Bonhoeffer's Questions: A Life-Changing Conversation 1978707835, 9781978707832

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PRAISE FOR BONHOEFFER’S QUESTIONS: A LIFE-CHANGING CONVERSATION “In this superb, compact, and elegantly written book, the leading South African expert on Bonhoeffer, John de Gruchy, shows how Bonhoeffer’s core questions like ‘What does Christian identity look like in the modern world,’ and ‘how should future generations live in light of God’s humanity’ not only shaped the author’s own social and political engagement in Africa, but are also intrinsically relevant to global contemporary political issues. If you are looking for a personally engaging, trustworthy, expert introduction to Bonhoeffer’s theology along with political, social, and environmental applications of his thought born from life-long, careful study of Bonhoeffer, this is the book to buy.” —Jens Zimmermann, Trinity Western University “John de Gruchy first read Bonhoeffer’s theology as a young South African theologian in opposition to apartheid. In Bonhoeffer’s Questions he reflects on the central aspects of Bonhoeffer’s work that have shaped his own faith and scholarly work over the decades. In the process de Gruchy explores how our interpretations and understandings of Bonhoeffer have changed and deepened as we reflect on today’s challenges. This book is a thoughtful and far-reaching study of why the questions Bonhoeffer posed in his own times remain central for Christians today.” —Victoria J. Barnett, general editor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English Edition “John de Gruchy presents us the summary of a life long journey with Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He presents the legacy of this martyr as a new kind of Christian humanism. In explaining the clarity of Bonhoeffer’s questions the author encourages readers to find their own answers.” —Wolfgang Huber, chief editor of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Works, German edition “John de Gruchy brings to Bonhoeffer’s Questions sixty years of persistent and intensive Bonhoeffer scholarship, including his key role in editing and producing Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English. This concentrated focus of a lifetime shows in the way he has gone about the task of enunciating and elaborating on Bonhoeffer’s core questions and the questions we might ask in light of his questions, including arguably Bonhoeffer scholarship’s most intriguing and imponderable question, ‘who is Bonhoeffer for us today?’ As de Gruchy sifts through the questions and ponders on potential answers, we see just a glimpse of what some of Bonhoeffer’s systematic theology might have looked like. The combination of profundity of thought with an easy read makes the book both edifying and a delight. This is a ‘must read’ for Bonhoeffer scholars and students.” —Terence Lovat, editor-in-chief, The Bonhoeffer Legacy: An International Journal “John de Gruchy weaves together a masterful commentary on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and thought with details from his own development as a theologian who discovered in Bonhoeffer an invaluable dialogue partner for the struggle against apartheid, and combines these with timely observations about the challenges and opportunities the world now faces. Whether a reader has only sampled what Bonhoeffer has to offer or is deeply immersed in all that he said and did, de Gruchy extends to each questions to ponder and possibilities to contemplate as women and men strive to bear witness to Christ and promote the dignity of all in a rapidly changing and uncertain world.” —Barry Harvey, Baylor University

“Long after his death under the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer remains the most challenging, inspiring, and yet often provocatively puzzling theologian of the 20th century. No one is better equipped than John de Gruchy, following his lifetime of research and interpretation, to provide a new guide on Bonhoeffer. He identifies the searching questions Bonhoeffer raised in his context of crisis and resistance, and invites readers into a conversation on how these bear on today’s search for faith and responsible human life in the world. In relatively few pages, the development of Bonhoeffer’s thinking is seamlessly interwoven with the story of his life and the fateful history of his time, just as for de Gruchy himself, from the struggles in apartheid South Africa down to the present day, theology and public engagement have been inseparable. The result is an unusually compelling contemporary encounter with Bonhoeffer, immensely valuable for newcomers yet abounding in fresh insights for those who already claim familiarity with him.” —Rev. Dr. Keith Clements “John de Gruchy’s volume captures the core questions of Bonhoeffer’s published books, essays, monographs, letters and interventions into public life, and reaffirms de Gruchy as a global doyen of Bonhoeffer studies. He reminds us that Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the dangers of religious captivity in Nazi Germany, anticipates the perils of religious surrender to partisan politics and the struggle for global domination. This anticipates a set of ‘new’ questions that are part of an increasingly diverse global consciousness, in an everchanging scientific and technological worldview.” —Charles Villa-Vicencio, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town “De Gruchy offers a very fine and readable account of Bonhoeffer’s abiding provocation to contemporary Christian life, thought, and faith. Fresh exposure to Bonhoeffer’s own profound and searching questioning of faith, modern life, and their interrelation is bracing. Here, our experience of this is deepened and enriched further by our being given insight into de Gruchy’s own lifetime’s wrestling with the legacy of the German theologian in the context of recent South African history. The result is a book of rare value and interest.” —Philip G. Ziegler, University of Aberdeen “De Gruchy’s latest book is more than a rich, lifelong endeavor into the depth of Bonhoeffer’s life and thought, and more than another well-written book by the great South African Theologian. It introduces the reader to both the contextuality and universality of Bonhoeffer’s theological impulses and thus gives a vision for engaging with Bonhoeffer in the future regardless of what context he will be read in.” —Ralf K. Wüstenberg, Europa-Universität Flensburg and University of Cambridge “John de Gruchy belongs to that first international generation of theologians who were inspired by Bonhoeffer’s questions, questions about the world come of age, who Christ is for us today, and how the coming generation is to go on living. Bonhoeffer may have posed these questions most pointedly in the isolation of his prison cell, but, as de Gruchy shows, they were the culmination of a lifetime of conversations. In Bonhoeffer’s Questions, de Gruchy reflects on his own sixty years spent in conversation about these questions, offering in the process a portrait of Bonhoeffer as a witness to Christ, a prophet, and a humanist.” —Michael P. DeJonge, University of South Florida “John de Gruchy’s dialogue with Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a life-long one, and it has—and continues to be—a life-changing conversation. As an internationally recognized Bonhoeffer scholar and socially-engaged intellectual, De Gruchy is at the forefront of exploring the meaning of Bonhoeffer’s life, theology, and legacy not merely for his native South Africa but also with an eye on the complex political and religious global challenges facing us today. In Bonhoeffer’s Questions the questions are real, the conversation is inviting and stimulating, and the outcome is a wonderful book by a seasoned theologian that will not leave the reader unchanged.” —Robert Vosloo, Stellenbosch University

Bonhoeffer’s Questions A Life-Changing Conversation John W. de Gruchy

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL Copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 9781978707832 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 9781978707849 (electronic) TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To all who share in the conversation with Bonhoeffer and to the next generation who lead the way into the future

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

vii 1

1: The Conversation

5

1

Questions That Changed My Life

2

Bonhoeffer’s Core Questions

17

3

Participating in the Conversation

27

2: Who Is Bonhoeffer for Us Today?

7

39

4

Theological Witness to Christ

41

5

Prophet of God’s Justice and Peace

59

6

Christian Humanist

77

3: Our Questions

97

7

Who Is God; How Do We Know; and Do We Need “Him”?

8

What Is a Christian, and Where Is the Church?

119

9

How Do Faith and Politics Mix?

137

10 How Do We Resist Tyranny and Build Democracy? Postscript: One Last Question Chronology Bibliography Index of Subjects Index of Names About the Author

99

153 175 179 183 189 197 199

v

Acknowledgments

Far too many friends and colleagues have shared in my conversation with Bonhoeffer over the past sixty years for me to mention them all by name. Some, but by no means all, will be acknowledged by reference to their work in what follows. Without their support, encouragement, and insight this book could never have been written. It must suffice, then, to mention those who have had a more direct hand in bringing this manuscript to completion by reading and commenting on a penultimate draft: Keith Clements, Phil Ziegler, Jens Zimmermann, and Robert Vosloo. I also express my gratitude to those colleagues in the Faculty of Theology at Stellenbosch University who have shared with me over the past decade in arranging and participating in the annual graduate student colloquia at Volmoed. These have been sponsored in part by the National Research Council, which has also funded much of my research over the years. The Volmoed Colloquium, which began many years ago as a doctoral seminar on Bonhoeffer’s theology at the University of Cape Town, has led more recently to the establishment of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Unit in the Beyers Naudé Centre at Stellenbosch, which is now responsible for the Colloquium. The formation of this unit is an acknowledgement of the link between Naudé and Bonhoeffer that I will later describe, and an important step in ensuring that Bonhoeffer’s legacy will continue to inspire and inform succeeding generations of students. The unit has also taken responsibility for organizing the thirteenth International Bonhoeffer Congress to be held at Stellenbosch University in January 2020. I was present and gave my first paper on Bonhoeffer at the Second International Bonhoeffer Congress held in Geneva in 1976, and I have presented papers at every International Bonhoeffer Congress since then. As these have been central to my conversation with Bonhoeffer and subsequently published in journals, collections of essays, and conference papers, I have referenced all of them in the bibliography. But this book is not a collection of my essays, even though I have used some of that material because everything has been freshly written within a new framework and format, taking into account advances in Bonhoeffer scholarship and the present times in which we live. The Geneva Congress coincided with the celebration of the seventieth anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s birth. At that event, his close friend Eberhard Bethge observed that it was difficult to conceive of Bonhoeffer as an old man. Back then, I was a few years younger than Bonhoeffer when he died vii

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and, as such, part of the “next generation” about whose future he expressed great concern toward the end of his life. What kind of a world would we inherit? Now being more than twice Bonhoeffer’s age when he died, I have a similar concern about the world we are leaving to those who come after us. With that in mind, I dedicate this book to the new generation of Bonhoeffer scholars and the generation of my grandchildren Thea, David, and Kate, whose zest for life, conversation, and commitment to making the world a better place is a constant source of delight. I am grateful to the publishers Rowman & Littlefield who so gracefully and speedily agreed to publish Bonhoeffer’s Questions, and to Neil Elliot, Gayla Freeman, and Jessica Thwaite of their Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Division whose helpful and professional editorial assistance has brought the project to completion. Isobel has shared her life with me for almost sixty years and so has been present during the gestation and birth of virtually everything I have written since my graduate student days. To say that I am grateful to her for her support and encouragement is an understatement. But then any expression of gratitude would be totally inadequate. John de Gruchy Volmoed, Hermanus, South Africa June 2019

Introduction

In a conversation something new can always happen. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, July 1944, Tegel Prison 1

Bonhoeffer did not write a systematic theology, but he did leave us substantial texts that reveal a deep underlying structure that gives his theological legacy coherence and continuity. He was more than able to present detailed and dense academic lectures and wrote numerous essays and monographs, virtually all of which are now available in his collected works. And, incidentally, many of them have “Question” in the title. But his preferred teaching method was moving away from the podium and sitting down with his students to provoke discussion, raise questions, and prompt others as the conversation developed. He also did this through an extensive correspondence with family, friends, and colleagues. None of this replaced his lectures and other writings, but it made his questions more existential, immediate, and personally challenging. Pursuing knowledge and theological inquiry in this dialogical way was not unique to Bonhoeffer. From the Upanishads and the dialogues of Plato in Greece to the present day, this has been and remains the preferred practice of most gifted teachers. Like most of us, Bonhoeffer engaged in many conversations of consequence during his life. In what follows, we will listen to and become participants in some of these insofar as they relate to us today. But we engage Bonhoeffer in conversation mindful that many others have done so and continue to do so across the world. Anyone familiar with the publications, conference papers, dissertations, and college courses related to Bonhoeffer’s legacy will know that there is not one “Bonhoeffer conversation” but many. So, let me acknowledge at the outset that my conversation cannot possibly take them all into account. Yet, what follows is the outcome of sixty years of Bonhoeffer research and writing in conversation with others, students and colleagues alike, and I am grateful to them all. I am only sorry that I received Wolfgang Huber’s splendid Dietrich Bonhoeffer—Auf dem Weg zur Freiheit. Ein Porträt too late to include in my discussion, but I am encouraged to discover that his “portrait” converges with mine at many points. 2 I also acknowledge the lack of an adequate engagement with feminist Bonhoeffer scholars who adopt similar methodologies to my own in interpreting his theology. My conversation would undoubtedly have been enriched if I had. 3 1

2

Introduction

As the title suggests, Bonhoeffer’s Questions is a response to what I regard as Bonhoeffer’s most probing questions, that is, his “core questions.” He asked these in one form or another throughout much of his life, even if they found their final formulation in his Letters and Papers from Prison. I was privileged to spend five years (2004–2009) editing the new English translation of this classic text. Almost daily during that time, I was confronted with these questions, which have also occupied and often perplexed Bonhoeffer scholars since the first truncated version of the Letters and Papers was published soon after the Second World War. 4 Although none is unique to Bonhoeffer, the way in which he formulated them in relation to his context is distinct. But because these “core questions” gestated over a longer period than the years of Bonhoeffer’s incarceration, and did so in conversation with many others, we must explore them mindful of their biographical, theological, and contextual background. This requires that we continually refer to earlier writings and previous versions of the questions, not only to discover their origin but also to help us understand how the questions arose and how he attempted to answer them especially during his final days. For it was in prison that he asked and reflected on them with an urgency and clarity made possible by his enforced confinement in what he likened to a monk’s cell, and by his awareness of the hastening of both his fate and that of Germany. His imprisonment also meant that his only way of sharing his questions and attempted answers was through writing letters and drafting papers. Gone were the days of lively interpersonal interaction with students, faculty, friends, and family. Yet it is precisely because of what he wrote in prison that we can share in that conversation today. In part 1, I begin by telling how I became involved in Bonhoeffer studies as a result of a question Eberhard Bethge posed when I was a student and how this led to an ongoing dialogue with Bonhoeffer (and Bethge) in relation to the South African context. I then introduce Bonhoeffer’s core questions, and hopefully say enough about them to whet the appetite for the conversation ahead. In the final chapter of part 1, I also say something about the importance and nature of this conversation through which these core questions weave their way and gather momentum as the conversation develops. In part 2, my focus shifts from Bonhoeffer’s questions to a consideration of who he is for me and for many others today. From early on I understood him as a faithful witness to Christ, 5 but soon began to think of him as a prophet of God’s justice and peace, and eventually came to appreciate him as a Christian humanist. That Bonhoeffer was and remains a witness to Christ is universally acknowledged; that he was a prophet is often mentioned but less often examined; and his identification as a Christian humanist has only gained attention in more recent times. But these three dimensions of his profile belong together, inform-

Introduction

3

ing each another and enabling us to understand who he became in the course of his life. Taken together, they help inform and make our conversation with him relevant today. In part 3, I discuss a string of questions evoked by Bonhoeffer’s core questions and prompted by his legacy. Some of these are frequently asked by those interested in what he said and did, but they are all questions that I often ask. They have to do not only with what it means to believe in God, but also about what such faith implies for our life in the world, whether it is shaped by science and technology or that of political struggles and engagement. And not least they have to do with the “next generation” and who Christ may be for them as well as for us. The publication of the seventeen-volume Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English has provided an indispensable resource to engage in a continuing conversation with Bonhoeffer’s legacy. I have made extensive use of these volumes because if our conversation is with Bonhoeffer, then it must be conducted primarily through his own words and not those written about him. In doing so, I also hope to introduce readers to some of the treasures to be found in his collected works that are sometimes overlooked or unknown. In reading these volumes, I have also been surprised, time and again, by how often Bonhoeffer asked questions both of himself and of those to whom he was writing or speaking. So, I invite the reader to share in this ongoing conversation prompted by Bonhoeffer’s questions. I assume that the reader is familiar with the basic details of Bonhoeffer’s life. If not, there are several biographies available, both short and concise accounts, and those that are far more extensive and detailed. Some of these will be discussed in chapter 3, but others I have found useful are listed in the Bibliography. I have also provided a basic chronology so that the reader is better able to follow the development of Bonhoeffer’s life. My hope is that a clear profile of who he was and what he did will emerge in a coherent way, and that the questions he asked will be located in his context and changing circumstances, so that the reader will be able to enter into my conversation with him in an informed way today in our different local yet shared global contexts. NOTES 1. Notes, Tegel, July 1944. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 453. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations at the beginning of the parts and chapters of the book are by Bonhoeffer, and all references to his work, unless otherwise indicated, are from the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English (DBWE) as listed in the Bibliography. 2. Wolfgang Huber, Dietrich Bonhoeffer—Auf dem Weg zur Freiheit. Ein Porträt. München: C. H. Beck, 2019.

4

Introduction

3. See Lisa E. Dahill, Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2009; Jennifer M. McBride, The Church for the World: A Theology of Public Witness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 4. See Martin E. Marty, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011). 5. See John de Gruchy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Witness to Jesus Christ (London: Collins, 1988).

1

The Conversation

Dear Eberhard, Only in conversation with you did I find out whether an idea was of any use. 1 Dietrich, Tegel Prison November 18,1943 Dear Dietrich, Any letter from you is an event and gives rise to a host of questions, brings me new stimuli and new ways of seeing things. Each time it’s very exciting for me. 2 Eberhard, South of Italy March 2, 1944

NOTES 1. Letters and Papers from Prison, 182. 2. Letters and Papers from Prison, 313.

ONE Questions That Changed My Life

[Would not] Bonhoeffer’s hot theological discussions with Geneva and with Faith and Order in 1934 and afterward . . . make a good and penetrating textbook for our judgment of the present crisis between the churches in South Africa and the relation of Geneva to this crisis? —Eberhard Bethge, Alden Tuthill Lectures, Chicago, 1960 1 Are we involved in a “church struggle” like that in the Third Reich and do we have to create a ‘Confessing Church” as you did in Germany? This question was raised in almost every discussion I had in South Africa. —Eberhard Bethge, “A Confessing Church in South Africa? Conclusions from a Visit,” 1975 2

These two questions changed my life. But I am anticipating what brought this about. I first read Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship while a student at Rhodes University in South Africa in 1958. What I read then about “costly grace” in its opening chapters has challenged me ever since. It was this Bonhoeffer that spoke to us as theological students who would soon become engaged in the church struggle against apartheid. And the more we learned about Bonhoeffer’s prophetic witness during the German Kirchenkampf, the more we found in him an uncomfortable but kindred spirit. A few years after reading Discipleship I read the first, very truncated, English edition of Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. 3 In its pages I encountered a different Bonhoeffer, but the challenge he presented was disturbing in another way. It is one thing to be confronted with the call to follow Jesus even to death if necessary; it is another to face the question, “Who is Jesus Christ actually for us today?” As a young pastor I thought I 7

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knew who Jesus was; he was “the Christ of faith,” as both Bonhoeffer and I had learned from Martin Kähler. 4 But Bonhoeffer was asking me to think again. What did faith in Christ really mean, and not just in the classroom or pulpit, or only in the struggle against apartheid, but also in a world “come of age?” My conversation with Bonhoeffer had begun, but my academic interests were elsewhere when, in 1963, I was awarded a scholarship by the World Council of Churches to study in Chicago. Nevertheless, I could not shake off Bonhoeffer’s nagging question, and not least because en route on the boat from South Africa to Southampton and New York, I read Bishop John Robinson’s Honest to God, which had just been published in response to the questions Bonhoeffer asked in his prison letters. I was excited and intrigued but also perplexed and confused. If only I could ask Bonhoeffer himself what he meant by “non-religious” Christianity. Fortuitously, a year before my arrival, Eberhard Bethge had given the AldenTuthill lectures at Chicago Theological Seminary on “The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Theology.” Soon after arriving I avidly read them and decided to change the focus of my studies. The chief reason for this decision was that in his lectures Bethge posed a question that jumped off the page as I read. Would not Bonhoeffer’s discussions with the World Council of Churches in Geneva in the 1930s make “a good and penetrating textbook for our judgment of the present crisis between the churches in South Africa, and the relation of Geneva to this crisis?” 5 This led me to do a reading course on Bonhoeffer’s dissertation Sanctorum Communio, which then became the foundational theological text for my master of theology thesis on the “Church and the Racial Problem” in preparation for my return to pastoral ministry in Durban, South Africa. It also became the research question that some years later led to my doctoral dissertation on the ecclesiologies of Karl Barth and Bonhoeffer and their significance for the church struggle in South Africa. 6 Without this I would not have been able to pursue an academic career at the University of Cape Town when the opportunity came or become part of a global network of scholars engaged in Bonhoeffer studies. My life would have been very different. 7 I appropriated four key insights from Bethge’s Alden-Tuthill lectures, which have influenced the way in which I have approached Bonhoeffer’s legacy ever since. The first is an awareness of the integral relationship between Bonhoeffer’s life and the development of his theology in his context. The second is, that despite the changes that occurred in Bonhoeffer’s theological development from his student days through to his imprisonment, there was an underlying continuity that gave it coherence and direction. Once I understood this, I could locate what I read in his Letters and Papers from Prison in continuity with what I had previously read in Discipleship. I could also appreciate that the changes in emphasis and formulation were not necessarily deviations but deepening expres-

Questions That Changed My Life

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sions of fundamental convictions in changing circumstances. The third is that theology, or dogmatics strictly speaking, cannot be separated from ethics because what we believe and what we do are inseparable. The fourth lasting insight that I garnered from Bethge’s lectures is that to understand Bonhoeffer’s theology I had to start at the beginning, namely with his dissertation Sanctorum Communion. In retrospect, it was the right place to begin. BEGINNING WITH SANCTORUM COMMUNIO Bonhoeffer completed Sanctorum Communio in 1927 when he was twentyone years old. It was a prodigious scholarly effort that led to a conclusion that would inform his theology to the end: “Christ exists as church-community.” 8 This may sound simple enough, but in writing his thesis and, soon after, his Habilitation Act and Being, Bonhoeffer was engaging in some of the most important philosophical, anthropological, and theological debates of his day. In doing so, he was trying to discern where the Christ of faith is visibly present in the world by daringly connecting the sociality of our common humanity with the church-community of faith understood as the “new humanity.” 9 To understand the significance of Sanctorum Communio we need to locate his thesis in the context of the Protestant Church in Germany as Bonhoeffer experienced it growing up. His family was not a “”churchgoing family even though they cherished and practiced what they regarded as Christian values. These were, however, filtered through the Enlightenment, which made Christianity a matter of individual choice and high moral principle. This, too, was the view of Bonhoeffer’s liberal professors at Berlin University, chief among them being the much-esteemed and family friend Adolf von Harnack. But at the time Bonhoeffer was beginning his studies, this understanding of Christianity was seriously challenged by the Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth, who had previously broken with liberal Christianity because of its failure to oppose Germany’s war policy in 1914. Bonhoeffer was soon captivated by Barth’s theology. But he was also about to experience the church differently. This happened when on his travels as a young student, he attended Holy Week services in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Suddenly he discovered the church as a universal, living, and worshipping community. By contrast, the Prussian Church (the Evangelical Church of the Union, comprising both Lutheran and Reformed congregations) was a pale shadow of what he now began to think the church should be. Briefly tempted to become a Catholic, 10 Bonhoeffer would remain a Lutheran by conviction, but now spurred on by both Barth and his own youthful experience he was intent on reinventing the church as a living community of faith spoken of in the confessions of the

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Reformation. The church was not a society of religious individuals as liberal Christianity maintained, but neither was it only an “event” as Barth insisted, or the literal embodiment of Christ as Catholics believed, though that seemed closer to the mark. Sanctorum Communio was an attempt to take each of these options seriously, acknowledging their strengths but also finding a way to overcome their weaknesses. And for Bonhoeffer this was as much an existential necessity as it was an academic endeavor. How could he be a theologian and a pastor in a church whose character was problematic and whose credibility was in doubt? Fundamental to Sanctorum Communio is an interpersonalist anthropology, which insists that being human is being-in-relationship with others. The “I,” that is, who “I am,” derives its identity from its relationship to the “You.” This relationship is ethical in character, for the “person exists always and only in ethical responsibility,” but it is also dynamic because “the person is re-created again and again in the perpetual flux of life.” 11 Everything, then, that “can be said about the Christian concept of person can be grasped directly by the person who is facing responsibility.” 12 The reason is theological. The “other,” the “You” is “an image of the divine You,” the one through whom God encounters me. The claim of the “other” upon me is always God’s claim, but at the same time it is always also the claim of the “other.” 13 From this perspective Bonhoeffer argues there is a “net of sociality” that is “prior to any human will to community.” 14 This does not mean that the individual loses personal identity, any more than it means the priority of the social over the personal. It means that the discovery of genuine personal identity is only possible in community, that is, through “the other.” For this reason, God does not desire a history of individual human beings, but the history of the human community. However, God does not want a community that absorbs the individual into itself, but a community of human beings. 15

Human community is, however, fallen community, one in which relationships have been broken and in which the “I” dominates the “You.” The overcoming of this requires the coming into being of the church as the “new humanity,” that is humanity pardoned and reconciled in Jesus Christ. 16 This “community of love” expresses its true nature through “being for others” in “vicarious action” (Stellvertretung). By this Bonhoeffer meant that God’s “being-there-for-others” in Christ is the distinguishing characteristic of social relations within the life of the church and its relationship to the world. This means that the “outcome of revelation . . . is a new social form of humanity in which love liberates people from dominating and exploitive power over others to the freedom of being with and for others.” 17 The “reality of Jesus Christ” meant that “God established the reality of the church, of humanity pardoned in Jesus Christ—not religion,

Questions That Changed My Life

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but revelation, not religious community but church.” 18 The church, then, is more than the sum of its individual members, it is already an anticipation of the “new humanity” that God is bringing into being through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Moreover, every congregation is called to become the embodiment of that “new humanity,” of humanity fully restored in Christ. 19 The social and political consequences of what Bonhoeffer was saying soon became clear to me as I reflected on the question of race in the life of the church in South Africa and in United States because I was a student in Chicago just when the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum. Sanctorum Communio, heavily academic as are most doctoral dissertations, contained, so it seemed to me, the seeds of a genuinely transformative dynamic ecclesiology with explosive political implications. Although Bonhoeffer may have regarded Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being as his “academic theology” unrelated to politics, as Stanley Hauerwas would later observe, “the theological position Bonhoeffer took in those books made the subsequent politics of his life and work inevitable.” 20 BONHOEFFER IN SOUTH AFRICA The full implications of what Bonhoeffer was saying only dawned on me after I returned to South Africa and became involved in the church struggle against apartheid, encouraged by Beyers Naudé, the prophetic Dutch Reformed church leader. 21 In doing so, I began to read and interpret Bonhoeffer’s legacy from the global South rather than Europe and North America, where most Bonhoeffer scholars were located. Yet being white and the grandson of European colonists and, as such, part of a privileged minority, and having studied in the United States, I straddled both worlds. This enabled me to better understand the different worlds Bonhoeffer inhabited (Germany, England, and America), the importance of his traveling abroad (North Africa, Cuba, and Mexico), and his awareness of what was happening further afield in Gandhi’s India and German South West Africa, 22 now known as Namibia since its independence from South Africa in 1990. Of even greater interest to me was the fact that Bonhoeffer’s theological engagement with National Socialism during the 1930’s had affinities with our own struggle against the theological justification for apartheid in South Africa. But not being poor, oppressed, or black, I was challenged by Bonhoeffer’s example of what he would later describe as seeing things “from below,” that is, from the perspective of the oppressed. 23 Bonhoeffer knew that understanding our own social location irrespective of where we live is fundamental to the way we see, imagine, and interpret reality and, therefore, to the way we do theology and live as Christians.

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The first step in this process, so I learned, is to acknowledge that although Bonhoeffer might have something to contribute on a wide range of contemporary issues, he may not be the theologian we turn to on every occasion and issue in our own time and place. We need to establish a prima facie reason to engage Bonhoeffer, discerning some correspondence between his context and our own, his theological concerns and ours. This was not difficult to do in apartheid South Africa. The second step is to trace the development of that trajectory in his legacy that best speaks to our contemporary concerns and then research and evaluate Bonhoeffer’s response to the issues in his own context. The third step is bringing these two horizons together in a meaningful way. What I also learned in the course of this conversation was that in doing so, I and others from the South, discovered insights in Bonhoeffer’s legacy that those in a different historical and social location to my own did not readily discern. The influence of Bonhoeffer’s legacy on the witness of the church in South Africa over the past half-century may be considered in relation to three specific periods. 24 The first was during the church struggle in South Africa, 1960–1989. The second, 1990–1996, was during the immediate post-apartheid period, which included the Seventh International Bonhoeffer Congress held in Cape Town in 1996 and coincided with the years of Nelson Mandela's presidency. The third has spanned the years from then until now, marked by the thirteenth International Bonhoeffer Congress to be held in Stellenbosch in 2020. When I first engaged Bonhoeffer’s theology in the 1960s and 1970s, the church struggle against apartheid had begun to gather momentum following the Cottesloe Conference. That event, sponsored by the World Council of Churches, was held in Johannesburg in December 1960 in response to the Sharpeville Massacre earlier that year. 25 It was to this that Bethge referred in his Alden-Tuthill lectures and, in doing so, stirred my life-changing interest in Bonhoeffer’s legacy. For it was soon after Cottesloe that Naudé, disillusioned by the dismissive reaction to Cottesloe by his own church, launched the Christian Institute, an ecumenical foundation motivated by his vision of a Confessing Church in South Africa. 26 In doing so, Naudé was influenced by the Kirchenkampf and especially Bonhoeffer’s role and witness in it. Indeed, several of us younger theologians who came under Naudé’s influence began to regard him as “South Africa’s Bonhoeffer,” something affirmed by Bethge when he visited South Africa in 1973. 27 The Christian Institute led the church struggle against apartheid until both it and Naudé were banned by the apartheid government in 1977. This followed the state murder of the Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko, and Naudé’s public identification with Biko and with the Soweto Uprising in 1976, which Biko inspired. Black Christians had been engaged in the struggle against colonialism and apartheid long before Cottesloe and the formation of the Christian

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Institute and, thus, well before Bonhoeffer’s influence on the South African church struggle. They had already learnt what white Christians had yet to learn about Christian resistance to oppression and injustice. Naudé challenged us to do this and thus to respond, however haltingly and inadequately, to the rise of Black Consciousness and Black Theology from a very different perspective to that of white supremacist South Africa. Bonhoeffer’s theology spoke not primarily to those who were suffering from injustice, though clearly to some of them too, 28 but to those who, like him, had to be liberated from privilege and start to see things differently as the starting point for doing theology and Christian witness. 29 References to Bonhoeffer’s writings, selective as they were at the time, regularly demonstrated his relevance for the struggle against apartheid as it intensified during the two periods of State Emergency rule in the mid- and late 1980’s––the recognition that we were in a status confessionis; that apartheid was not just evil but a heresy; and that the illegitimacy of the state demanded that Christians resist and help bring an end to an unjust and illegitimate regime. Bonhoeffer’s influence was also evident in the Kairos Document, which categorically rejected the apartheid regime as tyrannical, opposed any cheap reconciliation without justice, and unequivocally called on Christians to take sides with the oppressed in their struggle for liberation. 30 Christian activists, inspired by Bonhoeffer’s example, sometimes referred to his words about the need to “put a spoke in the wheel” of an illegitimate government and sought ways to do so. 31 In 1989, at the same time as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the struggle against apartheid came to an end with the unbanning of the liberation movement. In 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from jail, and four years later he was elected the first president of the new democratic Republic of South Africa. A progressive constitution was drafted and adopted, and a Constitutional Court installed to uphold its values. Then followed the establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to deal with past human rights abuses and foster a culture in which justice could be restored and reconciliation achieved. Bonhoeffer’s influence was not unimportant in preparing the churches for these developments, 32 but we also began to ask whether his legacy was still of value in the new democratic South Africa? IS BONHOEFFER STILL OF ANY USE? At the Sixth International Congress held in New York in 1992, Bethge proposed that Cape Town be the venue for the next one because of the significance of Bonhoeffer’s influence during the church struggle against apartheid. The South African planning committee then adapted Bonhoeffer’s question “Are we still of any use?” 33 from his essay “After Ten Years” as its theme. There were two reasons for doing so. The first was

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the need to consider whether Bonhoeffer’s legacy was still of value, not just in a democratic South Africa, but also in the new global environment. The second reason was the need to discern whether those theologians and churches that had been engaged in the struggle against apartheid were still of any use in the democratic transformation of South Africa. The answer was positive, with the proviso that this would require a fresh engagement with Bonhoeffer. 34 As it turned out, during the years that followed, the legacy of apartheid continued to permeate much of South Africa’s social and political reality; the optimism evoked by the work of the TRC and the belief that the ecumenical church and its theologians could have much influence on government policy by working from within the structures of the establishment, soon dissipated, as did the euphoria of the new millennium. The economic recession caused by the banking crisis in the United States in 2007 also had a severe effect on developing countries and emerging markets, which led to massive unemployment and increased poverty in South Africa. At the same time, the character of the democratic future of the country was hotly contested by liberals, socialists, trade unionists, communists, and African nationalists in a way not unlike that which Bonhoeffer would have experienced during the final years of the Weimar Republic. Given these realities, it soon seemed like Bonhoeffer’s legacy had taken on fresh significance in a historical context that resembled the 1920’s and early 1930s in Europe and, especially, Germany. We also had to face the fact that the dominant role of colonial Christianity in South Africa was now being challenged. This was the result of several factors. The first was that too many white churches and Christians in South Africa had either supported apartheid or remained silent when they should have spoken. The second was the resurgence of other religious traditions, especially Islam and African traditional religions. The third was that South Africa was now a secular state. Not only did the church have to learn how to relate to a secular state but also respond to the secular challenge presented by the global debate about God. As the transition to democracy got underway, my own theological interests also began to shift. At the time there was much discussion about the humanism of Nelson Mandela and a pan-African Renaissance. This reawakened my interest in the kind of “Christian humanism” that characterized the European Renaissance and prepared the way for the Protestant Reformation. Gradually it dawned on me that Bonhoeffer, who spoke to us during the struggle against apartheid as a witness to Christ and prophet of social justice, also spoke to us today as an heir to that humanist tradition. In short, a new agenda for doing theology in dialogue with Bonhoeffer was being established. 35 Then, in 2004, I was asked to edit the new DBWE edition of Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. 36 When I first read these prison writings as a young pastor in 1962 I could not have imagined that, in retirement, I would be daily engaged in

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this task for five years. Or that, in doing so, I would be reflecting so intensely on the questions that Bonhoeffer was asking as his life moved toward its end, questions that had also bothered me so much when I first read them. If my conversation with Bonhoeffer had begun with Sanctorum Communio, it was coming to an end as I encountered afresh the core questions he raised in his Letters and Papers from Prison. NOTES 1. Eberhard Bethge, “The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Theology,” Chicago Theological Seminary Register 51, no. 2, February 1961, 3. I have turned a rhetorical into a direct question, for that is how I first read the text. 2. Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr, ed. John W. de Gruchy (London: Collins, 1975), 167 3. (London: SCM, 1953). 4. Martin Kähler, The So-Called Historical Jesus and the Historic Biblical Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964); See Bonhoeffer, Berlin, 329. 5. Bethge, “The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Theology,” 3. 6. John W. de Gruchy, The Dynamic Structure of the Church (University of South Africa, 1972). 7. John W. de Gruchy, I Have Come a Long Way (Cape Town: Lux Verbi; Eugene OR: Cascade Books, 2015). 8. Sanctorum Communio. 189ff; et al. 9. See Introduction, Act and Being, 13–20. 10. The Young Bonhoeffer, 1918 – 1927, 89, 107. 11. Sanctorum Communio, 48. 12. Sanctorum Communio, 52. 13. Sanctorum Communio, 55. 14. Sanctorum Communio, 79. 15. Sanctorum Communio, 80. 16. Sanctorum Communio, 153. 17. Clifford Green, Bonhoeffer: Theology of Sociality (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 2. 18. Sanctorum Communio, 153. 19. Sanctorum Communio, 136f; 282f. 20. Stanley Hauerwas, Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Non-Violence (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004), 34. 21. The Legacy of Beyers Naudé, L. D. Hanson, ed. (Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2005). 22. See, Fiction from Tegel Prison. 23. Letters and Papers from Prison, 52 24. See Robert Vosloo, “Interpreting Bonhoeffer in South Africa? The Search for a Historical and Methodological Responsible Hermeneutic,” in Peter Frick, ed., Bonhoeffer and Interpretive Theory: Essays on Methods and Understanding (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013). 25. See John W. Gruchy with Steve de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South Africa: 25th Anniversary Edition (London: SCM, 2004), 60–67. 26. See de Gruchy and de Gruchy, The Church Struggle, 101–12 27. See Bethge, “A Confessing Church in South Africa? Conclusions from a Visit,” in Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr, 167–78 28. See Allan A. Boesak, “What Dietrich Bonhoeffer Has Meant to Me,” in Bonhoeffer’s Ethics: Old Europe and New Frontiers, eds. Rene van Eyden Guy Carter, Hans-Dirk van Hoogstraten (Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1991), 21–29.

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29. See, John W. de Gruchy, Bonhoeffer and South Africa: Theology in Dialogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), 67–90. 30. The Kairos Document (Johannesburg: Institute for Contextual Theology, 1986). 31. See Keith Clements, What Freedom? The Persistent Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Birmingham: Church Enterprise Print, 1990), 62; Steve de Gruchy, “Human Being in Christ: Resources for an Inclusive Anthropology,” in Paul Germond and Steve de Gruchy, eds., Aliens in the Household of God (Cape Town: David Philip, 1997), 357–59. 32. See de Gruchy, “Confessing Guilt in South Africa Today in Dialogue with Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa no. 67 (July 1989); Ralf K. Wüstenberg, Bonhoeffer and Beyond: Promoting a Dialogue between Religion and Politics (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008), 79–88. 33. Letters and Papers from Prison, 52. 34. See Russel H. Botman, “Afterword: Is Bonhoeffer Still of Any Use,” in Bonhoeffer for a New Day: Theology in a Time of Transition, ed. John W. de Gruchy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 366–72; and Robert Steiner, “Bonhoeffer lesen in Südafrika—Die ‘theologische Geographie’ der Grenze,” in Ralf K. Wüstenberg (Hrsg.), Dietrich Bonhoeffer lesen im internationalen Kontext: Von Südafrika bis Südostasien (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2007), 67–80. See D. J. Smit, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and ‘The Other’,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 93, 1995: 3–16; R. R. Vosloo, “The Promise of Bonhoeffer’s Theological Anthropology for Reconfiguring Holiness” in Christian Gremmels and Wolfgang Huber, eds., Religion im Erbe: Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Zukunftsfähigkeit des Christentums (Güterloh: Christian Kaiser, 2002), 125–43. 35. See the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, No. 127, March 2007, commemorating the centenary of Bonhoeffer’s birth. 36. See my Introduction to Letters and Papers from Prison, 28–30.

