Dietrich Bonhoeffer: a Pastor’s Response to Nazism.

Scholar, theologian, professor, pastor, visionary, double agent, conspirator, and martyr ar several(pre noinal) of the attributes associated with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The service valetner in which Dietrich was reared lent a hand to the cart track he took as a young person man, his family having the means to properly educate him and his siblings gave him a thirst for knowledge. That thirst coer him to rent an academic career as a theologian, and later his work as a theologian lead him to be a pastor.Bonhoeffer croakd in the midst of a severe example and political ineptness nonwithstanding he continued to hold to the truths of countersign patch his fellow countrywork force were walking the slippery slope of Nazism. The ideals Bonhoeffer held to heart were ceaselessly under attack from the oppressive goernment under which he lived. The direct of this oppression was at first productive in the development of Dietrichs holiness and his resolve to t apiece the next generati on of pastors to hold true to the church doctrine in the midst of oppression.Later this oppression led Bonhoeffer to leave Germ either for the f every(prenominal) in States this trip was short lived as Dietrich soon resolved he must shine to Germany upon his return he joined a conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffers decision to conspire against Hitler ultimately led to his imprisonment and death. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born in February 1906 to Karl Bonhoeffer and capital of Minnesotaa von Hase Bonhoeffer. Karl Bonhoeffer was an esteemed professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Berlin and also served at Chairte Hospital in Berlin overhaul in the psychiatric unit.The Bonhoeffer family consisted of eight children including Dietrich, thither were four boys and four girls. in that location were 3 older boys, Karl-Friedrich, Walter (who perished in b each(prenominal) War 1) and Klaus. The older girls were Ursula and delivery boyine, Dietrich had a twin sist er Sabine and to go off the family was Susanne. Karl Bonhoeffer was an agnostic while Paula came from a family of theologians. The household was not notably religious. The constituted Bible-story Christian nurture was supplied in the childrens early age, the two governesses were pious young women, a simple blessing was al elbow rooms asked at table- and that was it.Dr. Bonhoeffer and the older children were completely of scientific or legal bent an unaggressive agnosticism prevailed among them. 1 approaching from the environment commonwealthd above make things interesting when as a young teenager Dietrich informed his parent that he wanted to assume theology. This came as a shock to his family as they purpose he would plight music due to his abundant skills in this area. His father suasion the sedentary life of a pastor was not a bully garb for his son, but after studying how he lived he knew that it was the regenerate path for him.Paula Bonhoeffer was trained as a te acher at the university and al-Qaeda-schooled all(prenominal) her children until they were organise to enter the German Gymnasium which was a college preparatory school. Dietrich started his study of theology at Tubingen at age seventeen. He excelled in his studies to the point that he finished his dissertation, titled Sanctorum Communio The Communion of Saints, by the time he was 21 historic period of age. Over the next few years Dietrich would travel to Barcelona, Spain back up to Berlin, and then to the united States. While in the United States he analyse and taught at Union Theological Seminary in naked York City.He did all this traveling because he was too young to be ordained. This gave Dietrich the ability to pursue his studies more and focus his career on teaching and not pastoring a church. While in New York he make a habilitate of worshipping with an Afri shtup-American congregation and teaching Sunday School. While in the United States he also was introduced to many ideas such as pacifism, kind justice, and oecumenism. He (Dietrich) encountered a pacifism that was rooted in the treatment on the Mount- personified in the French theologian and friend Jean Laserre. 