, his Christian hosts took him on a boat ride down a river. The boat was loaded with fishing equipment, but no one was fishing. About an hour into the trip, in the middle of the enormous river, they met up with another boat filled with what looked like fishermen. After a while, another boat joined them. A lookout was appointed to watch for other boats that might carry government authorities or law enforcement, because to be caught could mean their arrest or immediate execution. This group of forbidden Christians spent hours reciting passages of Scripture they had memorized, since no one owned a Bible. They prayed, sang hymns quietly, and encouraged one another. At dusk, with many tears and deep emotion, they parted and went their separate ways.
Recent Comments