TWO Bonhoeffer’s Core Questions

Dear Eberhard, One writes some things in a more uninhibited and lively way in a letter than in a book, and in a conversation through letters I often have better ideas than when I’m writing for myself. —Tegel Prison, July 8, 1944 1

Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo on April 5, 1943 and taken to Tegel Military Prison in Berlin. Four months previously, on January 17, 1943, he was secretly engaged to Maria Wedemeyer after a year of courtship. She was eighteen and he was thirty-seven years old and already in prison by the time their engagement was announced to the wider family. 2 Being sociable by nature and a conversationalist by desire, Bonhoeffer’s sudden separation from family, friends, and fiancé was an intolerable burden. Although his parents were given permission to visit him on a regular basis and Maria on a few occasions under the watchful eyes of wardens, they were never to embrace again in freedom. Bethge, his confidant since 1935, would only see him once more, on December 23, 1943, while on compassionate leave from the army for the baptism of his son, Dietrich. But during the initial few months of his incarceration, Bonhoeffer lived each day in the hope of being released and reunited with those he loved. When this did not happen, he was often despondent and, fearing the worst, soon began to think about what he would leave behind if he never returned to those he loved. Bonhoeffer’s earthly possessions were relatively modest, and most were stored at his parents’ home. Among them were his books, mainly theological and novels, his paintings and an icon, a piano, motorcycle, and car, and some other items he also valued. Together they represented his love for learning and literature, his interest in music and art, his 17

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holidays and travels, his family life, and his friendships. He also left behind specific tasks for Bethge. 3 Among them were the distribution of his possessions, the preservation of his writings and the hope that his friend would one day write his biography. But, in addition, Bonhoeffer left behind a series of “bothersome” questions scattered throughout his writings, but especially in what became his Letters and Papers from Prison. These questions regularly appear in his prison writings as he thinks about what is happening in the outside world and to him more personally in captivity. They are indicative of an ongoing conversation he was having with himself as he reads, writes, reflects, and imagines and then shares his thoughts in correspondence with family (though everything was censored) and, finally with Bethge, once he was able to establish a way of smuggling uncensored letters to him. This is the conversation into which we are invited to participate. But our conversation does not start in a vacuum. Bonhoeffer’s questions from prison have provided the starting point for many scholarly dissertations, books, and essays over the past seventy years, as they have been for numerous conferences and congresses. On reflection, it soon becomes obvious that they are neither random nor lacking coherence. Indeed, taken together they lead us into the substance of Bonhoeffer’s thinking and the actions that arose in response. And although no question is more important than the others, they are all framed by his concern about how future generations will live and whether Christianity has a future. HOW SHALL FUTURE GENERATIONS LIVE? On February 28, 1941, as the Second World War was in full swing, and there were no signs of Hitler’s eventual defeat, only confirmation of his grip on power, Bonhoeffer wrote to his friend Paul Lehmann in New York. He had known Lehmann since they had studied together at Union Theological Seminary in 1930–1931 and discovered a theological kinship. Now, though separated by the Atlantic and by war, they still trusted each other’s judgment. So as Bonhoeffer’s thoughts turn to what kind of world would come into being after the war, he starts a conversation with Lehmann by posing a question: What do you think will be after the war, what will be the new social and political order? What role will the church play in that order? 4

In thinking of the next generation, Bonhoeffer was also thinking about the best kind of political order that should replace tyranny and worn-out Western democracy. But he was also asking himself what had brought about the Nazi catastrophe in Germany. That was a critical question if,

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going forward, Germany and the West, indeed, the world, was not going to repeat the mistakes of the past. Bonhoeffer gave expression to his thinking about these mistakes in an essay he titled “After Ten Years,” which now provides the Prologue to the Letters and Papers from Prison. It was written in December 1942 shortly before his imprisonment in Tegel Prison as a Christmas gift for his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, his trusted friend Eberhard, and General Hans Oster. All of them were part of the circle in which Bonhoeffer had been in discussion about overthrowing the Nazi regime. “After Ten Years” is a remarkable essay, and I will refer to it several times in these pages. But there is one paragraph, titled “without ground under one’s feet,” which particularly speaks to us today. In it, Bonhoeffer staccatolike, poses a series of searching questions not only to those to whom he is writing but also to himself. Have there ever been people in history who in their time, like us, had so little ground under their feet, people to whom every possible alternative open to them at the time appeared equally unbearable, senseless, and contrary to life? Have there been those who like us looked for the source of their strength beyond all those available alternatives? Were they looking entirely in what has passed away and in what is yet to come? . . . Or rather, facing a great historical turning point, and precisely because something genuinely new was coming to be that did not fit with the existing alternatives, did the responsible thinkers of another generation ever feel differently than we do today? 5

This paragraph was, as Victoria Barnett puts it, “a synthesis of an ongoing and troubled conversation” between Bonhoeffer’s inner circle of resisters, “as they wrestled with their consciences and the diminishing options open to those who sought the end of National Socialism.” 6 But, as Barnett also says, Bonhoeffer’s “observations about what happens to human decency and courage when a political culture disintegrates continue to resonate around the world today.” 7 This is a conversation that should involve all of us. There were other questions that bothered Bonhoeffer to which we shall soon turn, but these disturbed him the most at the time and, as such, provide the historical context within which rest need to be located. Certainly, those about the future of Christianity and the meaning of Christ for today, the questions we normally associate with Letters and Papers from Prison, cannot be isolated from Bonhoeffer’s concern for the future of his country, of Europe, and wider the world. Bonhoeffer’s concern about how future generations are going to live was more specifically expressed in “After Ten Tears” shortly after the paragraph that I have just quoted. His question was not just about how he and his colleagues were to live without “ground under their feet,” but also how the next generation was to live in a world that his generation

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had been messed up so badly. Indeed, “the ultimately responsible question” he says, “is not how I extricate myself heroically from a situation but [how] a coming generation is to go on living.” Indeed, it was only “from such a historically responsible question” that “fruitful solutions” will “arise, however humiliating they may be for the moment.” 8 But, and this was for Bonhoeffer the most critical point, it was not his generation that would call the shots, but the “younger generation” who will “have the surest sense whether an action is done merely in terms of principle or from living responsibly, for it is their future that is at stake.” 9 In saying this, Bonhoeffer was not handing over responsibility to the next generation as if he and his own could wash their hands of the chaos they had created, even if tempted to do so. He was asking whether and how they could together discover the way forward. Indeed, for his generation to abnegate responsibility for what had happened and hand it over to the next generation to fix would be totally irresponsible and unacceptable. What was necessary for his generation to do was to “think and to act with an eye on the coming generation and to be ready to move on without fear and worry.” 10 The pertinence of Bonhoeffer’s questions about the failures of his generation for us today needs little comment, as nations once again resort to rebuilding and enlarging their arsenals at enormous cost, and flounder in their attempts to deal with the environmental crisis that is inexorably destroying life on the planet. Bonhoeffer may not directly address all these issues facing us, but as we shall see in these pages, there is much in his legacy that enables us to engage him in a conversation about them. And there is no better place to begin that conversation than to take note of what he says about the root causes of the world’s ills and our impotence to deal with them. Namely human hubris and folly, or what he was not shy to call sin or our willful disregard for God’s will for the world. In “After Ten Years” Bonhoeffer also describes several symptoms that led to the German catastrophe, each of which should be part of our contemporary conversation with his legacy. But let me highlight just one of these symptoms here, namely “stupidity,” which, Bonhoeffer says, “is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.” But against stupidity, he despairingly says, “we are defenseless.” The problem is that reason falls on deaf ears, facts that contradict one’s prejudgments are rejected, and even if they are “irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.” 11 I have highlighted stupidity because it is characteristic of the current and perennial failure of political will to deal adequately and timeously with the challenges facing us, not least the resort to war, violence, and environmental crisis. This is only one, but surely the most important indication of what Bonhoeffer’s calls “folly.” In his words,

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the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self-satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous. 12

To reject scientific evidence and reasoned argument about climate change and other follies is, however, symptomatic of a much deeper human problem, namely the lack of will to act in the interest of the common good. For that reason, it needs to be addressed at a deeper, spiritual level. So, in his “Outline for a Book,” which he drafted in prison, Bonhoeffer speaks about the danger of relying on technological solutions without addressing deeper spiritual problems. Whereas nature “used to be conquered by the soul (Seele),” that is, by intellectual and emotional resources, it is now “conquered through technological organization of all kinds. . .” But this “protection from the menace of nature” has led to “a new threat to life . . . namely, through organization itself. Now the power of the soul is lacking!” In fact, the “human being is thrown back on his own resources. He has learned to cope with everything except himself.” 13 With all this in mind, Bonhoeffer writes from prison to his nephew HansWalter Schleicher as a representative of the next generation and asks him to help him find answers to his questions: “. . .how we are going to find a basis for living together with other people, what spiritual realities and rules we honor as the foundations for a meaningful human life?” 14 For Bonhoeffer himself, that basis was already given in Jesus Christ. But who is he actually, for us, today? WHO IS CHRIST ACTUALLY, FOR US, TODAY? Bonhoeffer was fully aware that Christianity alone could not provide all the answers in a pluralistic world. In fact, Christianity in Europe had failed to prevent the catastrophe that had overtaken it in the rise of Nazism. It was for this reason that he attempted to visit India and meet with Mohandas Gandhi who was, for him since the early 1930’s, his “favorite prophetic figure.” 15 Perhaps, so he thought, the East had answers for the spiritual crisis facing the West. This did not mean that Christianity did not have a vital contribution to make, but it did mean that Christianity had to be radically reinvented, and for that to happen, we have to discover who Christ actually is for us today in a secular and pluralistic world that has lost its soul. Even though it had been a long time gestating, evidence that Bonhoeffer was developing a new theological paradigm under the rubric of “a nonreligious interpretation of Christianity,” or “Christianity in a world come of age” first emerges in a letter from prison to Bethge dated April

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30, 1944. 16 Bethge was taken by surprise, but excitedly so, because he had begun to think along similar lines and so was more than willing to become a sounding board for what was to become a celebrated theological conversation by correspondence. By that time, Bonhoeffer had come to terms with fact that, in all probability, he was not going to be released from prison. Accepting this reality, he was liberated to get on with what he regarded as his “real work,” that is, an extensive program of reading and reflecting on a wide range of books in theology, philosophy, science, art, history, and literature, which he either found in the prison library or which were brought to him by members the family. It also led him to start work on a new book related to this and other questions. All that survives of that project is an outline sent to Bethge at the beginning of August 1944 as part of the conversation he was having with Bethge in the remarkable correspondence that eventually comprised the hard core of the first edition of Letters and Papers. 17 Bonhoeffer’s starting point was that the world had “come of age,” specifically the rapidly secularizing West. Since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment human beings in the West had learned to live and manage their affairs without any reference to God. “Coming of age” did not mean that human beings were more moral or that there was no residue of religion that attracted those who felt the need for such, and it did not mean that there were no places in the world where religion still played a major role in the life of society. It referred, rather, to the growing numbers of people for whom the “God hypothesis” was no longer needed to explain reality and meet human need. But, Bonhoeffer asked himself and Bethge, and continues to ask us, does this mean that God is no longer a reality to be reckoned with? Is it not possible to speak about God without the presuppositions of religion? In fact, the more Bonhoeffer read the Scriptures in prison, the more he discovered that the God of religion was not the God of the Bible. This led him to the startling conclusion that God wanted us to learn to live “before God, but without him.” And this, in turn, called for a “nonreligious” interpretation of Christian faith and raised the question: what is Christianity, and who is Christ actually for us today? 18 . . . What do we really believe? I mean, believe in such a way that our lives depend on it? 19

The question “who” Christ is, had long been the focus of Bonhoeffer’s theological enquiry and was always more than an academic question because it related to the further question “how” does this Christ take form or become embodied in the world? According to Bonhoeffer, this question had several dimensions: What does a church, a congregation, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life, mean in a religionless world? How do we talk about God—without religion, that is, without the temporally conditioned presupposi-

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tions of metaphysics, the inner life, and so on? . . . How do we go about being “religionless-worldly” Christians, how can we be ἐκ-κλησία, those who are called out, without understanding ourselves religiously as privileged, but instead seeing ourselves as belonging wholly to the world? 20

We know that religion as such has no means disappeared as a powerful social and political force in the modern world. The resurgence of religion, and especially religious fundamentalism often in conjuncture with radical politics and right-wing nationalism, is a phenomenon with which we are all too familiar. Although it is doubtful that Bonhoeffer thought religion as such would disappear, at the time he was writing secularism had become the worldview of many in the West who were formerly nurtured within Christian tradition. That secularized world remains and, in fact, has expanded. But the global world we inhabit cannot simply be categorized as non-religious when in many ways it is very religious and, often, dangerously so. For that reason alone, Bonhoeffer’s pivotal Christological and ecclesiological questions need to be recast in fresh ways. But they remain pertinent and critical, prompting others, which, if not expressed, are implicit in what he wrote. Will future generations be ashamed of their Christian heritage because of its failure to confront evil and, therefore, reject it as some of Bonhoeffer’s own family, friends, and colleagues had already done? Will the Christianity of the future be able to hold its own and contribute meaningfully to the intellectual debates of the day whether on public matters or the debate about God? Will the masses of un-churched people remain indifferent because the church seems irrelevant to their need, and Christianity makes little sense? Will the oppressed and poor remain captive to their condition without any hope of liberation? Will people of other faiths or secularists be angry with Christianity’s triumphalist claims and the church’s hypocrisy? In fact, can Christianity provide a basis for living together with other people in a way that would bring healing and renewal to the world? Indeed, can it provide hope for the next generation? This prompts Bonhoeffer’s next core question: not just what does it mean to be Christian, but what does it mean to be truly human? WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE FULLY HUMAN? After his brief visit to Berlin on “compassionate grounds” in December 1943 for the baptism of his son, Bethge returned to the Italian Front on January 8, 1944. At that time Berlin was being heavily bombed, the Russians were rapidly approaching the city from the East, and the military intelligence or Abwehr (where the Resistance group with which Bonhoeffer was involved was located) was now controlled by the Gestapo. In these unlikely circumstances, Bonhoeffer raised a question that was hard-

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ly noticed by those who were engaged in Bonhoeffer’s studies until long after the war. In fact, years later, Renate Bethge told me that she had forgotten all about it until much more recent times when some of us began to write about Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism. The question was raised by Bonhoeffer, in a letter to Eberhard and Renate written on January 23, 1944, that is, three months prior to Bonhoeffer’s first “theological letter” to Eberhard on April 30. It is found in a passage where Bonhoeffer revisits, as we shall later see, what he had previously discussed in his Ethics about the divine mandates: marriage, work, state, and the church. He does so to locate culture and education within the mandates, issues that were for him, as they were for the Bethge’s, of obvious importance as new parents, because they had to do with how future generations would be equipped for the future. Bonhoeffer asks: what about culture and education? I don’t think they can simply be classified under work . . . but rather in the sphere of freedom [Spielraum], which encompasses all three spheres of the divine mandates. Someone who doesn’t know anything of this sphere of freedom can be a good parent, citizen, and worker, and probably also be a Christian, but whether such a person is a full human being (and thus also a Christian in the fullest sense) is questionable to me.

He then goes on to say: it is only from the concept of the church that we can regain the understanding of the sphere of freedom (art, education, friendship, play). This means that “aesthetic existence” (Kierkegaard) is not to be banished from the church’s sphere; rather, it is precisely within the church that it would be founded anew. . . . Who in our time could, for example, lightheartedly make music, nurture friendship, play, and be happy? 21

If we recall the circumstances under which Bonhoeffer raised these questions it is remarkable that he was thinking “lightheartedly” about making music, nurturing friendships, playing, and being happy. In fact, not only that, but asking the question whether someone who was unable to “be happy” could be fully human and therefore fully Christian. I will return to what he meant by “being happy” later when discussing what he meant by “aesthetic existence.” These passages in the Letters and Papers from Prison struck me with considerable force after the demise of the apartheid regime, encouraging me to explore both what “aesthetic existence” in the life of the church meant for Bonhoeffer and now for us, leading me further to explore what some of us began to designate as Bonhoeffer’s humanism. 22 But in thinking about what it means to be truly human, we are inevitably also asking the more personal question with which Bonhoeffer himself was confronted as his life came to an end, who am I myself, that is, the one who asks all these questions?

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WHO AM I? During his vicariate in Barcelona in 1928, Bonhoeffer preached a sermon that even back then shows that he was aware of his strong ego and struggling to deal with his identity. He might have couched what he said in the third person, but it is not difficult to discern the first between the lines: Anyone who remembers his youth and his own coming of age, or who spends much time with young people of this age, knows that young people at this stage of their lives have only one question at the center of all their thinking and action. . . . They now stand as if before an abyss in which everything is seething and surging and raging; overwhelmed, they stare into all this wild and passionate activity and bustle and must recognize that all this is actually the self, the person’s own ego. . . . That is my self, my soul?!

Bonhoeffer goes on to describe this ego: This uncannily strong, unpredictable, unbridled, demonic thing that assaults me—that’s me? No, that’s not me. It’s something else, something dreadful that has put me under its spell; and yet—it is me, for in me, too, things are seething and surging like that.

This leads him to ask questions that became central to his journey through life, reaching a crescendo in prison: Who am I? Why am I here? Where did I come from? What am I to do? Once these questions arise, they never again turn us loose. How do I save my ego? How do I become free? This is the fundamental question of all human thought and action. 23

Bonhoeffer’s final enigmatic response to this fundamental question is found in his remarkable, though late resort, to writing poetry in prison, 24 especially his poem, “Who am I?” But in the end it is impossible for him to answer all the questions about who he is which constantly mock him. All he can say with any confidence is: “Whoever I am, thou knowest me; O God, I am thine!” 25 All of Bonhoeffer’s core questions continue to challenge us today. But it is Bonhoeffer’s death as a martyr in all its ambiguity that confronts us with his last and most challenging question: Who is this man who asks us these searching questions, challenging us to discover who we are, and posthumously inviting us to converse with him today? And, therefore, how do we engage in this often life changing conversation? NOTES 1. Letters and Papers from Prison, 458.

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2. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Contemporary (London: Collins, 1970), 686ff; Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer, Love Letters from Cell 92 (London: HarperCollins, 1994). 3. Letters and Papers from Prison, 193. 4. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 168. 5. Letters and Papers from Prison, 38. 6. Victoria Barnett, After Ten Years: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Our Times (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 4. 7. Barnett, After Ten Years, 2. 8. Letters and Papers from Prison, 42 9. Letters and Papers from Prison, 42. 10. Letters and Papers from Prison, 50. 11. Letters and Papers from Prison, 43–44. 12. Letters and Papers from Prison, 43. 13. Letters and Papers from Prison, 500. See also Ethics, 115–16. 14. Letters and Papers from Prison, 409. 15. Larry L. Rasmussen, “Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, and Resistance,” in Geffrey B. Kelly and C. John Weborg, eds., Reflections on Bonhoeffer: Essays in Honour of F. Burton Nelson (Chicago: Covenant Publications, 1999), 50. 16. Letters and Papers from Prison, 361–67 17. Letters and Papers from Prison, 499–504. 18. Letters and Papers from Prison, 262. 19. Letters and Papers from Prison, 502. 20. Letters and Papers from Prison, 364. 21. Letters and Papers from Prison,267–68. 22. See John W. de Gruchy, Christianity, Art, and Transformation: Theological Aesthetics and the Struggle for Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 136–68; John W. de Gruchy, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer as Christian Humanist,” in Jens Zimmermann and Brian Gregor eds., Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 3–24. 23. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 532–33. 24. See Bernd Wannenwetsch, “Introduction: Who is Dietrich Bonhoeffer for Us Today?” in Bernd Wannenwetsch, ed., Who Am I? Bonhoeffer’s Theology Through His Poetry (London: T and T Clark, 2009). 25. Letters and Papers from Prison, 459–60.

THREE Participating in the Conversation

Dear Eberhard, There is a spiritual hunger for discussion that is much more tormenting than physical hunger, and I can speak in that way and about certain things with no one else but you. Entire complexes of questions are opened and clarified in a few words and hints. Christmas Day 1943 Tegel Prison 1 Dear Maria, I don’t believe that the people who really know me—Klaus [Bonhoeffer], Christel [von Dohnanyi] and Eberhard [Bethge], not to mention my parents—think me reticent, and I’m sure dearest Maria, that you will one day marvel at how un-reticent I am—indeed, how immensely difficult I shall find it to keep things to myself, and how I long to share with you what I have to withhold from others. Always and ever your Dietrich March 11, 1944, Tegel Prison 2

On January 11, 1939, the Gestapo banned Bonhoeffer from teaching, publishing, and speaking in public in Berlin. He could visit his family but not live in the city. His banning was not unlike that of Naudé’s in South Africa who, for seven years (1976–1983), was placed under house arrest in Johannesburg and banned from meeting more than one visitor at a time, something he sometimes disregarded. Unlike Bonhoeffer’s, his banning was mitigated by conversations with close friends, family, and those who sought his counsel. But the consequences would have been severe if the Security Police discovered that his conversations with the occasional visitor were not always “innocent.” He was not only fulfilling the role of spiritual counselor, but had become a conduit for information among those involved in the underground liberation struggle. 27

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Bonhoeffer’s position was also precarious. At any moment he could be called up for military service, a possibility he wanted to avoid at all costs, and he lived under surveillance by the Gestapo who wanted him behind bars. Perhaps, he thought, the time had come for him to go into exile. With this question in mind, he and Bethge traveled together to London on March 10, 1939. 3 There they met Bishop George Bell, a leader in the ecumenical movement and a member of the House of Lords, whose counsel Bonhoeffer treasured and who he wanted to bring up to date on what was happening in Germany. While in England, Bonhoeffer also discussed his situation with his brother-in-law Gerhard Leibholz and Reinhold Niebuhr, his former professor at Union Seminary who was in Britain to give the Gifford Lectures 4 in Edinburgh. It was then that Niebuhr raised the possibility of Bonhoeffer going into exile in New York. Bonhoeffer also met Willem Visser ‘t Hooft, the recently elected General Secretary of the provisional World Council of Churches, in London for the first time. In fact, the two them had a memorable conversation on Paddington Station that ‘t’ Hooft later recalled: We had heard a great deal about each other, but it was surprising how quickly we were able to get beyond the first stage of feeling our way, into the deeper realm of real conversation. . . . We walked up and down the platform for a long time. . . . I remember his acute questions better than his answers; but I think I learned more from his questions than he did from my answers.” 5

Many of Bonhoeffer’s friends and students would have agreed. Engaging Bonhoeffer often led them into “the deeper realm of real conversation,” where fresh insight happens, and life-changing decisions are made. As promised, Niebuhr arranged for Bonhoeffer to receive an invitation from Union Theological Seminary, which Bonhoeffer subsequently accepted, though with some misgiving. He departed for New York on June 12, but after a few weeks of agonizing reflection, he concluded that he had made a mistake in going to America at that critical moment in Germany’s history. So, on July 8, just before the outbreak of the Second World, he began the journey back home to share again in the struggle against Nazism. Soon after he was approached by Dohnanyi, his brotherin-law and the director of the office of the minister in the Reich Ministry of Justice, who invited him to join the Resistance located in the Abwehr. If employed by the Abwehr, Bonhoeffer would automatically receive military exemption. That would have been a bonus, but Dohnanyi wanted him primarily as a go-between the Resistance and leaders of the Provisional Council of the World Council of Churches and the broader ecumenical Church. 6 In August 1940, Bonhoeffer had his first discussion with the leaders of the Resistance, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and General Hans Oster. They met at the Bonhoeffer home in Berlin, together with Dohnanyi, Bethge,

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and Hans Gisevius. After this fateful conversation there was no turning back. Bonhoeffer had left the public terrain of the church struggle with its clear confession of Christ and entered the underworld of the conspiracy against Hitler in which deception and lies became the unfamiliar order of Bonhoeffer’s day. He could only talk to those sworn to secrecy, those who were learning to trust each “without reserve.” As he wrote to them in “After Ten Years”: We now know that one can truly live and work only in such trust, which is always a venture but one gladly affirmed. . . . For us trust will be one of the greatest, rarest, and most cheering gifts bestowed by the life we humans live in common, and yet it always emerges only against the dark background of a necessary mistrust. We have learned to commit our lives on no account into the hands of the mean but without reserve into the hands of the trustworthy. 7

The Gestapo eventually found reason to arrest Bonhoeffer, namely for helping Jews to escape Germany. He was taken from his parents’ home in Berlin to Tegel military prison on April 5, 1943. The same day the Gestapo arrested Hans and Christel (Bonhoeffer’s eldest sister) Dohnanyi. All face-to-face in-depth conversation with family, fiancé, close friends, and fellow members of the Resistance, ended abruptly. The only possible alternative was conversation by correspondence. As all his letters were censored, and as all his conversations with those allowed to visit him were in the presence of a guard, this obviously limited what Bonhoeffer could say. But eventually he found a way to smuggle letters out of prison to Bethge in which he could share his thoughts and bare his soul. Bonhoeffer’s friendship with Bethge began soon after they first met at the illegal Confessing Church Preachers’ Seminary in Finkenwalde in 1935. For most of the time over the ensuing years their conversation was face to face, though circumstances sometimes meant that it had to be by correspondence. This meant that well before Bonhoeffer’s arrest, the two of them had developed the skill of conversing in depth whether in person or through letters. And as Bonhoeffer told Bethge, it was only through such conversation that he found out “whether an idea was of any use.” 8 In some respects, it might be said, our conversation with Bonhoeffer is participating in their conversation. Whether Bonhoeffer had any premonition that his questions would later cause controversy and, therefore, needed to be discussed in relation to the development of his theology, it is impossible to tell. But they can only be understood within the framework of his life. That is the reason why Bethge would eventually write Bonhoeffer’s biography as he was more or less asked to do. In a letter to Bethge dated February 1, 1944, Bonhoeffer said: I could go on writing for weeks without coming to the end of everything I have to tell you, and, second, one never knows how long it will

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Chapter 3 still be possible. And since you will someday be called upon to write my biography, I want to make sure the material you have is as complete as possible! So here I go! 9

Bethge eventually did as Bonhoeffer had hinted and hoped, and he did so, as Bonhoeffer would have wanted, without sentimentality. I will say more about this in due course. Yet, as anyone who has written a biography knows, it is impossible to include everything in telling the story, even that of a life of only thirty-nine years, and certainly not one as complex as Bonhoeffer’s. But for us to enter the conversation with Bonhoeffer, we first need to know his story and learn how to decipher its contemporary significance. BONHOEFFER AS OUR CONTEMPORARY Albert Schweitzer famously concludes his Quest for the Historical Jesus with these words: “It is a good thing that the true historical Jesus should overthrow the modern Jesus,” because he “comes to us as one unknown.” He also said that only those who heed Jesus’s call to follow him today “experience who he is,” otherwise “Jesus remains a stranger to our time.” 10 Despite the diligence of those who, during the nineteenth century attempted to write Jesus’s biography, he remained elusive, much as his identity remained hidden during his lifetime. Could the same be said in response to the phenomenal contemporary interest shown in Bonhoeffer? 11 The chief reason Schweitzer gives for his conclusion is that Jesus’s “biographers” wrenched him “loose from the soil of eschatology,” 12 that is, from the apocalyptic context in which Jesus lived, taught, and died. It was a time of insurrection and rumors of wars, increasing fear that the end of the world was near, and heightened expectation that a messianic leader would come to establish God’s new age of peace, justice, and prosperity. Extracting Jesus’s teaching, life, and death from this framework did not mean that nothing could be known about him, but the odds were that our knowledge of him would then be a figment of our imagination, someone who fits neatly into our worldview rather than his own. It is certainly possible that even after we have studied all Bonhoeffer wrote, listened to those who knew him in the flesh, and read all there is to read about him, we end up with the Bonhoeffer we want, a Bonhoeffer wrenched loose from his historical context. In doing so we misunderstand his questions and escape their probing challenge. The truth is, Bonhoeffer’s questions cannot be isolated from his historical context and neither can our conversation with him take place outside ours. In fact, the questions we bring into the conversation inevitably influence what we discover in his legacy. If we want to know what Bonhoeffer thought about the philosopher Hegel, we will end up in a conversation different

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from that in which we want to know what Bonhoeffer thought about marriage, war, prayer, interpreting the Bible, the Trinity, or democracy. And much will depend on why we want to participate in the conversation in the first place. Is it for academic purposes, or is it, as it was for him and Bethge, a matter of life and death in apocalyptic times? Recalling Schweizer’s further comment, that only those who heed Jesus’s call to follow him “experience who he is,” we must also ask whether the same applies to our understanding of who Bonhoeffer is for us today. Of course, Bonhoeffer never called anyone to follow him and become his clones, but he did call us to follow the One he followed, Jesus the Christ. That is precisely why he asks us to consider not just who Jesus Christ is according to Scripture or tradition, an academic question, but “Who Christ actually is for us today.” Whatever the similarities or differences between the “historical Jesus” and Bonhoeffer (they were both victims of religio-political tyranny) and the claims we may make about them (Jesus as the Messiah and Bonhoeffer as martyr), Bonhoeffer’s historical proximity to us, the memory of those survivors who knew him and lived to tell us his story, and Bonhoeffer’s voluminous writings give us an access to him that is not possible in the search for the historical Jesus. Icons or paintings of Jesus are not the same as the photographs that adorn the covers of Bonhoeffer’s collected works, and the relatively few pages of the gospels cannot measure up to the monumental biography which Bethge wrote about his friend. Yet, despite all the information and documentation at our disposal, anyone familiar with Bonhoeffer interpretation is aware that few theologians have become the victim of ideological bias to the same extent as Bonhoeffer, not least because claiming Bonhoeffer’s imprimatur for various causes apparently gives them greater significance. As Bernd Wannenwetsch puts it: Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been claimed in ideological fashion like few other others have, and although nobody would intentionally wish to be one-sided or narrow, the choice of an entry point into the author’s theology by identifying a focal vision or naming one or another core concept has often resulted in this kind of one-sided perception of ideological partisanship. 13

Nothing demonstrates this more than the Bonhoeffer documentaries that have been produced, and the many biographies that have been written. For even though Bonhoeffer’s life was relatively short, its complexity and circumstances require considerable expertise and knowledge on the part of biographers and informed choices about what to include and how to interpret it. Because it is not only whether we can trust Bonhoeffer as a faithful witness to Christ that matters, equally important is whose ac-

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count of Bonhoeffer’s story can we trust? With “which Bonhoeffer” do we engage in conversation? DIFFERENT READINGS OF BONHOEFFER’S STORY 14 Apart from reading Bonhoeffer’s own writings, I was introduced to Bonhoeffer through Bethge’s biography, listening to Bethge lecture, and having many conversations with him and his wife Renate, Bonhoeffer’s niece. In doing so, as I was particularly interested in Bonhoeffer’s role in the German Kirchenkampf and about the political, ecclesiastical, and theological issues and debates of the time. In other words, quite apart from a growing interest in Bonhoeffer’s story, I approached my conversations with Bethge with a set of questions about Bonhoeffer’s relevance for the church struggle against apartheid. I was not an “innocent” reader but, then, neither was Bethge an “innocent” writer. He was not just writing the story for the general reader, but was mindful of the questions that scholars, theologians, pastors, and historians in postwar Germany were asking about Bonhoeffer. These included what it meant to be a confessing church in a Germany divided between East and West and, therefore, how to be a Christian in a communist country on the one hand and secular, capitalist society on the other. But there were other burning questions being asked, among them, how to respond to the Holocaust and evaluate Bonhoeffer’s role in the Resistance, and not least, the debate about hermeneutics, which was stimulated by the very questions raised by Bonhoeffer in prison concerning Christianity “in a world come of age.” The size and scope of Bethge’s biography had at least one unintended consequence. Bonhoeffer was all that Bethge described, but because of the extent of his coverage along with the increasing publication of Bonhoeffer’s many writings and his growing status as a martyr, as well as the paucity at the time of other accounts, Bethge’s biography ran the danger of exaggerating Bonhoeffer’s role in the German Church Struggle and the Resistance. Of course, this was not Bethge’s intention. He knew as well as anyone that Bonhoeffer was not alone in the Confessing Church struggle and that his role in the Resistance was not as crucial as that of Dohnanyi. 15 Nonetheless, Bethge’s achievement remains monumental and indispensable in discovering who Bonhoeffer was, and who he is for us today. In translating Bethge’s biography into what became the first English edition, Edwin Robertson, a British Baptist pastor, thought it unnecessary to “burden” his Anglo-Saxon readers with all the details of Bonhoeffer’s theological development, so he abridged the biography by two hundred pages and modified its character in the process. It was difficult enough for the average British reader to gain a basic understanding of the German ecclesiastical and political scene and, within it, the theological debates the raged in the Third Reich, without having to go deep into the

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details. In any case, few people in the Anglo-Saxon world were asking the same questions as were being raised in Germany, or at least with the same intensity. Significantly, when the next English translation appeared in 2000, thirty years after the first edition, it included all the original material. In translating and editing the text, Victoria Barnett not only brought her wealth of knowledge of the latest Bonhoeffer scholarship to the task but was also mindful of a new generation of readers. The fact that the publishers undertook this venture at all, indicates the extent to which scholarly and not just popular interest in Bonhoeffer in the English-speaking world had grown. It also shows an awareness that the theological questions raised by Bonhoeffer and discussed by Bethge had not gone away, especially in the United States where interest in Bonhoeffer had reached new heights. The same was not as true in the United Kingdom, either when Bethge’s abridged biography first appeared, or later in 1987 when Robertson, wrote his own biography. British readers might have been perplexed by the way in which Bonhoeffer had become popularly known through the publication of Robinson’s Honest to God, but they were not particularly interested in all the finer points of the discussion. Serious Bonhoeffer scholars in Britain were few, and academic courses on his theology even rarer. But there was a wide interest in Bonhoeffer’s significance for congregational life and Christian spirituality, alongside his role in the Resistance and his martyrdom. So, Robertson’s major aim was to share more about “the wholeness of the man, who lived and died a disciple of Jesus Christ.” Who was this man who longed to be free and to enjoy life, yet was sometimes so depressed that he contemplated suicide? There is no glorification of martyrdom in Robertson’s telling of the story, only a profound sense that, for Bonhoeffer, his life and death were in the hands of God. “From a child,” Robertson wrote, Bonhoeffer’s “life’s ambition was to make a good and beautiful death and show the world how a Christian can face death. Those who saw him at the end bear witness to his fulfilment of his wish.” 16 The first Bonhoeffer biography in English was, however, neither Robertson’s translation of Bethge’s volume, nor his own biography, but that by Mary Bosanquet, whose The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer was published in 1968. 17 Bosanquet spent many hours consulting with Bethge as she also did Dietrich’s twin sister, Sabine Leibholz, and she had the benefit of the German edition of Bethge’s biography. So her work is a well-informed, substantial, sensitive, and accurate account of Bonhoeffer’s life and thought, though it could not have been written had not Bethge pioneered the way. But most significantly it evoked the comment from Bonhoeffer’s twin sister that there were “no inventions” in the book! That is a remarkable statement, for Bonhoeffer’s story has sometimes been told in ways that do not always keep to the facts. This generally

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happens when they are written with a more polemical agenda in mind, as are those by Eric Metaxas and Charles Marsh whose accounts are clearly written with the contemporary American cultural wars in the foreground. So, although applauding Bonhoeffer’s courage in opposing Nazism, Metaxas uses his storytelling skills to score points against contemporary “mainline churches” and “liberal theology” from a neoconservative evangelical perspective. He is notably silent about Bonhoeffer’s appreciation for the social witness of the “liberal” American church of the 1930s or the significance of Bonhoeffer’s critique of American racism. He also pays little attention to Bonhoeffer’s prison theology, accusing those who do of using it to support “death of God theology,” a problematic misreading of Bonhoeffer’s prison theology. In short, Metaxas’s biography serves to reinforce the theological convictions of a constituency that would dearly love to claim Bonhoeffer as one of their own but without exposing them to the full prophetic and theological challenge of Bonhoeffer’s life and thought. By contrast, Marsh tells Bonhoeffer’s story from the perspective of a different North American world. Unlike Metaxas, Marsh is a recognized Bonhoeffer scholar who is passionate about Bonhoeffer’s legacy as “lived theology.” His controlling image is that of Bonhoeffer as a prophetic theologian opposing rabid nationalism, triumphalist Christianity, racism, and cultural chauvinism, someone willing to take personal risks in acting in solidarity with the oppressed. At times his book borders on becoming a historical novel (a very good one) constructed to communicate Bonhoeffer’s contemporary significance for a more progressively minded American audience. 18 This is especially true when it comes to his discussion of the relationship between Bonhoeffer and Bethge, something that has long intrigued people, so much so that Bethge found it necessary to speak frankly about their friendship. It was, he said, an intimate and singular relationship but not a homosexual one. 19 Given the heated debates in the United States around LBGT issues, this has been read in different ways. Marsh describes the relationship well as one that “strained toward the achievement of a romantic love, one ever chaste but complete in its complex aspirations.” 20 But, even then, he later had to clarify what he meant. 21 This demonstrates how difficult it is to write a biography of someone who lived in a different historical context and cultural environment to that of the readers with contemporary issues in mind. Despite this difficulty, Marsh’s portrayal of Bonhoeffer as a prophetic visionary for our time, and his witness on the cutting-edge of theological exploration in solidarity with the oppressed cannot be faulted. Ferdinand Schlingensiepen overstates his point when he says that these two American “portraits of Bonhoeffer, one for the right and one for the left,” only bear “a passing resemblance to the German pastor by

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the same name.” 22 But he has good reason to be bothered by the way in which Bonhoeffer’s legacy has become embroiled in contemporary American political and religious controversy by casting Bonhoeffer in the popular mind as a liberal, conservative, or radical when none of these labels as understood in that context fits who he actually was and fails to explain who he can be for us today. Schlingensiepen’s own biography, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906–1945, 23 builds on Bethge’s work, but it is more manageable and better for several reasons, as Keith Clements elaborates. 24 First, since Bethge wrote his biography a great deal of new information has come to light about Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment. Second, Schlingensiepen has known and interviewed many of Bonhoeffer’s family members, colleagues, and students who did not always appreciate how important their memories were when they earlier talked with Bethge. Third, Schlingensiepen has written for a new generation of readers, in the first instance for Germans, but with his good knowledge of British and American culture, for the wider English-speaking world. And fourth, Schlingensiepen provides more precise linkages between the events or engagements that mark Bonhoeffer’s life and his theological writing, as for example, between his Ethics and his involvement in the German Resistance. In effect, I think that Schlingensiepen has provided the most comprehensive and accurate biography in almost fifty years, one that is faithful to Bonhoeffer’s visionary hope for the rebirth of the church and for a more just and peaceable world. DEFENDING BONHOEFFER “ORTHODOXY” OR ACHIEVING A BROAD CONSENSUS? In the light of what I have said, the question might well be asked whether there is, as some have suggested, a “Bonhoeffer orthodoxy” that should guide our efforts and determine the answers to our questions. As such an “orthodoxy” is usually associated with the role of Bethge, it has been asked whether, at least for some of us, Bethge’s “seal of approval” has become “an indispensable sign of orthodoxy in Bonhoeffer’s studies?” 25 From the outset there were those among Bonhoeffer’s former students who challenged some of Bethge’s interpretations. They had known Bonhoeffer before Bethge arrived on the scene in Finkenwalde and were unhappy about Bethge’s role at the seminary and, later, in transmitting Bonhoeffer’s legacy after the war. 26 But Bonhoeffer was responsible for giving Bethge a leadership position at Finkenwalde, and Bethge was protective of the legacy he inherited because Bonhoeffer had asked him to be its custodian. He was, therefore, concerned about the way in which Bonhoeffer’s legacy was being “creatively misused” by some, and the danger

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this presented of compromising its significance for contemporary theology and the witness of the church, especially in Germany. 27 For good reason, then, Bethge’s position has become the default position for many of us, providing an entry point for our conversation with Bonhoeffer. In fact, it could hardly have been otherwise. But Bethge never claimed to be the sole guardian of Bonhoeffer’s legacy. No person, institution or scholarly society can control its transmission or interpretation. In following Bethge in conversation with Bonhoeffer, I, for one, am not claiming that everything he said or wrote about him was infallible and inerrant, any more than we should claim that for Bonhoeffer himself. It is also, to labor the point I have already made, a travesty of the facts to box Bonhoeffer into categories, such as liberal, radical, conservative, or progressive, not only because these terms mean different things in different contexts but also because he refused such labels. He was also not averse to changing his mind, or challenging established “orthodoxies,” and would be unhappily surprised if we put his legacy into a theological or ethical straitjacket. On matters of doctrine Bonhoeffer was undoubtedly a Lutheran, holding fast to the Reformation Confessions as he did to the classic Creeds of the ecumenical church. But, then, as Bonhoeffer acknowledged, so was Ludwig Müller the Nazi Reichsbischof and many of his followers, even if dishonestly. 28 But for Bonhoeffer, holding fast to the confessions did mean closing down theological enquiry or refraining from raising critical questions. In any case, to claim Bonhoeffer’s support in defense of Christian triumphalism, racism, apartheid, going to war, or right-wing nationalism, as some Lutherans (and many others) have done, is a blatant perversion of the truth. There may be some justification in claiming that Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the plot against Hitler justifies the use of violence in overthrowing an oppressive regime, a subject I will discuss later, but his views on euthanasia 29 and abortion 30 do not support the “liberal agenda” today, though in the context of Nazi Germany they were undoubtedly necessary. The truth is, Bonhoeffer’s theological and ethical assertions need to be tested according to the established criteria of logic, rationality, evidence, and coherence and done so in relation to his context. More importantly, Bonhoeffer would want us to test them in relation to Scripture and Christian tradition. That, at least, is how Bonhoeffer himself evaluated theological assertions, as he reported from Finkenwalde: “Two evenings each week were reserved for discussing particularly important dogmatic and ethical questions. . . . The exclusive standard and guide for all our work were the Holy Scriptures and the confessions of the church.” 31 For him this would equally apply to his “worldly” interpretations of biblical concepts such as “faith, justification, rebirth and sanctification,” 32 which he began to develop in prison. But Bonhoeffer was neither a biblical nor a confessional fundamentalist. If he were,

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we would not enter a conversation with him because we would be given dogmatic answers at the outset and not become engaged in discussing searching questions. Although there is no Bonhoeffer orthodoxy, I do believe, nonetheless, that there is broad consensus on the significance and meaning of his legacy. This does not mean agreement on all the issues among Bonhoeffer scholars, but it does mean that over the past sixty years much progress has been made in describing and interpreting his legacy. We now know more about Bonhoeffer and his writings than ever before, and we have resources, both digital and otherwise, that make it possible to examine his legacy in more depth and detail than before. This has made consensus on many issues more possible, just as it has also opened further areas for an ongoing conversation increasingly led by a new generation of scholars. Hopefully, by now a profile of Bonhoeffer has begun to emerge that enables readers to participate in my conversation with him, putting his questions in context and suggesting how he would respond to them today, as well as respond to those questions we might bring to the table. So, let me now, in part 2, attempt to portray who Bonhoeffer is for us today or, at least, who he is for me. NOTES 1. Letters and Papers from Prison, 240. 2. Love Letters from Cell 92, 169. 3. On Bonhoeffer’s several visits to Britain, see Keith Clements, Bonhoeffer and Britain, (London: Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, 2006). 4. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York: Scribner, 1949). 5. Quoted in Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 646. 6. See Bonhoeffer’s “camouflage letter” to Dohnanyi, November 4, 1940. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 395–99. 7. Letters and Papers from Prison, 46–47. 8. Letter to Bethge, November 18, 1943, Letters and Papers from Prison, 182. 9. Letters and Papers from Prison, 283. 10. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 403. 11. Stephen R. Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004). 12. Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, 401. 13. Bernd Wannenwetsch, “Introduction” to Who Am I? Bonhoeffer’s Theology Through His Poetry, 3. 14. See also John W. de Gruchy, “Biographies and Portraits.” In The Oxford Handbook of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited by Michael Mawson and Philip G. Ziegler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 462-471. 15. Elizabeth and Fritz Stern Sifton, No Ordinary Men: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi, Resisters Against Hitler in Church and State (New York: New York Review Books, 2013). 16. Edwin H. Robertson, The Shame and the Sacrifice: The Life and Teaching of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1987), 20. 17. Bosanquet, The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1968).

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18. Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906 – 1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance (London: T and T Clark, 2010), 23–27. 19. Eberhard Bethge, Friendship and Resistance: Essays on Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Geneva: WCC, 1995), 80–104; John W. de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit: Bonhoeffer’s Friend Eberhard Bethge (London: SCM, 2005), 60–68. 20. Charles Marsh, Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 384. 21. Marsh, Charles. “Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer Delusions.” www.religionandpolitics.org/. 22. Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, “Making Assumptions about Dietrich: How Bonhoeffer was made fit for America,” an essay review in the Bonhoeffer Newsletter, no, 110, Spring 2015, 23. 23. Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906 – 1945. 24. Keith Clements, review in Theology, March/April 2011 (vol 114, no. 2), 122f. 25. Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon, 147. 26. Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann and Ronald Gregor Smith, I Knew Bonhoeffer: Reminiscences by His Friends, ed. Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann and Ronald Gregor Smith (London: Collins, 1966). 27. Bethge, Exile and Martyr, 23–25. 28. London, 183. 29. Ethics, 206–7. 30. Ethics, 189–92. 31. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 160. 32. Letters and Papers from Prison, 373.

2

Who Is Bonhoeffer for Us Today?

Who am I? Why am I here? Where did I come from? What am I to do? Once these questions arise, they never again turn us loose. Sermon on Luke 17:33, Madrid, October 1928 1 Am I really what others say of me? Or am I only what I know of myself? . . . Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest me; O God, I am thine! “Who am I?” Tegel Prison, July 1944 2

NOTES 1. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 532. 2. Letters and Papers from Prison, 459–60.