2 The idea of pacifism is genius that Dietrich accepted whole heartedly he believed that man could not justify war. His pacifism lead to an internal struggle when the Nazis came to power and started to persecute and kill the Jews. During his years of study Bonhoeffer became acquainted with the teachings of Karl Barth. Barth and his writings influenced young Bonhoeffer to pursue theology to its honorableest and not be boxed into the liberal theology taught at the University of Berlin. Bonhoeffer struck up a friendship with Barth that lasted until the end of his life.Dietrich would spend time with Barth at his home in Bonn and they would talk theology, they would criticize each others work and scrap each other in their views of what it means to be a Christian and a recess of the church. These meetings continued even after Barth moved to Switzerland in the brass section of Nazi persecution. These meetings and letters helped Bonhoeffer explore his theology break throughside the bounds of the university. Upon move from his year of sabbatical in New York Dietrich continued his teaching place and the University of Berlin.This was all happening almost the same time Adolf Hitlers Nazi political science was slowly gaining power in the regime and in popularity among the wad. When Hitler was elected prime minister of Germany things were started to change but the full extent of the Nazis plan was not nevertheless revealed. Dietrich saw that trying times were ahead for those who were theology seekers, this was due to the occurrence that shortly after the political choice at that place was a teleph iodin for church elections. Among the churches in Germany there were conflicts over the rise of the Nazi party.There were some pastors and Bishops who woul d not preach Nazi propaganda, so Hitler called for church elections to accept the offices with his supporters. There was some hold outance to just letting them take over but this small remnant did not have control over the mob. With the church now under control of the Nazis, those who saw a keen contradiction between Nazi Christianity and true Christianity were left with no plectrum but the start their get church. This was allowed by the Nazis but they kept a close eye on them.This new conclave was called the Confessing Church they were an evangelical remnant that had not been persuaded by the masses. On the day of the church election Dietrich preached this, of you who have lost your church, let us go together in search of the eternal church. 3 This group of believers who opposed the Nazis were trying to speak condition and the truth of Scriptures to the German people. Dietrich was among the founding members of the Confessing Church and helped pen the Bethel Confession which was their parameter of belief.He used the formation of the Confessing Church to push his passion for ecumenism among the churches. In 1933 while the Confessing Church was forming Dietrich decided to take a aim in capital of the United Kingdom. Some of his colleagues like Karl Barth accused him of leaving his church while it was burning, but Dietrich thought he needed some time out because his thoughts were not swell received even among friends. While in capital of the United Kingdom he pushed for ecumenical relationships between the churches in England and elsewhere to condemn the German Christian Movement which allowed the Nazis to take control of the church. To this end he was not very successful.He also caught the eire of church leaders in Germany who move Theodor Heckel the foreign affairs minister to London to instruct Bonhoeffer to not hold in ecumenical activity not authorized by Berlin, a warning not heeded by young Dietrich who was just twenty-seven years of age in 1 933. After two years in London Dietrich returned to Germany, the Confessing Church had lost its momentum. The Confessing Church was still going and since it was not recognised as a state church it had to train its pastors in an hush-hush seminary. The church invited Dietrich to lead their seminary called Finkenwalde.It was here the Dietrich wrote the books Life Together and The appeal of Discipleship. The spring came from his time as the leader of Finkenwalde Seminary. The latter is a study of the Sermon on the Mount. In 1936 Dietrich was declared a pacifist and an enemy of the state by Theodor Heckel. For the next few years Dietrich lived in the community of Finkenwalde with his students and taught them monastical and communal living as they open the Scriptures together to prepare these men for the ministry in the true church that was opposing the counterfeit church of the German Christian Movement.They had a few years of great ministry that was funded by benefactors who believ ed in the ideals of the Confessing Church. In 1938 Bonhoeffer was banned from Berlin, two years later the Gestapo came and closed shoot the seminary and arrested some of its pastors. At this time Dietrich was offered a position to teach at Union Theological Seminary in New York, an offer he initially accepted. Dietrich was trying to escape in to the safety of the United States to lift serving in the military and having to deal with living under the oppressive Nazi regime.Upon arriving in the U. S. Dietrich worked with German refugees and emigrants, a job that posed my challenges for him. Bonhoeffer wrote in the Cost of Discipleship, Costly grace is the sanctuary of God, he writes. And, faith is only real when there is obedience. 