FOUR Theological Witness to Christ

All our words serve . . . to keep our eyes on one goal, and to point . . . toward Christ, toward the Lord, toward the Word of God, which is beyond all our words, which God speaks at any time and in any place, touches and enters human hearts and brings fear and comfort to them, whenever and wherever God wants . . . God’s Word speaking through ours. Sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:20, London, October 1933 1 We should not be surprised if for our church . . . times will come again when the blood of martyrs will be required. But this blood . . . will not be as innocent and untarnished as that of the first witnesses. Sermon on Colossians 3:1–4 Berlin, June 1932 2

Bonhoeffer decided to become a theologian while still in high school. This did not please his father. So seeing that young Dietrich was already an accomplished pianist, his parents, wanting to make sure whether his true vocation was perhaps music rather than theology, “arranged for him to play for the pianist Leonid Kreuzer, a virtuoso of the Vienna school.” 3 The outcome was indecisive, but by March 1921, Dietrich had made up his own mind, driven, Bethge’s says, by a “basic drive for independence . . . the need for unchallenged self-realization.” 4 Given his strong ego, there was a youthful arrogance at work; a desire to prove to the skeptical members of his family that he could excel in his own chosen field. He was going to be the best theologian possible. As Bonhoeffer himself describes it, “he plunged into work in a very unchristian way,” driven by ambition, and “turning the doctrine of Jesus Christ into something of personal advantage.” It was only later when, during his student

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year at Union Theological Seminary in 1931–1932, that he discovered the Bible in a new way, that “the theologian became a Christian.” 5 Several biographies of Bonhoeffer attempt to profile Bonhoeffer with keyword subtitles. Bethge labels him a “theologian, Christian and man for our times.” The first two were the descriptors that Bonhoeffer used of himself, so it is appropriate that we should begin with his theological witness to Christ. Others profile him as a martyr, so it is also appropriate to have the endpoint of his life in mind because his death, however understood, casts a long shadow over all his questions. Indeed, we cannot approach them without being mindful of what happened to him in Flossenberg concentration camp on Monday morning April 9, 1945, the same day Dohnanyi was executed in Sachsenhausen. Would the “Bonhoeffer phenomenon” have developed if Bonhoeffer had not been so cruelly put to death and faced it with such courage and Christian conviction? Was his untimely and tragic death the seal on his theology and the final outcome of his witness, or was it simply a political act of desperation by a collapsing regime, an act of vengeance against a traitor? WITNESS UNTO DEATH In 1998, ten statues of twentieth-century Christian martyrs were unveiled above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey in London. Among them stand pastor Bonhoeffer and Manche Masemola—the one, a widely known and acclaimed German theologian, the other, a South African teenage girl from a remote Bapedi village who probably would have remained largely unknown if she had not been cast in stone and placed above the entrance to the Abbey. Bonhoeffer and Masemola never met in life, but they are linked eternally in death. And, by an uncanny coincidence, Masemola was martyred—a “baptism in blood” she called it—on February 4, 1928, Bonhoeffer’s twenty-third birthday. Whatever other connections we may make between Bonhoeffer and South Africa, this is one of the most remarkable. It is also not beyond the bounds of possibility that Bonhoeffer might have met someone who knew Masemola because she belonged to the Bapedi clan, which was first evangelized by missionaries of the Berlin Missionary Society. 6 After 1919 the work among the Bapedi was taken over by the Anglican Community of the Resurrection (with whom Bonhoeffer had contact in England), and Manche herself was converted by an African priest of the order, Fr. Augustine. But, although Bonhoeffer and Masemola are now both celebrated martyrs standing alongside each other, the circumstances of their deaths were very different. Masemola died at the hands of her parents for choosing to follow Christ instead of tribal custom and authority. Bonhoeffer was hanged for participation in a plot to kill Hitler. Masemola’s

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death was clearly the consequence of her witness to Christ against culture. In what sense, if any, can the same be said of Bonhoeffer’s? In the history of Christianity bearing witness to Christ against the claims of tribal or national authority has often been the reason for martyrdom. Masemola died a martyr because she chose Christ above clan, and for that, she is rightly honored above the West Door of Westminster Abbey. Her martyrdom is unquestionable according to Christian tradition already established in the Acts of the Apostles. Yet many African theologians today do not believe that obedience to Christ demands rejecting one’s own culture, especially if the form of Christianity involved is linked to European colonialism. And Bonhoeffer certainly did not renounce his German heritage and identity to be a Christian but participated in the Resistance not least because he believed that Nazism was destroying the culture that had nourished him. This comparison raises a twofold question: what precisely is Christian martyrdom, and who qualifies to be called a martyr? 7 What constitutes Christian martyrdom has always been contested, and the debate about martyrdom today has become more problematic because it is associated in the popular mind with “suicide bombers” seeking paradise in pursuit of political objectives. The problem is not whether Christian martyrdom has political overtones and significance because it invariably has since the time of the Roman Empire, but whether Bonhoeffer’s death at the hands of the Third Reich because of his participation in the plot against Hitler can unequivocally be labeled martyrdom. 8 Similar questions have also been raised about several of the other martyrs celebrated at Westminster Abbey whose killings were politically motivated, among them Martin Luther King Jr., and Archbishop Oscar Romero, just as they were asked about the martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket in 1170 because he challenged both ecclesiastical and political authority. Originally, the word martyria in the Greek New Testament meant a witness to Christ, but it was soon used almost exclusively to describe those who died because of their witness. This is not surprising given the fact that the first apostolic witnesses to Christ were put to death because of their confession of Christ as the promised Messiah. Christian martyrs did not, and still do not, die because they believe in a fable or seek a quick entrance to paradise; nor do they die because of their philosophical convictions. They are put to death because they confess Christ as Lord in a way that is perceived as a threat to those in authority. There can be no doubt that Bonhoeffer was condemned to death for treason, not for publicly acknowledging Christ as Lord, yet his martyrdom began when he first became a witness to Christ. As he wrote in Discipleship, although “Christ honors only a few of his followers with being in the most intimate community with his suffering, that is, with martyrdom,” and in that act, “the life of the disciple is most profoundly identical with the likeness of Jesus Christ’s form of death,” yet, and this is

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the point, “from baptism all the way to martyrdom, it is the same suffering and the same death. It is the new creation of the image of God through the crucified one.” 9 Peter Frick reminds us that Bonhoeffer’s “entire life is shaped at the deepest level by convictions that have extensive roots in his intellectual formation.” He insists, further, that it was only “because Bonhoeffer had unshaken convictions that were rooted in his fertile intellect” that he “was prepared to meet his death with unflinching courage.” 10 In other words, his decision to join the Resistance arose out of convictions that had developed in the course of his life. But these were obviously more than intellectual in character because they cannot be separated from his spiritual formation as a Christian. 11 In other words, his decision to conspire against Hitler cannot be understood in isolation either from his struggle to answer the question “who is Christ actually for us today?” in theological terms or from his decision to follow that Christ in his daily life as a disciple and pastor. “ALL OUR WORDS POINT TOWARDS CHRIST” 12 When a youthful Bonhoeffer first announced that he wanted to become a theologian what he had chiefly in mind was not an academic career, though he was certainly cut out for such a future. He studied theology to preach. So much is this the case that, in Barnett’s words, we cannot understand “Bonhoeffer the resistance figure or Bonhoeffer the theologian without understanding Bonhoeffer the preacher.” 13 Even when he became a theological teacher, first as an assistant university lecturer in Berlin in 1931 and, then, in 1935 as director of the illegal seminary in Finkenwalde, studying theology was, as he frequently told his students, the handmaid of preaching. This led Bonhoeffer to the thrilling discovery that a sermon is “something unique in all the world, so completely different from any other kind of speech,” as he said in a sermon in London in 1935. For when “a preacher opens his Bible and interprets the word of God, a mystery takes place, a miracle: the grace of God, who comes down from heaven into our midst and speaks to us, knocks on our door, asks questions, warns us, puts pressure on us, alarms us, threatens us, and makes us joyful again and free and sure. 14

The world outside, Bonhoeffer continued, knows nothing about this, but in this event the Spirit is at work and the Incarnate God is revealed. Of course, Bonhoeffer knew only too well, that most people did not perceive sermons in this way, which led him to ask: How is it possible that thousands upon thousands of people are bored with the church and pass it by? Why did it come about that the cinema

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really is often more interesting, more exciting, more human and gripping than the church? Can that really be only the fault of others and not ours as well? The church was different once. It used to be that the questions of life and death were resolved and decided here. Why is this no longer so? 15

That this bothered Bonhoeffer for the rest of his life can be seen from the questions he raised in his prison letters about the future of Christianity and the church. Preaching for him was about questions of life and death, that is why he remained a pastor to the end, preaching his final sermon in a school room on the way to Flossenbürg. Bonhoeffer had already discovered the joy of preaching when he was a youthful vicar in Barcelona. 16 But, as he acknowledged to his friend and fellow pastor Helmut Rößler, a sermon “can never grasp the center, but can only itself be grasped by it, by Christ.” And when that happens, “Christ becomes flesh” irrespective of whether the preacher is a pietist, socialist, or cleric. He also confessed that it seemed to him that his “most effective sermons” were those in which he had “spoken about the gospel in an enticing manner, the way one tells children a fairy tale about a strange land.” 17 Hence his disillusionment, on the one hand, with the preaching of liberally minded white pastors in the more affluent churches he attended in New York, which he experienced during his time at Union Seminary and, on the other, his attraction to the dynamic preaching of the gospel he discovered in the black churches of East Harlem. 18 But where did the problem lie? It was not that white seminarians were untrained in rhetoric and homiletics; the problem was far more fundamental; it was theological. As he said in his Report on Protestantism in the United States, drafted after his brief second visit to New York in 1939, the problem reflected a failure in Christology. “In New York,” he said “they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life.” 19 The problem could be traced back to the historical development of American Christianity, leading Bonhoeffer, with “tongue in cheek,” to blame God for not giving it a Reformation! He gave strong revivalist preachers, men of the church, and theologians, but no reformation of the church of Jesus Christ from the word of God. Those churches of the Reformation that came to America either stand in deliberate seclusion and distance from general church life or have fallen victim to Protestantism without Reformation.” 20

Of course, there were exceptions among white mainline churches, including the Broadway Presbyterian Church he attended nearby Union Seminary. But overall, as Bonhoeffer concluded his Report: “Christendom in American theology is essentially still religion and ethics. Hence, the per-

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son and work of Jesus Christ recedes into the background for theology and remains ultimately not understood, because the sole foundation for God’s radical judgment and radical grace is at this point not recognized.” 21 In other words, a faithful witness to Christ demands an adequate theology that sustains it and gives it direction. But even though Bonhoeffer had misgivings about so much of the preaching he heard in white congregations, he was glad that this forced him to think again about basic theological issues and come to understand “what important questions really are and how much one owes to our own theology.” 22 Indeed, we have only to read Bonhoeffer’s lectures and sermons after his return to Germany in June 1931 to see that his American experience had made him even more certain that serious theological enquiry was essential to the well-being of the church, the life of the Christian and the ministry of the pastor. 23 TRACTS FOR THE TIMES Apart from his pastoral responsibilities in Berlin, Bonhoeffer also became an assistant professor (Privatdozent) at Humboldt University. In his lectures and seminars during the next two years Bonhoeffer demonstrated both his academic ability and his pastoral and prophetic concern, indeed, he became a theological witness to Christ in the classroom. At the same time, in retrospect, he was sharpening his theological tools in anticipation of the church struggle (Kirchenkampf) that was about to erupt. He was no longer engaged in writing dissertations, but in producing biblical and theological “tracts for the times.” During the winter semester in 1932, Bonhoeffer gave his lectures on Genesis 1–3, later published as Creation and Fall. In the first, on “The Beginning,” he observed that the question “why” did God create the universe takes us around in philosophical circles because every answer leads to a further question, and “for that very reason there is no beginning at all.” 24 The Bible does not tell us why the world came into being, it exclaims: “In the beginning God. . .” Nor does it tell us “how” the world came into being. Instead, it recounts a story that draws us into a conversation in which God asks us: “who are we? How are we relating to each other and to the world in which we live?” And so, the “first theological conversation” recorded in the Bible begins and proceeds with questions and counter-questions: “Did God really say . . . ? Yes, God did say . . . But why did God say it . . . ?” 25 According to Bonhoeffer, then, the perennial “debate about God” was, then, there at “the beginning.” But it was neither about the existence of God, for that was assumed, or whether the creative source of life was to be called Elohim, YHWH, or Adonai, but about what the God who was there at the beginning required of us to ensure that the whole of creation

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should flourish. Like most “debates about God,” or about human responsibility for the environment and similar questions, the conversation threatened to go around in circles like a snake grasping its tail. But God’s “Word” interrupts human talking, and for that reason, if we are to know who God is and what God requires of us, we must start listening. Our knowledge of God and God’s will does not come through reason but through revelation. The light must break through the cracks of our existence. In other words, theology starts when we stop talking and start listening to the question posed by God’s Word, which brought everything into being. Such theology was not “unscientific,” decrying reason, but neither was it based on rational argument. It was witnessing to God’s revelation in Jesus Christ the “Word who was in the beginning,” the “Word become flesh.” Of critical importance in Creation and Fall is Bonhoeffer’s development of his “theology of sociality” which he had already discussed extensively in Sanctorum Communio. Only now he does not speak about Stellvertretung or “vicarious representative action” but with Barth in mind, he uses the phrase “analogia relationis.” 26 That is, our knowledge of God is relational. Being created “in the image of God” means that human beings are in a relationship to God who not only gives life but also establishes the boundaries that make life in community possible. God is, therefore, both the boundary and the center of human existence, the one through whom human beings are related to each other and to nature itself. The story told in Genesis 1–3, then, is “not a tale about some primeval human being that hardly affects us”; on the contrary, in it “we are confronted by ourselves for we are Adam and Adam’s history is our history.” But there is “one decisive difference,” that is, our history begins where Adam’s ends, namely through Christ who becomes the new center of life. 27 Given Bonhoeffer’s diagnosis that the ills of white American Christianity can be traced back to a weak Christology, even among its best theologians, it is not surprising that his lectures on “Creation and Fall” not only led him to this Christ-centered conclusion but also prompted him to give his next major series of lectures the following semester on “Christology.” And he did so at the same time as Hitler was taking hold of power. For that reason, Bonhoeffer was not only interested in the Christ of Christian tradition but also in discerning “who Christ actually was” in a Germany that was rapidly becoming a dictatorship. This was unusual, not least because of its possible consequences. Most professors would have proceeded to give their lectures as if nothing of significance was happening beyond the protected walls of the academy. No wonder many students flocked to hear Bonhoeffer rather than attend the lectures of his senior colleagues. Many years later when Bonhoeffer was in prison, Bethge, then a soldier in Italy, wrote to tell him that he was planning to visit Rome as a tourist. This triggered off memories in Bonhoeffer’s mind of his own life-

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changing visit to the Eternal City in 1924 as well as a joint visit he and Eberhard had made in 1936. 28 In replying to his friend, Bonhoeffer told him that he would love to revisit Rome with him, but seeing that was impossible, he could at least suggest that if he was there during Holy Week he should “attend the Maundy Thursday afternoon service” in St. Peter’s Basilica. It was then, he said, that “they extinguish the twelve candles on the altar, symbolizing the disciples’ running away, so that in that enormous space there is only one candle still burning in the center— Christ—then comes the cleansing of the altar.” 29 As darkness fell on Nazi Germany, there was, for Bonhoeffer, only one light still burning, barely shining through the cracks. But doing theology in that context demanded faithful witness to that light, to Christ the center of the church, history, and nature, no matter the consequences. CHRIST THE CENTER Bonhoeffer’s Christology lectures begin where those on Creation and Fall end. As such, they provide the theological basis for all that is to follow from now until the prison letters in response to the question: “Who is Jesus Christ actually for us today?” But before we begin that part of the conversation, Bonhoeffer tells us as he told his students, we must be silent and listen, not to the beating of our hearts or to our own voices, but to the revelation of God through his Word. 30 So we pause in our conversation with Bonhoeffer. The question he posed is not an academic, historical, or even biological question: “how on earth did God become human?” Neither is it philosophical: “why did God become a human being?” In fact, we are not asking any questions at all; we are being asked with the disciples of old: “Who do you say that I am?” It is noteworthy that around this time, the word “mystery” regularly appears in Bonhoeffer’s preaching, as it did in a sermon on the Trinity he preached in London on Trinity Sunday, May 24, 1934. “To live without mystery,” he says, means that we do not see the most important things that happen in life, even to deny that they exist.” In fact, we do not want to hear or know that everything significant lies in mystery, and if we do, we want to calculate, explain, and dissect it. But all we do is to kill the “life in it and still do not find the mystery. The mystery remains a mystery. It eludes our grasp.” 31 But because everything has its origin in mystery does not mean that the mystery cannot be disclosed and that we cannot know God. In fact, the “very deepest mystery is when two persons grow so close to each other that they love each other. . . . Thus knowledge does not dispel the mystery but only deepens it.” This means that “all our thinking about God must serve only to make us see how completely beyond us and how mysterious God is, to make us glimpse the mysterious and hidden wisdom of God in all its mystery and hiddenness, rather than

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making it any less so. . . . Every dogma of the church only points to the mystery of God.” 32 This is supremely so with the Incarnation, for the “Word which was with God in the beginning, the Word that was God, the Word through whom all things came to be, became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 2, 14). A clear reminder that Bonhoeffer’s theology was not a “Jesusology,” or narrowly Christocentric, as sometimes claimed. For Bonhoeffer, the Incarnation is inclusive of the death and resurrection of Christ and deeply rooted in the mystery of the Trinity. 33 This is the core of Bonhoeffer’s theology, the basis for everything that follows as becomes abundantly clear in his Ethics a few years later. Christian ethics, Bonhoeffer tells us there, is not about developing moral codes of conduct, putting religious or philosophical principles into practice, developing “programs of ethical or religious world-formation,” 34 or even trying to live like Jesus, but about discerning the reality of God and the world meeting in Christ here and now. This means that there is one place where God and the reality of the world are reconciled with each other, at which God and humanity have become one . . . lies in the midst of history as a divine miracle. It lies in Jesus Christ the reconciler of the world. . . . Whoever looks at Jesus Christ sees in fact God and the world in one. From then on they can no longer see God without the world, or the world without God. 35

As Christians, Bonhoeffer says, we are called to be witnesses to the reconciliation of the world to God in Christ by “being conformed to the unique form of the one who became human, was crucified, and is risen.” 36 This was at the core of Bonhoeffer’s testimony to Christ, and that does not change when, in prison he again poses the question of Christ for us today. In fact, for him, asking and answering that question presupposes the historic consensus within the Church concerning “who Christ is,” as expressed in the consensus on the “two natures of Christ” (human and divine) dating back to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE. The importance of this for Bonhoeffer throughout his theological development is evident, as we shall see, in his prison theology when he deals with the question of Christ right at the end of his life. 37 We do not start from scratch when faced with the question of Christ today for we reflect on who he is within the church-community where he is already and always present as Word, Sacrament, and church-community. As such he is the center and “beginning of our new existence”; the center of history, where promise and fulfillment, as well as church and state meet; and the center of nature waiting to be liberated from bondage. And he is the center because he who stands in my place, on my behalf before God, that is, pro-me. Christ as the mediator is precisely the end of the old, fallen world and the beginning of the new world of God. 38

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But is Bonhoeffer’s Christology more metaphysical than historical, giving primacy to Chalcedon rather than to Jesus of Nazareth, as John H. Yoder argued, even though this may be more pronounced in his interpreters rather than in Bonhoeffer’s Christology as it developed after his 1933 lectures? 39 Indeed, for Yoder, Bonhoeffer’s understanding of Jesus in prison may be closer to Anabaptist Christology than some of his interpreters allow in so far as he takes the historical Jesus more seriously than they do. 40 The Incarnate One, says Yoder, is surely not primarily (or only) the representative universal human being who sanctifies human nature, but in his Incarnation “God broke through the borders of man’s definition of what is human, and gave a new, formative definition in Jesus.” 41 It was this “Jesus,” says Yoder, whom Bonhoeffer later feared was disappearing “from view.” 42 That is true, for Bonhoeffer was echoing the early Anabaptists when he wrote to Bethge from prison and said that discipleship meant “being pulled along into the—messianic—suffering of God in Jesus Christ.” 43 But this did not imply any departure from his strong affirmation of Chalcedonian Christology. Certainly for Bonhoeffer, even in his lectures on Christology, the Christ we know by faith is none other than the Jesus of history. 44 As he told his students, we cannot avoid “the challenge of historical knowledge; we have to go through it, not bypass it.” 45 At the same time, although Jesus has “his place in history,” we cannot get behind the testimony embodied in the gospels to find him because he only encounters us through the witness of the first evangelists. 46 For that reason, in writing Discipleship, Bonhoeffer does not enter into the debate about the “historical Jesus” documented by Schweitzer. 47 He wants his readers to hear and respond to the call of Jesus to follow him as “the Christ” and so join the community of those who, in Paul’s words, live life together “in Christ.” 48 So, no matter how much we can discover about the “Jesus of history” we only know who Jesus of Nazareth really is as the “risen Christ.” That is why our approach to the question begins with the Christ who is “present” for me (pro me) and for us (pro nobis) in the church-community. “As the Crucified and Risen One, Jesus is at the same time the Christ who is present now. This is the first statement: that Christ is the Christ who is present in history. He is to be understood as present in time and space.” In fact, it is only “because Christ is the Christ who is present” that we are “still able to inquire of him.” 49 Keeping this in mind, Bonhoeffer distinguishes between “critical or negative Christology” and “positive Christology.” Critical Christology evaluates the truth claims made about Christ, that is, trying to make the “incomprehensible comprehensible.” That history culminates in the Chalcedonian formula, which is necessarily a negative process because it proceeds by excluding half-truths or heresies, that is, attempts to give a definitive answer to the question concerning Christ and so explain away the mystery. 50 That is the nature of all the Christological heresies. By

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contrast, the Chalcedonian formula “is an objective, living assertion about Christ that goes beyond all conceptual forms. Everything is encompassed in its very clear yet paradoxical agility [Lebendigkeiten].” 51 Jesus remains God, both “wholly human and wholly divine” in his humiliation and his exaltation. 52 Negative Christology thus prepares the way for Positive Christology. We stop trying to say who Christ is in his essence, that grasping mystery is beyond our ability, and turn instead to consider his significance “for us today.” Bonhoeffer’s first positive claim is that God became “completely human” just like we are and are meant to be. Jesus is God as the true human being. Therefore, if “we are to describe Jesus as God, we should not speak of his being all-powerful or all-knowing; but of his birth in a manger and his death on the cross. There is no “divine nature” as all-powerful and ever-present. 53 Thus, we do not have to decide when Jesus was being divine or being human for already, following Luther, “the child in the manger is God,” 54 just as God is “the crucified One.” 55 In fact, Luther’s “theology of the cross” is the distinguishing feature of Bonhoeffer’s lectures on Christology, anticipating his statement from prison that only a suffering God can save us. 56 God consents to be pushed out of the world and onto the cross; God is weak and powerless in the world and in precisely this way, and only so, is at our side and helps us. . . . Christ helps us not by virtue of his omnipotence but rather by virtue of his weakness and suffering! 57

This means that the mystery we name God is “hidden” in Christ and only known by faith. God is present with Christ on the cross and in the bread on the altar table and, therefore, present as the crucified One in the realities of history and the commonalities of life. Thus, the mystery of the Incarnation remains, for who Christ actually is, that is, for us today, can only be discerned as we listen to the Word in relation to worldly reality. Thus, the question “who is Christ today?” is really about where does Christ become visible in the world for us? And the “central problem for Christology” stems from the fact that for us, God comes among us no longer in the form of God, “but rather incognito, as a beggar among beggars, an outcast among outcasts; he comes among sinners as the one without sin, but also as a sinner among sinners.” 58 In other words, the scandal of Christianity is not that God becomes human, but that in doing so he becomes sin for our sake (a “robber, murderer, adulterer” to quote Luther) even though he is without sin. 59 It is only through this humiliation that Christ can redeem us, that is, become Christus pro nobis. What lies between this humiliation and Christ’s exaltation is the “empty grave.” But this “impossible possibility” is the final stumbling-block, for to the very end “Jesus remains incognito.” There is no conclusive proof. The exalted One remains the humiliated One. This has far-reaching consequences for the church because the church can neither glory in its pow-

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er nor boast of its humility. It can only glory in Christ crucified, that is, “the God who became human, was humiliated, resurrected and exalted.” 60 Bonhoeffer has often been criticized for what is called Christo-monism, that is, for so focusing on the centrality of Christ that the trinitarian understanding of God fundamental to Christian faith is lost. But, as Clifford Green has shown, from beginning to end, Bonhoeffer’s theology develops within a Trinitarian framework, even if at times it is only implicit. 61 As Bonhoeffer says in his Christology (1933) lectures: God who became human is the God of glory; God glorifies himself in the human [Gott verherrlicht sich im Menschen]. This is the ultimate mystery of the Trinity. From “now unto eternity,” God regards himself as the God who became human. God’s self-glorification in the human is thus the glorification of the human, which shall have eternal life with God the Three in One. 62

The Trinitarian structure of Bonhoeffer’s theology is, in fact, fundamental to his Christology. But, as Green further observes, this is not an academic matter for Bonhoeffer given the context in which he gave his Christology lectures. Indeed, the “invocation of the triune God” in his essays on the “Jewish Question,” which he wrote around the same time, was a direct rebuttal of the “heretical God-talk and Christ-talk of the German Christians.” 63 It was also a rebuttal of the weak Christology of some of his liberal teachers, Harnack the chief among them. Bonhoeffer’s students could hardly have missed the fact, then, that for him the question “who Jesus Christ is for us?” had everything to do with what was happening outside the university walls on the streets of Berlin and in the corridors of power. It had to do with confessing Christ concretely in word and deed in the life of the church so that it should be a witness to the world. What more Bonhoeffer would have said in his lectures we can only surmise because he did not give those scheduled for the next semester on the “cosmic Christ.” His formal academic career had come to a sudden end just as a new and terrifying day dawned for Germany. CONFESSING CHRIST CONCRETELY At an ecumenical youth conference in Czechoslovakia in 1932 Bonhoeffer declared that the church must not proclaim timeless principles, but “only commandments that are true today. For that which is ‘always’ true is precisely not true today.” 64 To proclaim the gospel, it is therefore necessary to have knowledge of concrete reality. “Reality,” he declared “is the sacrament of the commandment.” 65 That is, to discern what is really going on in one’s historical context is necessary to speak the Word of God directly to the situation. I will say more about Bonhoeffer’s prophetic

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“discerning the times” in the next chapter, but first we need to remember what those times were about. Hitler became chancellor of the Third Reich in January 1933. In May, at the same time as Bonhoeffer was lecturing on Christology, the Evangelical Church of the Union in Berlin-Brandenburg, to which Bonhoeffer and Barth belonged, was being torn apart over the election of a Bishop and the question whether those who were of Jewish ancestry could be members. By July the pro-Nazi German Christians had seized control. A month later “Aryan legislation” excluding Jews from official church positions came into effect. And by September the various regional synods of the Evangelical Church, including Berlin-Brandenburg, had been united in the Reich Church (Reichskirke) under Ludwig Müller, Hitler’s choice, as Reichsbischof. As these alarming developments unfolded, Bonhoeffer and Barth were in urgent conversation on whether a “status confessionis” had been reached. By this they meant, whether a situation had arisen in the life of the church, as at the time of the Reformation, when it had to confess its faith anew against a heresy that was destroying its life and witness? Was the Evangelical Church in Germany still a true church of Jesus Christ? Or was its witness to Christ so seriously compromised that a confessing movement faithful to Christ was urgently needed? It was, we may note, precisely these questions that struck a chord with Naudé in the early sixties in South Africa and led to a growing interest in Bonhoeffer’s legacy for our context and to the declaration that the theological defense of apartheid was a heresy. Although Bonhoeffer was deeply involved in the discussions about a “status confessionis,” and in the formulation of the Bethel Confession in response to the Nazi control of the church, he was becoming increasingly disillusioned with the church’s response to Nazism. So, without telling Barth, he accepted an invitation to become the pastor of two Germanspeaking congregations in England and departed for London in October 1933. He knew that if he had discussed the matter with Barth, he would have most likely been dissuaded from taking this decision. Barth was, to say the last, not pleased because Bonhoeffer was needed in Germany. 66 But Bonhoeffer was not at the founding Synod of the Confessing Church at Barmen or involved in the drafting of its famous Declaration in May 1934, a task chiefly undertaken by Barth, whose first thesis unequivocally declared: Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. 67

Barmen was addressed directly and solely to the church and its witness. It was resistance by theological confession, as Bethge would later say, not confessing by resistance. The latter was still a boundary to be crossed and

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very few did so. “Bonhoeffer himself,” writes Bethge, “took time to cross that border, yielding himself into that unaccustomed and ambivalent ground of the conspiracy.” 68 During his pastoral stay in London Bonhoeffer remained almost daily in touch with what was happening in Germany and did much to promote both the Confessing Church and the work of the ecumenical movement, especially with regard to its response to the German crisis. 69 But after this brief yet very active ministry, in April 1935, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany to take up his position as Director of the Confessing Church’s preachers’ seminary, first at Zingst, and then in Finkenwalde, a village on the Baltic coast. There he was soon in his element, teaching theology to pastors and helping in their formation as preachers and witnesses to Christ. THE OLD TESTAMENT AS WITNESS TO CHRIST For Bonhoeffer the whole of the Bible was a “witness to Christ” from beginning to end. For that reason, the important questions in interpreting it were not those that had to do with date, authorship, and context in the interest of historical-critical scholarship but with their testimony to Jesus Christ. This did not mean that textual and literary criticism were unnecessary “from the perspective of general scholarly issues of veracity.” Indeed, it was necessary for that reason. But it was also theologically necessary because it was an “attack on the canonization of the Bible in the place of the God of the Bible,” that is, the replacement of God with a fundamentalist “verbally inspired Bible.” 70 As Bonhoeffer wrote in his Introduction to Creation and Fall: Where Holy Scripture, upon which the church of Christ stands, speaks of creation, of the beginning, what else can it say other than that it is only from Christ that we can know what the beginning is? The Bible is after all nothing other than the book of the church. 71

For that reason, Bonhoeffer says, one can read the Bible “as a book that moves toward Christ only when one knows that Christ is the beginning, the new, the end of our whole world.” 72 In approaching the Hebrew Bible in this way Bonhoeffer was going against his illustrious teachers in Berlin, Harnack chief among them, 73 but he was in unison with Barth and a minority of biblical scholars. 74 Of course, Bonhoeffer’s Christological interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures may appear anti-Semitic, and certainly supercessionist, indicative of the widespread anti-Judaism of his time even in his circle. But in exalting the Old Testament he was categorically opposing those German Christians who had rejected the Old Testament for ideological reasons as

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well as the views of those of his teachers for whom the Old Testament was un-Christian or only of value in preparing the way for Christianity. As we will see in the next chapter, from early on in his ministry the Old Testament prophets played an important role in Bonhoeffer’s life. But during the last few weeks of his stay in England in 1935, he developed a new and lively interest in the Psalms. This came as a result of his visiting several Anglican monastic communities in England where he joined in the daily offices in which praying the psalms play a dominant role. This led him to introduce the daily reading of the Psalms into the liturgical life of the Finkenwalde Seminary. 75 In addition, one of the first lectures Bonhoeffer gave to the seminarians was on “Christ in the Psalms.” 76 The Psalms became his Prayerbook as they had been for Jesus. In praying the Psalms, he was praying with Christ in Gethsemane and on the Cross. 77 This was particular so for Bonhoeffer in prison where the Psalms provided the spiritual resources he needed to face his increasingly uncertain future and finally his death. More generally, some of Bonhoeffer’s most insightful comments on the witness of the Old Testament to Christ are found in his prison writings. Fundamental to them are his conviction that the Old Testament prevents us from over-spiritualizing the New, 78 or turning Christianity into a religion of redemption from the world rather than in and for the world. 79 Biblical faith, he insisted, is not about escaping from the world, but about taking responsibility for it. This was fundamental to what he called a “nonreligious” interpretation of Christian faith. Discussion of that development must wait. In bringing this chapter to a close I must return to where we began, the endpoint of Bonhoeffer’s witness, his conformation to the death of Christ and his status as a martyr. MARTYRDOM FOR THE SAKE OF THE “OTHER” No one has explored the moral and theological ambiguities of Christian martyrdom more compellingly and controversially than Shūsaka Endṓ in his novel Silence (1966). It is a complex and haunting story about a Jesuit priest, Fr. Rodrigues, who, prepared to die for his faith, finally recants to save Japanese converts from torture and gruesome death at the hands of the authorities. The underlying, searching question, is whether Christ wants him to remain faithful to death, thus keeping his conscience pure but sealing the fate of his followers or to apostatize to save them. In the end, Christ breaks his silence, telling Rodrigues to trample on the icon put before him to test his faith. “It was to be trampled on by men,” Christ says, “that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.” 80 The story, strongly contested by orthodoxy, forces us to consider “who Christ is actually for us today?” in a radical way. Is he the one who

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commands us not to deny him even if this causes the suffering of others or to surrender our desire to die for him to save them? Which is the most authentic witness to who Christ truly is? Should African Christians, for example, reject their culture in its totality to follow Christ or stand in solidarity with their people when they are suffering at the hands of the colonizer? In addressing this question, Abonkhianmeghe Orobator, a Nigerian Jesuit theologian, reminds us that there have been many African Christian martyrs in the twentieth century who have not died because they rejected their culture but because they opposed oppression and injustice. 81 This confirms what Bethge wrote in discussing Bonhoeffer’s martyrdom. “Whereas formerly, martyrdom was the result of bearing testimony to the name of Jesus in a hostile world, now martyrdom is often the result of bearing testimony on behalf of a threatened humanum, it has become a sacrifice for the sake of humanity.” 82 In this way it mirrors the death of Jesus himself, who identified with sinful humanity and died a criminal’s death on the cross for the sake of redeeming the world. In participating in the Resistance and the plot on Hitler’s life Bonhoeffer was not seeking martyrdom, nor did he attempt to justify his actions on theological grounds; on the contrary, he accepted his guilt. For him, as we shall discuss more fully later, this was a “venture of free responsibility” undertaken to save the lives of Nazi victims and bring an end to the suffering and destruction caused by the regime. But his decision to join the Resistance arose out of his prior decision to follow Christ and confirmed his assertion that “whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.” 83 As Craig Slane observes, Christian martyrdom has always had “political overtones” because it is the point at which the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world collide. 84 So I concur with his conclusion that Bonhoeffer was both a “martyred theologian” and a “theologian of martyrdom,” that is, someone who not only wrote and spoke about “costly discipleship” and witnessed faithfully to Christ through his public confession, but who, in the end, did so “incognito”—that is, in a way that transgressed the boundaries of “acceptable martyrdom”—but conformed to Christ in his humiliation and death. Symbolic of the ignominy of Bonhoeffer’s death, and his solidarity in dying with the victims of injustice, is that he died naked, and there is no grave to mark his final resting place. All we can surmise is that his ashes were probably scattered with those of many other victims—Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies, and enslaved laborers—who had been tortured and put to death in that gruesome place called Flossenbürg. Such was the fate that awaited many prophets of God’s justice and peace. NOTES 1. London, 322–23.

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2. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 459. 3. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 37. 4. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 37. 5. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 205–5. 6. See Johannes du Plessis, A History of Christian Missions in South Africa (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911), 343–52; G. B. A. Gerdener, Recent Developments in the South African Mission Field (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1958), 81–82. 7. See Bethge, “Exile and Martyr,” 155; Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 931; Petra Brown, Bonhoeffer: God’s Conspirator in a State of Exception (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 8. Craig J. Slane, Bonhoeffer as Martyr (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2004). 9. Discipleship, 285–86. 10. Peter Frick, “Friedrich Nietzsche’s Aphorisms and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theology,” in Frick, ed., Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation, 2. 11. Geffrey B. and F. Burton Nelson Kelly, The Cost of Moral Leadership: The Spirituality of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), xv. 12. Bonhoeffer, London, 322–23. 13. Foreword to The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Isabel Best, ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), x 14. London, 323. 15. London, 323. 16. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 267. 17. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 127–28. 18. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 31. See also Josiah Ulysses Young III, No Difference in the Fare: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Problem of Racism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 87–124. 19. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 313. 20. Theological Education Underground, 461. 21. Theological Education Underground, 462. 22. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 266. 23. See, inter alia, the student notes based on his lectures on the “Nature of the Church.” Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 269–332. 24. Creation and Fall, 26. 25. Creation and Fall, 111–12. 26. Creation and Fall, 65. See also, Green, Bonhoeffer: Theology of Sociality, 193–95. 27. Creation and Fall, 92–93. 28. See Letters and Papers from Prison, 449. 29. Letters and Papers from Prison, 304–5. 30. Berlin, 300. 31. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 361. 32. London, 362. 33. See Clifford Green, “Trinity and Christology in Bonhoeffer and Barth,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 60, no. 1–2 (2006,): 1–22. 34. Ethics, 97. 35. Ethics, 82. 36. Ethics, 93–94. 37. Letters and Papers from Prison, 394. 38. Berlin, 327. 39. John H. Yoder, “The Christological Presuppositions of Discipleship,” in Jens Zimmermann and Brian Gregor, eds., Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 144. 40. Yoder, “Christological Presuppositions,” 147. 41. John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 101. 42. Letters and Papers from Prison, 500. 43. In a letter to Bethge, July 16, 1944. Letters and Papers from Prison, 481.

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44. Berlin, 328. 45. See “The History of Twentieth Century Theology,” in Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 212. 46. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 212. 47. Discipleship. 48. Discipleship. 49. Berlin, 310. 50. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 331. 51. Berlin, 343. 52. Berlin, 355. 53. Berlin, 354. 54. Berlin, 354. 55. Berlin, 355. 56. Berlin, 461, 479, 480–82. 57. Letters and Papers from Prison, 479. 58. Berlin, 356. 59. Berlin, 357. 60. Berlin, 360. 61. See Green, “Trinity and Christology in Bonhoeffer and Barth.” 62. Berlin, 355. 63. Green, “Trinity and Christology,” 8, see also 10. 64. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 359–60. 65. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 361–62. 66. See Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 207–21. 67. See Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s Confessions under Hitler (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1976), 239. See also Rolf Ahlers, The Barmen Theological Declaration: The Archeology of a Confessional Text (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986). 68. Eberhard Bethge, “The Confessing Church, Then and Now: The Barmen Declaration, 1934 and 1984,” in Hubert G. Locke, ed., The Barmen Confession: Papers from the Seattle Assembly (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 215. 69. See Keith Clements, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ecumenical Quest (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2015), 109–16. 70. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 390. 71. Creation and Fall, 22. 72. Creation and Fall, 22. 73. See Martin Kuske, The Old Testament as the Book of Christ: An Appraisal of Bonhoeffer’s Interpretation (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1976), 7–13. 74. Kuske, The Old Testament as the Book of Christ, 14–17. 75. See Life Together: Prayerbook of the Bible. 76. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 386–90. 77. Letters and Papers from Prison, 480–81. 78. Letters and Papers from Prison, 492–93. 79. Letters and Papers from Prison, 447–48. 80. Shūsaku Endṓ Silence (London: Picador, 2006), 231 81. Abonkhianmeghe Orobator, Theology Brewed in an African Pot (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008), 146–47. 82. Bethge, “Exile and Martyr,” 159. 83. Discipleship, 87. Previously translated as “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM, 1959), 79. 84. Slane, Bonhoeffer as Martyr, 248.

FIVE Prophet of God’s Justice and Peace

Jeremiah was not eager to become a prophet of God. When the call came to him . . . he shrank back, he resisted, he tried to get away. No, he did not want to be a prophet and a witness for this God. But . . . he was seized by the word, by the call . . . he cannot get away anymore . . . the arrow of the Almighty has struck down the hunted game. Jeremiah is his prophet. Sermon on Jeremiah 20:7 January 1934 1 It is not for us to predict the day . . . when people will once more be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be in a new language . . . the language of a new righteousness and truth . . . proclaiming that God makes peace with humankind and that God’s kingdom is drawing near. “They shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for them” (Jer. 33:9). “Thoughts on the Day of Baptism of Dietrich Bethge,” May 1944 2

From the time he was a student, Bethge tells us, Bonhoeffer was “gripped by the ‘passion of the prophets.’” 3 As he told his congregants in Barcelona in 1927 in a lecture on “The Tragedy of the Prophetic,” he had become “so attached to the history of the prophets,” that they were one of his favorite subjects of study. 4 It is not surprising, then, that there are many references to the prophets in his writings, and that some, notably Jeremiah, became his model. Yet few commentators explain this passion, even if all agree that his courageous opposition to Nazism was prophetic in substance and character. Geffrey Kelly and Burton Nelson are an exception to this general rule. They speak at length of Bonhoeffer’s prophetic leadership under the rubric of the Holy Spirit. The apparently overwhelming Christocentric character of Bonhoeffer’s theology, they say, leads his interpreters to pass 59

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over the many references to the Spirit in his writings. 5 Once again, it is a failure to recognize the Trinitarian character of his theology, But the Holy Spirit is certainly important for him, indeed, as he declared in one of his Pentecost sermons, the Spirit “is not a lifeless word on a page, but the living God” 6 without whom we would neither remember the word of Christ or know who he is “for us today.” “We can neither know Christ except through the Spirit who interprets the Word, nor witness to Christ in our own context except in the power of the Spirit. Christ was more than a prophet, but he was also a prophet, someone empowered by the Spirit to proclaim good news to the poor . . . release to captives . . . recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free . . . and the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18–19) This was the Christ to whom Bonhoeffer bore witness in speaking to the crises of his times. EMPOWERED BY THE SPIRIT The prophets, Bonhoeffer told his Barcelona congregation, were not soothsayers or predictors of the future, but people “who in a specific, convulsive moment” felt “seized and called by God” to “go out among the people and proclaim God’s will.” They were people who wrestled with God and with their own age, an age in which everything was out of joint, an age in which national and völkisch arrogance was paired with godlessness and immorality, men who felt called by their God and stepped out among their people, men for whom the covenant with God became their undoing. 7

Bonhoeffer eloquently recalls this legacy in his lecture. Though sadly, he says, the prophets’ own people “often considered them to be sick and ridiculed and avoided them.” And, no wonder, for on occasion some were “suddenly seized by some power forcing them to speak out, sometimes in the middle of a crowd and in utterly incomprehensible riddles; or in the very midst of joyous celebration they would begin to weep.” 8 Understandably, people thought they were insane,” as did scholars in Bonhoeffer’s day who subscribed “to such superficial views.” But the idea that the prophets were “abnormal, psychopaths, and nothing more” prevents “any prospect for understanding the unprecedented seriousness” of their tragedy. For the “central consideration enabling us to understand the prophetic soul is that the prophet knows himself to be allied with God.” 9 If the popular psychological profile of the prophets or the scientific verdict on their activities prevail in our thinking, it is difficult to imagine Bonhoeffer among them. After all, he was reserved by temperament, rational, and intellectual by training and wary of religious enthusiasm. But then we fail to appreciate not only the differences of background and

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temperament among the prophets themselves, but also the truth of their message, their rhetorical skill, the profundity of their insight, the clarity of their vision, the courage of their convictions and, not least, their patriotic love which made them prepared to suffer for the very people who rejected their testimony. In short, we fail to appreciate their passion and why that gripped Bonhoeffer’s imagination and attracted him into their company. 10 Nonetheless, we must ask, how can it possibly be that the apostle of “non-religious” Christianity be profiled as a Spirit-inspired prophet? Part of the problem in responding to that question is that the words “prophet” and “prophecy” mean different things to different people. While the Old Testament prophets, especially the pre-exilic, were primarily proclaimers of God’s righteousness and justice, calling the nation to repentance and offering them hope, for many contemporary Christians prophets are charismatics who discern what is happening in the life of congregations and individuals 11 or those who predict the “end times.” Either way, early in the history of Christianity the “spirit of prophecy” was regarded as something that ended with John the Baptist and the coming of Christ. But this silencing of the prophets was due as much to social forces, ecclesial designs, and political factors as it was to theological considerations. The unity of Christendom demanded an imperial theology that was subservient not subversive. As David Aune writes: “With the institutionalization of Christianity and the rationalization of its authority structures, prophecy became redundant as well as dysfunctional.” 12 St. Paul’s fear came true—”the Spirit of prophecy was quenched.” (I Thess. 5:19–20). Or better, we could say it was driven underground, even though it constantly erupted into prominence given the right circumstances. The phenomenon of prophecy in ancient Israel was more complex though no less charismatic than that described in the New Testament. From earliest times there were wandering bands of ecstatic prophets who roamed the countryside preaching and exorcising demons. There were the cultic “prophets of Baal and Asherah,” and “false prophets” who proclaimed peace without justice and gave legitimacy to corrupt rulers as both Bonhoeffer and Jeremiah well knew, prophets who cry “peace, peace, when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11). 13 But around the eighth century before the Christian era, prophets began emerging who lifted prophecy to a new level by challenging the idolatry, faithlessness, and injustices of Israel and Judah and warning them of disaster if they did not change their ways. These are the prophets that particularly attracted Bonhoeffer. The first of these was Elijah who, in his epic confrontation with the prophets of Baal supported by king Ahab, challenged the people of Israel to make up their minds about who they really wanted to follow and, therefore, decide between the word of the Lord and what today we call

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“fake news” (I Kings 18). This was a seminal moment in the biblical narrative, not just in terms of the substantive issues at stake but also because it portrays the prophet as a “troubler in Israel.” Following in the footsteps of Elijah came the pre-exilic prophets such as Amos, Hosea, Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Each was different. Some were peasants, others were priests, and most were reluctant to be prophets because scorn, rejection, and suffering were part of their job description. Although their message varied according to their time and location, they all condemned idolatry and called on the nation, people, priests, and royalty alike to change their ways and seek first God’s righteousness. On the one hand, their intention was “to disrupt, destabilize, and invite to alternative perceptions of reality,” 14 on the other they also offered “images of new possibility,” 15 above all the messianic hope of a new age of justice and peace. This prophetic message of God’s justice and peace reflects a profound theological shift in ancient Israel. Bonhoeffer refers to it in his Barcelona lecture when he says that there was among these prophets a deepening of the understanding of God as “holy, righteous, the God of conscience.” What God required of his people, he declared, was not cultic ritual or sacrifices, but “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). 16 Finally came the postexilic prophets such as Haggai, Ezra, and Nehemiah, whose major concern was the rebuilding of Jerusalem and national rebirth. They, too, stressed the holiness and righteousness of God, but for them, this required strict obedience to the Torah and ethnic purity. The age of rabbinic Judaism had begun, and the voice of the pre-exilic prophets was fading into the background. But the woes and suffering of Israel did not end, and as the yoke of the Roman Empire became increasingly heavy, so the longing for Elijah to return to herald the dawn of a new age of justice and peace began to stir. This is the context in which John the Baptist appears as herald of the Messiah, proclaiming “the kairos is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15). It is not incidental that a copy of Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (c. 1515), depicting John the Baptist pointing to the crucified Christ, hung in Bonhoeffer’s bedroom in Finkenwalde. 17 When working on the relationship between the “penultimate and the ultimate” in writing his Ethics, 18 Bonhoeffer even thought he might title the book Preparing the Way and Arrival, 19 with John the Baptist’s testimony in mind. Preparing the way for the kingdom of God, Bonhoeffer wrote, means responding to the needs of the hungry, the homeless, the oppressed, and the lonely here and now, that is, in the penultimate. This prepares “the way for the coming of grace” that is, the ultimate. 20 The relationship between the ultimate and the penultimate, we could then say, corresponds to that between Bonhoeffer as a theologian of the cross and witness to Christ and

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Bonhoeffer as a prophet of God’s justice and peace. If the church does not oppose injustice, it becomes an obstacle to the coming of grace. In the New Testament, Elijah, alongside Moses as the custodian of the Torah, represents the prophetic tradition. So it is not surprising that when Jesus asked his disciples who people thought he really was, some said he was John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets (Matt: 16:13–18). That is, Jesus was bringing their work to completion by challenging the corruption of religious and political power working together in tandem to the detriment of the “common people.” This is precisely what brought him into conflict with the authorities just as it had led to the rejection and persecution of the prophets before him, and finally led to his own passion that fulfilled the testimony of the prophets (Matt: 23:37). Bonhoeffer spoke to this fulfilment of the passion of the prophets in the Passion of Christ in a sermon on New Year’s Eve 1940, a few years before his imprisonment. In Christ, he said, the church is given prophetic vision to see reality through the eyes of Jesus who shared “the life of those who are disregarded and despised, so that he may bear the misery of all human beings and become their Savior.” 21 And then, with reference the gospel lection for the day on the slaughter of the Innocents, he went on to speak about the great “sorrow, screaming, lamenting, weeping, and wailing” that comes “over the people whenever the Lord Jesus Christ is persecuted, as it came over all Bethlehem when the innocent children had to die.” This is what the prophet Jeremiah once beheld in the last hour before the destruction of Jerusalem. But only now, when Bethlehem’s mothers wept for their children who had died for Jesus Christ, did the word of the prophet come to fulfillment: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.” 22

A LATTER-DAY JEREMIAH None of the great Hebrew prophets foreshadowed the passion of Christ as did Jeremiah of Anathoth, the son of an aristocratic priest whose ministry began during the reign of Josiah, king of Judah (626 BCE) and only ended after the Fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 587, when Jeremiah went into exile in Egypt. All commentators agree: Jeremiah was not just a prophet who declared the Word of God; he embodied the suffering and grief of God. 23 Yet despite his frequent times of deep despair, Jeremiah was able to encourage the lamenting exiles in Babylon to sober, realistic thinking about their plight and their future. 24 Jeremiah’s heart was often broken, but his mind remained razor-sharp.

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Early on in his imprisonment Bonhoeffer confessed to his parents that sometimes “without any apparent physical or psychological reason . . . the heart becomes, as Jeremiah very aptly put it, an obstinate and anxious thing that one is unable to fathom.” 25 So it was in Jeremiah that he found a kindred spirit who understood his despair, helped keep his hope alive, and enabled him to remain in touch with reality. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the sermon Bonhoeffer wrote in prison for the baptism of his godson Dietrich Bethge: Our lives, unlike our parents’ lives, have become formless or even fragmentary. Nevertheless, I can only say that I have not wanted to live in another time than ours, even though it tramples on our outward happiness. More clearly than in other ages, we realize that the world is in God’s wrathful and merciful hands. In Jeremiah’s words: “Thus says the LORD: I am going to break down what I have built, and pluck up what I have planted. . . . And you, do you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them, for I am going to bring disaster upon all flesh, says the LORD; but I will give you your life as a prize of war in every place to which you may go” (chap. 45). 26

This passage, which Bonhoeffer quotes four times in his prison writings, was heavily marked in his Bible with indelible pencil. 27 Henrich Ott even chose it as the theme of the Prologue to his study of Bonhoeffer’s legacy. Jeremiah’s words, especially “I will give your life as a prize of war,” he writes, become “a keyword for what was axiomatic in his Christian and theological life” in the final days that led to his death. 28 Bonhoeffer had been attracted to the Jeremiah long before his fatal embrace of the prophet’s legacy. He even gave a masterly exposition of the prophet during one of the children’s worship services he conducted in Berlin at the beginning of 1927. As always, his presentation was thorough in style and challenging in content, but more than that, it helps us understand why Jeremiah already had such a strong and lasting influence on his life. What the children made of his talk we can only surmise, for Bonhoeffer resisted talking down to them and pulled no punches: Jeremiah had warned them (the people). He realized that a terrible fate was concealed in the clouds that gathered in the sky. Yet they had listened to him less than to any other prophet. He was the fool, the object of derision, but also the terror of the city. They ridiculed and abused him out of a deep fear of the one who stood behind him. They knew that this was decisive. They could either believe him and repent or—or indeed seek to get rid of him by any means possible. 29

Bonhoeffer then describes how over many years Jeremiah called on the kings and people of Israel to repent and change their ways but how every time they scorned his words, taunted and humiliated him, and refused to heed his warnings. As a result, Jeremiah frequently sank into despair and even “cursed the day he was born.” But because he loved his people, a

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phrase that Bonhoeffer the “true patriot” would make his own, 30 he refused to give up on them until, in the end, Jerusalem was destroyed and went into exile in Egypt. If the children hoped for a happy ending, Bonhoeffer could not provide one. “Children,” he said, “being with God does not make one happy. We learn this from Jeremiah.” 31 But Bonhoeffer also helped them see Jeremiah as a figure of Christ. “There was only one other time that a person carried a wooden burden a thousand times heavier than Jeremiah’s iron yoke. He carried his burden not just for his people but for the whole world. His burden was a wooden cross. It’s true, isn’t it children; we all know who he was!” 32 A year and a half later, Bonhoeffer gave his lecture in Barcelona on the “tragedy of the prophetic,” and once again reveals the influence Jeremiah had on him. “It was,” he said with a “feeling of being pressed beyond his own powers that Jeremiah, in the most profound, distressing despair, once fell down before God and uttered the following indescribably moving words, words to be reckoned among the most beautiful in world literature.” You have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed. ... If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones. . . . 33

These words of Jeremiah were also the text for a sermon Bonhoeffer preached in London in January 1934, just at the time when the church struggle was gaining momentum in Germany. 34 And years later, toward the final weeks of his imprisonment, Bonhoeffer expresses his own feelings in a way reminiscent of Jeremiah’s lamentations, in his poem “Night Voices”: I sink into the depths of darkness. You, Night, full of wanton abusing, make yourself known! Why do you gnaw at our patience, our own? Deep, long silence—not a word; then I hear Night bending toward me to be heard: I am not dark, dark is guilt alone! ... Harassed and hunted by humans, rendered defenseless and accused; bearers of unbearable burdens, it is we who now accuse... . . 35

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Just as Jeremiah bares his soul, so too, uncharacteristically, does Bonhoeffer. Yet, as he says of Jeremiah: Something enticed him, blinded him, seduced him; he could not help himself, let himself be drawn in, rushed in blindly—into divine ruin. . . . He can no longer come free from God; yet neither can he bear the torment any longer of continually having to confront his beloved people as an accuser, something that tears his soul asunder.

But, concludes Bonhoeffer, “God’s path leads over the broken souls of the faithful.” 36 And this too is the fate of all who are “enticed by God’s will.” As he had previously said, no one who embarked on the prophetic journey can “be quite as cheerful” about “the course their lives take,” no longer “as carefree, or quite as free. . . . For the prophet, religion and happiness no longer coincide, but religion and human power, strength and feeling, will and understanding, all challenge one another.” 37 The “last words the aged Jeremiah receives from Yahweh,” says Bonhoeffer, “are devoid of hope: ‘Behold, I have broken down what I have built, and plucked up what I have planted, and you, Jeremiah, wanted to desire great things for yourself.’” Yet something else is also taking place as Jeremiah—and Bonhoeffer—come to terms with their fate. The unthinkable is happening. God himself is suffering; how dare a human being complain about suffering? . . . God’s own heart has been broken; should not the hearts of God’s faithful also be broken? It was over, the prophets had lost, the tragedy of their lives had played itself out, the curtain came down, the fifth act was over. 38

But could that possibly be the last word? The prophets might have sacrificed everything, “but surely” Bonhoeffer hopefully asks, “what they sacrificed would not be lost forever.” On the contrary, although their “message cost the prophets their lives, the message itself became a permanent possession of humanity.” 39 Central to that message was the conviction that doing justice was the only basis for the coming of God’s peace. BONHOEFFER’S PEACE TESTIMONY Bonhoeffer was deeply involved in the ecumenical movement during the 1930’s, a time when European nations were frantically engaged in rearmament. 40 In fact, he purposefully avoided taking part in the Commission on Faith and Order and, instead, threw himself fully into working for peace through the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches. Unless the churches cooperated in working for peace, he insisted, all talk about unity was theoretical. But even so, Bonhoeffer, with incisive theological motivation, took a more radical stance on the issues than either his fellow Germans or most other ecu-

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menical leaders who were generally cautious in not wanting to alienate the German Reichskirche. Bonhoeffer’s more radical approach is evident in his lecture on “Christ and Peace” probably given in 1932 at a time when discussions on disarmament in Europe were faltering. He acknowledged that Christ does not give us “specific rules for our conduct in every possible complex political, economic, or other situation” but that does not compromise God’s commandment to love the other and to work for peace. 41 Bonhoeffer’s better known contribution to the debate was his address to the ecumenical conference in Fanø, Denmark in 1934, when he spoke on the responsibility of the Churches among the nations, 42 on God’s commandment to “make peace,” and the twin temptations to avoid doing so. Blind obedience oblivious to reality, was one; the questioning of the peace mandate itself, was the other. If blind obedience to party, ideology, or religion led to irresponsible actions oblivious to reality on the ground, questioning the peace mandate led to prevarication, compromise, and inaction. Echoing the tempter’s words in Paradise and the Wilderness, Bonhoeffer asked: Must God not really have said that we should work for peace, of course, but also make ready tanks and poison gas for security? . . . Did God say you should not protect your own people?”

To ask such questions, Bonhoeffer, insisted, is already to deny God. 43 So the ecumenical church dare not be sidetracked in its witness, but rather speak God’s word to the world “regardless of the consequences.” 44 Peace is not achieved through treaties, economic investment, or arms, for peace is not security. “There is,” Bonhoeffer says, “no peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared.” 45 And this means discerning God’s kairos in the present time. As he said in a sermon on Zechariah preached at Finkenwalde, it was the prophets who were given special vision to see reality in this way. 46 DISCERNING THE TIMES It is not difficult to note the resemblances between Bonhoeffer’s life as a witness to Christ and the passion of the prophets. But what is perhaps unexpected, especially for those unfamiliar with his intellectual formation, is the way in which he speaks of German philosophy (he had Kant and Hegel chiefly in mind) 47 as the means whereby “we partake even now of the inheritance of the bloody seed of the prophets.” 48 German philosophy enabled Bonhoeffer to read the signs of the times and even discern the outworking of a transcendent, moral purpose in history. 49 In this way he connected the Hebrew prophetic tradition and the transcen-

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dental tradition of German philosophy into critical conversation to proclaim the Word of God in accordance with reality. For reasons that I will soon give, Bonhoeffer does not use the New Testament word kairos (a time of judgment and opportunity, as distinct from chronos, “ordinary time”) to describe crisis moments in history, even though he was familiar with its use by theologians like Paul Tillich for whom kairos described “the content of the prophetic view of history.” Such an understanding of history, Tillich said, “is consciousness of the Kairos in the sense of the words: ‘Repent; the time (kairos) is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.’” 50 For Tillich, Kairos also expressed “the feeling of many people in central Europe” after the First World War, “that a moment of history had appeared which was pregnant with a new understanding of history and life.” 51 This “kairos consciousness,” Tillich argued, was about “being inwardly grasped by the fate and destiny of the time,” which is found in the “passionate longing of the masses,” and takes “form in small circles of conscious intellectual and spiritual concern,” and finally gains “power in the prophetic word.” 52 There is, however, only one reference in Bonhoeffer’s collected works where he uses kairos, and that is in a Bible study at Finkenwalde in October 1936. But what he then says is significant: “Who can know, after all, the time (die Zeit) of God? It is impossible to recognize God’s kairos from circumstances. The proclamation itself creates the kairos; it is not the kairos that coerces a proclamation for itself.” 53 Bonhoeffer is following Barth, who had abandoned the use of kairos because of its misuse by GermanChristian theologians. 54 For them, it was not the gospel that created the kairos, but the kairos that constituted the good news of redemption. And they were using Hegel’s philosophy to make their argument. 55 The most notorious of these theologians was Emmanuel Hirsch, who described Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 as a kairos initiated by God for saving the German Volk from the humiliation of Versailles, the failures of Weimar, and the poverty of the Great Depression. 56 For Hirsch, Hitler had become God’s prophet to the German nation completing the work begun by Luther, and for that reason, Hitler rightly demanded wholehearted Christian obedience. 57 In reaction, Tillich abruptly ended his friendship with Hirsch and accused him of being “false prophet.” 58 Significantly, in South Africa around the same time, leading Afrikaner theologians and philosophers under the influence of Hirsch and other right-wing Hegelians, declared that the rise to power of Afrikaner Nationalism in 1948 was, like Hitler’s “election” in 1933, and as such, also a God-given Kairos in which the Afrikaner volk were emancipated from British imperialism. As D. F. Malan, a Dutch Reformed minister and Afrikaner Nationalist leader put it, “Afrikanerdom is not the work of men but the creation of God.” 59 This conviction was foundational for the theological justification of apartheid. God was at work in Afrikaner history in the same way as he was in German history.

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Such claims would later be declared a heresy by anti-apartheid theologians under the influence Barth and Bonhoeffer. 60 Instead of using kairos they spoke of the status confessionis which had arisen and which demanded that Christ be confessed anew against apartheid. 61 This was not an attempt to discern God’s hand in history, a kairos moment, but a proclamation of the gospel against the theological legitimation of apartheid. Fifty years later, the language of status confessionis and of kairos were integrated in the theological struggle against apartheid with the publication of the Kairos Document in 1985. Those who drafted the document recognized that a historical “moment of truth” had arisen that demanded, not just a confession of faith, but a prophetic response. Bonhoeffer is not quoted in the Kairos Document, but his influence is clearly apparent. Firstly, the document rejects what it calls “state theology,” that is theology that legitimates an oppressive regime. Secondly, it rejects a “church theology” that proclaims reconciliation without demanding social justice. That, it says, is “cheap reconciliation,” an obvious allusion to Bonhoeffer’s “cheap grace.” Thirdly, it calls the church to take a stand in solidarity with the oppressed and become involved in the resistance against a tyrannical state. 62 In other words, the Kairos Document calls for the church to become a prophetic community, precisely what Bonhoeffer calls for in his prison writings. A PROPHETIC COMMUNITY On April 17, 1933, the Law for the Reconstitution of the Civil Service was promulgated by the Third Reich. This meant that all Christian pastors of Jewish ancestry had to be expelled from serving the Protestant Church, including Franz Hildebrandt, Bonhoeffer’s closest friend at the time. The following month, Bonhoeffer began his lectures on Christology and his seminars on Hegel at the Humboldt University, topics chosen not least because of the times. Even as he lectured, and as we have previously noted, he would have been aware of the ominous developments taking place elsewhere in Berlin at that very moment that would soon plunge the Church into a life and death struggle. For it was then, early in May, that the Deutsche Christen demanded that all non-Aryan members of the church should be excluded and nominated Ludwig Müller as their candidate for Reichsbischof. On the last Sunday of that month, as the struggle for the soul and control of the Church escalated, Bonhoeffer preached in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, one of the most prestigious in Berlin. The Old Testament lection for the day was Exodus 32, the story of Moses confronting Aaron and the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai shortly after he had received the Ten Commandments, and they, in rebellion, had begun

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worshipping the “Golden Calf.” The atmosphere in the church must have been electric as Bonhoeffer began to preach: Priestly church and church of the Word, church of Aaron and church of Moses—this historic collision at the foot of Mount Sinai, the end of the worldly church and the appearance of the Word of God, is repeated in our church day after day, Sunday after Sunday. As the worldly church . . . a church that makes its own gods, that wants to have a god that pleases it rather than asking whether it is itself pleasing to God; as a church that wants to do for itself whatever God does not do; as a church that is ready to make any sacrifice for the sake of idolatry, the glorification of human ideas and values—as a church that presumes divine authority for itself through its priesthood—it is as such a church that we come again and again to worship. 63

But that church, Bonhoeffer insisted, must now listen again to the prophetic message and should leave the sanctuary “as the church of Moses, the church of the Word.” The distinction between the prophetic church as the true church and the idolatrous Reichskirche as the false church became fundamental to Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology as the Kirchenkampf gathered momentum and as Bonhoeffer became more involved in the ecumenical movement. In a letter to Helmut Rößler the year before he preached in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Bonhoeffer wrote that although the “church is more than prophecy” because Christ is more than a prophet, the church cannot be less than a prophet for the reason that Christ gives it very concrete commands.” 64 As a witness to Christ it must, therefore, be prophetic not just evangelical, for by so doing it was preparing the way for grace. The church does not exist to protect its own space or interests except for the sake of its witness to the world. Otherwise it ceases to be the church of the God who loves the world. As he would later write in his Ethics, the first task given to those who belong to the church of God is not to be something for themselves . . . but to be witnesses of Jesus Christ to the world. Where that witness has become silent it is a sign of inner decay in the church-community . . . just as failure to bear fruit is a sign that a tree is dying. 65

If Christ truly exists in the world as “church-community,” then the church could not escape its responsibility to be a prophetic community. This was not interfering in politics as though the church had any right to govern or rule, but it was central to its public witness to Christ as Lord of all reality. From the time he wrote Sanctorum Communio Bonhoeffer was committed to an ecclesiology premised on the belief that Christ became visible in the world through the church. The idea that the “true church” was invis-

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ible was simply not good enough, and certainly not true to the New Testament which speaks of the bodily presence of Christ in the life of the church. As Bonhoeffer wrote in his dissertation: “The church is God’s new will and purpose for humanity,” and it begins to be implemented in history, that is, it becomes visible and comprehensible in the life of the church. 66 This means that the church by its very existence, even before it speaks truth to power, as a witness to Jesus Christ it is a prophetic community. The tragedy is that instead of being inclusive, it is too often divided by race and gender; instead of speaking the truth to power when it should, it remains silent; and instead of seeking God’s justice, it even becomes a “false prophet” saying “Peace, peace when there is no peace.” It was precisely to this failure that the Kairos Document addressed its “challenge to the Church” in South Africa to become prophetic. And in some respects, the ecumenical church did respond to that call. But a common complaint about the ecumenical church in South Africa is that after 1994 it withdrew from critical public engagement and returned to “church business” as usual. Even Kairos theologians, who had aligned themselves with the “liberation movement” as God’s instrument for ending apartheid, now entered public life, and a few years later, a new “state theology” began to emerge in support of the state, and “church theology” returned to reign within congregations and denominations. There were charismatic evangelists and prophets aplenty, but the prophets of social justice had largely left the scene. Thinking in prison about the future of Christianity after the war, Bonhoeffer did not fall into the trap of assuming that once Nazism had been defeated the Confessing Church, or what remained of it, could simply return to business as usual. On the contrary, it was precisely because the church had not fulfilled its prophetic role before 1914 and again before 1939 that it had failed so miserably to be the church of Jesus Christ. The church is not only called to be prophetic in kairos moments—being prophetic is part of its essence as the church of Jesus Christ and, therefore, to its witness to him as Lord. But clearly the prophetic word could no longer simply be a rehash of the Barmen Declaration, it had to be the Word that spoke to concrete reality “here and now” in the emerging new postwar context, and a “world come of age.” According to Bonhoeffer, the church could no longer remain “entrenched behind the notion of the ‘faith of the church,’” 67 standing up “for the ‘cause’ of the church . . . against the world.” 68 With this in mind, in his very last sermon written in prison for the baptism of his godson Dietrich Bethge, Bonhoeffer anticipated that one day the time would come when prophets in the mold of Jeremiah would again speak the Word of God “in such a way that the world is changed and renewed.” It will be proclaimed, he said. “in a new language . . . the language of a new righteousness and truth, a language proclaiming that God makes peace with humankind and that God’s kingdom is drawing

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near.” 69 Much of Bonhoeffer’s subsequent theological reflections in prison had to do with the recovery of this liberating and redeeming prophetic language of justice, truth, and peace in a “world come of age.” This was no academic matter for him as it was to become in the heady days when scholars debated “non-religious Christianity” ad nauseam. In fact, the “world come of age” was not only, or even chiefly, a secular world of doubt and despair, but a profoundly troubled secular world plagued by war, poverty, and injustice. 70 Thus, to treat it as an academic matter was failing to recognize that Bonhoeffer’s proposed hermeneutics mainly had to do with the recovery of the prophetic Word that called the church to metanoia and solidarity with the oppressed. 71 Like John the Baptist, Bonhoeffer was preparing the way for a radically new understanding of Christian proclamation, which goes beyond the Law and the commandment in the light of the gospel and transforms the world. 72 After a visit to Bonhoeffer in Tegel Prison on June 3, 1944, Bethge wrote to thank his friend for their special time together. In doing so he commented that what attracted people to Barth was the sense of the “Old Testament prophetic” in his theology, “the standing up for the oppressed.” 73 He then went on to ask Dietrich to write to him and say more about the place of contemplation, worship, and ritual, as well as the role of the prophetic in the life of the church and the importance of the Christian tradition. 74 It was in response to this request that Bonhoeffer sent him his “Outline for a Book” in which he cryptically shared his thoughts on these subjects and acknowledged the importance of conversation with Bethge in doing so. 75 It is specifically in chapter 3 of the outline that Bonhoeffer addresses the need for the church to be both prophetic and contemplative, and I shall discuss this later in chapter 8 when I consider the question where is the church today. The global situation that confronts us now is admittedly complex and as such defies simplistic analysis. But prophetic theologians in the mold of Bonhoeffer often have to take risks in identifying the present moment as a kairos which demands a prophetic response. Like Europe back then, we are globally faced once more with resurgent right-wing nationalism, rapid and extensive rearmament, seemingly uncontrollable terror, and being engulfed in a Third World War. 76 And tragically, on all the issues it is, as it was in Bonhoeffer’s day, the church is a house divided against itself. But we would betray his legacy if we lost hope, if we were tempted to think we were no longer of any use, and so withdraw from responsibility for serving the common good. As Bonhoeffer wrote in the spirit of the great prophets: “it may be that the day of judgment will dawn tomorrow; only then and no earlier will we readily lay down our work for a better future.” 77 In Jeremiah’s words: “Thus says the LORD: I am going to break down what I have built, and pluck up what I have planted. . . . And you, do

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you seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them, for I am going to bring disaster upon all flesh, says the LORD; but I will give you your life as a prize of war in every place to which you may go” (chap. 45).

In the end, isolated from his family, friends and community, and in the loneliness of a prison cell, Bonhoeffer accepts his tragic fate as a prophet and submits his life to God, undoubtedly thinking of Jeremiah as he did so. But he also returns to the story of Moses, the prophet who confronted Aaron at the foot of Mount Sinai, the story that he had preached about in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin twelve years previously, now a virtual lifetime away. Mindful that Moses did not enter the promised land of freedom, Bonhoeffer wrote: On the mountain peak where few have trod stands the prophet Moses, man of God . . . “Thus you keep your promise that I heard; never have you broken, Lord, your word. 78

NOTES 1. London, 349. 2. Letters and Papers from Prison, 390. 3. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 54. 4. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 327. 5. Kelly and Nelson, The Cost of Moral Leadership, 51–82. 6. Theological Education Underground, 555. 7. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 328. 8. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 330. 9. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 331. 10. See Bonhoeffer, Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 253; Barcelona, Berlin, America, 332–33. 11. David E. Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983). 12. Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity, 33. 13. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 329. 14. Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 625–26. 15. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 317–32; Abraham J. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 195–23. 16. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 331–37. 17. Letters and Papers from Prison, 194. 18. Ethics, 170. 19. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 92. 20. Ethics, 163. 21. Theological Education Underground, 494. 22. Theological Education Underground, 493. 23. See John Skinner, Prophecy and Religion: Studies in the Life of Jeremiah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936). 24. Gerhard von Rad, The Message of the Prophets (London: SCM, 1972), 179–80. 25. Letters and Papers from Prison, 79. 26. Letters and Papers from Prison, 387. 27. Letters and Papers from Prison, 150, n. 5.

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28. Heinrich Ott, Reality and Faith: A Theological Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), 15. 29. The Young Bonhoeffer, 566. 30. On Bonhoeffer as patriot, see Keith Clements, A Patriotism for Today: Love of Country in Dialogue with the Witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (London: Collins, 1984). 31. The Young Bonhoeffer, 514. 32. The Young Bonhoeffer, 519. 33. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 332. 34. London, 349. 35. Letters and Papers from Prison, 446. 36. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 333. 37. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 334. 38. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 340. 39. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 341. 40. Clements, Bonhoeffer’s Ecumenical Quest, I: 65–88. 41. Bonhoeffer, Berlin, 258–61. 42. “The Church and the Peoples of the World,” in Bonhoeffer, London, 307–10. 43. London, 307–8. 44. London, 307. 45. London, 309. 46. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 855. 47. See Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr., “Encounter with an Other: Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” in Peter Frick, ed., Bonhoeffer’s Intellectual Formation, 83–119. 48. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 341. 49. See Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Bibliography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 469–94. 50. Quoted from Paul Tillich: Theologian of the Boundaries, edited by Mark Kline Taylor, vol. 3 of The Making of Modern Theology (London: Collins. 1987), 57. See also Paul Tillich, The Protestant Era, abridged ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 32–54. 51. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1963), 369. 52. Tillich, The Protestant Era, 48 53. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 941. 54. See Editor’s Afterword Barcelona, Berlin, America, 608. 55. Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 132–33. 56. Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler, 150–62. 57. See K. Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich: 1918 – 1934 (London: SCM, 1987), 417–20. 58. Tillich, Systematic Theology, 371. 59. T. Dunbar Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 1. 60. John W. de Gruchy and Charles Villa-Vicencio, eds., Apartheid is a Heresy (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983). 61. See Bonhoeffer’s letter to Karl Barth, September 9, 1933, Bonhoeffer, Berlin, 165–66, 371–73. See also D. J. Smit, “What Does Status Confessionis Mean?” in G. D. Cloete and D. J. Smit, eds., A Moment of Truth: The Confession of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, 1982 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), 53–65. 62. The Kairos Document, 24. 63. Berlin, 476. 64. Berlin, 83. 65. Ethics, 63–63. 66. Sanctorum Communio, 141–42. 67. Letters and Papers from Prison, 502.

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68. Letters and Papers from Prison, 500. 69. Letters and Papers from Prison, 390. 70. See Jeffrey C. Pugh, Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times (New York: T and T Clark, 2008). 71. Letters and Papers from Prison, 26–27. 72. The Young Bonhoeffer, 348–49. 73. Letters and Papers from Prison, 413. 74. Letters and Papers from Prison, 414. 75. Letters and Papers from Prison, 415. 76. See, for example, “The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement,” in Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 393–411. 77. Letters and Papers from Prison, 51. 78. Letters and Papers from Prison, 539–41.

SIX Christian Humanist

Whenever, in the face of barbarism, there was an appeal to culture and humanity; whenever, in the face of their violation there was an appeal to freedom, tolerance, and human rights . . . this was sufficient to evoke immediately awareness of some kind of alliance between the defenders of these threatened values and Christians. “Church and World I,” Ethics 1 In Christ’s incarnation all of humanity regains the dignity of bearing the image of God. Whoever from now on attacks the least of the people attacks Christ, who took on human form and who in himself has restored the image of God for all who bear a human countenance. “The Image of Christ,” Discipleship 2

In describing Bonhoeffer as a theological witness to Christ and a prophet of God’s justice and peace I have traced two trajectories that developed during his life, overlapping and informing each other at different times in response to changing circumstances. Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism is a third distinct trajectory in his emerging profile that develops over time but predates the other two. Its origins lie in Bonhoeffer’s early formation within the Bonhoeffer household and the formal education he received. It was only later that young Dietrich’s humanism become distinctly Christian and prophetic, even overshadowed by them, and it is only toward the end of his life that he began to consciously embrace and integrate it fully into his theology. But even so, he left us with an “unfinished project” and, therefore, with the task to continue what he had begun.

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AN UNFINISHED PROJECT In his memoir on Bonhoeffer for the first English edition of Discipleship (1948), Gerhard Leibholz, the husband of Bonhoeffer’s twin sister Sabine, said that Bonhoeffer “stood for what is called Christian Humanism today.” 3 The fact that he made this comment shortly after quoting Bonhoeffer’ prison poem on “Death” is significant because it means that he distinguished Bonhoeffer’s humanism from any form of “cheap humanism” divorced from his ministry and martyrdom. But it also expresses Bonhoeffer’s self-understanding expressed in a letter from prison to Eberhard Bethge in July 1944: “to be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way . . . but the man that Christ creates in us.” 4 That is, to be truly Christian meant being truly human, free, and responsible in serving the world. For that is what Leibholz meant when he referred to what was called Christian humanism today. Christian humanism understood in this way had become a subject of renewed interest among some theologians in the early post-World War II years. This is evident in Emil Brunner’s Gifford Lectures on Christianity and Civilization given in Edinburgh in 1947. In them Brunner traced the fault-lines in recent European history back to the emancipation of Western civilization from Christianity during the Renaissance. His prognosis was that the West, in response to secularism, had to recover its spiritual foundations as embodied in Christian humanism, which, he reminded his audience, predated secular humanism. This, he said, was not a dogma but “an unfinished project” that had to be retrieved in each generation. Indeed, it had been the historic contribution of the church to Western civilization at least until after the Reformation and it remained “a debt the Christian Church owes to the world to this day.” 5 Though, it must be said, Brunner was uncertain about whether it was not already too late to save European civilization, and whether Christianity could still play a role in doing so for the sake of future generations. 6 Two years after Brunner gave his Gifford Lectures, a conference was held in Geneva on the theme “A New Humanism” attended by eminent and predominantly secular European intellectuals. Brunner did not participate, but Karl Barth, his long-time sparring-partner in Basel, was invited to give a lecture. In it Barth expressed reservations about liberal and secular humanism and spoke instead about the social and political potential of “God’s humanism” inherent in the Incarnation. 7 He was ambivalent about the conference, glad that those who participated were able to discuss the subject frankly, but disappointed “that even the concept of humanism and its definition were surrounded by the deepest obscurity and contradiction.” 8 According to Barth, two dominant positions emerged in the course of the discussion. The first was the reaffirmation of “classical humanism” with its roots in Greek and Roman antiquity, and its later expression in

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the European Renaissance. The second was an understanding of humanism as the absence of “exclusive dogmas” and an advocacy of human freedom. Both assumed that the world was intelligible and humans potentially perfectible, though they were equally pessimistic about humanity’s ability to achieve rational goals. 9 Barth also referred to Christian humanism, then in vogue in French Catholic circles influenced by Henri du Lubac and Jacques Maritain, and possibly mindful of Brunner’s recent Gifford Lectures. He had reservations about the phrase because it implied a set of principles more akin to moral philosophy than to the gospel. 10 It was, he said, “an awkward tool,” something that “has been revealed in every attempt to use it.” 11 Maybe that was why Bonhoeffer himself did not use the term, but I believe that in conversation with him we can critically retrieve and use it to describe what it means to be Christian in our own time. The concerns about the future of Western civilization expressed by Brunner in his Gifford lectures and by others at the Geneva Conference were daily on Bonhoeffer’s mind while writing his Ethics and, then, when in prison, in thinking about how future generations would live. Could the West achieve a just, peaceful, and stable social and political new order, and if so, what role could Christianity fulfil in achieving this goal? In thinking about this, Bonhoeffer recalled Maritain’s Integral Humanism (1938) in which he revisioned Christian humanism in response to the contemporary crisis in Western civilization. 12 There is no clear indication that Bonhoeffer would have identified himself specifically as a “Christian humanist” back then, and by the time the term came into vogue after the war, he was already dead. Nonetheless, Leibholz was right in saying that Bonhoeffer stood for what was called Christian humanism “at that time,” but he was also giving it more substance through his theological and prophetic witness. In his lecture at the Geneva Congress, Barth distinguished Christian humanism (even though he hesitated to adopt the phrase) from other humanisms by saying that the gospel of God’s humanity in Christ “begins where different humanisms leave off; or it leaves off where they begin.” 13 This, I suggest, is also an apt description of Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism. Just as Bonhoeffer became a Christian without stopping being a theologian, he became a Christian without relinquishing his humanism. But in the process his humanism became more profoundly Christian, and his Christianity more intensely humanist. In fact, as Jens Zimmermann remarks, “Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism has greater affinity with the humanist tradition than secular humanism does.” 14 This is so because it is more deeply rooted in the spiritual soil out of which Western culture flourished. As such it provides a trenchant critique of secular humanism while also engaging it as partner in countering the dehumanization of the world. 15

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A CRITICAL HUMANISM During the 1990s, the demise of apartheid was hailed as a victory for humanism and a catalyst for a continent-wide African Renaissance. This led me to think about the need to revisit Christian humanism in relation to the South African context. I was familiar with the way in which Renaissance humanism prepared the way for the Reformation and of the role played by Erasmus, the archetypical Christian humanist of that period. I was also aware of Leibholz’s comment and, with that in mind, turned to Bonhoeffer for help. 16 At the same time, I was conscious that other theologians were thinking along similar lines, most notably Jens Zimmermann. 17 This led me to initiate a two-year (2009–2010) research project on “The Humanist Imperative in South Africa” at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (STIAS), modeled on the 1949 Geneva Conference, and involving seventy scholars from a range of disciplines to debate the subject and provide a platform for appropriate action. 18 A good proportion of those who participated in the Stellenbosch project were secular humanists who spoke of the need for a new and more critical humanism in South Africa This, they argued, would affirm human dignity and obligation, seek to overcome past hatreds and deal with current challenges to human existence, accept others beyond national borders, be committed to the reconciliation of sameness and difference in the realm of law, and recognize both the risks and opportunities of the new global connectedness that had begun to emerge. 19 Such humanist concerns, we agreed, were enshrined in the Constitution of the “new” South Africa, but they had yet to become embodied in the lifeblood of the nation through the development of a humanist consciousness and consensus. This, as Njabulo Ndebele said, would lead to a “fundamental shift from predetermined group-based identities, towards a future of groups re-energized and re-humanized by free individuals.” 20 Ndebele spoke as both a distinguished humanist scholar and a committed Christian, but there were many conservative Christians in South Africa who, during the early debates about the celebrated new Constitution, refused to endorse what was being proposed because it was too humanist and lacked any acknowledgement of God as the ultimate source of authority. This objection reflected a failure to recognize that South Africa had become a secular state and that Christian responsibility had to take that into account. South Africa was no longer the “Christian country” that the defenders of apartheid had claimed, even though a large majority of South Africans remained Christian by affiliation. And for most of them there was no conflict between Christianity and humanist values. After all, during the 1960s, as one African country after another gained independence from its European colonizer, the first president of

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Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, had described himself as a Christian humanist. This might have sounded like an oxymoron to Western agnostics or atheist secular humanists, but Kaunda wrote as an African and a Christian, and he spoke, as did Ndebele, of a pan-African humanist revolution that aimed at restoring the dignity and national pride of all the peoples of the continent who had been dehumanized by the forces of tribalism, slavery, and colonialism. 21 These, too, were the convictions that motivated Mandela’s leadership, as they were also those of the more overtly Christian humanist Desmond Tutu. 22 All of which confirmed my use of the term to describe the character of the Christianity appropriate for the task facing us in building a new nation as well a new more just and peaceable global society. Providentially, the new South Africa was born at the same time as the Berlin Wall was broken down, joint symbols of an emerging global society of inclusion and human rights rather than strident and competing nationalisms. The growing consensus on global cooperation in combatting violence, poverty, disease, and environmental decay reflected humanist values that, so it was believed, could, and indeed would, become the basis for life in the twenty-first century. That belief, and the process of global humanization more generally, suffered a serious blow with the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York in 2001, the subsequent “War on Terror,” and the severe economic recession in 2008. The path to global peace and justice was clearly not one of inevitable progress any more than it was on the eve of 1914 or after the “war to end all wars.” Instead, the consequences of these traumatic events have led to the resurgence of right-wing nationalism across the globe, the erosion of European unity, a lack of political will to tackle the environmental crisis we face, and more generally, an apocalyptic mood that Bonhoeffer would have readily recognized. 23 The new South Africa, born with much optimism, has also become a casualty, challenged by outbreaks of tribalism, xenophobia, racism, and right-wing nationalism. So, my conversation with Bonhoeffer on Christian humanism began at a time reminiscent of his Europe in the 1920s and 1930s when National Socialism and Fascism were rapidly gaining the ascendancy, trashing humanist values, and when many people, both Christian and secular, had lost their moral compass and courage. But, let me take a step back to the time when Nazism emerged and gained its ascendency in Europe. HUMANISM, NATIONALISM, AND CHRISTIANITY Bonhoeffer’s moral values were nurtured in his family milieu well before his Christian faith developed. His opposition to Nazi barbarism was sparked off in the name of the best in German culture epitomized in the legacy of Goethe whose humanism was foundational to German national

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life and widely regarded as complementary to Christianity. 24 As Bethge tells us, Bonhoeffer’s grandparents “saw no discrepancy between patriotic German nationalism and the lofty humanist standards that they demanded of themselves and their children.” 25 All of them were raised, in Barnett’s words, “in an atmosphere of enlightened humanism, with an emphasis on independent thinking, clear ethical standards, and a broader sense of their obligations as citizens.” 26 This was reinforced by their school education, modeled on the Greek paideia, which aimed at the formation (Bildung) of virtuous character necessary for Bürgertum, that is, the building a good and moral society. 27 Cemented together by Protestant Christianity, this German synthesis of religion, patriotism, and humanism could be traced back to post-Reformation times and especially to the more recent influence of Kant, Goethe, Hegel, and Alexander von Humboldt during the formative years of Prussian nationalism. The Dom on the banks of the Speyer, located at the cultural, academic, and political epicenter of Berlin, was the national shrine and symbol of an imperial alliance between pulpit and throne, Christianity and culture. It was the Protestant response to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. But I doubt that would have impressed Bonhoeffer, though it undoubtedly did Harnack who so ably represented the synthesis among Protestant Christianity, humanism, and nationalism that Bonhoeffer following Barth rejected. Indeed, Harnack’s office at Humboldt University was but a short walking distance both from the Dom and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, powerful symbols of the world he cherished. Yet, Harnack was also an encyclopedic humanist scholar whose influence spread well beyond Germany and the church, leaving an enduring mark on Bonhoeffer himself. Harnack was the epitome of the German Protestant “liberal theologian,” whose scholarly reputation attracted students from far and wide. Among them was Barth, then a young Swiss pastor, who attended his seminar in 1906. Barth, it must be said, retained an enormous respect for Harnack’s work even when he disagreed fundamentally with him. 28 As did another of Harnack’s students, Rudolf Bultmann, who later said that for Harnack “the reconciliation of Christianity with German culture presented no real difficulty.” 29 That is putting it mildly. Harnack had been a close counselor of Kaiser Wilhelm II and strongly supported Germany’s war policy led up to the First World War, publishing several declarations to that effect in daily newspapers of the time. He was also incensed by what he regarded as the hypocrisy of England, a country whose traditions, culture, and scholarship he held in high regard, when it declared war on Germany. In a declaration aimed at the British public and academy published in October 1914 he retorted: Germany’s army and Germany’s people are one. This consciousness today makes seventy million Germans without distinction of educa-

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tion, class and party one brotherhood. . . . We call out to you: believe us, believe that we shall fight to this end as a people of culture to whom the legacy of a Goethe, a Beethoven, a Kant is as holy as its hearth and soil. 30

Barth was deeply disturbed by such declarations that were also supported by many of his other revered former professors. It was this that led to his decisive break with liberal theology, regarding it as responsible for what he regarded as blasphemy. It “had become religionistic, anthropocentric, and in this sense humanistic.” 31 From his perspective his former teachers in Berlin had failed to discern the judgment of God in the outbreak of war because of their anthropocentric theology. The God of the Bible and that of the Reformers had been replaced by human religiousconsciousness, and the eschatological kingdom of God by a belief in social progress or subjective inward experience. God, Barth declared, is the “Wholly Other” and, therefore, beyond human manipulation. God’s kingdom breaks into the world pronouncing “NO!” to all human pretension. There is no religious path to God, only that of God’s “YES!” to the world in Christ crucified. Barth expressed his views in his famous commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans 32 and, in various lectures, notably one on “Biblical Questions, Insights and Vistas” given at a student conference in the Swiss town of Aarau in 1920. His theme was that the Bible alone offers us knowledge of God. 33 Contrary to how this might sound, Barth was no fundamentalist. He accepted the need for historical criticism of the Bible, but he insisted that the first task of theology was not critical study but listening to what the Spirit is saying through the Word of God at this moment in history, as at the time of the Reformation. Such a theology of the Word provided a radical critique of both Harnack’s liberal humanist theology and his war-mongering nationalism. Harnack, who also attended the same Aarau conference as a guest lecturer, was horrified by what he heard Barth say, even if characteristically courteous. 34 Barth’s theology, he declared, was “unscientific,” irrational, incomprehensible, and dangerous. The harmony that Harnack believed he had achieved “between faith and the world, between the teaching of Jesus and the wisdom of Goethe and Kant, between the kingdom of God and the policies of Kaiser Wilhelm II” was under attack. 35 But, as Bultmann, who was normally full of praise for Harnack’s scholarship, said in agreement with Barth, Harnack had “diluted to the point of harmlessness . . . the ever-problematical core of Christianity.” How is Christian existence possible in this world when it is so deeply embedded in its culture? The First World War not only brought about a Barthian revolution in theology, but it also created a profound crisis for those who took the symbiotic German nationalist, humanist, and Christian ethos for granted.