4 These words tugged at Dietrichs heart because he knew where he should be and what God had called him to do but choose the easy road. on June 30, 1939, Dietrich wrote these words to Paul Lehmann, I can hardly find it in my heart to allege you that I have had to decide to return to Germany,5 The words here bear to echo the actions of the Nazarene in John 44 and he must needs go through Samaria (KJV). This has the same idea as Dietrich and his return to Germany. Jesus could have gone around Samaria as all the Jews did, but he had a divine appointment with that woman at the well and the people of Samaria. Dietrich was having the same feeling that he must return to Germany but he did not have to.He was living what he had scripted faith is only real when there is obedience. 6 The following was written to Dietrichs friend Reinhold Neibuhr in a farewell note, I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national accounting with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people. 7 This shows Gods call for Dietrich to follow him.Dietrich and his frien ds knew he was returning to a hostile place where he would be each be drafted into the military or governance severe persecution. Upon his return to Germany Dietrich made contact with his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi who was a member of the military counterintelligence service called Abwehr. The Abwehr was the center of a small German resistance whose goal was to assassinate Hitler and overthrow the government. Dietrich was stipulation a role as a double agent in the Abwehr in 1940, from that point he was fully integrated into what was called the German electrical resistance.He would have secret meetings with pastors and leaders from other countries as he strike to be gathering information for the Nazi government, while really plotting against them. It is at this point where people have trouble following Bonhoeffers theology and harmonize his beliefs with his actions. There are a couple of ways to deal with this mint of his life. Looking at these two seeming seemingly inc ompatible thought processes one could assume that Bonhoeffer had fallen off his rocker but it helps us to see how he reconciled this. Bonhoeffer precisely advocates patience when he puts forth as a concrete dictation of God the saying resist not wrong. By this he means struggle against the enemy, but avoid idolizing him. Keep him unimportant . Failure to struggle is submission to the enemy and not to God. 8 As Bonhoeffer looked at the situation he must resist the evil that was surrounding him, and to do that he would have to go to extreme measures and challenge the ideals he came to hold so dear in the midst of such moral depravity. He saw resisting evil as a command in the loose sense.Dietrich wrote about a religionless Christianity in which a turn Christian steps outside the structure of the church and enters the world to decree change through the things he has been taught and learned from Scripture and the church. Woelfel writes the following about Bonhoeffer As the integra ted man that he was Bonhoeffer pioneered religionless- Christianity indeed as well as in word. His full secular involvement in the German Resistance during the war is the supreme example, but throughout his life he was a vigorously world affirming Christian. 9 This idea of religionless Christianity lets a follower of Christ fully engage his world while leaving the confines of the church. This was one ting that Bonhoeffer had lived at as well as wrote in his final examination years. Many look at Bonhoeffers writings in prison and his work titled Ethics and see the man who was deeply attached to his faith and also a man who was torn by what was an honorable Christian to do in the midst of such atrocities that were being perpetrate by the Nazis.A look back at Bonhoeffers life brings this into full view as stated thusly, for it was while Bonhoeffer was trying to explain his own participation in the lying and double dealing of traitors that he veritable the beginnings of what has sin ce become known as situational and contextual moral philosophy the right and the good and the true seen not as immutable objectives, but as qualities of any action which is appropriate to the loving will of God as the particular possibilities of the immediate situation permit. 