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This was true for the Bonhoeffer family whose patriotism was beyond doubt and whose humanism was deeply entrenched by family tradition and personal conviction. But when the radical antiliberal nationalist movements emerged out of the ashes of war, the Bonhoeffers had to make a painful choice between nationalism and their cherished humanist values. They had to rethink the meaning of their patriotism. This choice also faced Dietrich as a first-year theological student in Tübingen (1923–1924) 36 where he read and was enthralled by Barth’s Aarau lecture. This persuaded him to reject liberal theology and become a theologian of the Word. 37 But did this mean the end of his humanism? BONHOEFFER AS A HUMANIST BARTHIAN After his year in Tübingen, Bonhoeffer continued his theological studies in Berlin (1924–1927), a stronghold of anti-Barthian sentiment and of Harnack’s liberal Protestantism. Berlin’s Humboldt university was also the academic home of the celebrated classicist Werner Jaeger who, at that time, was calling for the birth of a “third humanism.” 38 This, he proposed, would go beyond the “first humanism” of Erasmus and the Renaissance,” as well as beyond the “second humanism” of Goethe and Humboldt that shaped the life of post-Enlightenment German culture and Prussian nationalism. Jaeger’s “third humanism,” based in classical antiquity would, he argued, provide the cultural foundations for the reawakening of German nationalism in the early Nazi period. 39 Jaeger’s ideas were influential in scholarly circles, and gave some credibility to National Socialism, but they could not change the rabid antihumanist, anti-Semitic Nazi mind-set. Disillusioned, Jaeger immigrated to the United States in 1936. An authentic humanism could not coexist with right-wing nationalism let alone influence its decisions and actions. For one thing, humanism knew no national boundaries. This was something Bonhoeffer commented on in a letter to his parents during his vicariate in Barcelona in which he said that although Rome, both classical and Catholic, embraced the world, drawing people of all cultures and tribes into its orbit, Germany and Spain fenced their boundaries and defended their national identity as contiguous with their Christianity and culture. 40 Bonhoeffer had already begun to question the nationalist and monocultural character of German Protestantism, that is, its Volkisch character, during his visit to Rome as a student. 41 But now, under the influence of his church history professor Karl Holl in Berlin, Bonhoeffer became interested in Dostoevsky’s Russian ideal of a “supranational panhumanism . . . necessarily and emphatically linked to Christianity.” This, Bonhoeffer suggested, reestablished “the genuine ‘Catholicism’ of original Christianity.“ 42

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In March 1928, also during his vicariate in Barcelona, Bonhoeffer made an intriguing note in his diary: “My theology,” he says, “is beginning to become humanistic.” He is not entirely sure what this means for him as a theologian committed to a “theology of the Word,” but I surmise it was an implicit reference to the ingrained influence of Harnack. Bonhoeffer even begins to weave motifs from classical antiquity into his theological reflection and thinks about the Sermon on the Mount in terms of an openness to the world, including that of antiquity. 43 Indeed, some of Harnack’s insights would remain influential to the end of Bonhoeffer’s life, not least his insistence that “a knowledge of reality” is fundamental to Christian ethics. 44 Yet, even while pondering on what it might mean that his theology was becoming more humanistic, Bonhoeffer attacks humanism as the “most severe enemy of Christianity.” 45 This he does in his Barcelona lecture on “Jesus Christ and the essence of Christianity,” a title deliberately chosen to distinguish himself from Harnack’s influential early work The Essence of Christianity. 46 “People are utterly at sea,” he tells his audience, “not only in lay circles but in professional theological circles as well.” From the pulpits and the lecterns, we hear things described and preached as “essentially Christian” that could just as easily find their spiritual author in Plato, Buddha, or Goethe. Moreover, the far-reaching history-of-religions research of the past few decades has pushed Christianity so completely into the culture of Hellenistic religious syncretism that we have gradually lost sight of what is unique in Christianity to begin with, a uniqueness to which Christianity does, after all, owe its victory over the Mithras cult and the mystery religions. 47

At the same time as Bonhoeffer, under the influence of Barth, attacks this liberal humanist interpretation of Christianity, philosophical and theological points of divergence between him and Barth begin to surface. This is evident in his Habilitation dissertation Act and Being. 48 Although agreeing with Barth that revelation is contingent on God’s freedom, and that it cannot be subsumed within an institution, made dependent on human conscience, or on any “religious a priori,” Bonhoeffer insists that God’s freedom is not freedom from humanity or the world, but freedom for humanity in the person of Jesus the Christ existing “as a community of persons,” in the world. 49 These theses are important building blocks for Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism, and probably had some influence on Barth’s later thoughts about the “humanity of God.” 50 Bonhoeffer was at his most “Barthian” when, after his arrival at Union Seminary in New York in 1931, he encounters what he calls an “outrageous ignorance” about Barth’s theology. 51 In a seminar paper he tells his fellow students and professors to forget everything they ever thought they knew about Barth as well as all their philosophical approaches to the question of God. For, he declares, with reference to Barth’s theological

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revolution: “here we stand at an entirely different and new point of departure of the whole problem. We stand in the tradition of Paul, Luther, Kierkegaard, in the tradition of genuine Christian thinking.” 52 Within that American context, where a “radically immanent ethical humanism influenced by William James’ pragmatism and John Dewey’s instrumentalism, pervaded American theology,” 53 it was highly unlikely that Bonhoeffer would have confessed that his theology was humanistic in any sense. But once back in Germany, Bonhoeffer’s respect for Harnack’s legacy and its importance for his life, surfaces again when, on June 15, 1930, he delivers an address at his revered teacher’s memorial service, expressing deep appreciation for Harnack’s remarkable humanism. Years later, when in prison, Bonhoeffer read Harnack’s great study of German humanist endeavor, the History of the Prussian Academy, and asked Bethge in a letter: “Where do you see an intellectual “life’s work” these days? Where is anyone gathering, working through, and developing what it takes to accomplish such? . . . Our intellectual existence remains but a torso.” 54 But in 1930, with Harnack dead and Hitler very much alive, Bonhoeffer had to batten down the hatches and follow Barth in the struggle for evangelical truth against German nationalist heresy. This did not mean that Bonhoeffer blindly followed Barth on all issues. Indeed, as the Confessing Church struggle continued with diminishing success, and as Bonhoeffer’s thinking developed in Finkenwalde, fresh differences between Bonhoeffer and Barth became evident. In a letter to his “esteemed professor Karl Barth” dated September 19, 1936, Bonhoeffer tells him that he is probably moving away from him on some questions that had emerged from his reading of the Bible. 55 In addition Bonhoeffer soon found that, just as he had made common cause with Barth in opposing Hitler and German Christianity, he was beginning to make common cause with a handful of secular humanists who were committed to bringing Nazism to an end, among them those who, remaining “just, truthful and humane,” put Christians to shame. 56 SECULAR, SOCIAL, AND CHRISTIAN HUMANISM The liberal Christian humanism Harnack espoused was socially conservative and critical of secular humanism. 57 Harnack advocated political changes that would improve the plight of the poor and was critical of industrial capitalism, but his close relationship with the Kaiser and the political elite put him at odds with intellectuals on the left, such as those who belonged to the new Frankfurter Schule, whose Marxist leanings and social democratic politics bothered him because of their radical tendencies and their antireligious outlook. Christians, he argued, should be engaged in dealing with the burning social and political questions of the

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day, but socialism and secular humanism were enemies of Christianity and threatened social stability and progress. This was also the opinion of most Christians, theologians, and of the church generally. One of the most celebrated secular German humanists of that period was the Nobel Prize–winning novelist Thomas Mann. Before going into exile in 1933 after Hitler came to power, Mann lived in the same Berlin suburb as the Bonhoeffer family, though there was evidently little contact between them. In any case, Mann was already thirty by the time Dietrich was born, and when he later became aware of Mann’s novels, he did not think much of them. 58 Although they might have lived close by, they inhabited different universes. Despite this, they were both opponents of Hitler from the outset because beneath their obvious differences lay a social humanism that immediately recognized the danger of National Socialism. Despite being a secular humanist and a critic of the authoritarian nationalist leanings of the Protestant church, Mann was not anti-Christian as such, respecting the humanist residue in Christianity. Back in 1925 he approvingly quoted Goethe on the “nobility and ethical culture of Christianity as it glimmers and shines in the Gospels,” 59 and in later years he wrote about Christian ethics as a counter to barbarism. 60 And Bonhoeffer, who showed little interest in the Frankfurter Schule and its brand of critical Marxist sociology, would have identified with other members of his family in supporting the social democrats, and later, when that was no longer an option, he came to recognize residues of Christian conviction in secular humanism. 61 Secular humanists like Mann and Christians like Bonhoeffer did not share the same faith or ideological commitments, but their commitment to progressive humanist values derived, at least in some measure, for Bonhoeffer from Christ. As Tillich later observed, it was “a consciousness of the Christian humanist values which underlie even the antireligious forms of this society” (i.e., Germany) that “made it possible to resist the inhuman systems of the twentieth century.” 62 Indeed, for Bonhoeffer, the alliance between secular humanists and confessing Christians grew in inverse proportion to the degree in which the Confessing Church narrowed its field of action. 63 In other words, the more faithful Christians were to confessing the exclusive claims of Christ against Nazi authoritarianism, the more inclusive they became in joining hands with others who opposed Hitler. In reaching these conclusions on the need for Christians to be engaged with secular humanists in resisting tyranny, I regard it as highly likely that Bonhoeffer was influenced by his close friend Franz Hildebrandt who, being partly of non-Aryan descent, was in exile in London when Bonhoeffer arrived to serve as a pastor in 1933. 64 Hildebrandt, who was a committed Lutheran, not only had a great respect for Erasmus, and “the decisive part” that humanism played in the Lutheran Reformation, 65 but

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also for the humanist convictions of sectarians and enthusiasts, like the Anabaptists, despite their “thoroughly questionable theology.” 66 This led him to advocate what he called “true humanism,” 67 that is, a Christological humanism that enabled the church to “make common cause with the humanists for the sake of peace and of the rights of man.” 68 For both Hildebrandt and Bonhoeffer, the real opponents of authentic Christianity in Germany were not secular humanists but German Christians who were vocal in their support for Hitler, and orthodox Lutherans and liberal Protestants who remained silent when they should have been outspoken. Christians were meant to confess Christ for the sake of the world. This meant affirming humanity, expressing solidarity with the victims of injustice, and affirming the good and great in culture. Denying humanity, denying support for the victims of Nazism, and denying all that was good and great in German culture, meant denying Christ. Paradoxically, then, it was Bonhoeffer’s Christology that not only distinguished him from secular humanists but also from most other Christians, yet at the same time, provided the theological basis for his solidarity with those secular humanists engaged in the struggle against tyranny. This brings me to the heart of the matter. Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism might have resonated with some of the values of liberal humanism, but it was not an amalgam of Kantian idealism and liberal Christianity. It was an Incarnational humanism, and it was precisely this that once again brought Bonhoeffer into close theological affinity with Barth. INCARNATIONAL HUMANISM In his lecture at the “New Humanism” conference in Geneva in 1949, Barth made it clear that as a Christian he could not unreservedly embrace either classical humanism or the new humanisms on offer, but he could speak of “God’s humanism.” By this he meant the humanism implicit in the Incarnation, of “the Word” who “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). 69 Such a humanism, Barth argued, defends “the truth of socialism” against individualism, and “the truth of personalism” against totalitarianism. “It recognizes and acknowledges,” he declared, “human dignity, duty and rights” but does so only in the context of the realization that true human existence means existence together with one’s fellows. 70 Barth’s understanding of “God’s humanism” was expressed later in his lecture on “The Humanity of God,” which he gave in 1956 at Aarau, the same place where he had confronted Harnack in 1920. This made it a symbolic moment, not least because Barth, looking back to that occasion, now admitted that he had been wrong exactly where he had been right! His theology had been rightly Christocentric but not adequately Incarnational. God’s deity does not mean that God exists for God’s sake, nor does God’s freedom mean that God is only free from the world. On the

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contrary, in Christ, God’s deity includes humanity and God’s freedom is the freedom of love for humanity, which means that even godless humanism is embraced by God. 71 By the time he gave this lecture Barth was familiar with Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. In fact, he alludes to them in his lecture, though clearly unconvinced that Bonhoeffer was on the right track in his fragmentary thoughts on “Christianity in a world come of age.” Whether or not he understood Bonhoeffer’s cryptic comments has become a subject of debate. But whatever their differences, in speaking of the “humanity of God” Barth was closer to Bonhoeffer than ever before, and viceversa. And the reason was undoubtedly that their theologies were no longer focused solely on the proclamation of “the Word” against the world but on the implications of the “Word become flesh” for the life of the world. 72 As a student of Harnack, Bonhoeffer received a remarkably thorough knowledge of early Christian dogma and the Christological controversies that shaped the Nicene Creed. But Harnack himself was suspicious of “Christology” believing that the “essence of Christianity” was what Jesus, the messianic and last of the prophets, taught about the Fatherhood of God, forgiveness, the need to love others, the inward experience of God’s Spirit, and freedom from religious legalism. 73 But as Bonhoeffer told his students in Berlin in 1931, this was neither the gospel nor who Jesus Christ is “according to the Scriptures” or the teaching of the early Church. Like all attempts to make the teaching of Jesus “relevant,” it was doomed to fail given the challenges facing the church. 74 But this did not mean that the teaching of Jesus was irrelevant, only that liberal Protestantism had reduced Jesus to a teacher of moral truth. 75 So when, later in prison, Bonhoeffer speaks about the danger of “‘Jesus’ disappearing from sight” in the life of the church he was not suggesting that Christians in the Third Reich were losing sight of Jesus “the Galilean” understood as a romantic Aryan folk hero, but of Jesus as the revelation of God Incarnate in “human form” and existing for others. Faith in Jesus, as Bonhoeffer says, “is participating in this being of Jesus. (becoming human [Menschwerdung], cross, resurrection.)” 76 This is not a liberal reduction of Christianity to a Jesusology, but an affirmation of God’s transcendence in Jesus the crucified embodiment of God “living out of the transcendent.” 77 Rather than diminishing the significance of Jesus’s life or teaching, it is a recognition that Jesus is always “the Christ” and vice versa. 78 The basis for Christian witness in the world, then, is neither religious teaching nor philosophical idealism but the humanism of God embodied in Christ. As Green comments in his introduction to Bonhoeffer’s Ethics: “It is not too much to say that Bonhoeffer’s Christology, his doctrine of God’s becoming human in Jesus Christ, is the foundation of a Christian humanism.” And it is so, because the Incarnation not only discloses

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something about God, namely, God’s being-for-humanity,” but because it also promises “the restoration of true humanity” both personally and corporately. 79 This means that being a Christian cannot be an end in itself, nor can it be so for the church. In “becoming human, God is revealed as the one who seeks to be there not for God’s own sake but ‘for us.’ To live as a human being before God, in the light of God’s becoming human, can only mean to be there not for oneself, but for God and for other human beings.” 80 THE HUMANISM OF THE CRUCIFIED The Christology that made common cause with secular humanists possible was, then, not the result of metaphysical speculation or an apologetic attempt to bring Christianity into harmony with classical culture, but the shared “suffering of lawlessness, organized lies, of hostility to humankind and acts of violence,” coupled with “the persecution of justice, truth, humanity, and freedom that drove people, to whom these values were precious, under the protection of Jesus Christ and thus under his claim.” In doing so it also caused the church-community, even if only a remnant of the “true church” remained, “to discover the breadth of its responsibility.” 81 This also meant that Christ did not have to justify himself before the world “by acknowledging the values of justice, truth, and freedom” because these values already found their justification in Christ. Indeed, “the crucified Christ” had “become the refuge, justification, protection, and claim for these higher values and their defenders who have been made to suffer.” It is the Christ who is unable to find shelter in the world, the Christ of the manger and the cross who is cast out of the world, who is the shelter to whom one flees for protection; only thus is the full breadth of Christ’s power revealed. The cross of Christ makes both sayings true: “whoever is not for me is against me” and “whoever is not against us is for us.” 82

The claim that the church is the guardian of truth, justice, and freedom can easily be misconstrued, not only because it has too often not been the case, but also because it could support a triumphalist understanding of Christianity. But Bonhoeffer was fully aware of the failures of the church and he was by no means an advocate of Christian triumphalism. He was witnessing to the significance of Christ crucified for the life of the world and making the claim that these humanist values have their origin and find their full meaning in Christ. Contrary to those Christians who regard these humanist values as anti-Christian, Bonhoeffer claims them for Christ and, by so doing, embraces those secular humanists who, in affirming these values, find themselves outside the church. It is precisely at

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this point that Bonhoeffer as witness to Christ and Bonhoeffer as humanist come together. Part of the reason why the Church in Germany was antihumanist, Bonhoeffer says, is that German humanism, as distinct from French, Dutch, Italian, and English humanism, drew more on Greek rather than Roman antiquity. Roman antiquity, he writes, “promoted the reconciliation of antiquity with Christianity,” whereas in Germany there was “a deliberately anti-Christian appropriation of the Greek heritage.” This was a by-product of the Reformation in Germany that resulted in the opposition of grace and nature and eventually in Nietzsche’s nihilism, thus destroying the creative and transformative relationship between Christ and culture in a way that was not the case in the rest of Western or Catholic Europe. 83 At the same time, because the Incarnation can never be affirmed in isolation from the cross of Christ, Christianity should always exist in critical tension with culture and, therefore, with secular humanism. As Bonhoeffer put it: Where Christ’s becoming human is more strongly in the foreground of Christian awareness, there one seeks reconciliation between Christianity and antiquity. Where the cross of Christ governs Christian proclamation, there the strong emphasis is on the break between Christ and antiquity. But because Christ is both the incarnate and the crucified, and wills to be recognized as both equally, the proper reception of the historical heritage of antiquity is still an open task for the West. 84

In other words, there is no easy reconciliation between classical antiquity and Christianity and no reconciliation with any form of humanism that is incapable of dealing with the tragic dimensions of life and the call to oppose evil. Awareness that this was so began, for Bonhoeffer, when, as a student in Rome, he visited the Belvedere and contemplated the Laocoön, that “classical man of sorrows” that brought to mind the “crucified God.” 85 Only in the Yes and the No can we recognize Christ as our life. It is the Yes of creation, reconciliation, and redemption, and the No of judgment and death over life that has fallen away from its origin, essence, and goal. However, no one who knows Christ can hear the Yes without the No and the No without the Yes. 86

But Bonhoeffer’s humanism does not remain bound by suffering and death: The “yes” is an affirmation of life, of the good life that humanists have always cherished and promoted: creativity, health, happiness, ability, achievement, success, honor, and “in short the Yes to the flourishing of life’s strength.” By contrast the “no” is about “dying, suffering, poverty, renunciation, surrender, humility, self-deprecation, and self-denial,” and yet these already contain the “yes to new life.” So it is that both

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Thus, Bonhoeffer’s humanism, as Ronald Gregor Smith puts it, “is both released and confirmed in the being of God for the world in his suffering in Christ.” 88 It “discloses rather than legitimizes power,” it is “a humanism in which one person fails to inherit humanity when another does not.” 89 True humanism can never hold others in contempt even in fighting for a righteous cause. “The only fruitful relation to human beings— particularly to the weak among them—is love, that is, the will to enter into and to keep community with them. God did not hold human beings in contempt but became human for their sake.” 90 Thus, while Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism is an affirmation of human dignity and life in its fullness, it is also and always a humanism of the cross shaped by suffering and struggle for the sake of the restoration humanity. THE RESTORATION OF HUMANITY If for Bonhoeffer, the Incarnation provides the basis for Christian humanism by overcoming the dualism between the sacred and secular, reconciling God and humanity and asserting human dignity, and the Cross locates and critically evaluates such humanism in the reality of a suffering world and the struggle for justice, it is through the Resurrection that the power of death is broken, and human hope fulfilled. In Jesus Christ, the one who became human was crucified and is risen; humanity has become new. What happened to Christ has happened for all, for he was the human being. The new human being has been created. 91

This assertion in his Ethics takes us back to Bonhoeffer’s Sanctorum Communio and his attempt from then on to find a way between individualism and collectivism in “Christ existing as church-community,” that is, in the embodiment of a “new humanity” in Christ. It was there, we recall, that Bonhoeffer introduced the idea of vicarious representation (Stellvertretung), and wrote: In the old humanity the whole of humanity falls anew, so to speak, with every person who sins; in Christ, however, humanity has been brought once and for all—this is essential to real vicarious representative action [Stellvertretung]—into community with God. 92

This is not only the life-giving principle for all who are “in Christ existing as church-community,” but also for “the entire new humanity” that “is established in reality in Jesus Christ” because “he represents the whole history of humanity in his historical life. Christ’s history is marked by the fact

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that in it humanity-in-Adam is transformed into humanity-in-Christ.” 93 This is fundamental to Bonhoeffer’s Incarnational humanism; it is a social humanism that presupposes human solidarity both in sin and in redemption. Already in Discipleship Bonhoeffer had not only made this connection but also drew out its consequences. 94 The chief of these were not just secular “human rights” as in liberal humanism, but respect for “human dignity,” which is divinely given and, therefore, the transcendent claim of “the other”: In Christ’s incarnation all of humanity regains the dignity of bearing the image of God. Whoever from now on attacks the least of the people attacks Christ, who took on human form and who in himself has restored the image of God for all who bear a human countenance. 95

This anticipates Bonhoeffer’s thoughts in prison on “recapitulation,” or the recreation of humanity in Christ, a key motif in the theology of Irenaeus, the second-century bishop and martyr of Lyon to whom Bonhoeffer turns for comfort during his imprisonment. In a letter to Bethge, dated on the fourth Sunday of Advent in 1943, and quoting from a hymn by Paul Gerhardt, he writes: In recent weeks this line has been running through my head over and over: “Calm your hearts, dear friends; / whatever plagues you, / whatever fails you, / I will restore it all.” What does that mean, “I will restore it all”? Nothing is lost; in Christ all things are taken up, preserved, albeit in transfigured form, transparent, clear, liberated from the torment of self-serving demands. Christ brings all this back, indeed, as God intended, without being distorted by sin. 96

Irenaeus’ teaching, Bonhoeffer reminds us, originates in the letter to the Ephesians (1:10) and refers to “the restoration of all things, ἀνακεφαλαίωσις—re-capitulatio (Irenaeus).” As such it “is a magnificent and consummately consoling thought.” 97 Bonhoeffer’s Christian humanism, then, is deeply rooted in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a humanism that provides a deeper, theological basis, for the humane values that have characterized authentic humanism from the beginning, a humanism that fosters “vicarious representative action” on behalf of the “the other.” It is a critical humanism fashioned in the struggle for truth and justice against dehumanizing power but deepened through suffering and always affirming human goodness against perversity, hope against despair, and life against death. This is the meaning of Jesus Christ for us today.

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NOTES 1. Ethics, 339–40. 2. Discipleship, 285. 3. The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM, 1959), 18. 4. Letters and Papers from Prison, 361. 5. Emil Brunner, Christianity and Civilisation: Part One Foundations (London: Nisbet and Co., 1948), 88. 6. Brunner, Christianity and Civilisation I, v. 7. “The Christian Proclamation Here and Now” in Karl Barth, God Here and Now (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), 1–10. 8. Barth, God Here and Now, 95. 9. Barth, God Here and Now, 97. 10. Barth, God Here and Now, 101. 11. Barth, God Here and Now, 101. 12. See Ethics, 88, n. 52. Jacques Maritain, Integral Humanism (1938). 13. Barth, God Here and Now, 101. 14. Jens Zimmermann, “Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christological Humanism,” in Jens Zimmermann and Brian Gregor, eds., Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 28. 15. See also Rowan Williams, Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction (London: Continuum, 2008), 238–39. 16. See John W. de Gruchy, Being Human: Confessions of a Christian Humanist (London: SCM, 2006), and John W. de Gruchy, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer as Christian Humanist,” in Zimmermann and Gregor, eds., Being Human, Becoming Human, 3–24. 17. See Jens Zimmermann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christian Humanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 18. John W. de Gruchy, ed., The Humanist Imperative in South Africa (Stellenbosch: SUN Media, 2011). 19. Achille Mbembe and Deborah Posel, “A Critical Humanism,” editorial, The Wiser Review, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, Johannesburg, no. 1, July 2004. 20. Njabulo Ndebele, “Towards a New Humanism in Africa,” in The Humanist Imperative in South Africa, 180. 21. Kenneth D. Kaunda, A Humanist in Africa: Letters to Collin M. Morris (London: Longmans, 1966). 22. See Michael Battle, Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1997). 23. See John W. de Gruchy, The End Is Not Yet: Standing Firm in Apocalyptic Times (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017). 24. Barnett, After Ten Years, 2. 25. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 9. 26. Barnett, After Ten Years, 2. 27. The German Bildung and the English “formation” do not mean precisely the same thing. “Formation” does not convey the ambiguity of Bildung, which can mean both copy (Nachbild) and model (Vorbild), see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 10–19. 28. Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1976), 38–44. 29. See Rudolf Bultmann’s Introduction to Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1986), xi. 30. A declaration written by Harnack and published in German newspapers on October 4, 1914, under the title An die Kulturwelt. Quoted in Martin Rumscheidt, eds., Adolf von Harnack: Liberal Theology at Its Height (London: Collins, 1988), 25.

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31. Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (London: Collins, 1961), 39. Italics in the original. 32. The first edition published in 1918 was thoroughly revised for the second edition published in 1921. The sixth edition, based on the second, was translated into English. See Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933). 33. Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957), 51. 34. Busch, Karl Barth, 81–83, 114–15. 35. Martin Rumscheidt, Revelation and Theology: An Analysis of the Barth-Harnack Correspondence of 1923 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 18–19. 36. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 48–51. 37. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 77. 38. See Ethics, 118, n. 68. 39. Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947). 40. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 95. 41. See his Italian Diary, The Young Bonhoeffer, 82–93. 42. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 69. 43. Bonhoeffer was reading Josef Wittig’s Leben Jesu in Palästina, Schlesien und anderswo at the time. Wittig was a patristic scholar and a Catholic “modernist” as was Maritain. See Staats, Barcelona, Berlin, America, 628. 44. Afterword Barcelona, Berlin, America, 622. 45. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 355. 46. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 342–59. See below note 331. 47. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 343–44. 48. See Michael P. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer’s Theological Formation: Berlin, Barth, and Protestant Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 15. 49. Bonhoeffer, Act and Being, 111. 50. Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (London: Collins, 1960). 51. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 243. 52. “The theology of crisis and its attitude towards philosophy and science” Barcelona, Berlin, America, 463. 53. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 311–12. 54. Letters and Papers from Prison, 305–6. 55. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 252. 56. Ethics, 347. 57. See his “Essays on the Social Gospel,” Rumscheidt, Von Harnack, 278–98. 58. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 607; see also John A. Moses, ““Rejecting Kultur”: Thomas Mann’s and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Reaction to Wilhelminism, National Socialism and the USA—an Historian’s Perspective,” Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies 4, no. 2 (2016): 23–40. 59. Thomas Mann, Letters of Thomas Mann Volume I 1882 – 1942 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1970), 135. 60. Thomas Mann, Letters of Thomas Mann Volume II 1942 – 1955 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1972), 538. 61. Mann, Letters, II: 651–52. 62. Paul Tillich, My Search for Absolutes (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1967), 23. 63. cf. Ethics, 55. 64. See the editors Introduction to Discipleship, 25. 65. ranz Hildebrandt, “The Interpretation of Luther at the Present Time,” in Franz Hildebrandt, ed., “And Other Pastors of Thy Flock”: A German Tribute to the Bishop of Chichester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1942), 137. 66. Hildebrandt, “The Gospel and Humanitarianism,” 4. 67. See Hildebrandt, “The Interpretation of Luther at the Present Time,” 137.

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68. Franz Hildebrandt, “Barmen: What to Learn and What not to Learn,” in Hubert G. Locke, ed., The Barmen Confession: Papers from the Seattle Assembly (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 300. 69. Barth, God Here and Now, 6–7. 70. Barth, God Here and Now, 6–7. 71. Barth, The Humanity of God, 37–55. 72. See Jens Zimmermann, Incarnational Humanism: A Philosophy of Culture for the Church in the World (Downers’ Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012). 73. See Adolf Harnack, What Is Christianity? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1986). The German title is literally The Essence of Christianity. 74. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 204. 75. Discipleship, 8. 76. Letters and Papers from Prison, 501. 77. Letters and Papers from Prison, 501. 78. See Zimmermann’s assessment of J. H. Yoder’s critique of Bonhoeffer’s Christology. in Zimmermann, Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought, 39–48. 79. Ethics, 6. 80. Ethics, 400. 81. Ethics, 344–45. 82. Ethics, 345–46. 83. Ethics, 105–7. 84. Ethics, 107. 85. The Young Bonhoeffer, 89, 194. 86. Ethics, 251. 87. Ethics, 252. 88. Ronald Gregor Smith, Secular Christianity (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 21. 89. de Lange, “A Particular Europe, a Universal Faith,” 93. 90. Letters and Papers from Prison, 44–45. 91. Ethics, 91. 92. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, 91. 93. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio, 92. 94. See Jens Zimmermann, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christological Humanism,” in Being Human, Becoming Human: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Social Thought, 37–38. 95. Discipleship, 285. 96. Letters and Papers from Prison, 229–30. 97. Letters and Papers from Prison, 230.

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Our Questions

Must it be that Christianity, which began in such a tremendously revolutionary way long ago, is now conservative for all time? That each new movement must forge a path for itself without the church, that time after time the church does not see what has actually happened until twenty years after the fact? Sermon on Colossians 3:1–4, Berlin, June 1932 1 How is it possible that thousands upon thousands of people are bored with the church and pass it by? Why did it come about that the cinema really is often more interesting, more exciting, more human and gripping than the church? Can that really be only the fault of others and not ours as well? The church was different once. It used to be that the questions of life and death were resolved and decided here. Why is this no longer so? Sermon on 2 Corinthians 5:20 London, October 1933 2

NOTES 1. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 459. 2. London, 323.

SEVEN Who Is God; How Do We Know; and Do We Need “Him”?

Theology . . . starts with the statement of the reality of God. . . . But that at once gives rise to the question, how can theology state the reality of God without thinking it? And, if it thinks it, how can it be avoided that God should again be pulled into the circle of thought? That is the central and most difficult problem of a genuine theological epistemology, which springs from the Christian idea of God. The basis of all theology is the fact of faith. Only in the act of faith as a direct act God is recognized as the reality which is beyond and outside of our thinking, of our whole existence. Theology, then, is the attempt to set forth what is already possessed in the act of faith. “Concerning the Christian Idea of God.” New York, 1931 1 As in the scientific domain, so in human affairs generally, “God” is being pushed further and further out of our life, losing ground. . . . The world, now that it has become conscious of itself and the laws of its existence, is sure of itself in a way that it is becoming uncanny for us . . . there still remain the so-called ultimate questions—death, guilt—which only “God” can answer, and for which people need God and the church and the pastor. . . . But what happens if some day they no longer exist as such, or if they are being answered “without God”? Letter to Bethge, June 8, 1944 2

One of the distinguished speakers at the anniversary celebration of Bonhoeffer’s seventieth birthday in Geneva in 1976 was Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, the eminent physicist. Bonhoeffer read von Weizsäcker’s book The World View of Physics in prison, which led him to ask the question whether there is any room left for God in the modern world? 3 99

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At the time of his Geneva lecture, Weizsäcker was the director of the Max Planck Institute engaged in research into the conditions of living in a world dominated by science and technology and, therefore, involved in thinking about the kind of world the next generation would inherit. In his lecture he acknowledged that Bonhoeffer’s theology was relevant to this discussion, but he was not sure what position Bonhoeffer as a theologian would take on the issues. Would it not be better for us to base our values on scientific humanism without the God hypothesis, or is faith in God necessary for the sake of the future of the world? If such faith is necessary, who is God, and what does it mean to believe in God? These were obviously critical questions for Bonhoeffer as they are for all of us. But neither God nor faith in God can be taken for granted in the modern world, even though many people still claim to believe, nor can we assume that faith in God means the same for everyone who professes to do so. Let me begin, then, with a more personal question, one that I would have liked to ask Bonhoeffer: “why did you become a theologian?” And, for that matter, why did I? WHY DID BONHOEFFER BECOME A THEOLOGIAN? In his birthday lecture, Weizsäcker describes Bonhoeffer as “one of those homines religiosi who make the decision to offer themselves to the service of God early in childhood in a way that escapes the observation of their fellows.” He went on to say: A child can, without detriment to his natural development as a child, have a silent and intensive life with God in which the environment only provides him with culturally distinctive patterns in which he can interpret and cultivate this inner experience. Some such experience, begun in childhood and probably never fully disclosed to another human soul, was . . . the vital spring of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s entire life right until his death. 4

Weizsäcker had obviously read Bethge’s biography in which Dietrich’s youthful religious inclinations are described, even some impressionable experience of the transcendent, but going to church was not a family habit and neither was talking about religion. So, when Bonhoeffer, as a teenager, announced that he wanted to become a theologian rather than a professional musician, the family was taken by surprise and his father was dismayed—what a waste of talent! But, as I previously mentioned, despite his parents attempt to change his mind, sometime in March 1921 Dietrich made up his mind to become a theologian. 5 Little did he know at that time, that his knowledge of music would later inform the development of his theology. 6 But why did Bonhoeffer choose theology above music as a career? Was it because he wanted to know God better or serve the church as a

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pastor? Was he a religious child by nature as well as by the nurture of his Moravian nanny? Did his early love for the music of Mozart awaken in him an aesthetic-religious sensitivity and sense of transcendence, or was his calling driven by a desire for “independence” and “self-realization” and, therefore, by the need to follow a different path from those chosen by his elder brothers and father? 7 Whatever the reason, according to him, “he plunged into work in a very unchristian way,” driven by ambition, and “turning the doctrine of Jesus Christ into something of personal advantage.” 8 What, then, became of his youthful religious sensibility? Was it still the “vital spring” of his life as it unfolded? If so, how did it connect with his increasingly academic interest in intellectual, theological, and philosophical questions, his involvement in the church struggle, and his eventual advocacy of a “non-religious” Christianity? And, in what way if any, did his sense of God change and develop? An important clue to young Dietrich’s choice of career lies in his relationship to his elder brother, Karl-Friedrich, a student of science who would eventually become a well-known physicist like Weizsäcker. KarlFriedrich may not have been dismayed, like his father, when his youngest brother announced that he would become a theologian, but as a confessed agnostic he undoubtedly teased him about his religious sensitivities and his decision. We can imagine him asking Dietrich: “why do you want to spend your life serving not only a moribund church but also a God who does not exist?” Certainly, as Bethge tells us, after his decision to become a theologian Dietrich “had to defend himself against his brother Karl-Friedrich’s skepticism, and this spurred him to grapple with epistemology.” 9 Later, in an essay he wrote on “What should a student of theology do today?” Bonhoeffer gives us insight into how he might have answered that question on the eve of the Kirchenkampf and under the influence of Barth. 10 But whatever the other reasons for Dietrich’s choice of his career path, one driving factor was undoubtedly his felt need to respond to his brother’s bothersome questions: how do we know that there is a God, let alone know who and where that God is? Thus, when Bonhoeffer went to study theology at Tübingen, over and above his required courses, he chose to study philosophy and spent much time thinking about epistemology. 11 If he was going to be a theologian, religious experience and sensibility were insufficient; he had to find a better way to respond to scientific skepticism, and critical to that quest was the nagging question how can we know God, assuming that God is? Or put more philosophically, it was the question of transcendence and especially its relationship to material reality and human experience. This was prompted by his love for music, as can be seen in some of his sermons preached during his vicariate in Barcelona, and later finds further expression when, in prison, he begins his project on the “non-religious interpretation” of Christianity.

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IS THERE A TRANSCENDENT REALITY? In the very first sermon which he preached in Barcelona, on Sunday March 11, 1938, based on Romans 11:6, Bonhoeffer speaks about the restlessness that makes us anxious about our mortality and quickens our desire for power over the eternal in order to bring it under control. 12 He says: There is in the soul of human beings . . . something that makes them restless, something that points them toward the infinite, eternal. . . . It wants to acquire power over the eternal so that it can rid itself of anxiety and restlessness. . . . From this restlessness . . . the colossal works of philosophy and art emerged . . . the quartets and symphonies of Beethoven . . . all were overwhelmed by the idea of something eternal and unchangeable. 13

The question Bonhoeffer then asks is how can this Romantic restlessness of soul for the infinite, so necessary for the composition of great music, art and philosophy be prevented from becoming destructive? That is, how can the desire for the transcendent not become a lust for power to “be like God,” and egotistically destroy us, as it famously destroyed Adrian Leverkühn (a symbol of Germany’s catastrophe) in Thomas Mann’s Dr Faustus, beguiled as he was by Beethoven’s opus 111? 14 In another sermon preached in August later that year, Bonhoeffer quotes Nietzsche who says that “all joy wants eternity,” but somewhat wistfully acknowledges that joy, beauty, and splendor pass away as do the works of Beethoven, Bach, Goethe, and Michelangelo. 15 Everything is penultimate and, therefore, subject to death; the ultimate or transcendent is beyond our grasp. 16 In both these sermons musical allusions help Bonhoeffer express his thoughts, anticipating his later use in prison of musical analogies and metaphors as his theology takes a fresh turn. 17 As a student and young pastor Bonhoeffer was fully aware of Nietzsche’s infamous though often misunderstood declaration that “God is dead, and we have killed him!” 18 Nietzsche did not rejoice in making this assertion for he knew that it meant that the sun had set on centuries of European culture, an “ancient and profound trust has been turned into doubt,” and the basis for treasured values, beauty, truth, and goodness had collapsed. Nietzsche’s unsettling assertion together with the scientific humanism espoused by his brother Karl-Friedrich were seldom far from Bonhoeffer’s mind for much of his life, even if he had other things to think about as a participant in the church struggle and Resistance. But the questions obviously challenged him as a pastor, just as they would haunt him with a vengeance in the confines of his prison cell both in times of doubt and despair and when thinking about the future of Christian faith in a rapidly changing world.

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It is unsurprising, then, that soon after completing Sanctorum Communio, and while serving his vicariate, Bonhoeffer began work on Act and Being, a sophisticated philosophical and theological study of epistemology. This he did by engaging the current debate generated by transcendental idealist philosophy that attempted to counter Nietzsche’s nihilism. “At the heart of the problem,” he wrote, “is the struggle with the formulation of the question that Kant and idealism have posed for theology. It is a matter of the formation of genuine theological concepts, the decision one comes to between a transcendental-philosophical and an ontological interpretation of theological concepts.” To help us understand what he is getting at, Bonhoeffer goes on to say: In other words, the meaning of “the being of God in revelation” must be interpreted theologically, including how it is known, how faith as act, and revelation as being, are related to one another and, correspondingly, how human beings stand in light of revelation. Is revelation “given” to them only in each completed act; is there for human beings such a thing as “being” in revelation? 19

The question is whether transcendental idealist philosophy can help us find and know God, or is reason, whatever help it provides, finally incapable of doing so? In other words, as André Dumas observes, Bonhoeffer was responding to “the alternatives, whether they be a dogmatic and unreal transcendence or a nihilistic and tragic denial of truth . . . not from the standpoint of naïve realism but on the basis of a Christological ontology, insisting that the truth of God is hidden in the reality of the world.” 20 Bonhoeffer never lost his love for music, but under the influence of Barth he developed reservations about German Romanticism. 21 Already in Sanctorum Communio he had challenged the Romantic notion that values such as the beautiful, the good, and especially the holy (transcendent values) have a unifying power, and he opposed the use of Romantic music in the liturgical life of the church because “its great beauty and power” prevents “us from hearing the Word of God” 22 and, moreover, is susceptible to being manipulated for evil ends, as it was by the Nazis. 23 But years later, in prison, Bonhoeffer would gain a new appreciation for the late music of Beethoven (Missa Solemnis, Ninth Symphony, the last piano sonatas and string quartets), in which the desire for transcendence is taken to a new level at the same time as Beethoven’s deafness increased and death approached. Just as Beethoven is about to experience transcendence toward the end of his final piano sonata (opus 111), there is a moment of silence. Beethoven has entered holy ground and, overtaken by awe, draws back from the danger of trying to grasp the infinite. 24 As Bonhoeffer listens by memory to Beethoven in the isolation of his cell, he enters the silent world of Beethoven’s deafness. However, for him, this does not signify the absence of God, rather it signifies the inexpressible

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mystery of God. But how do we know God, especially if God is transcendent mystery beyond material reality? HOW DO WE KNOW GOD? Bonhoeffer’s answer to these questions in Act and Being is that God’s revelation creates its own epistemology, that is, its unique way of knowing. God makes himself known in Christ, and this knowledge becomes concrete within the life of the church-community. Thus, “Christ-existing as church-community,” the thesis of Sanctorum Communio, also provides the basis for Bonhoeffer’s epistemology. Revelation is not just an event that tangentially touches the world (Kant and the “early” Barth) or becomes available to us through a religious institution and sacraments (the Catholic Church), an infallible Bible (Protestant Orthodoxy and fundamentalism), or through religious experience (liberal Protestantism and Pietism), but in a historical event, that is, in Jesus Christ who exists through Word and Sacrament, not in a religious enclave or ghetto, but at in the center of the world. But how does this epistemological claim hold up when faced with the skepticism of the scientist and the philosopher? Shortly after completing Act and Being as a student in New York in 1931, Bonhoeffer had this question in mind when wrote his essay, “The Theology of Crisis and its attitude toward Philosophy and Science.” His stated aim was to provide a framework for considering Barth’s understanding of our knowledge God in response to the intellectual challenges of the modern world. 25 Following Barth, he insists at the outset that because there is no end to questions about God when we start with philosophy and science, as theologians we must start with the “reality of God.” If we start anywhere else, we just go around in circles. 26 At best, empirical investigation and reason might prepare the way for faith but they cannot establish the reality of God. Theology assumes that reality and, thus, speaks from faith to faith. Without God there would be no life and, therefore, no one to ask the God question. This, after all, is where the Bible begins. “In the beginning God!” a subject that Bonhoeffer would discuss at length and in considerable depth in his lectures on Creation and Fall soon after returning to Berlin. 27 When the biblical writers recount the primordial myths of creation (Genesis 1–3), they are not interested in how the world came into being (the question of science), or even why (the question of philosophy), but who brought it into being. How and why questions are circular because we “live in a circle,” neither knowing the beginning, as we were not there, or the end, because the end is not yet. So such questions immediately give rise to others that can “be pushed back endlessly, without reaching the beginning.” This means that every answer is not only provisional but prompts another.

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What does it mean that in the beginning God is? Which God? Your God, whom you make for yourself out of your own need because you need an idol, because you do not wish to live without the beginning, without the end, because being in the middle causes you anxiety? 28

Who, then, is the biblical God? The pivotal story in providing an answer is that of Moses at the “burning bush” where he asks the mysterious voice that calls him to his liberating task: “what is your name?” and again, “who shall I say has sent me?” to which he receives the enigmatic response YHWH, “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:13–14). The verb “to be” must suffice. For God “is,” “was,” and “will be” and can only be known by what he does. The unpronounceable, vowel-less YHWH says it all. For this reason, some Jewish students I taught invariably wrote “G-d” in their essays, reminding me that G-d is always beyond description and imagination, and that all metaphors for who “G-d” is are inadequate if not misleading. G-d is the ultimate mystery on whom everything depends, including the freedom of slaves. The one who is before all things, and who brings all things into being, reveals who “he” is in liberating the Hebrews from bondage. Memory of that event subsequently becomes the foundation of Israel’s faith in G-d; forgetting that and creating substitute deities as the need arises, as when G-d is apparently absent, is the cause of Israel’s woes. Hence, the commandment not to take the name of G-d in vain, that is, to empty it of its true meaning by creating alternative divine images we can manipulate for our own ends but inevitably for our selfdestruction. A major problem with the perennial debate about God with which we are again familiar today, is the general lack of a definition of the God who supposedly does not exist except in the imagination of its devotees. For as ancient myths remind us, gods come and go as times and needs change, fighting among themselves for our allegiance, whether they are the gods of city-state and nation, or of greed, status, and power. Idols serve their makers’ interests before devouring them. So, the word “God” is a catchall for whatever image of God we prefer, whether profound or banal and, thus, an easy target for the scornful sceptic. The truth is all metaphors for who “G-d” is are inadequate, and that before the “burning bush” we should take off our shoes, be silent, and listen. For that reason, Bonhoeffer, as he begins his lectures on Christology soon after those on creation, calls us to silence. But we cannot remain silent and, therefore, cannot avoid using the word “God” any more than could Moses and the authors of the Bible. We keep on imaging the unimaginable, as Graham Ward aptly reminds us, and necessarily so, because we can only relate to that which we do imagine. 29 And not all images or icons are idols. The question, then, is how does the unknowable G-d become the God who is known, the God in whom we believe is “full of grace and truth,” about whom we write and

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of whom we speak? How and where does God become visible and audible? This is the question at the heart of Bonhoeffer’s theological quest as it is of all critical and constructive Christian theologies, which, on the one hand, are iconoclastic and prophetic, and on the other, Incarnational or centered on Christ as the “icon of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15) That is why, for Christian theology, it is not only God who is “in the beginning,” but also “the Word,” that is, God’s desire for self-disclosure in the life of the world. As Bonhoeffer insisted in his Ethics, the reality of God and the reality of the world meet in Christ. We encounter God not in transcendent remoteness but in the world, incarnate. Part of the problem with the contemporary “debate about God” is that it reduces God to a religious phenomenon, as though religion is the sole sphere of God’s activity, the place we discover God, and that religious language is God’s preferred means of communication. Indeed, if you say you believe in God, the popular inference is that you are, therefore, religious—whatever that means. So, the debate about God ends up in a heated discussion about religion—whatever that is. But if we are to understand what Bonhoeffer eventually called his “non-religious interpretation of Christianity,” we need to know what he meant by this slippery word and why he was so negative about it. WHAT IS RELIGION, AND HOW DID BONHOEFFER UNDERSTAND IT? Religion is notoriously difficult to define. 30 But human beings have had what we call religious sensibilities, a sense of the infinite if you like, throughout history without necessarily being able to define, explain, or describe them. However, until modern times, what we call religion was seldom discreet or separate from daily life. In fact, what we have reduced to religion was the lifeblood of culture, that is, the cultic expression of the meaning of life in dance, song, sacrifice, and rites of passage. Religion as something different from the totality of life or the religious as a sacred sphere separate from the secular, first developed within Western Christendom to describe the cultic dimension in alien cultures. This became a useful category to distinguish between “them” and “us,” between Christianity (“true religion”) and heathendom (“idolatrous religion”) and, thus, validate the superiority European civilisation. Derived from the Latin religio, the word “religion” originally had several related meanings (conscience, commitment, a sense of awe and of the sacred as distinct from the profane), but no definition of religion covers all variables. This means that talking about religion in general is not very enlightening. For this reason alone, to say as some critics do, that religion has failed in making a difference to the welfare of the world, or made things worse, is impossible to evaluate let alone understand with any

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precision. The word “religion” is undermined more by a thousand qualifications than it is by the gross failures associated with it by its critics. So, to equate religion with God, or being religious with faith in God, is neither accurate nor helpful because that surely can’t be God. All we can say is that what we loosely and popularly call religion can be bad and abused, but religion can also feed dreams, inspire hopes, and shape aspirations. Indeed, by “invoking a sense of wonder about the natural world,” says Ward, “religion can promote scientific discoveries, and by focusing on shared experiences, religion helps to bind societies together” as well as help us understand who we are. 31 But how did Bonhoeffer understand religion and why was he so critical of it? Already in Sanctorum Communio Bonhoeffer says that although the church is a religious community, that is not its essence. In fact, we can only understand what the church truly is through revelation. 32 Then in his 1928 Barcelona lecture on “Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity” Bonhoeffer declares more sharply: Christ is not the bringer of a new religion, but the bringer of God. Hence as the impossible path from human beings to God, the Christian religion stands alongside other religions. Christians can never boast of their own Christian religiosity, for it, too, remains humanly all-toohuman. . . . Christ’s gift is not the Christian religion but God’s grace and love, which culminate in the cross. 33

And again, in prophetic mode, during the early days of Hitler’s rise to power, in a sermon preached in Berlin on June 12, 1932, Bonhoeffer castigates the congregation for wanting to believe in a God we can control, a God who sanctions our actions and politics and not in the God of the Bible who calls the nation and the church to repentance and not to religion. Our “disobedience” he says, “is not that we are so little religious but that we actually would like very much to be religious . . . and are very much reassured when some government or other proclaims the Christian worldview.” And, to drive home his point, he says It is our disobedience, it is our fleeing, it is our calamitous downfall— that we, the more pious we are, are all the less willing to let ourselves be told that God is dangerous; that God does not allow himself to be mocked; that we human beings must die if we really want to have anything to do with the living God; that we must lose our life if we really want to gain it. 34

Bonhoeffer’s antipathy to religion understood in this way does not change. In a diary note written during his trip to America in 1939, just after he had worshipped one Sunday at Riverside Church in New York, he scathingly declared that the sermon was “a discreet, opulent, selfsatisfied celebration of religion.” He went on to say that such “preaching renders people libertine, egoistic, indifferent,” and asked, “Do the people really not know that one can do as well or better without “religion”—if

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only it weren’t for God himself and his word.” 35 In other words, despite our religion and in contrast to it, God makes himself known through the Word, that is, through self-disclosure. Such negative experiences and descriptions of religion help us understand Bonhoeffer’s Barthian and prophetic antipathy to it. They also prepare the ground for his attempt to develop a “non-religious interpretation of Christianity” as he himself acknowledged. 36 But what prompted him to go further than Barth in the way he did and not to Barth’s liking? WHAT IS “NON-RELIGIOUS CHRISTIANITY”? In discussing Bonhoeffer’s use of the term “non-religious” in his Geneva lecture to which I referred previously, Weizsäcker distinguished, firstly, between religion understood as an element in culture that shapes social life, helps meet human needs, explains the world, and provides meaning to life; secondly, religion as the “basis for a radical ethic,” that is as a source of social and cultural critique which offers an alternative way of being in the world; and, thirdly, “religion as theology,” that is, as a way of being human in relation to what is believed to be the divine and a way of understanding and interpreting that reality. 37 Bonhoeffer’s use of the term straddles all three, but he does not develop a theory of religion either as an anthropological phenomenon or an intellectual-historical one. 38 Nonetheless in his critique of religion in his prison letters Bonhoeffer does tell us what he is rejecting, that is, “what it means not to interpret” Christianity in terms of religion even if, as Ralf Wüstenberg observes, this is based on a rather “loose understanding of religion.” 39 What Bonhoeffer rejected was metaphysical dualism, the separation of the sacred from the secular and an individualistic piety unconcerned about the world. As such, religion was nothing more than a “garment of Christianity” characterized by a particular metaphysics, inwardness, and partiality. 40 That is, “a historically conditioned and transient phenomenon,” which belonged to a certain period in intellectual history. 41 As such it must be discarded if Christianity is faithfully to represent the gospel today. In sum, Bonhoeffer is against religion as it manifested itself in the post-Enlightenment and scientific Western “world come of age”—a term he borrowed from the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey. Dilthey was referring to developments associated with the rise of modern science in Western Europe, starting around the thirteenth century, which led to human autonomy and emancipation from belief in God. 42 In this secular world, as distinct from the world understood as sacred in its totality, humans had increasingly learned to live and manage their affairs without any reference to God, whether in science, politics, law, and medicine, or more generally in daily life. This did not mean that they had become morally

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better, nor did it mean that religion as a cultural phenomenon no longer existed or served some useful, even valuable function. But it did mean that for vast numbers of people the “God hypothesis” was no longer needed to explain reality and meet human need. Bonhoeffer’s critique of religion was, therefore, historically and culturally specific and, as such, does automatically apply to all forms of what we call religion or religious traditions. For example, it does not easily fit what is broadly referred to as “African traditional religion,” which is generally holistic, world embracing, and inclusive. So thoughtful African Christians do not usually relate positively to Bonhoeffer’s critique of religion even though his proposal for a “religionless Christianity” resonates with African Christianity’s emphasis on religion as a way of life and human sociality or ubuntu. 43 It also provides a counter to Western individualism and the American “prosperity gospel” that has infected some forms of African Christianity. But generally, whereas the “religious act” may “be partial” in modern Western Christianity as Bonhoeffer says, this is not true if African Christianity where “faith is something whole, involving the whole of one’s life” something that resonates with Bonhoeffer’s comment in prison that “Jesus calls us, not to a new religion, but to life.” 44 Bonhoeffer’s “non-religious” interpretation of Christianity is, therefore, specifically addressed to the secular West or secularism wherever it is found. Yet it is important to note that Bonhoeffer did not support the demythologization of religion as proposed by Rudolf Bultmann because “you can’t separate God from the miracles.” 45 In other words, Bonhoeffer is not wanting to reduce the gospel to make it fit into either our religious or secular understanding of the world but to interpret biblical and specifically Christian concepts central to the narrative, such as Incarnation, Cross, Resurrection, “in a way that does not make religion the condition for faith.” 46 As Rowan Williams puts it, Bonhoeffer is developing “a vision of the language of faith enlarging itself to become the language of (that) unrestricted human community.’ 47 In other words, the various secular critiques of religion, whether scientific or philosophical, may be valid, but they generally miss the point when it comes to the gospel. For Christianity is not religion, and nor is faith in God contingent upon some religious a priori embedded in human nature. Thus, the question of God from a “non-religious perspective” leads Bonhoeffer directly to the question “how can Christ become Lord of the religionless as well?” 48 HOW, THEN, CAN CHRIST BECOME LORD OF THE RELIGIONLESS AS WELL? In responding to this question, Bonhoeffer was sorry that Barth, who had led the way in the criticism of religion, failed to give any “concrete guid-

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ance” and “ended up with a positivism of revelation.” 49 Crudely put, this meant that Barth was telling the world to “like it or lump it.” In other words, according to Bonhoeffer, Barth was saying that the doctrines of Christianity, were all equally significant and necessary, “whether it’s the virgin birth, the Trinity, or anything else” and, therefore, “must be swallowed whole or not at all.” But that, says Bonhoeffer, is not biblical. There are degrees of cognition and degrees of significance. 50 Barth was understandably non-plussed by Bonhoeffer’s criticism, as he told Bethge, and the issue has been discussed at great length ever since. 51 Whether Barth was guilty of Bonhoeffer’s charge, or whether his criticism was aimed more at what had happened to the Confessing Church when it resorted to a defense of its integrity rather than engage the world, is part of the debate. But what Bonhoeffer was trying to say is pertinent, nonetheless. Can we expect the secular world to accept the total dogmatic and ethical package of Christianity and swallow it whole? When Barth attacked liberal theology in that theologically defining moment at the beginning of the twentieth century, he was rejecting Christianity as a cultural and social construct, that is as a religion, a necessary prelude to faith in God. By contrast, for Barth, Christianity had to do with God’s revelation in Jesus Christ and our response of faith to that selfdisclosure. If religion, is about the human attempt to find God—to grasp hold of the transcendent—and explain the meaning of life, Christianity, is about God’s gracious revelation in Jesus Christ and our obedience to that Word. On this understanding, God is not an object to be studied by scientists of religion or to be sought by mystic devotees, but a Subject who addresses and calls us to obey Jesus as Lord. Our knowledge of God is therefore contingent on God making himself known to us in the life of the world. But even so, we must ask: if religion is not the prerequisite for faith in God, does not science also undermine “non-religious” faith on the same grounds and, therefore, exclude God as a “working hypothesis” for understanding the world and ourselves, irrespective of the language we use? Are we not playing language games? Is there any room left for God in the world whether understood religiously or not? This is the question modern science poses for theology. HOW DOES FAITH RELATE TO THE “SCIENTIFIC WORLD-VIEW”? In a letter written in January 1940 to his skeptical brother Karl-Friedrich, by then a distinguished physicist, Bonhoeffer tells him that he is enthusiastically reading Anton Zischka’s book Wissenschaft bricht Monopole 52 as though it was a novel. He only wishes he had read it earlier because, as he says, “it virtually alters my view of the world.” 53 Science had broken the monopoly of religion in explaining the world. The question, then, is

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how did this change of worldview affect Bonhoeffer’s theology, and especially his understanding of God? Bonhoeffer’s worldview might have altered when he read Zischka’s book, but he was not ill-informed about science. However, once he came under the influence of Barth, he did not allow the scientific worldview to affect his theology. This is evident in his essay at Union Seminary in 1931, to which I referred previously in this chapter, on “The Theology of Crisis and Its Attitude toward Philosophy and Science.” 54 In it he asserts: As far as science is a discovery of happening facts, theology is not touched (because theology is concerned only with a certain interpretation of facts.) If science itself gives its own interpretation of the world, then it belongs to philosophy and is subjected to the critic of theology. 55

But what if theology becomes subject to the critique of science and its monopoly is broken? That was a question that increasingly bothered him in prison as it must also bother us today. In February 1944 Bonhoeffer wrote to Bethge from prison expressing regret that he lacked knowledge of the natural sciences and wondering whether it was “too late to catch up on that.” 56 But he also made the attempt in an exchange of letters with Karl-Friedrich and, more systematically, by reading Weizsäcker’s The World View of Physics, 57 which, Bonhoeffer says has again brought home to me quite clearly that we shouldn’t think of God as the stopgap [Lückenbüßer] for the incompleteness of our knowledge, because then—as is objectively inevitable—when the boundaries of knowledge are pushed ever further, God too is pushed further away and thus is ever on the retreat. We should find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know; God wants to be grasped by us not in unsolved questions but in those that have been solved. 58

Among these questions, were also “the universal human questions about death, suffering, and guilt.” For, today, “there are human answers that can completely disregard God. Human beings cope with these questions practically without God and have done so throughout the ages, and it is simply not true that only Christianity would have a solution to them.” 59 But if it is true that God is no longer “a working hypothesis for morality, politics, and the natural sciences” as well as for philosophy and religion, then, says Bonhoeffer, it “is a matter of intellectual integrity to drop this working hypothesis, or eliminate it as far as possible.” The question then becomes, is there “any room left for God?” 60 The challenge has been recently put, for example (one among many) by the secular humanist philosopher Steven Pinker who asks “If the factual tenets of religion can no longer be taken seriously, and its ethical tenets depend entirely on whether they can be justified by secular morality, what about its claims to wisdom on the great questions of experi-

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ence?” That is, to the existential questions traditionally dealt with by religion: “the deepest yearnings of the human heart” and the “questions of life, death, love, loneliness, loss, honor, cosmic justice, and metaphysical hope.” 61 It is nonsense, Pinker insists, to believe that religion can meet these needs. It is too flawed. Only science as part of the “entire fabric of human knowledge, reason and humanistic values” can do so. Indeed, secular humanism cannot be extracted from a scientific worldview for this has become the basis for morality in the modern world and its institutions, defining for us what is good and true. This being so, says Pinker, we can no longer resort to religion to find meaning or to provide value or naively accept traditional claims for belief in God or moral guidance. Meaning and value are to be defined and guided exclusively by secular humanism and science. There is no transcendent reality; no light breaking through the cracks into our world to illuminate our path. There is only silence and not the silence necessary for us to discern a no-existent transcendent reality, but the silence of absence, Nietzsche’s nothingness. Although Pinker’s target is religion in general, his focus is on whether faith in God is plausible or helpful in our scientific and secular age. As far as I can tell, he has not read much, if any, serious theology that deals with this issue, let alone Bonhoeffer, but in some ways Pinker and Bonhoeffer are on the same page, showing the extent to which the scientific worldview influenced Bonhoeffer. There is no way back to the religious naivete of childhood. In fact, the attempt to do go back, says Bonhoeffer, becomes “only a counsel of despair, a sacrifice made only at the cost of intellectual integrity. It’s a dream, to the tune of ‘Oh, if only I knew the road back, the long road to childhood’s land!’” 62 So, too, for Bonhoeffer, we dare not resort to fitting God into the gaps in our knowledge, thus reducing God to “a cog in our explanatory systems” and turning “the divine reality” into “but one feature of the world we construct for ourselves.” 63 God is not at the end of an emergency phone number. “God wants to be recognized in the midst of our lives, in life and not only in dying, in health and strength and not only in suffering, in action and not only in sin.” For “God is the center of life and doesn’t just “turn up” when we have unsolved problems to be solved.” 64 Indeed, we must live in the world—”etsi deus non daretur.” And, that, Bonhoeffer continues, “is precisely what we do recognize—before God! God himself compels us to recognize it.” That, of course, distinguishes Bonhoeffer from the likes of Pinker. What he is proposing is not some form of “Christian atheism” as some have assumed for it is God who “would have us know that we must live as those who manage their lives without God,” says Bonhoeffer. The same God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34!). The same God who makes us to live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God, and with God, we live without God. 65

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Bonhoeffer’s apparently contradictory assertions should be read through the lens of patristic and High Middle Ages theology in their attempt to say “what can and what cannot be said truthfully about the nature of God,” something which was later forgotten during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. 66 Bonhoeffer is not saying that God’s absence is a mode of God’s presence. Rather, he follows here the via negativa, that God is beyond every affirmation and denial that we make about who God is. Through this “coincidence of opposites “we reach the limitations of the human mind with respect to the divine.” 67 At this point, Bonhoeffer stands in the tradition of apophatic or contemplative Christian mysticism, something that would certainly have made Barth uneasy. But it is indicative of the change in worldview that Bonhoeffer is alluding to when he writes about the influence of science on his thinking in prison. Indeed, it is not uncommon for great scientists to become mystics not as a way of escaping reality but as a way of relating to reality. Had Bonhoeffer lived, he might well have made a major contribution to the current discussion between the relationship between theology and science and not least for this reason. Because just as he opposed “thinking in two spheres” in other areas of life, he surely would have opposed keeping science and theology in two separate silos, the one dealing with “facts” and the other with “values.” But from the perspective of the Incarnation this is no longer possible. For, in Bonhoeffer’s words: “In Jesus Christ the reality of God has entered into the reality of the world.” 68 The reality of God in the reality of the world is not waiting to be discovered by empirical methods; it confronts, questions, unsettles, and makes moral demands on us. The real is what is intelligible and logical but not necessarily what is observable and empirically verifiable. 69 In other words, there is more to reality than meets the eye whether aided by the microscope or telescope. Our thoughts are real even though they are not physical, so also are mathematical equations, or beauty, truth, and goodness. They are ontologically real irrespective of how they are neurologically explained or physically embodied. And they are real because it can be demonstrated that they have a causal effect on physical entities, which also means that any transcendental idea actually or potentially unrelated to physical reality is unreal. Matter only matters because it is related to a transcendent cause larger than itself. In other words, for Christians, the Incarnation, that is, the transcendental Word that was “with God from the beginning and was God” becoming “flesh and dwelling among us” is fundamental to our understanding of who God is in G-d’s-self. That is why, in the development of Christian dogma, the doctrine of the Incarnation leads directly to that of the triune God, the doctrine of the Trinity. Our understanding of who YHWH is is determined by who Christ is for us. As Paul puts it, “he is the image of the invisible God. . . . In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all

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things” (Colossians 1:15f.). But then, “who Christ is really for us today” will influence the way in which we understand who the triune God is. But can we interpret the Trinity in a “non-religious” way? WHAT ABOUT THE TRINITY? We may not, as Bonhoeffer retorted in response to Barth, “like it or lump it” when it comes to the doctrine of the Trinity, but neither can we set it aside. Nor is Bonhoeffer suggesting for a moment that we should. The Christian understanding of who God is, is inescapably trinitarian, even if that word is often misunderstood and the language in which it is traditionally expressed is problematic. But, then, any attempt to describe the meaning and significance of the reality of God whether in G-d’s-self or in relation to creation, history, society, and human experience is inadequate, whether using modern idiom or not. Indeed, the attempt to understand Christological (“truly God and truly human”) and Trinitarian dogma (one God in three personae) in rational terms eventually runs aground because these dogmas are doxological; they point to a mystery beyond what we can grasp by reason to what is only graspable by faith and expressed in worship. We stand with Moses before the “burning bush,” with the Shepherds before the crib, and the women beneath the cross. Bonhoeffer speaks to this when, in his Christmas meditation in 1939 sent to his former Finkenwalde students, he reminds them that “all Christian theology finds its origin in the miracle of miracles, that God became human.” He goes on to say that the task of theology is “not to decode God’s mystery” but “to keep the miracle of God a miracle, to comprehend, defend, and exalt the mystery of God, precisely as mystery.” This, he continues, is what the early church was trying to express in its creeds: “the mystery of the Trinity and the person of Jesus Christ with tireless fervor.” 70 And that mystery, God’s creative and redemptive love for the world, never ceases to be mystery, its character as mystery only deepens the more it is revealed. 71 If the doctrine of the Trinity is an attempt to relate transcendent or ultimate reality to worldly reality in the Incarnate Christ taking form in the world in the power of the Spirit, then Bonhoeffer’s theology is trinitarian from beginning to end. In fact, it is fundamental to his attempt to interpret Christianity in a “non-religious” way precisely because, for Bonhoeffer following Paul, in Christ the reality God and the reality of the world are reconciled. The mystery of God does not refer to some transcendent idea; nor is it located in a separate religious sphere; it is revealed by what God does in the world, whether in liberating slaves from bondage, or reconciling all things to himself. Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the Incarnation in terms of the self-emptying (kenotic) and

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self-giving love of God for the world in Christ crucified, reveals that God’s redemptive love for the world is of the essence of who God is. Further, we can say, that if Bonhoeffer’s thesis that “Christ exists as church-community” is based on revelation not religion, then it implies the sociality of God. God is not a monad remote from the world, nor a society of individual deities, but a communion of “persons” (personae) engaged with the world. And if we humans are created in the “image of God,” then we also are not isolated individuals but designed for community. God’s sociality revealed in Christ existing as community” is, then, the premise of human sociality and the “new humanity” that Christ established through his death and resurrection, and to which the Spirit gives life. In one of his most profound sermons, preached on Trinity Sunday in London in 1934, Bonhoeffer uses the analogy of interpersonal relations to help us understand both the dogma of the triune God and its implications. “The very deepest mystery,” he says, “is when two persons grow so close to each other that they love each other . . . yet the more they love each other and know about each other through love, the more they realize the mystery of their love. Knowledge does not dispel the mystery but only deepens it. That the other person is so close to me, that is the greatest mystery.” 72 With this in mind he goes on to say that we can never make God understandable because all we can do is to “glimpse the mysterious and hidden wisdom of God in all its mystery and hiddenness.” But the world cannot understand this because it “wants to have either a God whom it can calculate and exploit or else no God at all.” The result is that the world “is blind to the mystery of God,” namely that God became poor and lowly, small and weak, out of love for humankind; because God became a human being like us, so that we might become divine; because God came to us, so that we might come to God. God who becomes lowly for our sake, God in Jesus of Nazareth—that is the secret and hidden wisdom . . . God’s glory in lowliness and poverty, in his love for humankind. That God did not remain far above human beings but rather comes close to us and loves us, God’s love and closeness—that is the mystery of God, the holy mystery prepared for those who love God. 73

God does not choose to be remote from the world, then, but transcendent in the world. The mystery of God is embodied but hidden in the world. And this mystery is God’s infinite redemptive love for the world; therefore, to participate in that love is to be led into mystery. Thus, says Bonhoeffer, our “relationship to God is no ‘religious’ relationship to some highest, most powerful and best being imaginable,” that is not, he says, “genuine transcendence.” Rather, “our relationship to God is a new life in ‘being there-for-others,’ through participation in the being of Jesus. The transcendent is not the infinite, unattainable tasks, but the neighbor with-

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in reach in any given situation.” 74 As he told his congregation in Barcelona on the Sunday after Easter in 1928, that is, a month after the sermon referred to at the beginning of this chapter in which he referred to experiencing the transcendent in music: Jesus Christ, God himself, speaks to us from every human being; the other person, this enigmatic, impenetrable You, is God’s claim on us; indeed, it is the holy God in person whom we encounter. God’s claim is made on us in the wanderer on the street, the beggar at the door, the sick person at the door of the church, though certainly no less in every person near to us, in every person with whom we are together daily. . . Now life in the human community acquires its divine meaning. This community itself is one of the forms of God’s revelation. God is with us as long as there is community. The most profound meaning of our ties to social life is that through it we are tied all the more securely to God. 75

That is a “non-religious interpretation” of the triune God, and as such it prepares the way for the next set of questions we must ask of Bonhoeffer: what is a Christian and where in the world is the church in this “world come of age”? NOTES 1. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 454. 2. Letters and Papers from Prison, 426. 3. Eberhard Bethge, “The Nonreligious Scientist and the Confessing Theologian: The Influence of Karl-Friedrich Bonhoeffer on His Younger Brother Dietrich,” in John W. de Gruchy, ed., Bonhoeffer for a New Day: Theology in a Time of Transition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 39–56. 4. Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, “Thoughts of a Non-Theologian on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theological Development,” translated by the WCC Language Service, The Ecumenical Review (Geneva: World Council of Church) xxviii, no. 2 (April 1976), 157. 5. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 37. 6. Andreas Pangritz, Polyphonie Des Lebens: Zu Dietrich Bonhoeffers ‘Theologie der Musik,’ 2nd ed. (Berlin: Orient and Okzident, 2000). 7. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 37. 8. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 205. 9. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 42. 10. Bonhoeffer, Berlin, 432–35. 11. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 56. 12. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 481–82. 13. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 481–82. 14. See John W. de Gruchy, “The Search for Transcendence in an Age of Barbarism: Bonhoeffer, Beethoven, Mann’s “Dr Faustus” and the Spiritual Crisis of the Present Time,” in Festschrift in Honour of Andreas Pangritz, Matthias Grebe, ed. (Kohlhammer, 2020), 195–208. 15. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 517. 16. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 518. 17. Pangritz, Polyphonie de Lebens.

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18. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 279–80. See also Barcelona, Berlin, America, 363, 366–67. 19. Act and Being, 27–28. 20. André Dumas, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian of Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 37. 21. Pangritz, Polyphonie de Lebens. 22. London 1933 – 1935, 356. 23. See London, 356. 24. Letters and Papers from Prison, 332. See Andreas Pangritz, “Point and Counterpoint—Resistance and Submission: Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Theology and Music in Times of War and Social Crisis,” in Lyn Holness and Ralf K. Wüstenberg, eds., Theology in Dialogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 56–58, 67–70. 25. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 462. 26. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 452. 27. Creation and Fall, 25–39. 28. Creation and Fall, 29. 29. Graham Ward, Unimaginable: What We Imagine and What We Can’t (London: I. B. Taurus, 2018). 30. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Mentor Books, 1964); Jonathan Z. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” in Mark C. Taylor, ed., Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269f. 31. Graham Ward, Theology and Religion: Why It Matters (New York: Polity, 2019). 32. Sanctorum Communio, 130. 33. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 358. 34. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 455. 35. Theological Education Underground, 224. 36. Letters and Papers from Prison, 429 37. Weizsäcker, “Thoughts of a Non-Theologian on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theological Development,” 169. 38. Wüstenberg, Faith as Life, 68. 39. Wüstenberg, Faith as Life, 159. 40. Letters and Papers from Prison, 280. 41. Ernst Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 173f. 42. See Letters and Papers from Prison, 650; Ralf K. Wüstenberg, Faith as Life: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Non-Religious Interpretation of the Biblical Message (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 104ff. 43. See Mpolo, 1983; Thomas G. Christensen, An African Tree of Life (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990). 44. Letters and Papers from Prison, 362. 45. See Letters and Papers from Prison, 372. 46. Letters and Papers from Prison, 430. 47. Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 104, n.20. 48. Letters and Papers from Prison, 404. 49. Letters and Papers from Prison, 363–64. 50. Letters and Papers from Prison, 373. 51. Karl Barth, Fragments Grave and Gay (London: Collins, 1971). 52. Anton Zischka, Wissenschaft bricht Monopole (Leipzig: W. Goldman, 1938). 53. Theological Education Underground, 291–92. 54. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 462. 55. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 475. 56. Letters and Papers from Prison, 285. 57. Bethge, “The Nonreligious Scientist and the Confessing Theologian.” Also Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 55. 58. Letters and Papers from Prison, 454.

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59. Letters and Papers from Prison, 405. 60. Letters and Papers from Prison, 532. 61. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress (London: Penguin Random House, 2018), 433. 62. Act and Being, 177 n.62. 63. Barry Harvey, Taking Hold of the Real: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Profound Worldliness of Christianity (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 66. 64. Letters and Papers from Prison, 405. 65. Letters and Papers from Prison, 478–79. 66. Harvey, Taking Hold of the Real, 75. 67. Harvey, Taking Hold of the Real, 76. 68. Ethics, 54. 69. See, Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (London: SCM, 1972), 172. 70. Theological Education Underground, 528–29. 71. See the discussion in Christiane Tietz, “The Mysteries of Knowledge, Sin and Shame,” in Ulrik Nissen, Kirsten Busch Nielsen, and Christian Tietz eds., Mysteries in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 2007), 45; John W. de Gruchy, Led into Mystery: Faith Seeking answers in Life and Death (London: SCM, 2013). 72. London, 361. 73. London, 362. 74. Letters and Papers from Prison, 501. 75. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 494–95.

EIGHT What Is a Christian, and Where Is the Church?

What does a church, a congregation, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life, mean in a religionless world? . . . How do we go about being “religionless-worldly” Christians, how can we be ἐκ-κλησία, those who are called out, without understanding ourselves religiously as privileged, but instead seeing ourselves as belonging wholly to the world? Letter to Bethge April 30, 1944 1 I wonder whether it is possible (it almost seems so today) to regain the idea of the church as providing an understanding of the area of freedom (art, education [Bildung], friendship, play), so that Kierkegaard’s `aesthetic existence’ would not be banished from the church’s sphere, but would be re-established within it? Letter to Renate and Eberhard Bethge, January 23, 1944 2

In the previous chapter, I mentioned that Bonhoeffer’s “non-religious” interpretation of Christianity did not find much empathy among African theologians, mainly due to a different understanding of religion. Bonhoeffer had in mind religion as it had developed in secular Western Europe, which was different from the holistic, world-embracing, and inclusive understanding of African religion. We must remember this throughout this chapter because Bonhoeffer’s understanding of what it means to be a Christian and the church today is an attempt to draw out the conclusions and consequences of what we discussed in the last one. But there is an important qualification. African society, not least South African, has become increasingly divided into two major parts, the one traditional in outlook, the other decidedly modern, progressive, and in119

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creasingly secular. This is not simply a division between those who are black or white; it is a divide that cuts across ethnicities and cultures, paralleling what some describe as the “culture of two economies,” the one governed by the policies and practices of modern business and the other by those of the rural market, even if transported onto the township streets or those in the cities. Traditional societies are conservative, modern ones progressive and, in most countries, coexist uneasily, dividing institutions, communities, and even families. People often live in both worlds at the same time, somehow managing to hold them uneasily together or living schizophrenic lives without necessarily giving that more than a passing thought. Likewise many Christians, not only in Africa, live in two worlds, the one dominated by science, technology, and growing secularism, and the other paradoxically very religious, often fundamentalist and deeply embedded in traditional culture or secular. How these two connect in Africa is not very different from what also prevails wherever these “two cultures” coexist. But not all who live in these separate silos or spheres, especially the more thoughtful younger generation, are or will long be satisfied by such a schizophrenic Christian existence, and it is to this that Bonhoeffer continues to speak about faith today. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO HAVE FAITH? Bonhoeffer’s turn “from phraseology to the real” that, he said, made him a Christian and not just a theologian, happened during his year as a student in New York. Jean Lasserre, a French pastor and fellow student, with whom Bonhoeffer often had deep conversations, played a crucial role in this life-changing transition. In Lasserre, says Bethge, Bonhoeffer “found a man who shared his longing for the concretion of divine grace,” someone who “confronted him with the question of the relationship between God’s word and those who uphold it as individuals and citizens of the contemporary world.” 3 Years later in prison Bonhoeffer remembered the occasion when he and Lasserre discussed what they wanted to do with their lives. Lasserre, reports Bonhoeffer, “said he would like to become a saint.” At the time, Bonhoeffer was “very impressed,” but he disagreed with Lasserre and said that he himself would “like to learn to have faith.” 4 But back then, he did not appreciate the significance of what he had said or recognize the contrast between Lasserre’s desire and his own. Bonhoeffer’s response was not, however, an off-the-cuff remark. He had already spent much time thinking about what faith meant; indeed, the relationship between faith and knowledge was central to his discussion in Act and Being. Was faith in Christ an existential act made without reasoned prior knowledge and careful reflection, or did faith evolve out

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of growing understanding? Drawing on a Lutheran dogmatic tradition, Bonhoeffer described the former as fides directa (direct and implicit faith) and the latter as fides reflecta, that is the faith that arises out of conscious reflection. 5 This distinction, which played an important role in the development of Bonhoeffer’s theology, 6 helps explain his enigmatic response to Lasserre. He not only wanted to be a theologian who thought about faith, but to “have faith” that is, to live and act by faith not just understand it. That was the faith necessary to become a disciple of Christ. Sainthood was undoubtedly an admirable goal, but there and then he needed to take the first step of trust that discipleship required and not more knowledge about the meaning of faith. Lasserre’s counsel helped Bonhoeffer do that and, in the process, to take the Sermon on the Mount more seriously as a basis for living. 7 Only then was he in a position to reflect on what such faith meant and eventually write about it with passion and power in Discipleship. What, then, is such faith? The first disciples who spontaneously “left their nets” to follow Jesus, implicitly trusted him. If they had thought about the long-term implications of their decision, they might not have done so. Their faith was direct and immediate. As Bonhoeffer wrote in Discipleship Following Christ means taking certain steps. The first step, which responds to the call, separates the followers from their previous existence. A call to discipleship thus immediately creates a new situation. . . . The first step puts the follower into the situation of being able to believe. If people do not follow, they remain behind, then they do not learn to believe. Those called must get out of their situations, in which they cannot believe, into a situation in which faith can begin. 8

Such faith is not believing in a doctrine, even in the doctrine of “justification by faith alone” as formulated by St. Paul or Luther, it is faith as an act of obedience, a response to the call to follow Christ. Reducing faith to a doctrine only cheapens God’s saving grace, turning it into a principle or system. “It means forgiveness of sins as a general truth; it means God’s love as merely a Christian idea of God.” But this “denial of God’s living word” leads to “the justification of sin but not of the sinner!” 9 In sum, “cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.” For this reason, Bonhoeffer insisted, “only those who believe obey, and only those who obey believe.” 10 How such faith and obedience are related is the underlying theme of Discipleship or, put differently, the book’s central theological question is how justification by faith and sanctification, that is, becoming holy or a saint, are related. In the New Testament, the word “saint” means a Christian. That is, someone called and set apart by God as a witness to Jesus Christ. But soon the word “saint” was used only with reference to those Christians who were exceptionally dedicated or holy and who demonstrated this by

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their ability perform miracles, and even accept the baptism of martyrdom. Over time, this led to the “cult of the saints” at the center of which was the veneration of the relics of martyrs which, it was believed, had the power to heal, and to dependency on their heavenly intercessions in times of need. In the tenth century, the Catholic Church instituted a process of canonization to regulate this phenomenon because of its abuse, and then in the sixteenth, the Protestant Reformers cast it aside altogether and, following Luther, reinterpreted sanctification in terms of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. But this, too, led to abuse, for Protestants all too easily separated faith from obedient discipleship on the pretext that it undermined depending on faith alone for salvation. But often all they did in the process was to cheapen grace. Bonhoeffer devotes a biblically dense chapter in Discipleship to “The Saints,” that is, to all who faithfully follow Jesus Christ by faith and obedience as his disciples. Significantly, this follows a chapter on “The Body of Christ” because, for Bonhoeffer, being a saint implied being part of the visible church-community. You could not be a solitary saint; even hermits belong to a community. The sanctorum communio precedes the sainthood of its members, making it possible. So, at the conclusion of his chapter on the “‘body of Christ” Bonhoeffer writes about how justification by faith and sanctification within the church are connected, for “those who have faith are being justified; those who are justified are being sanctified; those who are sanctified are being saved on judgment day.” 11 Becoming a saint is a process of formation into the death and resurrection of Christ because says Bonhoeffer, quoting St. Paul, Christ “himself is our sanctification” (1 Corinthians 1:30). While justification . . . liberates believers from their sinful past. Sanctification makes it possible for them to stay close to Christ, to persevere in their faith, and to grow in love. . . . Sanctification is the fulfillment of the will of God. . . . This fulfillment is brought about by God the Holy Spirit, and in it God’s work in us finds its completion. 12

At the time he wrote these words, Bonhoeffer was training students to become pastors in the Confessing Church and therefore witnesses to Christ against a “false church” and demonic ideology. His attempt to recover the biblical relationship between justification and sanctification was not an academic matter. In that Nazi environment, the doctrine of justification by faith alone had become, for German Christians and pious Lutherans, an escape mechanism from obedience to Christ, and sanctification had been reduced to religious conformity and an inner individualistic piety. This made no difference to the way they lived in the world and allowed them to turn a blind eye to injustice. The same happened in South Africa when those Christians engaged in the struggle against apartheid were accused by the religious supporters of apartheid of making obedience to God in the political arena a necessary companion of

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faith in Christ. But, for Bonhoeffer as for us, faith in Christ as savior was meaningless without obedience to Christ as Lord. For Bonhoeffer, then, a Christian was first and foremost a disciple of Christ. That is what he meant when he recalled his own journey from being a theologian to becoming a Christian, and later wrote that “Christianity without the living Jesus Christ remains necessarily a Christianity without discipleship; and a Christianity without discipleship is always a Christianity without Jesus Christ.” 13 But he also insisted that just as the first disciples lived “in the bodily presence of and in community with Jesus,” so do Christians today. In fact, the sanctorum communio today “is even more definite, more complete, and more certain” for us than for the first disciples, “since we live in full community with the bodily presence of the glorified Lord.” 14 And it is our participation in his crucified and risen life that “makes us holy,” because Christ is our sanctification. How, then, are we to understand sanctification in a “non-religious” way? Or, what is “worldly holiness?” WHAT IS “NON-RELIGIOUS” HOLINESS? If in Discipleship Bonhoeffer showed the connection between justification and sanctification for Christians engaged in the life and death church struggle in Germany, the question facing Bonhoeffer in prison became what do they mean and how do they relate to each other in a “world come of age?” As he tells Bethge in a letter of May 5, 1944: “At the moment I am thinking about how the concepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, and sanctification should be reinterpreted in a “worldly” way—in the Old Testament sense and in the sense of John 1:14.” 15 And in a later letter, he expresses some reservations about what he wrote in Discipleship, by reference to his conversation with Lasserre while a student at Union Seminary. 16 These reservations had arisen because back then, so he tells Bethge, he did not fully understand the depth of the distinction between Lasserre’s desire for sainthood and his for faith, thinking that he “could learn to have faith by trying to live something like a saintly life.” Now, reflecting on his subsequent experience in exercising the “freedom of responsibility” as a Christian in the Resistance, Bonhoeffer feels that what he wrote in Discipleship was too focused on being against the world and not sufficiently on living fully and responsibly in and for it. He had also learned that it “is not a religious act that makes someone a Christian, but rather sharing in God’s suffering in the worldly life.” 17 In other words, the act of repentance (he uses the Greek word μετάνοια which means a “change of heart and mind”) on which discipleship is premised, is not primarily about our “own needs, questions, sins, and fears,” that is our own spiritual life or salvation, “but allowing oneself to be pulled into walking the

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path that Jesus walks. . . .” 18 This means, he tells Bethge, “that one only learns to have faith by living in the full this-worldliness of life.” And, he goes on to say: If one has completely renounced making something of oneself—whether it be a saint or a converted sinner or a church leader (a so-called priestly figure!), a just or an unjust person, a sick or a healthy person— then one throws oneself completely into the arms of God, and this is what I call this-worldliness: living fully in the midst of life’s tasks, questions, successes and failures, experiences, and perplexities—then one takes seriously no longer one’s own sufferings but rather the suffering of God in the world. 19

Such “mature worldliness” is not, however, “the shallow and banal thisworldliness of the enlightened, the busy, the comfortable, or lascivious, but the profound this-worldliness, characterized by discipline and the constant knowledge of death and resurrection.” 20 Mature worldliness is not a “non-religious” form of cheap grace but a “non-religious” form of costly discipleship lived in solidarity with those who suffer, as a witness to Christ and prophet of God’s justice and peace. As Bonhoeffer writes in his “Outline for a Book,” our encounter with Jesus Christ reverses what we have taken for granted about our human existence because in following Christ we discover he is always and only “there for others,” and moreover, it is in his being for others that we discern transcendence, that is come to faith in God. Given what we considered in the last chapter about the human desire for transcendence, this is a remarkable statement because it means that our “relationship to God is not, as we have seen, a “religious” relationship to some highest, most powerful, and best being imaginable” but is participating in Jesus’ “being there for others.’” Thus, the transcendent “is not the infinite, unattainable tasks, but the neighbor within reach in any given situation. God in human form!” Indeed, it is only through the liberation from self by “being-for-others” unto death, that “omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence come into being.” In other words, all the so-called attributes of God have been profoundly “humanized” through the Incarnation and concentrated on God’s being for the “other.” 21 An immediate consequence of this “worldly holiness” is that it should also characterize the church. For who the incarnate Christ is for us today not only leads directly to the question, “how then does this Christ become visible in the life of the world?” but already provides the answer. For if God in Christ is “being-for-others” it means that the “church is church only when it is there for others.” This conclusion leads Bonhoeffer to make some radical suggestions, especially for a state church like his own. Among these are that the church should give its property to those in need, and its clergy should be supported by the congregation or their own secular work. Overall:

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The church must participate in the worldly tasks of life in the community—not dominating but helping and serving. It must tell people in every calling [Beruf] what a life with Christ is, what it means “to be there for others.” In particular, our church will have to confront the vices of hubris, the worship of power, envy, and illusionism as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak of moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment.