10 The argument here is that of when one looks at the situations that they are faced with and think to themselves what is right in the eyes of God. Bonhoeffer was living and competition that as a Christian we should act in a way that is appropriate for a Christian living in the will of God. Bonhoeffers was face to face with one of the most reprehensible political regimes in the history of the world, you choose one of two camps, there were those who just threw up their give and said there is nothing I can do. The other group were those who said this is unacceptable and do whatever is in their power to push for what is right in Gods eyes.Dietrich was arrested on April 5, 1943 after the documents were discove red that he and his brother-in-law were lawlessly helping Jews. He would never be a free man again for his part in the German Resistance. He was imprisoned at Tegel military prison for a year and a half to await trial in that time more documents came out that pointed to Bonhoeffer as part of the conspiracy to kill Hitler. In light of this evidence he was transferred from Tegel to a house prison and eventually to Buchenwald concentration camp in February 1945. slightly two years after his initial arrest information from the political boss of Abwehr journals were read by Hitler who in a rage said that all conspirators should be killed. On April 9, 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hung at Buchenwald concentration camp. He left fag in his legacy his letters to friends and family from prison, and his work Ethics which had yet to be published before his death. When one looks at the life and times of Dietrich Bonhoeffer they see a complex man whose thirst for knowledge and truth were fostere d from a young age. As a young man he fasten is feet on the path of a theologian to open the Bible and winding out the truths laid there in. His study of theology was dispositionual yet practical he sought to open the Scriptures and pull Jesus out of them. Bonhoeffer came of age in the pre-third Reich era, but as a young man he came face to face with the Nazis and their oppressive ways. Dietrich used this time in his life to expand his study of theology to grow more develop in his faith to blaze a trail for himself among his peers. He fought with the social and political issues of his day and sought to fight injustice with truth and intellect but these proved to be ineffective.His work as a theologian was well known among the Confessing Church and its followers. As Dietrich tried to fight for what was right and true he saw the moral compass of his country go askew. After he had tried all he could he became persuade that the only way to free Germany from this slippery slope was to overthrow the government by assassinating Hitler. His writings have opened the door to the study of ethics when faced with moral depravity, what it means to be and live as the church, and what it be to follow Christ.His teachings and theology have had an impact from the time they were published into the present. His thought helped usher in a new generation of theologians and how one can see their relationship to the church, culture and community and live and teach in such a way that Christ is on display. Bibliography de Gruchy, John W. A Concrete Ethic of the Cross Interpreting Bonhoeffers Ethics in northward Americas Backyard, Union Seminary Quarterly 58, no. 1-2 2004. Dramm, Sabine. Dietrich Bonhoeffer An introduction to his thought. Translated by Thomas Rice. Peabody Hendrickson. 2007. Ellingsen, Mark. Bonhoeffer, Racism, and a Communal Model for Healing Journal of Church and State 43, no. 2 Spring 2001. pp 237-249. Gushee, David P. Following Jesus to the Gallows, Christianit y Today 39 April 3, 1995 pp. 26-32. Hunt, George L. , ed. xii Makers of innovational Protestant Thought. New York Association Press. 1971. Pp 93-110 Klassen, A. J. , ed. A Bonhoeffer Legacy. Grand Rapids William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 1981 Mehta, Ved. The New Theologian. New York Harper Colophon, 1965. Miller, Patrick. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Psalms, The Princeton Seminary Bulletin 15, no. 3 (1994) 274ffSchliesser, Christine. Accepting guilty conscience for the Sake of Germany An Analysis of Bonhoeffers Concept of Accepting Guilt and its Implications for Bonhoeffers Political Resistance Union Seminary Quarterly Review 60 2006 no. 1-2. pp. 56-68 Schonherr, Albrecht. Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Message of a Life, Christian Century, November 27, 1985, pp. 1090-1094. Woelfel, James. Bonhoeffers Theology Classical and Revolutionary. Nashville Abingdon Press. 1970. 1 . George L. Hunt, ed. , Twelve Makers of Modern Protestant Thought (New York Association Press 1971), 97. 2 .Sabine Dramm Dietrich Bonhoeffer An intromission to His Thought (Peabody, Mass Hendrickson Publishers, 2007), 9 3 . Ibid, 157 4 . David P. Gushee, Following Jesus to the Gallows, Christianity Today 39, April 3, 1995, 31. 5 . Ibid 6 . Ibid 7 . Ibid, 30 8 . A. J. Klassen, ed. , A Bonhoeffer Legacy (Grand Rapids William B. Erdmans Publishing, 1981) 355-356. 9 . James Woelfel, Bonhoeffers Theology Classical and Revolutionary, (Nashville Abingdon Press 1970) 253. 10 . George L. Hunt, ed. , Twelve Makers of Modern Protestant Thought (New York Association Press 1971), 107-108.