The truth is that the witness of the church in the world “gains weight and power not through concepts but by example,” and loses it when it fails to embody who Christ truly is 22 that is, by being in the world for “others.” WHERE IN THE WORLD IS THE CHURCH? In Sanctorum Communio Bonhoeffer insisted that Jesus did not establish the church as we have come to know it as a religious institution. What Jesus did was to bring into being “the reality of the new humanity.” Hence his words, quoted before, that in Christ “God established the reality of the church,” that is, “humanity pardoned in Jesus Christ—not religion, but revelation, not religious community, but church. This is what the reality of Jesus Christ means.” 23 Thus, Bonhoeffer’s primary answer to the question: “who is Jesus Christ?” is that he is the one in whom God has brought a “new humanity” to birth. In other words, the reality of Christ and the reality of the church belong together, not the church as a religious community or institution but the church as a “worldly” reality, a “new humanity.” Obviously, the next question is this: what is the relationship between this “new humanity” and the church as a religious community or institution? Or, to put it differently, where does the church as the “new humanity” become concretely visible in the life of the world? Where, and when, is the church the “true church?” Is it the Lutheran or the Catholic Church, or maybe one of the Free Churches as debated and contested since the Reformation? Early on, Bonhoeffer considered each of these options in terms of his own participation, but as the years passed, he became less and less interested in such confessional differences important as they may have been. But, during the Kirchenkampf, the question of the “true church” was at the forefront of Bonhoeffer’s theological concerns, as reflected in his controversial essay “On the Question of Church Communion,” 24 which evoked heated discussion among his students and colleagues. 25 Who belongs to the church? Who no longer belongs to it? That is the question. The church reflects on its own boundaries. Why? Because its call to salvation is not being heard and believed; instead, it encounters limits. 26

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These questions led Bonhoeffer to respond: The church does not determine its own boundaries and scope. Hence the determination of its boundaries will always be different. Because no theoretical knowledge is available for determining that scope, that is, because such knowledge must always be acquired anew, there are also no theoretical norms according to which membership in the church might be determined. 27

Bonhoeffer followed this with an audacious, some said outrageous, claim based on the ancient saying Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The “question of church communion is the question of the community of salvation” and, therefore, whoever “knowingly separates himself from the Confessing Church in Germany separates himself from salvation.” In fact, he says, those “who separate the question of the Confessing Church from the question of their own salvation have not comprehended that the struggle of the Confessing Church is the struggle for their salvation.” 28 This provocative claim, like Luther’s naming the pope the Anti-Christ, was the necessary “fighting talk” of a prophet appropriate to the moment. As Helmut Gollwitzer, a fellow pastor in the Confessing Church, pointed out, this was not a legal statement, but an act of confession calling on Christians to obey Christ in a situation of crisis. 29 Later, in his Ethics, what bothered Bonhoeffer was how we can reconceive the “true church” in a post-Christian era, that is, not just when the Confessing Church was being attacked by the “false” Reichskirche, but when the church seems irrelevant and the world pays little attention to its message? This he did in terms of “Christian formation.” Just as being a Christian meant becoming conformed to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ in the life of the world, so the true church is where Christ takes form in the world. “The church,” Bonhoeffer writes, “is the place where Jesus Christ’s taking form is proclaimed and where it happens.” 30 Where, then, in the world is the church which makes the “new humanity” in Christ visible? Is it possible to understand the Church as a “new humanity” beyond ecclesiastical boundaries? While thinking about this question Bonhoeffer received a letter from Bethge which prompted him to share some of his thoughts that were occupying him at the time about “unconscious Christianity.” This related back to the old Lutheran dogmatic distinction between “a fides directa from a fides reflexa.” 31 This originally had to do with infant baptism; if baptism requires faith in Christ, is it possible for infants to believe without consciously knowing that they do so? But now Bonhoeffer was thinking about those secular compatriots who lived and acted as if they were Christians but who, in conscience, could not participate in the life of the church or respect its dogma. This stood in stark contrast to those Christians who said they believed in Christ but did not act as though they did. In other words, were not those who had distanced themselves from the church because its life and mes-

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sage lacked integrity, more Christian than those who remained within it? If so, what did this mean for our understanding of where the true church becomes visible in the world? After the end of the Second World War, the Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner, one of the theologians at Vatican II who helped draft Gaudium et Spes (the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World), developed a similar understanding in responding to the same question, though he named it “anonymous Christianity.” 32 Much debate ensued in response to both Bonhoeffer’s and Rahner’s formulations, ranging from those who insisted that Christians are only those who are baptized and who publicly confess their faith in Christ, to those who argue that labeling people “unconscious” or “anonymous” Christians patronizes those who have no desire to be regarded as Christian. But Bonhoeffer’s formulation was neither meant to undermine conscious Christian confession or be patronizing. He was grappling with a problem of which he was painfully aware; there were honest secular people who are more Christian in their behavior and actions than many people who claim to be Christian. They might even want to be Christian but in all conscience cannot be. Bonhoeffer described his feelings about this in one of his letters to Bethge when he referred to what he called his “Christian instinct,” which frequently drew him “more toward non-religious people than toward the religious.” He was sure this was not because he wanted to evangelize them but rather because he felt a “brotherly” affinity that he did not feel with religious people. He goes on to say that although he often feels reluctant to talk to religious people about God “because somehow it doesn’t ring true,” and even makes him feel “a bit dishonest,” he can speak with non-religious people about God and do so “quite calmly, as a matter of course.” 33 Whether using the term “unconscious Christians” is helpful or not, we must not lose sight of Bonhoeffer’s real concern, namely, to discern where and how the “new humanity” established in Christ is embodied in the life of the world. Static creedal formulae that describe the church cannot adequately answer that question because the way in which Christ takes form in the life of the world is a dynamic work in progress. A prime example from the New Testament is that although the Church came into being at Pentecost, it was only later that it “was led by the Spirit” to embrace Gentiles as well as Jews based on the growing conviction that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile.” 34 Already in that short space of time the boundaries of the church changed radically, and so they continue to do so as our understanding of Christ deepens and expands. In sum, if Christ exists only for others, so too does the church as it encounters the “other.” In other words, the “true church” is not legally constituted but constituted by the gospel. As such, it does not have the right to determine its boundaries because these are drawn in response to its proclamation of Christ. So, then, if in confessing Christ against Nazism

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“justice, truth, science, art, culture, humanity, freedom, and patriotism, after long wanderings” were finding “their way back to their origin,” 35 the “true” church, be it ever so few in number, became an inclusive “model of freedom” in a time when freedom had been destroyed in the life of Germany. HOW CAN THE CHURCH BE AN AREA OF FREEDOM? In thinking about the future of the church in a “world come of age” Bonhoeffer made a further intriguing comment that has often been overlooked. In a letter to Renate and Eberhard Bethge, he wondered whether today it is only from the concept of the church that we can regain the understanding of the sphere of freedom (art, education, friendship, play). This means that “aesthetic existence” (Kierkegaard) is not to be banished from the church’s sphere; rather, it is precisely within the church that it would be founded anew. If this could be achieved, it would mean that the church would provide an “area of freedom (art, education [Bildung], friendship, play)?” 36

I referred to this intriguing question previously in the book; the time has come to consider more fully what Bonhoeffer had in mind. Bonhoeffer borrowed the term “aesthetic existence” from Kierkegaard who was a major source of inspiration when he wrote Discipleship. 37 At that time most Kierkegaard scholars interpreted his thought in relation to three stages in his life. The first was when he fully embraced an aesthetic lifestyle; the second was the ethical, when his chief concern was the “moral life”;” and the third was the religious stage when he became a disciple of Christ. In terms of this scheme, Kierkegaard’s development can be described as a turning away from the aesthetic to the ethical, and then, in a leap of faith, to the religious. 38 Bonhoeffer’s development seems to be the reverse of Kiekergaard’s. His consciously Christian life began with an act of faith, then he developed a growing ethical commitment during the Kirchenkampf, and finally embraced the aesthetic in prison. But this is too simplistic. After all, Kierkegaard did not turn his back on the aesthetic (only on aestheticism); he subsumed it within the ethical and religious stages of life. And Bonhoeffer’s late espousal of Kierkegaard’s “aesthetic existence” does not mean, as we have seen, that he had no previous aesthetic sensitivity, quite the contrary, or that he embraced aestheticism, any more than he did moralism, or cheap grace. 39 In fact, Bonhoeffer remained a disciple of Christ even as he turned to embrace the world, and then made the proposal to recover “aesthetic existence” within the life of the church—something he had not previously integrated into his faith and ethical commitment since deciding to be-

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come a theologian rather than a musician. 40 This meant, like Kierkegaard, beginning to “live poetically.” So, it is not surprising that it was in prison that he began to express his deepest thoughts in poetry. 41 If the pre-Cartesian worldview of the Middle Ages helped Bonhoeffer envisage the recovery of “aesthetic existence,” it was the Old Testament that provided him with the basis for an “earthy” style of being Christian in the world. Unlike Kierkegaard, to whom he critically refers in this regard, for Bonhoeffer the Old Testament testified to God’s blessing on “the whole of earthly life.” 42 The cross, or “dying with Christ,” did not lead away from living fully in the world, in suffering rather than in blessing, but to the discovery that suffering and blessing belong together in the midst of the world. 43 Christ not only calls us to follow him to the death but also gives us life to the full in every respect as we do so. This includes, as Bethge put it in a letter to Bonhoeffer, “enjoying the good things of this earth with a good conscience.” 44 Bonhoeffer’s affirmation of Kierkegaard’s “aesthetic existence” and his use of the Old Testament also serve an apologetic purpose, namely to inform Bonhoeffer’s response to Nietzsche’s rejection of Christianity as hostile to life. 45 This brought to a conclusion his debate with Nietzsche that began when he was a student. Hence his affirmation of the body and the earth; his “theology of the cross” in which joy is only discovered through struggle and suffering; and his celebration of human freedom and life. 46 But it is also seen in his rejection of Nietzsche’s crude alternatives, as if the only concepts of beauty were the “Apollonian” or the “Dionysian,” 47 just as he rejected the dualisms of Gnosticism and modernity, the separation of creation and redemption, body and spirit, earth and heaven, faith and politics, prayer and action, rationality and experience. The Christian life is inevitably a fragmented existence in the penultimate, but in being centered in Christ it already anticipates the wholeness of the ultimate. To express this, Bonhoeffer, in a wonderfully evocative move, turns to musical metaphors, and what he called his “little invention.” 48 But what is this “little invention,” and what is its significance for being a Christian today? WHAT WAS BONHOEFFER’S “LITTLE INVENTION”? In his seminal study on Bonhoeffer and music, The Polyphony of Life, Andreas Pangritz remarks that polyphony was “conceived by Bonhoeffer as a musical description of a Christian Life” because it did “not mean harmony without conflict or dissonance, but rather “includes the perception of light and shadow, of love and suffering, of longing and passion amidst social crisis and catastrophe.” That is, “it contains both aspects of hope: hopeful resistance against fate and submission to God’s will, full of hope as well.” 49

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Bonhoeffer coins the word Fündlein to describe this use of polyphony. This unusual word has been translated into English as “hobbyhorse,” 50 but it is better translated as “little discovery” or “little invention,” either of which would be appropriate. If we go with “little invention,” as John Morris has suggested, it “is another musical allusion, namely to Bach’s Two- and Three-Part Inventions, those beginner’s introductions to counterpoint known by every budding pianist.” 51 It would not be surprising, then, if Bonhoeffer recalled this from his earlier life because now life had become so fragmentary that it was difficult to hold everything together and to keep the faith. What a liberation it was, he tells to Bethge, “to be able to think and to hold on to these many dimensions of life in our thoughts.” In fact, he has come to see that dislodging “people from their one-track thinking” is a “preparation for” faith, and paradoxically, it is “faith itself that makes multidimensional life possible.” 52 In saying this, Bonhoeffer is reshaping his earlier understanding of faith because now faith becomes the means to live a multidimensional life in adverse circumstances, namely war, imprisonment, and separation, when everything seems to be falling apart, and yet to somehow remain joyful, hopeful, and even happy and in love. But how does faith make this possible? His answer comes to the fore in a letter to Bethge in May 1944 with reference to their enforced separations, he from Maria, and Eberhard on duty in Italy from Renate and his young son. Bonhoeffer speaks about the danger in any passionate erotic love, namely losing “the polyphony of life.” “God, the Eternal,” he says, “wants to be loved with our whole heart, not to the detriment of earthly love or to diminish it, but as a sort of cantus firmus to which the other voices of life resound in counterpoint.” 53 So, at this moment in his life with calamity on every hand, Bonhoeffer returns to his knowledge of music to help him understand that faithfulness to Christ enables rather than prevents living life fully in the world. In doing so, he comes to a new appreciation of Beethoven, something sparked off by recalling Bach’s Art of Fugue. 54 He also now sees that Beethoven’s greatness in perfecting polyphony was made possible because Bach had developed the cantus firmus to the point where this could happen. So it is, that faith in Christ—the cantus firmus—makes it possible to live a polyphonous life without it falling apart in disarray and despair. It is within this context that Bonhoeffer makes two significant observations about the Song of Songs, which is, at one and the same time, a love song and a profoundly Christological statement. He writes: Where the cantus firmus is clear and distinct, a counterpoint can develop as mightily as it wants. The two are “undivided and yet distinct,” as the Definition of Chalcedon says, like the divine and human natures in Christ. Is that perhaps why we are so at home with polyphony in music, why it is important to us, because it is the musical image of this Christological fact and thus also our vita christiana? 55

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So, Bonhoeffer tells Bethge to hold fast to a good and clear cantus firmus, for only then will “this polyphony give your life wholeness, and you know that no disaster can befall you as long as the cantus firmus continues.” 56 Picking up on the same theme in another letter to Bethge in May 1944, Bonhoeffer records the reactions of his fellow prisoners and their warders to a bombing raid and the menaces of life, and comments on how they miss out on the fullness of life as everything dissolves into fragments. But Christianity, says Bonhoeffer, puts us “into many different dimensions of life at the same time; in a way we accommodate God and the whole world within us. . . . Life isn’t pushed back into a single dimension, but is kept multidimensional, polyphonic.” 57 If “our life is only the most remote reflection of such a fragment, in which, even for a short time, the various themes gradually accumulate and harmonize with one another and in which the great counterpoint is sustained from beginning to end.” So, then “it is not for us, either, to complain about this fragmentary life of ours, but rather even to be glad of it.” 58 “Christianity,” Bonhoeffer writes, “puts us into many different dimensions of life at the same time; we make room in ourselves, to some extent, for God and the whole world.” 59 So, where Christ the “the cantus firmus is clear and plain,” Bonhoeffer says, “the counterpoint can be developed to its limits.” 60 Indeed, the Christian life is a blending of the bodily and the spiritual, or eros and agape, without their confusion. This is very different from the kind of asceticism normally associated with saints, of the pain of prophets who, like Jeremiah, had to forgo happiness in the interest of faithfulness. As Bonhoeffer said in Discipleship disciples have to renounce happiness in taking up the cross. 61 Something which, at that time, meant that he had to forgo any thoughts of marriage. But is that necessarily so for the Christian? Does faithful discipleship exclude everything the world calls happiness? Not surprisingly, Bonhoeffer, recently engaged to Maria, now thinks otherwise! Indeed, it is striking how often the words “happiness” or “happy” (Glück) occur in Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, often in conjunction with misfortune, disaster, unhappiness, or calamity (Unglück), as in Bonhoeffer’s poem “Fortune and Calamity.” 62 But for Bonhoeffer it has become clear that the two belong together, suffering and blessing, calamity and fortune, unhappiness and happiness. This is part of the polyphony of life made possible in Christ. So, in writing to Bethge about the need to recover “aesthetic existence” in the life of the church, he makes the remarkable statement to which I referred at the outset: “who in our time could, for example, lightheartedly make music, nurture friendship, play, and be happy? Certainly not the “ethical” person, but only the Christian!” 63 And then, some months later he writes: “You think that the Bible does not say much about health, happiness [Glück], strength [Kraft], and so on.” But that, he says, is certainly not true in the Old Testament where God’s blessing brings happiness,

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and we should not over-spiritualize the New Testament to think that it is somehow different. 64 The question then arises, how does the church as an “area of freedom” not lose its identity as a prophetic and disciple community in the life of the world? How does it remain faithful to Christ the cantus firmus who makes the polyphonous life possible? HOW DOES THE CHURCH REMAIN FAITHFUL TO CHRIST IN THE WORLD? If the church takes form in the world by becoming an inclusive “church for others” and an “area of freedom,” how does it retain its identity as a community of saints? How does the church remain the church when fully immersed in the life and struggles of the world, providing hospitality to all who seek refuge within it? Or, to use Jesus’ analogy, how do Christians remain the “salt of the earth” without “losing their saltiness?” (Matthew 5:13), an analogy to which Bonhoeffer refers in Discipleship when he writes about the “visible church-community,” and says that that it “must remain salty for its own sake, as well as for the sake of the earth.” 65 So, he asks from prison: how do we go about being “religionless-worldly” Christians, how can we be ἐκ-κλησία, those who are called out, without understanding ourselves religiously as privileged, but instead seeing ourselves as belonging wholly to the world? 66

To enable “non-religious Christianity” and “mature worldliness” retain its “saltiness” it is necessary to develop a spirituality adequate to the task. But what does worship and prayer mean, in a religionless world? In response, Bonhoeffer retorts: is this not where the “arcane discipline” [Arkandisziplin], or the difference . . . between the penultimate and the ultimate, take on fresh significance? 67 In his prison poem “Stations on the Way to Freedom,” Bonhoeffer tells us that it is only through discipline that we learn the “secret of freedom.” If you set out to seek freedom, then you must learn above all things discipline of your soul and your senses, lest your desires and then your limbs perchance should lead you now hither, now yon. Chaste be your spirit and body, subject to yourself completely, in obedience seeking the goal that is set for your spirit. Only through discipline does one learn the secret of freedom. 68

Christian freedom is not the absence of discipline. To live life fully, freely and responsibly in the world, that is live the polyphonous life requires holding fast to the cantus firmus, and that only becomes possible through practicing what Bonhoeffer calls the “arcane” or “hidden discipline.” Bonhoeffer is referring to the ancient practice in the post-Constantinian church whereby the mysteries of Christian faith (creeds, liturgy, eu-

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charist) were protected against profanation. For as the church opened-up to the world it ran the risk of becoming conformed the dominant cultural values of the day. This led to the rise of monasticism when some Christians retreated to the desert in Egypt and Syria to remain faithful to Christ. They were no longer fleeing from political persecution but from a Christianity that had lost its integrity. As Bonhoeffer wrote in Discipleship, “Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.” 69 But eventually monasticism also became a pious escape from the world and subject to abuse. This led Luther to renounce his monastic vows and launch the Reformation, “the sharpest attack that had been launched on the world since early Christianity. . . . Following Jesus now had to be lived out in the midst of the world. . . . Complete obedience to Jesus’ commandments had to be carried out in the daily world of work.” 70 But during the Kirchenkampf, Bonhoeffer wondered whether it had not become necessary to revive monasticism because the church in Germany had sold its soul to German culture and nationalism. This was part of the motivation behind his establishment of the “House of Brethren” at Finkenwalde, which he describes in Life Together, even though there were some for whom the experiment was “unevangelical,” 71 smelling as Barth said, of “monasticism!” 72 But if the church was to “exist for others” in a “world come of age” and not surrender its soul to secularism it needed the “secret discipline” as a counterpoint. 73 This would require prayer and worship, meditation on Scripture, the eucharist, and the affirmation of the creed and the mysteries of redemption, in such a way that they were not simply thrust on the world in a “take it or leave it” manner. Only in this way could Christian faith and the life of the church be anchored in the cantus firmus, that is “in Christ,” a life “hid with God in Christ,” as Paul put it (Colossians 3:3). One of the most powerful passages in Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison is found in the sermon he wrote for the baptism of his godson, Dietrich Bethge. In many ways, this sermon and the following passage, sums up everything that I have said in this chapter about being a Christian and the church in the world today. Bonhoeffer wrote: “You are being baptized today as a Christian. All those great and ancient words of the Christian proclamation will be pronounced over you, and the command of Jesus Christ to baptize will be carried out, without your understanding any of it.” He then says: But we too are being thrown back all the way to the beginnings of our understanding. What reconciliation and redemption mean, rebirth and Holy Spirit, love for one’s enemies, cross and resurrection, what it means to live in Christ and follow Christ, all that is so difficult and remote that we hardly dare speak of it anymore. In these words and actions handed down to us, we sense something totally new and revolutionary, but we cannot yet grasp it and express it.

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However, says Bonhoeffer, because the church “has been fighting during these years only for its self-preservation, as if that were an end in itself. . . . it has become incapable of bringing the word of reconciliation and redemption to humankind and to the world.” The result is that this word has lost its power. Instead: “we can be Christians today in only two ways, through prayer and in doing justice among human beings. All Christian thinking, talking, and organizing must be born anew out of that prayer and action.” 74 Bonhoeffer’s remark about the need to combine prayer and the struggle for justice has resonated across the world among those who seek a spirituality that can support their involvement in social and political action. This was certainly true during the church struggle against apartheid in South Africa when it became apparent to those of us involved that without an adequate spirituality it would be impossible to continue. No one knew or demonstrated this more than Desmond Tutu who, when he became Archbishop of Cape Town in 1986 during a brutal period of repression, established the Centre for Christian Spirituality which, ever since, has provided the resources and encouragement to do precisely what Bonhoeffer said had to be done. 75 Tutu acknowledged Bonhoeffer’s influence in this regard when, in commending the new edition of Letters and Papers from Prison he said that this volume inspired many of us across South Africa and the world, for in its pages we meet Bonhoeffer at his most vulnerable and human, but also as a man of faith and prayer. Through his profound reflections on what it means to be a Christian he guides us into the twenty-first century. 76 The question then, is how does prayer and working for justice come together, or how do faith and politics mix? NOTES 1. Letters and Papers from Prison, 364. 2. Letters and Papers from Prison, 268. 3. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 154. 4. Letters and Papers from Prison, 485. 5. Act and Being, 152–62, 174–77. 6. Feil, The Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 9–10, 28–29. 7. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 152–54, 389–92; Green, Introduction to Barcelona, Berlin, America, 26–27, n.26. 8. Discipleship, 61–62. 9. Discipleship, 43–44. See his lectures on “The History of Twentieth Century Systematic Theology” in Berlin in the Winter Semester of 1931–1932, Bonhoeffer, Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 213–17. 10. As translated in The Cost of Discipleship (London: SCM, 1959), 54. 11. Ethics, 280. 12. Discipleship, 259–60. 13. Discipleship, 59. 14. Discipleship, 213. 15. Letters and Papers from Prison, 373.

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16. Letters and Papers from Prison, 542. 17. Letters and Papers from Prison, 480. 18. Letters and Papers from Prison, 480. 19. Letters and Papers from Prison, 486. 20. Discipleship, 369. 21. Letters and Papers from Prison, 501. 22. Letters and Papers from Prison, 503–4. 23. Sanctorum Communio, 153. 24. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 656–78. 25. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 678–97. 26. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 660. 27. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 660. 28. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 675. 29. Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 680–85. 30. Ethics, 102. 31. Letters and Papers from Prison, 489. 32. See Geffrey B. Kelly, “‘Unconscious Christianity’ and the ‘Anonymous Christian’ in the Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Rahner.” Philosophy and Theology. 9: 117–49. 1995; “Karl Rahner,” in ed. Geffrey B. Kelly, The Making of Modern Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 254–67. 33. Letters and Papers from Prison, 366. 34. Acts 10; Ephesians 2:11–22 35. Ethics, 132. 36. Letters and Papers from Prison, 268. 37. See Discipleship, 7–16. 38. Letters and Papers from Prison, 268, n. 23–24. See Discipleship, 7–16. On the relation relationship of the three stages see Sylvia Walsh, Living Poetically: Kierkegaard’s Existential Aesthetics (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994). 39. Discipleship, 34f., 92, 260. 40. An early exception being Theodore A. Gill, “Bonhoeffer as Aesthete,” a paper delivered at the American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, November 1975. Bonhoeffer Archive, Union Theological Seminary. 41. Jürgen Henkys, Geheimnis der Freiheit: Die Gedichte Dietrich Bonhoeffers Aus der Haft (Guttersloh: Gütersloher Verlag, 2005). 42. Letters and Papers from Prison, 549. 43. See Letters and Papers from Prison, 492 n. 9. 44. Letters and Papers from Prison, 268. 45. Ethics, 295. 46. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 366–67. 47. Letters and Papers from Prison, 366. 48. Letters and Papers from Prison, 445. 49. Pangritz, “Point and Counterpoint,” 42. 50. Letters and Papers from Prison, 445. 51. “Introduction” to Andreas Pangritz, Polyphony of Life, edited by John W. de Gruchy and John Morris, and translated by Robert Steiner (Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2020). 52. Letters and Papers from Prison, 405. 53. Letters and Papers from Prison, 393–94. 54. Letters and Papers from Prison, 306. 55. Letters and Papers from Prison, 394. 56. Letters and Papers from Prison, 394. 57. Letters and Papers from Prison, 405. 58. Letters and Papers from Prison, 306. 59. Letters and Papers from Prison, 310. 60. Letters and Papers from Prison, 303. 61. Discipleship, 103, 109.

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62. Letters and Papers from Prison, 441–42. 63. Letters and Papers from Prison, 268–69. 64. Letters and Papers from Prison, 491–92. 65. Discipleship, 111. 66. Letters and Papers from Prison, 364–65. 67. Letters and Papers from Prison, 364–65. 68. Letters and Papers from Prison, 512. 69. Discipleship, 46–47. 70. Discipleship, 48. 71. Ethics, 20. 72. Barth, Fragments Grave and Gay, 121. 73. George Pattison, Kierkegaard and the Crisis of Faith (London: SPCK, 1997), 92. 74. Letters and Papers from Prison, 389. 75. Silence and Solidarity: Celebrating 30 Years of the Centre for Christian Spirituality, ed. Laurie Gaum and Sallie Argent (Wellington, RSA: Centre for Christian Spirituality, 2017). 76. Commendation on cover.

NINE How Do Faith and Politics Mix?

Today immensely important things will be decided by whether we Christians have strength enough to show the world that we are not dreamers and are not those who walk with their heads in the clouds, that we don’t just let things come and go as they are, that our faith is really not the opium that lets us stay content in the midst of an unjust world, but that we, especially because we set our minds on things that are above, only protest all the more tenaciously and resolutely on this earth. Sermon on Colossians 3:1–4, June 19, 1932, Berlin 1 Those who would abandon the earth, who would flee the crisis of the present, will lose all the power still sustaining them by means of eternal, mysterious powers. The earth remains our mother just as God remains our father, and only those who remain true to the mother are placed by her into the father’s arms. Earth and its distress—that is the Christian’s Song of Songs. “Basic Questions of a Christian Ethic,” February 1929, Barcelona 2

The political responsibility of the church and its members has been debated from the beginning of the Christian movement when it struggled to survive and expand within the Roman Empire. But by the fourth century it had developed from being a persecuted minority to becoming the official religion of the empire. That migration to what eventually became known as Christendom has shaped the course of both world and church history ever since. But during the twentieth century, Christendom went into decline hastened, not least, as a result of the First World War in which the “Christian” nations of Europe sought to destroy each other. But, as Bonhoeffer noted in his essay “Heritage and Decay” in his Ethics, the seeds of Christendom’s demise were planted much earlier during the 137

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crusades, the inquisition, and the Reformation when its unity was destroyed. 3 Ever since, Christians and churches of various confessions have sought ways appropriate to their ethos to relate to the state and engage public life, whether in lands formerly within Christendom or further afield as missionary expansion planted the church in other countries, each with its own political system. South Africa, through colonialism and extensive missionary outreach, was drawn into the sphere of Christendom, especially as redefined by the Reformation and, thus, inherited its structures for relating church and state and governing Christian involvement in politics. In fact, the advocates of apartheid regarded South Africa as a bastion of Christendom. But the ending of that regime and the adoption of the new democratic Constitution in 1996 meant that South Africa became a secular state even though 70 percent of its population claimed Christian allegiance. This has meant that the relationship between church and state and the political role of Christians has had to be renegotiated and remains contested in what was already, since colonial times, a multicultural and religiously plural country. South Africa is not alone in having to find its way in a post-Christendom, post-Christian world. Throughout what was formerly Christendom, even in countries which have long had an established church, as in Britain, or where, as in the United States, the boundaries between church and state, so firmly established, have become blurred as secularization, multiculturalism, and political and ecclesiastical interests have interacted and often collided. Bonhoeffer’s commentary on the heritage and decay of Christendom, which anticipates much of what has happened since he wrote, is, therefore, an important text in our conversation. But first we need to recognize that engaging Bonhoeffer on political issues is a complex exercise. What is clear, as Michael DeJonge reminds us, is that while Bonhoeffer “did not separate theological and ethical-political issues” he did differentiate between them. 4 How he did so, and what this implies for us, is the central question behind this chapter. IN WHAT SENSE IS CHRISTIANITY POLITICAL? In November 1932, shortly before Hitler came to power, Bonhoeffer gave a lecture in Berlin titled “Thy kingdom come! The Prayer of the Church for God’s kingdom on earth.” 5 His opening words must have taken some hearers by surprise. It is not only secularists who “no longer believe in God’s kingdom,” he said, but also us Christians, for only those “who love the Earth and God as one, can believe in God’s kingdom.” 6 Bonhoeffer had already said as much when, in his lecture on Christian ethics in Barcelona in February 1929, he declared that only those who remain true

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to our mother, the Earth, and only those who respond to the “Earth in its distress” will know the embrace of God. 7 Indeed, he went on to say: If we are to pray for the coming of the kingdom, we can pray for it only as those wholly on the Earth. Praying for the kingdom cannot be done by the one who tears himself away from his own misery and that of others, who lives unattached and solely in the pious hours of his “own salvation. 8

These words have obvious significance as a starting point for developing a contemporary eco-theology that addresses the urgent challenges associated with climate change and, as such, are important in thinking about the world coming generations will inherit. 9 Indeed, if the church today is at all concerned about how future generations will live, it has no other option than to become involved in the struggle against the abuse of the earth. More generally, as Bonhoeffer said, we who “set our minds on things that are above” should “protest all the more tenaciously and resolutely on this earth.” 10 We have a God-given mandate to care for the earth and, therefore, to be mindful of the way in which the world is governed. On this issue, theology and politics connect and sometimes collide, even if we must always differentiate between them. At the same time, insofar as theology has to do with the earth and our common life in the world, it is inescapably political in character. But in what sense, is Christianity and theology political? Christendom was based on a political theology in which church and state were in unison, as was the political theology of the German Christians and that of the advocates of apartheid. For this reason, “political theology” carries negative connotations and, as such, it was not a term that Bonhoeffer would have used in any positive sense. But he would agree that theology is inevitably political because it has to do with our life together in society, whether locally, nationally, or globally. In contemporary terms, we could speak of Bonhoeffer as a “public” rather than a “political” theologian, if we understand “public theology” as defined by Duncan Forrester, a Scottish theologian who was deeply influenced by his experience of doing theology in South Africa. Forrester helpfully distinguishes between the magisterial approach of “political theology” and liberationist “public theology.” The magisterial approach, traditionally adopted within Christendom, is when the Church “speaks down” to the government or the public sphere, making authoritative pronouncements on the issues of the day. Or when it serves the interests of political power. Liberationist “public theology,” by contrast, listens to the voice of the disempowered “other,” makes that the basis of public pronouncements, speaks humbly as witness to the servant Christ, and participates with the oppressed in their struggle for justice. It is from this perspective that its prophetic witness arises. 11 In a democratic environment I would call this prophetic public theology rather than liberationist. 12

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Such a theology is motivated by the prophetic vision of a just and peaceful society and not just the defeat of tyranny. The model of government in ancient Israel was contested, but there can be no doubt that much of the narrative of the Old Testament is political and often a contest among magisterial, liberationist, and prophetic theologies. After all, the story of Israel begins when God brings a new nation into being by liberating slaves from bondage, and much of the rest of the narrative is about their subsequent conquest and occupation of land, the development of laws and institutions, the rise and fall of kings, the forging of relationships with other nations, and innumerable conflicts about resources. This is not only the stuff of politics, but it is also the context within which Israelite faith in God develops, prophets arise, temple worship occurs, a priestly class emerges, and theologies of creation, covenant, providence, and redemption are expressed in songs, sagas, and scriptures. Much of the theological controversy in the Bible is about whether YHWH is more powerful than other gods, how G-d acts, and whether G-d is a God of national interests and war or of justice for the poor and peace with neighboring peoples. As a result, the political character of God is hotly contested by kings, prophets, and priests; but it is taken for granted that God is somehow involved in the political struggles of Israel and the surrounding nations. The biblical God is certainly not absent from the terrain because the earth belongs to God. That is why Jesus taught his disciples to pray “your kingdom come on earth.” In short, the biblical narrative is essentially about the exercise of God’s power and the constant prophetic reminder to those who rule that they do so as God’s deputies in order that God’s reign of justice and peace be established and known among the nations. So, toward the end of his lecture, “Thy kingdom come!” Bonhoeffer speaks about the interrelated roles of church and state as God’s deputies: The kingdom of God exists in our world exclusively in the duality of church and state. Both are necessarily linked to each other. Every attempt to control the other ignores this relationship of God’s kingdom on Earth. Every prayer for the coming of the kingdom to us that does not have in mind both church and state is either otherworldliness or secularism. It is, in any case, a lack of faith in the kingdom of God.” 13

Yet the roles of church and state, although complementary, are distinct. “The ministry of the church is to witness to Christ’s resurrection from the dead, to the end of the law of death of this world under the curse, and to the power of God in the new creation.” Whereas “the state recognizes and maintains the order of preservation of life and insofar as it accepts responsibility for preserving this world from collapse and for exercising its authority here against the destruction of life. Not the creation of new life, but preservation of existing life is its ministry.” 14

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This relationship between church and state in which their respective roles are clearly defined was constructed within the framework of Christendom but specifically articulated at the time of the Reformation by both Luther and Calvin and their respective followers. But those on the radical wing of the Reformation, collectively if not always helpfully labeled as Anabaptists, refused to accept the presuppositions of Christendom. Instead they sought to return to pre-Christendom Christianity and especially to the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. And there is good reason for us to do the same today in this post-Christendom era of secular states and religiously plural nations. But can we speak of the “politics of Jesus,” and if so, does Bonhoeffer help us to do so? WHAT ABOUT THE POLITICS OF JESUS? John Howard Yoder was arguably the most persuasive and articulate advocate of modern-day Anabaptist convictions. Certainly, his The Politics of Jesus 15 was influential in shaping my own understanding of Christian political engagement in conversation with Bonhoeffer, as it also was for Stanley Hauerwas, one of the leading Christian ethicists of our time. Hauerwas even admits that his “presentation of Bonhoeffer makes Bonhoeffer sound very much like Yoder,” 16 and with good reason. Bonhoeffer was even accused of being too much of an Anabaptist when he wrote Discipleship, and it is salient that the book eventually received a warm reception from many within that tradition in North America. 17 Earlier I referred to Yoder’s critique of Bonhoeffer’s Christology in which he shows that although Bonhoeffer was not an Anabaptist, he was moving in an Anabaptist direction seldom acknowledged by his interpreters. This had to do specifically with Bonhoeffer’s interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount in Discipleship. But, despite important Anabaptist affinities, Bonhoeffer was not an Anabaptist, more specifically, although he became a pacifist, his pacifism was, in the end (and that’s what counts), not absolute. Indeed, some of my most heated conversations about Bonhoeffer’s political witness have been with those in the Anabaptist tradition, including Yoder himself. So, then, what about Bonhoeffer and the “politics of Jesus?” Let me begin, as does Yoder, by briefly locating Jesus within the politics of his day. The New Testament locates Jesus’s birth specifically at the time when Augustus was emperor in Rome and Herod king in Judaea. He was born in Bethlehem because of an imperial decree; his birth was the reason given for the “massacre of the innocents”; and he and his family became political refugees in Egypt. Later, his followers came to think he was the promised Messiah, and some of the more zealous wanted him to march on Jerusalem and liberate it from bondage and the Temple from corruption by violence if necessary. Finally he was put to death under the Ro-

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man procurator Pontius Pilate at the instigation of the religious authorities in Jerusalem. From the beginning to end, then, the Jesus’s story is embedded in the politics of his time. This is the context within Jesus taught his disciples about God’s kingdom or reign, the need to pray that it be established on earth “as it is in heaven,” and what it meant to be a disciple. And central to Jesus’s teaching was the Sermon on the Mount with its insistence on nonviolent resistance to injustice, as Bonhoeffer had learned from his friend Jean Lasserre when a student at Union Seminary in New York. Jesus did not come to overthrow Roman rule by violence, as some hoped, and others feared, but by God’s “tough love,” that is the prophetic love that works through doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. Nevertheless, given the crisis of the time, when insurrection was in the air, the “Lord’s Prayer” might well have been regarded as an incitement to revolution. It may not sound like that when we recite the prayer in church today, not least because “heaven” has come to represent a place to which we go when we die, the place where God reigns in isolated splendor far beyond the politics of the world. But “heaven” in the teaching of Jesus is a synonym for YHWH. When Jesus taught his disciples about the “kingdom of G-d (or heaven),” as in his many parables of the kingdom, he was talking about the way in which G-d reigns on earth and, therefore, the way in which we are called to live here and now as those who believe in G-d. Thus, to pray “your kingdom come” is a direct challenge to the kingdoms of the world. Furthermore, Jesus’s claim, as recorded by Luke (4:17–19), that he had come to fulfil the words of the prophet Isaiah, namely, “to bring good news to the poor . . . to proclaim release to the captives . . . let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,” that is, the Year of Jubilee when land and wealth would be redistributed—a central passage in Yoder’s Politics of Jesus—is revolutionary stuff. 18 As is Jesus’s counsel to his followers that they “seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness (or justice),” which is not advice about “getting to heaven” but a command to do God’s will on earth. (Matt. 6:33) Jesus’s response to Pilate (Jn. 18:36), that his kingdom is not “of” or “from this world,” likewise does not mean that it has no worldly relevance, but that God’s reign is not subject to human authority. And Jesus’s eventual “silence” in response to Pilate’s questioning is the loudest possible expression of “speaking truth to power” because it is a refusal to acknowledge such temporal power as supreme. It is not surprising that Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified. From the beginning, as a witness to God’s reign in Jesus the crucified Messiah, the Christian witness to Jesus the Christ has been political, and the Christian movement has been inextricably involved in the politics of the nations in which it took root. For to believe in one God who is almighty and to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of all reality immediately

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presents a challenge to other principalities and powers and has political consequences. The question, then, is not whether Christianity is political, but what is the nature of its political witness. Does this require direct political involvement and action, or watching, waiting, and praying from the sidelines? And, if direct action, what kind of action? Can the disciples of Jesus engage in civil disobedience, even use violence as a last resort or are they at all times, and under all circumstances, meant to “obey those in authority” as St. Paul counseled? (Romans 13) But, then, what about the gospel message that the God of the Bible revealed in Jesus Christ is committed to liberating the poor and oppressed and is not enamored with rulers who abuse their power, as Mary declared in her song anticipating the birth of Jesus the Messiah, and warning that through his coming the mighty would be overthrown? (Luke 1:46–55). For Bonhoeffer, to pray with Jesus “your kingdom come on earth,” then, was an act of resistance against Nazism as it was later against apartheid. 19 But apartheid South Africa, was not first-century Palestine, neither was Bonhoeffer’s historical context—it was the post-Enlightenment Protestant Germany of the Third Reich. So how he understood the prayer and politics of Jesus and therefore Christian political responsibility was inseparable from his reading of the Bible within that context. And although at times he did so in ways that would resonate later with some Anabaptists, he did so chiefly under the influence of Luther and Barth, neither of whom can be accused of being Anabaptists, least of all by Yoder. Despite his criticisms of Christendom, Bonhoeffer thought and functioned within the parameters of a Christendom defined by the Reformation. So it is in relation to that framework that we have to ask Bonhoeffer how he understood the politics of Jesus, the relation between the church as witness to God’s kingdom in Christ, and the state as an instrument of God in maintaining justice, law and good governance. And, only once we have understood the context within which Bonhoeffer posed his questions about Christianity and politics can we ask about the connection between Christian discipleship and political engagement today in our context, which is no longer his and is, in fact, a post-Christendom context? This latter question will be our focus in the next chapter. But first we need to understand Bonhoeffer’s theology of politics in his own context. THE “TWO REALMS” OF GOD? Despite resemblances and continuities, the structural way in which the church relates to the state varies from one historical context to the next even within the same confessional family. This is how it has been since New Testament times and why, given the many different historical contexts in which the church exists, it continues to do so. Consider the obvious fact that in some countries there are still state-churches, a remnant of

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Christendom, whereas in others, even where there is a constitutional separation of church and state, churches play an important and often decisive political role; and in still others, where Christians are a relatively small minority, their mere existence is a political act. In short, generalizations about the formal relationship between church and state are problematic given all the possible variables. The distinction that Bonhoeffer made between church and state in his essay “Thy kingdom come,” derived from Luther’s doctrine of the “two realms” (Zwei-Reiche Lehre). Luther distinguished between God’s temporal kingdom in which God “uses the instruments of law and power to preserve the world from chaos,” and the “spiritual kingdom” in which “God uses the preached word to redeem the world.” 20 If political authority is God’s agent in the “temporal kingdom,” the Church is God’s agent in the “spiritual kingdom.” In formulating his teaching, Luther’s intention was to counter both papal triumphalism, which conflated temporal and spiritual power, and the radicalism of those Anabaptists who attempted to establish the reign of God on earth by force or refused to obey temporal authority and serve in the military. 21 But over time, Luther’s teaching, which was widely followed even beyond the Lutheran Church, was distorted so that the two realms were kept in separate silos. This led to the church surrendering its prophetic role in society and virtually gave the state the license to act as it chose. In Bonhoeffer’s Germany, the well-respected Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus, who supported the Third Reich, argued that God’s kingdom of “temporal power” and Christ’s “spiritual kingdom” had nothing to do with each other. 22 But this did not mean that the church was not politically involved, on the contrary, just as the church supported Kaiser Wilhelm in going to war in 1914, so the Reichskirche pledged its allegiance to Hitler, rendering it impotent in opposing Nazism. Even pastors of the Confessing Church, to Bonhoeffer’s dismay, took an oath of loyalty to the Führer on his birthday in 1938 rather than being dismissed from office. 23 Nazi theologians also used the traditional Lutheran teaching on the Orders of Creation to reinforce and further misuse Luther’s doctrine of the “two realms.” According to them, the German Volk and its Kultur had a God-given status and role in history distinct from the church. In fact, Nazi theologians argued that Hitler was fulfilling what Luther, “the prophet to the German nation” had begun in asserting Germany’s rightful place in history. Such claims were also made by Afrikaner nationalist theologians in South Africa in asserting Afrikaner identity as God-given, and the white South African nation’s divine calling to protect Christendom. But, as Bonhoeffer insisted in Creation and Fall, the Bible does not provide a basis for autonomous orders—state, family, culture—that function independently of God’s revelation and redemption in Christ because that inevitably leads “to a divine sanctioning of all existing orders per se,

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and thus to a romantic conservatism.” 24 In opposition to this, Bonhoeffer spoke of the “orders of preservation” through which God preserves the world from plunging into chaos, but in anticipation of its redemption. 25 Later, Bonhoeffer moved away from this formulation as well and, in his Ethics, wrote about the “divine mandates” (work, marriage, government, and church) through which God works in the world “each in its own way” but inseparable from each other 26 because of “their original and final relation to Christ.” 27 As Bonhoeffer says God’s commandment is to be found not wherever there are historical forces, strong ideals, or convincing insights, but only where there are divine mandates [Mandate] which are grounded in the revelation of Christ. 28

In sum, creation and redemption while distinct cannot be separated; creation must be understood from the perspective of God’s creation of a “new humanity” in Christ. Bonhoeffer expands on his Christological approach to political reality in a powerful and often quoted passage in his Ethics. 29 “As long as Christ and the world are conceived as two realms” he says, we give “up on reality as a whole,” thus placing ourselves “in one of the two realms, wanting Christ without the world or the world without Christ.” Thinking in terms of two realms . . . worldly-Christian, natural-supernatural, profane-sacred, rational-revelational, as ultimate static opposites . . . fails to recognize the original unity of these opposites in the Christ-reality. . . . Things work out quite differently when the reality of God and the reality of the world are recognized in Christ . . . (then) the natural, the profane, and reason are seen as included in God from the beginning. 30

There “are not two realities, but only one reality,” namely “God’s reality revealed in Christ in the reality of the world.” For that reason, being “in Christ,” Christians “stand at the same time in the reality of God and in the reality of the world.” Therefore, if we want to live and act as Christians we must be “worldly,” otherwise we will not recognize Christ at work in the world. So Christian witness challenges a superficial and distorted “worldliness” not by turning away from the world into a so-called “sacred realm,” but “in the name of a better worldliness.” In fact, “belonging completely to Christ, one stands at the same time completely in the world.” 31 HOW SHOULD WE UNDERSTAND THE POLITICAL WITNESS OF THE CHURCH? But if we no longer think in terms of two realms, if the reality of the world and that of God meet in the reality of Christ, what happens to the

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distinction between the role of the church and that of the state and to the witness of the church to the state? In response, Bonhoeffer draws on a distinction that he had long made between the “ultimate” and the “penultimate,” that is, the “last things” and the “things before the last.” 32 The ultimate is God’s grace which justifies sinful human beings through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This remains the fundamental testimony of the church, that is, to the new life God gives to the world in Christ. But it is always beyond our grasp because it excludes “every method of reaching it by one’s own way.” 33 We are saved by God’s grace alone through faith alone. But “faith is never alone.” Faith would be a false, illusory, hypocritical self-invention, which never justifies, were it not accompanied by love and hope. It would be a rote-learned repetition of articles of faith, a dead faith, if the works of repentance and love did not accompany it.” 34

To deny this is to deny our humanity and our need to act responsibly. How we live in the “penultimate,” already anticipates the “ultimate.” So, the witness of the church to God’s redemption in Christ has political implications in the penultimate. But the church must avoid two extreme and false ways of fulfilling its political responsibility. The first is the “radical” way, and the second, the way of “compromise.” “The radical solution sees only the ultimate, and in it sees only a complete break with the penultimate.” 35 In pursuing this way, the ultimate and penultimate oppose each other, and Christ becomes the enemy of everything penultimate, whether culture or the political process. But the alternative, the way of compromise, goes to the other extreme by separating the ultimate from the penultimate in principle. So much so that the “ultimate stays completely beyond daily life and in the end serves only as the eternal justification of all that exists.” Even the “free word of grace becomes a law of grace reigning over all that is penultimate, justifying and preserving it.” 36 Both of these solutions, Bonhoeffer insists, “wrongly absolutize ideas” even though they may be “necessary and right in themselves.” The radical solution approaches things from the end of all things, from God the judge and redeemer; the compromise solution approaches things from the creator and preserver. One absolutizes the end, the other absolutizes what exists. Thus creation and redemption, time and eternity, fall into an insoluble conflict; the very unity of God is itself dissolved, and faith in God is shattered. 37

In rejecting both the path of radicalism (Anabaptist) and compromise (Christendom), Bonhoeffer was not denying the radical nature of the gospel or costly discipleship, nor was he ruling out the need to engage in the give and take of political life which involves negotiation and compromise. This was all part of living in the “penultimate.” But it always had to

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be done in the light of the ultimate. It is this qualification which determines whether Christian life and action is prophetic because it is the way in which we participate “in Christ’s encounter with the world.” 38 We do so eschatologically, that is with God’s purpose in mind, namely the “new creation” of a just and peaceable kingdom on earth. Like John the Baptist, Bonhoeffer says, the church prepares the way for the ultimate, the coming of God’s grace. 39 This allusion to the Baptist indicates that the role of the prophet and of the prophetic church, living in the tension between the penultimate and the ultimate, is not to “bring in God’s kingdom” but to prepare the way for its coming. So, the church prays “your kingdom come” whether in “extraordinary” or “ordinary” times. And it prophetically proclaims, with John the Baptist, that the way to the coming of God’s kingdom is always through a repentance or metanoia that enables us to live in redemptive solidarity with the struggling people of the earth. Thus, although giving “the hungry bread is not yet to proclaim to them the grace of God” it makes the “entry of grace” possible. 40 This is the prophetic witness of the church to the reign of God, and it is within this framework that it relates to the state in solidarity with the victims of the state and society, that is, those whom Jesus the Messiah especially came to liberate and redeem. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE IN SOLIDARITY WITH VICTIMS? Bonhoeffer was as one of the few theologians in Nazi Germany who took a stand on behalf of the Jews, a response which began already in 1933 with his essay on “The Church and the Jewish Question.” 41 In it he spoke of three possible ways in which the church can act with regard to the state. The first two would apply irrespective of circumstances. These are questioning the state with regard to the legitimacy of its actions and, thereby, keeping the state responsible, and serving “the victims of state action.” 42 But both of these, speaking truth to power and assisting the victims of the state, were punishable in Nazi Germany, and with few exceptions, the church was hesitant if not opposed to fulfilling them. But the third possibility put Bonhoeffer beyond the pale. He called for direct political action if the state failed to maintain genuine law and order, for then the state had surrendered its legitimacy by failing to fulfill its primary function. This marked a fundamental difference between Bonhoeffer and even other theologians who were opposed to Nazism. Hitler might have achieved power through the manipulation of constitutional means, but in effect he had seized power through intimidation, coercion, and violence, thereby undermining law and order. Bonhoeffer’s essay on the “Jewish Question” was written before the persecution of the Jews began in earnest, but it was already clear to him then that it would intensify. Certainly, from 1933 onward, he became

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increasingly concerned about what was happening and recognized Hitler’s genocidal policies as the “state’s decisive challenge to the Church” 43 and eventually as the murder of “the weakest and most defenseless brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ” for which the Christian Church had to confess its guilt. 44 Yet in some respects Bonhoeffer’s position on the “Jewish question” was more ambiguous than is usually assumed, 45 and for some later critics, his “words and actions appear small, tentative, restrained, and ambivalent.” 46 It can also be said that his theology perpetuates the notion that Christianity supersedes Judaism and that his involvement in the Resistance was motivated as much by his sense of national responsibility and moral outrage as it was out of a concern for the Jews. Certainly, he was murdered on Hitler’s instructions because of his involvement in the plot to assassinate him on July 20, 1944, and not because he helped Jews escape the clutches of the Gestapo even if the latter was the reason for his arrest. But having said all this, it must also be said that Bonhoeffer’s sense of patriotic responsibility and moral outrage cannot be separated from his concern for the plight of the Jews. In addition, his legacy, taken further by Bethge, has had a decisive influence in shaping contemporary post-Holocaust Christian attitudes, including my own, toward the Jews and Judaism for good reason. 47 But it also left me with a bothersome question. Bethge died on March 18, 2000, at age ninety. A few years earlier on a visit to his home, I had an opportunity to ask him a question that was beginning to disturb me, though I hesitated to do so for obvious reasons. Not only was he frail, but he had given much of his life to combatting anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism. But I felt it was important to ask him: “what about the Palestinian question?” Bethge understood my dilemma, but it was too late in his life to try and answer it. But, for me, the question refused to go away and became more urgent when Bonhoeffer’s name was used by some Western politicians, including President George W. Bush, to justify their aggressive policies in the Middle East and especially their uncritical support for the State of Israel. 48 Criticism of the state of Israel is often motivated by anti-Semitism, but the two are not the same. After all, many critics of the policies of Israel with regard to the occupation of Palestine, are themselves Jewish. AntiSemitism must be opposed in the strongest terms, especially at this time of its resurgence both on the radical left and right in Europe. Nothing should be allowed to detract from the unmitigated horror and evil of the Holocaust or Shoah as a crime against humanity or to suggest that Jews today are no longer victimized. But this does not mean that Palestinians who have suffered as a result of the Nakba and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank are not also victims and, as such, of concern to Christians. Surely what Bonhoeffer said about the church’s responsibility for victims in his essay on the “Jewish Question” must equally apply, and he

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would have been among the first to say so. For that reason, the question must be asked: who are the victims in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today from the perspective of Bonhoeffer’s legacy? 49 Bonhoeffer’s solidarity with the oppressed or victims of injustice whoever they might be, and his preparedness to speak out and act on their behalf, was unequivocal. Consider again the well-known words that he wrote shortly before his arrest in 1943: we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering. 50

Bonhoeffer undoubtedly had in mind the plight of the Jews in Europe, for they were foremost amongst the victims of Nazism and, not insignificantly for Bonhoeffer, they had a special relationship to Christianity. But he did not only have the Jews in mind when he spoke about the victims of his day. He was aware of countless others—communists, homosexuals, the physically disabled, along with the conquered peoples of Eastern Europe—who were being exploited, tortured, and killed by the Gestapo and other agents of Nazi tyranny. 51 In a sermon preached in London, probably in 1934, on II Corinthians 12:9, Bonhoeffer had already spoken out clearly about the fact that Christianity by its very nature should always identify with those who “cannot help themselves but who have just to rely on other people for help, for love, for care.” 52 He went on to say: Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its apologia for the weak. . . . It should give much more offence, more shock to the world, than it is doing. Christianity should . . . take a much more definite stand for the weak than to consider the potential right of the strong. 53

Today, many Palestinian Christians look to the ecumenical church, not least in South Africa, for support. I have little doubt that Bonhoeffer himself would have listened carefully and responded positively to their call to the church to repent of “unjust political options with regard to the Palestinian people” and “their call to stand alongside the oppressed and preserve the word of God as good news for all rather than turn it into a weapon with which to slay the oppressed.” 54 Bonhoeffer was fully aware of the danger of jumping directly from the pages of the Bible to the contemporary world in which we live. That is precisely why we, together with Bonhoeffer, must ask the question “who is Jesus Christ actually for us today?” because that is the fundamental political question for Christians. Where God and the reality of the world meet in Christ, that is where Christian political thought and action begins. For Bonhoeffer, Christian ethics is not primarily about developing

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moral codes of conduct, putting religious or philosophical principles into practice, developing “programs of ethical or religious world-formation,” 55 or even trying to live like Jesus, but about how and where we discern the reality of God and the world meeting in Christ. And this, for Bonhoeffer means witnessing to the reconciliation of the world to God in Christ and, therefore, “being drawn into the form of Jesus Christ, by being conformed to the unique form of the one who became human, was crucified, and is risen.” This happens, he says, “as the form of Jesus Christ himself so works on us that it molds us, conforming our form to Christ’s own (Gal. 4:9).” 56 For Christ “is the one place where God and the reality of the world are reconciled with each other in the midst of history as a divine miracle.” 57 But what does this mean concretely whether in standing in solidarity with those who are victims of the state or participating in building a just society? That is the question before us in the next and final chapter. NOTES 1. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 459. 2. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 377. 3. Ethics, 103–33. 4. Michael P. DeJonge, “Between Compromise and Radicalism: Luther’s Legacy in Bonhoeffer’s Thought,” in Michael P. DeJonge and Clifford J. Green, eds., Luther, Bonhoeffer, and Public Ethics: Re-Forming the Church of the Future (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Press, 2018), 131. 5. Berlin, 285–97. 6. Berlin, 285. 7. Barcelona, Berlin, America, 377. 8. Berlin, 289. 9. Larry L. Rasmussen, Earth-Honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 82–84. 10. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 459. 11. Duncan B. Forrester, Truthful Action: Explorations in Practical Theology (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 2000), 109, 118–23. 12. See John W. de Gruchy, “From Political to Public Theologies: The Role of Theology in Public Life in South Africa,” in William F. Storrar and Andrew Morton, eds., Public Theology for the 21st Century (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 2004), 45–62; Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer als öffenlicher Theologie,” Evangelische Theologie, vol. 69, no. 5, 2013, 110–27 13. Bonhoeffer, Berlin, 293. 14. Bonhoeffer, Berlin, 293. 15. John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972). 16. Hauerwas, Performing the Faith, 18. 17. Abram John Klassen, “Discipleship in Anabaptism and Bonhoeffer” (PhD Claremont Graduate School and University, 1971). 18. The Politics of Jesus, 64–77 19. See Discipleship, 156; Allan A. Boesak and Charles Villa-Vicencio, eds., When Prayer Makes News (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986). 20. DeJonge, “Between Compromise and Radicalism,” 128. 21. Inter alia, see especially “Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed,” in Luther’s Works, vol. 45, (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1957), 81–129.

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22. Paul Althaus, The Ethics of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 45–47. 23. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 607–20; Theological Education Underground, 52–58, et. al. 24. Ethics, 389. 25. See Introduction, Creation and Fall, 12. 26. Ethics, 55. 27. Ethics, 68. 28. Ethics, 388. 29. Ethics, 57–62. 30. Ethics, 58–59. 31. Ethics, 48. 32. Ethics, 146–70. Bonhoeffer first learnt about this distinction when he read Barth’s Tambach Lecture (1919) on “The Christian’s Place in Society.” See Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), 327; Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 94. 33. Ethics, 149. 34. Ethics, 148. 35. Ethics, 153. 36. Ethics, 154. 37. Ethics, 153. 38. Ethics, 159. 39. Ethics, 160–62. 40. Ethics, 163. 41. Berlin, 361–70; Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 257–324. 42. Berlin, 365. 43. Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 127. Tödt Heinz Eduard, Authentic Faith: Bonhoeffer’s Theological Ethics in Context (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 111; John A. Moses, The Reluctant Revolutionary: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Collision with Prusso-German History (New York: Berhahn Books, 2009), 148–72. 44. Ethics, 139, n.25. 45. See Clements, Bonhoeffer (London: SPCK, 2010), 72–77. 46. See, inter alia, Kenneth C. Barnes, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hitler’s Persecution of the Jews,” in Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust, eds. Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel, (Minneapolis: Augsburg-Fortress 1999) 110–28; de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit, 181–94. 47. Eberhard Bethge, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Jews,” in John D. Godsey and Geffrey B. Kelly, eds., Ethical Responsibility: Bonhoeffer’s Legacy to the Churches (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1981), 43–96. 48. I was asked to contribute a brief article for an Australian journal in 2010. This was not published because of opposition from certain unnamed quarters, but it was later included in The Ecumenical Review, vol. 63, no. 1, March 2011, 124–26. 49. “Bonhoeffer’s legacy and Kairos-Palestine,” in Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, no. 143, July 2012, 67–80. 50. Letters and Papers from Prison, 52. 51. See the discussion in David P. Gushee, The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust: A Christian Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 110–14, 219 n. 128. 52. London, 401; see also Discipleship, 285. 53. London, 402–3. 54. Kairos-Palestine Document, 6. 55. Ethics, 97. 56. Ethics, 93–94. 57. Ethics, 82.

TEN How Do We Resist Tyranny and Build Democracy?

The third possibility is not just to bind up the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel but to seize the wheel itself. Such an action would be direct political action on the part of the church. This is only possible and called for if the church sees the state to be failing in its function of creating law and order, that is, if the church perceives that the state, without any scruples, has created either too much or too little law and order. “The Church and the Jewish Question,” Berlin, June 1933 1 We must have a world of political and economic democracy, i.e., one in which the goods of life are enjoyed by all the people, in which the basic securities—employment, old age, health—are provided, in which all nations shall have access to the resources of the earth. That world can only be nourished and motivated by the Christian Church because its gospel of redemption and of responsibility is alone capable of inspiring and sustaining that world. Paul Lehmann Letters to Bonhoeffer, August 2, 1941 2

John Calvin framed his Institutes of the Christian Religion with words of encouragement to the King of France at the beginning and words of warning to tyrants at the end. He told his readers that obedience to the authorities was a duty, even if they were bad rulers, but he also told rulers not to exceed the limits of their authority. If they did, they could expect God’s wrath exercised through human agency, supporting his statement with many biblical allusions. 3 Calvin was not alone in addressing such matters with prophetic passion. From Augustine through Thom153

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as Aquinas and Luther right up to our present time, Christian theologians have written about what constitutes good governance, the limits of political authority, and the fate of tyrants. Like Calvin, Bonhoeffer’s theological development was also framed by political developments, questions, and struggles. It was within that framework, again like Calvin, that he asked: “who is God?” “who is Jesus Christ?,” “what is the church?,” and “what does it mean to be a Christian?” None of these questions can be wrenched from the historical context in which we live. Therefore, it is appropriate and necessary to conclude my conversation with Bonhoeffer by returning to where it began, that is, in South Africa during a time of political unrest and resistance. I call to mind that one of my earliest essays on Bonhoeffer was about civil disobedience written in the aftermath of the Soweto Uprising in 1976 and presented at the Third International Congress in 1980 in Oxford. 4 At that time I positively connected Bonhoeffer to the Calvinist political tradition, something not generally acknowledged, but the connection had particular relevance in South Africa where Calvinism was better known for its support of, rather than resistance to, apartheid. That was a few years before the publication of the Kairos Document, which specifically referred to the apartheid regime as tyrannical and called on Christians to take sides with the oppressed in their struggle for justice. 5 “The reign of a tyrant always ends up as a reign of terror,” it declared, almost echoing Calvin, and this is “inevitable, because from the start the tyrant is an enemy of the common good.” 6 South Africa is no longer ruled by tyranny, but it is struggling to overcome the legacy of apartheid and build a just democratic society, for that is the only way to prevent the return of tyranny. A democracy can never be taken for granted even after it has been successfully established, and a just democracy is always a work in progress. Even in the wellestablished but seemingly “tired” democracies of the West ,the fragility of democracy is increasingly made obvious by the resurgence of exclusive ethnicities and xenophobia, the rebirth of unbridled nationalism, and the return to jingoistic forms of national sovereignty. Such signs of the current time uncannily and disturbingly resemble those that characterized the 1920s and 1930s in which Bonhoeffer’s theology was nurtured. This is the context in which Bonhoeffer’s core question has to be considered: “how are future generations going to live?” The Seventh International Bonhoeffer Congress was held in Cape Town in January 1996, two years after the birth of South Africa’s new democracy. Appropriately, the congress was held in a former prison, and on one of the days, participants crossed over the nearby sea to visit Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela had been incarcerated. This was an emotional experience for many, but one which also prompted comparative reflection on two of the most celebrated icons of political resistance in

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the twentieth century. My question, then, is what can we learn from them today? WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM BONHOEFFER AND MANDELA? Obvious similarities that link the inmate in Cell 92 of Berlin’s Tegel Prison and the one confined to a cramped cell on Robben Island immediately come to mind despite differences of culture, education, vocation, religious commitment, and historical context. Mandela was the son of a Thembu chief and a lawyer by training. His commitment to the struggle against apartheid was rooted in his African identity and motivated by his mission education and his growing moral outrage against colonial injustice and racist oppression. 7 Bonhoeffer was a privileged child of Germany’s cultured bourgeoisie, a pastor and theologian, and a patriot wary of nationalism. If Mandela’s role in resistance arose out of his commitment to liberate his people from oppression, Bonhoeffer’s grew out of his outrage at the way in which Hitler was persecuting the Jews. But just as Mandela’s struggle for the liberation of his people was also motivated by his vision of uniting all South Africans in a future democracy, so Bonhoeffer’s resistance was driven by his desire to save Germany from disaster and restore the rule of law. 8 Bonhoeffer was not a member of any political party, but he was a social democrat by inclination as were some of his family. His political engagement was shaped by his upbringing, theological formation and his participation in the Church Struggle. Mandela was weaned in African culture and received a Methodist missionary education. But his political formation was largely under the influence the African National Congress (ANC). Woven into its fabric were differences of ideology, moral and religious conviction, ranging from liberal to Marxist, Christian to Jewish and Muslim, making its nationalism broad in scope and thus distinct from both Afrikaner Nationalism and National Socialism. Predominant to its ethos were Christian, secular humanist moral insights, and a philosophy of nonviolent resistance. Unlike Mandela, Bonhoeffer was part of a tiny cohort of anti-Hitler dissidents going against the stream all of whom died as traitors, rather than, like Mandela, an acclaimed leader of the popular, well-structured mass movement that the ANC had become since its founding in 1912. The contrast between Mandela’s ANC and Bonhoeffer’s Resistance group could not have been greater. If the one was a mass movement guided by its Freedom Charter, 9 the other was a very small clandestine group of highly placed but disaffected military officers, who had pledged allegiance to the Führer and lawyers of different political persuasions, now uncomfortably united in their conviction that Hitler had to be removed from power for the sake of Germany. 10 If Mandela was part of the

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disenfranchised, Bonhoeffer and his fellow conspirators were part of the “master-race,” not political activists or hardened revolutionaries with a clear plan and the technical skills needed to achieve their goal. The broader context should also be kept in mind. When the German Resistance began, Hitler still had immense popular support even though the tide was beginning to turn as his army began suffering defeat, whereas the Resistance itself had virtually no support. As the Allied leadership had decided that Germany had to surrender unconditionally, there were no guarantees that even a successful coup would be acceptable. By contrast, when the ANC began to ratchet up its campaigns against apartheid during the 1950s and early 1960s, the decolonization of Africa and Asia was gathering momentum. This did not mean that the former colonial powers were willing to support the ANC unequivocally, but a broad global anti-apartheid movement was emerging, led by overseas nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), faith communities, and the World Council of Churches. Many of those involved were only too aware that what was happening in South Africa was comparable with what had happened shortly before in Nazi Germany. History was on the side of the ANC. It was only a matter of time. But time had virtually run out for the German Resistance. Of critical importance for our conversation is that both Mandela and Bonhoeffer were dedicated peacemakers, influenced by the testimony of Gandhi, and committed to nonviolent political action. In fact Bonhoeffer wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr in July 1934 asking his advice about visiting the Indian leader to find out what he would do given the circumstances then prevailing in Germany. 11 Niebuhr cautioned against Bonhoeffer doing so “because Nazi Germany was no place to attempt nonviolent resistance”—such tactics could only work where democracy, and not tyranny, governed. 12 But Bonhoeffer, then in London, persisted with his plans, wrote to Gandhi and was invited by him to visit his ashram. 13 To his lasting regret, Bonhoeffer could not take up that invitation for he was soon asked to direct the Confessing Church seminary in Finkenwalde. By then it was too late. The situation in Germany was rapidly deteriorating, and passive resistance was no longer an option. So, it was only when all other alternatives seemed exhausted, that Bonhoeffer like Mandela and their colleagues ventured to embark on the path of violent resistance. In doing so, they were fully aware of the moral dilemma that surrounded their decisions, yet they were personally willing to pay the price for their actions. But whereas Mandela’s decision was made corporately within the inner circles of the ANC and led to a national war of liberation they knew they would win, Bonhoeffer’s decision was made in informal discussions with a small band of compatriots conflicted in conscience and uncertain of success.

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WHAT DO WE DO WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS? Bonhoeffer and Mandela were not the first to ask this question. They also knew the guidelines long established by just war theory which had to be followed in resorting to violent means in extreme circumstances. Indeed, the ANC, several of whose early leaders were Christian ministers, were guided by such moral convictions. But they also were mindful of past history that raised strategic considerations. After all, the ANC had been founded in1912 out of the ashes of repeated but failed bloody attempts to repulse colonialism by military means. Its leaders knew what they were up against just as much as they knew the moral dilemmas involved in reaching a decision. Four forms of violent resistance were considered by the ANC leadership in coming to a decision: sabotage, guerilla warfare, terrorism, and open revolution. Because the sabotage of strategic military and paramilitary targets would be the least destructive in terms of human life, that was the preferred path. But the ANC leadership was aware that sabotage alone would not bring the apartheid regime to its knees. It might even strengthen its resolve to repress resistance. So, a further decision was taken “to make provision for the possibility of guerilla warfare.” 14 This led Mandela to leave the country to study “the art of war and revolution” in Algeria. “If there was to be guerilla warfare,” he declared, he “wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and share the hazards of war with them.” 15 This also enabled Mandela to start the process of recruiting other South Africans for military training. Soon after returning to South Africa, Mandela was arrested, and on October 9, 1963, he and nine compatriots appeared in the Pretoria Supreme Court accused of embarking on a campaign to overthrow the government by violent revolution. On April 20 the following year, he refused to give evidence in his defense or be cross-examined. Instead he spoke from the dock setting out the reasons which led the ANC to embark on the armed struggle. His speech has become a classic text of twentieth-century resistance against oppression. After outlining the history of colonial and apartheid oppression for more than three hundred years, he recounted how the ANC had attempted by peaceful means to change the situation, only to be met with increasing violent repression. Mandela then came to the decisive point: It was only when all else failed, when all channels of peaceful protest were barred to us, that the decision was taken to embark on violent forms of political struggle. . . . We did so not because we desired such a course, but solely because the government had left us with no other choice. 16

So, it was, that on December 16, 1961, an auspicious day for it marked the anniversary of the Boer victory over the Zulu’s at the Battle of Blood

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River in 1838, the ANC decided the time had come “to hit back by all means in our power in defense of our people, our future, and our freedom.” In line with that corporate strategic decision, Mandela felt “morally obliged to do what he did.” One of the remarkable aspects about the ANC decision to resort to armed resistance was the extent to which its leadership went to ensure that acts of violence were, to quote Mandela, “properly controlled.” Hence their insistence that such acts were only to be undertaken by the military wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”). There was an acute awareness of the dangers of an all-out civil war that would lead to an uncontrollable spiral of violence and the possible destruction of South Africa rather than the birth of a nonracial, just democratic order. The decision to engage in violent resistance was thus guided by both moral concerns and consideration of long-term consequences. The cycle of violence triggered off by colonial conquest had to be broken rather than perpetuated. The armed struggle was a peace-making strategy made necessary by violent repression. With this in mind, Mandela brought his speech in the dock to a conclusion with these words: During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal I hope to live for and achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. 17

Less than a year after Mandela’s speech from the dock, Z. K. Matthews, another ANC stalwart and Christian ecumenist, addressed a conference convened by the World Council of Churches to consider the role of the ecumenical church in the struggle for justice in southern Africa. The significance of Matthew’s speech, titled “The Road from Nonviolence to Violence,” was that he took the decision of the ANC to resort to the armed struggle and turned it into a challenge to the church. “The dilemma confronting African leaders” he declared, was “whether they should continue to urge their followers to stand by their methods of persuasion and discussion in the face of increasing and relentless force with which their attempts at the amelioration of their lot are met by the government.” With convincing rhetoric Matthews concluded by asking whether it was not the responsibility of Christians to support the armed struggle? 18 This led to considerable and intense debate within ecumenical circles both in South Africa and elsewhere, which fluctuated between just war theory and nonviolent, pacifist convictions. Eventually the WCC Programme to Combat Racism, although not supporting violent resistance gave tacit support to liberation movements such as the ANC engaged in an armed struggle. 19 Just war theory and advocacy prevailed.

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There has been considerable debate about the significance of the armed struggle in bringing the apartheid regime to its knees. It was, some say, only part of the liberation struggle which was internally led by many nonviolent acts of resistance and protest. Was the armed struggle even necessary? The question is now hypothetical. But Matthew’s challenge to the church was undoubtedly a decisive turning point in giving ecumenical legitimacy to the armed liberation struggle. 20 And Bonhoeffer’s example through his participation in the plot against Hitler was flagged in support of that decision. For this, if for no other reason, Bonhoeffer’s legacy had become pertinent to the church struggle in South Africa. This was also the background to Bethge’s question in his Alden-Tuthill lectures, to which I referred at the beginning, that changed the direction of my life. WOULD YOU SEIZE THE WHEEL AGAIN? Bonhoeffer’s decision to participate in the conspiracy against Hitler was regarded by most Germans as an act of treason, and it is salutary to remember that he was not exonerated from that charge by the West German government until years after the war. Equally so, many churches and Christians, not only in Germany but elsewhere, were strongly divided over the question as to whether Bonhoeffer, by doing what he did, had undermined his previous courageous witness to Christ and any right to being regarded as a martyr. And, of course, this all became a subject of much theological scrutiny, speculation, and debate. The question I would like to ask him is admittedly hypothetical as well as impertinent, but in hindsight, would he “seize the wheel again?” In other words, would he do today what he did yesterday, and if so, would he encourage us to do the same in similar extraordinary circumstances if these should arise? From early in 1939, when Bonhoeffer was first introduced by Dohnanyi to Admiral Canaris, his theological thinking and writing was increasingly preoccupied with the ethics of resistance and what this might require in practice. It was primarily for this reason that he was invited to join the conspiracy; those involved wanted to know whether they could morally renege on their oath of loyalty to Hitler and, therefore, whether tyrannicide could be morally justified. 21 As soldiers, the issue was not whether they could kill an enemy, or engage in a just war, but whether they could assassinate the Führer to whom they had pledged their undying allegiance. So it was, that in 1941, when he was banned by the Gestapo, Bonhoeffer not only joined the Resistance, but he also immersed himself in writing his Ethics and developing his rationale for participation in the plot against Hitler. Gone were the days of the Kirchenkampf when he could openly confront evil in public by confessing Christ from the pulpit or through lectures and conference statements; now, in the shadowy

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world of the underground, he had to discover how to confess Christ in secret when all other avenues were apparently shut and ethical absolutes could no longer be applied. And this meant, for Bonhoeffer if not for the other conspirators, that he would be reneging on his commitment to the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and his pacifist inclinations. “What was exercising him,” John Moses aptly says,”“was the planning of the assassination of the Führer” mindful of the “eternal validity of the Commandment ‘Thou shalt do no murder.’” 22 Given all this, it is difficult to understand why Hauerwas says that “we cannot know how Bonhoeffer understood his participation in the attempt to kill Hitler.” 23 He had been thinking about this possibility since the time Hitler came to power when he wrote his essay on “The Jewish Question” and surmised that a time might come to “seize the wheel” from the dictator’s hand. Bonhoeffer knew only too well what he was doing. But, as Harvey aptly remarks Bonhoeffer, did not try “to harmonize either theoretically or practically, the profound tension between his peace ethic and his cooperation with those who sought with all the means at their disposal to bring the regime to an end.” 24 Obeying the will of God was no longer a matter of working out and applying principles based on philosophical reasoning and intellectual abstractions, or even gospel injunctions. The challenge was not to satisfy conscience or extricate oneself from the situation, but to act in ways that brought the Nazi catastrophe to an end and prepared the way for a Europe at peace, one in which the coming generation could live. 25 In such situations “shrouded in twilight” as they are, we “must decide not simply between right and wrong, good and evil, but between right and right, wrong and wrong.” 26 This means we cannot work to the rule of purity of motive, favorable conditions, or “the meaningfulness of an intended action,” hiding behind it or “appealing to its authority” to “be exonerated and acquitted.” The courage to act, Bonhoeffer said, “can grow only from the free responsibility of the free man.” 27 By implication, what Bonhoeffer was saying, was when we are trapped between a rock and a hard place we might consult others, but we have to make the decision freely for ourselves and take the responsibility for our actions. Those who are responsible act in their own freedom, without the support of people, conditions, or principles, but nevertheless considering all existing circumstances related to people, general conditions, or principles . . . have to observe, judge, weigh, decide, and act on their own. They themselves have to examine the motives, the prospects, the value, and meaning of their action. 28

Many other courageous people have said much the same over the centuries. However, there is, as we might expect, a theological twist to Bonhoeffer’s argument. Responsible action has to be ventured, but such “free action recognizes itself ultimately as being God’s action, decision as

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God’s guidance, the venture as divine necessity.” 29 “It is founded in a God who calls for responsible action and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the one who on account of such action becomes a sinner.” 30 The point is, as Robin Lovin rightly observes, the venture of free responsibility is a response to the command of God because that commandment is never “external to the historical situation” and always “immediate and specific, in contrast to abstract moral principles.” 31 Misunderstood, this could become a dangerous precedent, for much evil has been perpetrated on the basis that it was commanded by God. But for Bonhoeffer it could not be separated from his conviction that the reality of God and the reality of the world met in Christ. In other words, his decision cannot be separated from the rest of his life as a disciple of Christ. His “venture of free responsibility” arose out of his Christ-centered theological and spiritual formation which enabled him to do what he had to do freely in response to a historical necessity. So, then, what does such responsible freedom demand of us today in situations where oppression and injustice are so systemic and intransigent that peaceful resistance to tyranny seems ineffective and hopeless? Does Bonhoeffer provide us with an example to follow, turning what he did into a principle we can adopt, or is that a denial of the need for us to take responsibility for our own actions and therefore shift blame guilt onto someone else? To answer this, we need to get some perspective from both the Mandela and the Bonhoeffer narrative. WHAT DOES RESPONSIBLE FREEDOM REQUIRE TODAY? Unlike the ANC’s decision to engage in an armed struggle against the apartheid regime, Bonhoeffer’s decision was aimed at one person even though the “just war” moral argument for doing so was similar. There was at least the possibility that the assassination of Hitler would lead to the collapse of Nazi control and the end of hostilities with very little collateral damage. The killing of an individual might have saved the lives of millions if the plot on Hitler’s life had been successful, even though that could not have been taken for granted. 32 For if we have learned anything from the more recent wars in Iraq and Libya, getting rid of a dictator does not necessarily bring about justice and peace; it can plunge a country into prolonged war. Of course, neither Mandela and the ANC, or Bonhoeffer and the Resistance, did what they did without serious consideration of the possible consequences of their actions. The venture of free responsibility is not something to be undertaken inadvertently, or romantically. Responsible political action must correspond to reality, and Christians must refrain from either using Christ to sanction the status quo or to bless every revolution. 33 “Responsible action,” Bonhoeffer says, is not nourished by “an

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ideology but by reality, which is why one can only act within the boundaries of that reality.” 34 Otherwise, says Bonhoeffer, “it is the craziest Don Quixotry.” There is, in fact, nothing morally responsible about “going down fighting like heroes in the face of certain defeat.” 35 Ultimately, what Bonhoeffer did, became a necessity for him, but it did not establish a principle or precedent to guide all political action in every similar historical context. 36 It cannot therefore be used as a justification for Christians to engage in war, or even in a violent liberation struggle. For if we regard Bonhoeffer’s action as normative theory for Christian political action we may well end up supporting actions that are decidedly un-Christian, lead to far-reaching and unintended consequences, and ultimately to despair. 37 For once the path of violent resistance is chosen, even if it is to get rid of a dictator as happened in Iraq and Libya in recent times, forces are unleashed which are difficult to control, and unintended destructive consequences become inevitable, such as the loss of innocent lives, the destruction of infrastructure, collateral damage, and the desire for revenge on the part of those who are defeated. We have to take into account possible consequences, not just for the short term, but for future generations. In any case, what was of crucial importance in bringing apartheid to an end was the recognition that South Africa could not be liberated and transformed by violence, any more than apartheid, which could be sustained by violence. So, the decision to end the armed struggle was as important as the decision to begin it, and it would have been far better to have done that earlier than eventually happened. The political will to accept fundamental change and pursue negotiation rather than resort to further violence to maintain the status quo requires moral and strategic discernment, and a commitment to peace-making rather than vengeance. Such peace must be dared, for it too is a venture of free responsibility. Nothing can detract from Bonhoeffer’s and Mandela’s moral commitment, their courage, and their willingness to pay the cost for their actions on behalf of those for whom they ventured their acts of free responsibility. If we learn anything from our brief comparison of Mandela and Bonhoeffer it is that only those who are genuinely committed to peace deserve our respect if, as a last resort, they decide to engage in violent resistance; only those who take this path for the sake of the oppressed rather than their own power and privilege; and only those willing to risk their own lives in doing, deserve our acclaim. Moral considerations should drive strategy and therefore only those genuinely committed to peace-making have the authority to venture acts of last resort. In sum, Bonhoeffer’s participation in the German Resistance and his complicity in the plot to assassinate Hitler neither simply discredits his commitment to nonviolent resistance nor provides principled support for resorting to violence in opposing injustice. 38 But irrespective of how we evaluate what he and Mandela chose to do, they would undoubtedly

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agree that working for a just society to prevent the rise of tyranny in the first place must always be the priority. HOW CAN DEMOCRACY PREVENT TYRANNY? As I previously noted, Bonhoeffer was a social democrat by inclination but not a liberal democrat. His political understanding was shaped by the organic and anti-democratic worldview of mainstream German political philosophy and Lutheranism. 39 From that perspective, political authority did not derive “from below” but “from above.” 40 This implied that God was the ultimate authority, as it did for Luther, but since the Enlightenment it had come to mean the “rule of law” based on “universal” moral imperatives. The state is meant to be governed by a constitution that stands above political processes and the popular will, hence the understanding of Germany as a Rechtsstaat. 41 In a position paper on church-state relations, which he drafted for the Reich Brotherhood Council in 1941, Bonhoeffer distinguished between government and state. Whereas the state is created “from below,” whether through force or democratic means, government derives its authority “from above” and its legitimacy depends on its acknowledgment of this higher authority. 42 Irrespective of whether its form is authoritarian or democratic, government exercises its responsibility under God, that is, it is based on a moral law that transcends it. Insofar as government obeys the rule of law and seeks to pursue justice on that basis, it fulfils its divine mandate. Therefore, its actual form does not matter greatly to the church, except that some forms of governance better demonstrate that they are “from above” 43 because there is a “strict maintenance of outward justice,” the upholding of the God-given rights of the family and work, and the freedom to proclaim the gospel. 44 Within this scheme of things, the church’s task is to point to the limits of the popular will and to resist the notion that the voice of the people automatically represents that of God. 45 For Bonhoeffer, the protection of human dignity was a fundamental responsibility of the state and the basis for the defense of human rights. For that reason he affirmed the ethical gains of the Enlightenment in an important passage in his Ethics in which he says we must “not simply throw overboard advances in understanding the ethical that were gained during the Enlightenment,” because it “remains correct in criticizing a system in which society fell into the privileged and the nonprivileged classes.” It was also “perfectly correct” in pointing out that the ethical is not concerned with an abstract social order, with representatives of particular social classes, with “above” and “below” as such, but with people. It is consequently also correct in the passion with which it insists on the equal dignity of all people as ethical beings. 46

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Despite the claim of the Third Reich, and later, that of the apartheid regime, that it maintained “law and order,” and was in power by the will of the people and the decree of the Almighty, it had no respect for human dignity. Hitler was a populist dictator, his rise to power, for Bonhoeffer, epitomized a “vulgar democracy” 47 that has no respect for people, and inevitably leads to political nihilism. Bonhoeffer’s opposition to Hitler and his decision to join the Resistance were not motivated, then, by any desire to return to the democracy of Weimar, but to restore the rule of law to protect human dignity. Hence his strong affirmation of the rights of workers, concern for the poor, sense of social responsibility, and commitment to economic justice, but his equally strong reservations about populist democracy. Unlike most of his compatriots who shared his views, Bonhoeffer had experienced Anglo-Saxon democratic political life both in the United States and in Britain and had observed the differences between the German, Anglo-Saxon, and French political systems. The French Revolution, justified as it may have been in rejecting aristocratic privilege, bequeathed a legacy of unrestrained technology, nationalism, individualism, and mass popular movements that inevitably led to war and the nihilistic destruction of freedom and justice. The foundations of US democracy, by contrast, were not provided “by the liberated human being” but “by the kingdom of God that limits all earthly powers by God’s sovereignty.” The writers of the US Constitution, Bonhoeffer says, knew all “about original sin and about evil in the human heart.” 48 Yet, as Bonhoeffer observed, Anglo-Saxon liberal democracies were in crisis because they had jettisoned their Christian foundations and lost confidence in truth and justice and pursuing the common good. The fact of the matter is that not everything that goes by the name of “democracy,” is the same, for much depends on the historical context and cultural ethos in which it comes to birth and is nurtured. 49 This observation lies behind the question he asked in his essay on “Protestantism without Reformation” (1939): “why on the European continent it has never been possible to base a democracy on Christian principles” and, why in Europe “democracy and Christianity are always seen somewhat in opposition to each other, while in America democracy can be glorified as the epitome of a Christian form of government.?” 50 In seeking to answer these questions, and maybe recalling his conversations with Hildebrandt to which I referred previously, Bonhoeffer says that we must remember “that the European continent ruled out this possibility when it persecuted and expelled” the heirs of the radical reformation (Quakers, Anabaptists, Mennonites). By contrast, these Christian communities were offered hospitality in America and contributed to the shaping of its political thinking. This, for both Bonhoeffer and Hildebrandt, had serious negative consequences for German Protestant political understanding especially when combined with a misappropriation of Luther’s doctrine of the “two realms.”

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While writing his Ethics, and participating in the Resistance, Bonhoeffer thought a great deal about the kind of political system that should be put in place in Germany once Hitler was defeated, and the role of the church and Christians within it. He also wrote to his American friend Paul Lehmann in February 1941 to ask for his thoughts on the subject. 51 Six months later, he received Lehmann’s response: We must have a world of political and economic democracy, i.e., one in which the goods of life are enjoyed by all the people, in which the basic securities—employment, old age, health—are provided, in which all nations shall have access to the resources of the earth. That world can only be nourished and motivated by the Christian Church because its gospel of redemption and of responsibility is alone capable of inspiring and sustaining that world. 52

Bonhoeffer responded almost immediately and, given current events in global politics today, it is worth quoting what he said at length: The development that we believe is bound to come in the near future is world domination—if you will forgive me this expression—by America. The part England will play in the coming new world order seems rather uncertain. I, personally, do not believe as most people do that she will just become the “junior-partner” of U.S.A. and, moreover, I do not hope so. But at any rate the power of USA will be so overwhelming that hardly any country could represent a counterbalance. Now, you see, it is this idea that to a certain extent troubles us. You will not misunderstand me. USA domination is indeed one of the best solutions of the present crisis. But what is to become of Europe? What, for instance, of Germany? 53

Bonhoeffer went on to say that nothing “would be worse than to impose upon” Germany “any Anglo-Saxon form of government as much as he might like it.” That qualification is significant for it indicates a significant shift in his thinking about democracy. Democracy might be the best available form of government, but being a political realist, Bonhoeffer then adds, it “simply would not work.” In fact, “to restore complete freedom of speech, of press, of association . . . would throw Germany right into the same abyss.” For that reason, Bonhoeffer expresses the hope that an authoritarian Rechtsstaat would be established,” but acknowledges that it “will need a long process of education before the people as a whole will be in the position to enjoy all the liberties it used to have.” 54 At the time Bonhoeffer was corresponding with Lehmann he was also in consultation with Visser ‘t Hooft about drafting a joint response to The Church and the New Order, written by William Paton, the General Secretary of the International Missionary Council. 55 Their sentiments reflect what Bonhoeffer told Lehmann, and they are of particular relevance today when many “new democracies” that have emerged as a result of regime-change, revolution and war are struggling for sustainability. It

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would be unwise, so Bonhoeffer says, to insist on “an immediate return to full-fledged democracy,” especially in Germany, France, and Italy where “all centers of political creativeness and order” have been “discredited and destroyed.” Instead, a “strong centralized authority” was needed, together with the preparation of the soil in which democracy could flourish. 56 State absolutism was unacceptable and the rule of law was essential, but too much freedom was problematic “in situations where all order has been destroyed” as that could result in a return to dictatorship. 57 So the government had to be strong. 58 But civil and religious liberty, freedom of speech, and equality before the law, were essential, 59 as were international order and security, something that required the “effective limitation of national sovereignty” and the “limitation of economic individualism” to ensure security for “the masses.” 60 Bonhoeffer was increasingly open to a democratic future, but his reservations are important. For much depends on what brand of democracy we are talking about, whether citizens are prepared for it, whether its institutions are carefully constructed and sustainable in each context, and whether it is just, inclusive, and protective of human dignity. But is this possible to achieve in a multicultural secular state and religiously plural society such as most societies have become or are in the process of becoming? IS DEMOCRACY POSSIBLE IN A MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY? Democracy has seldom been fully representative of “the people” and able or willing to serve all their interests. This was the case whether in ancient Athens, where the polity supposedly has its roots in the West; in Switzerland, which has often been regarded as a model democracy; or in the United States, which claims to be the defender of democratic freedom today. In fact, the “other” has generally been excluded to some degree if not totally. Gender, ethnicity, education, class, and wealth have all played a critical role in determining who should have the vote and who should have the right to be elected to office. Such questions fueled the civil wars in England and in the United States, and they continue to plague old and new democracies around the world. The reason is obvious: changes in demography in a democracy lead to changes in the balance of power, so those who have been privileged by democratic policies will always seek ways to cling to power, and they generally become corrupt in the process. Hence the widespread disillusionment with democracy among many “others” and young people today. But failures in democratic practice are not necessarily the fault of democratic polity, especially if democracy is understood as a “work in progress” rather than a static form of government. In this regard, it is important to distinguish between democratic transition and transforma-

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tion, that is, between establishing democracy as a constitutional process after a period of social upheaval, and the unceasing task of establishing a truly just, inclusive, and sustainable democratic order, which should be operative in all democracies. 61 A transition to democracy can be achieved in a relatively short space of time, but democratic transformation is a never-ending project driven by a vision of a truly just, peaceful, and sustainable future. Apartheid South Africa was a reasonably well-managed democracy, but it was confined to a few million eligible white voters, not the more than twenty-five million currently on the voters’ roll today. As such it was fundamentally flawed and unjust not because there was no democracy but because only a white minority were allowed to participate in it. As the policy of apartheid evolved even its advocates realized that this was unsustainable and, therefore, devised a scheme to extend democratic rights to those who were excluded by creating a series of semi-autonomous states for each ethnic group with quasi-democratic institutions. This was doomed from the outset because whites retained most of the land, controlled virtually all the resources, and had ultimate power even over the satellite “states.” Post-apartheid South Africa has a remarkably progressive democratic Constitution, one influenced by that of reunited Germany whose guiding principle is human dignity. 62 But ever since its adoption in 1994 South Africa has struggled to ensure that its promises become a reality on the ground. So, although the transition to democracy was successfully negotiated, the hoped-for transformation has been far more elusive. Even though every citizen of voting age in South Africa is enfranchised and civil liberties entrenched, achieving a just society is still a long way off. This requires overcoming poverty, providing better education, health facilitie,s and housing for all, as well as the redistribution of land. But is democracy possible in a multicultural context if, for Bonhoeffer, it was going to be difficult to implement in a largely monoculture, like postwar Germany? That, of course, is the debate in Europe today following the massive influx of refugees, something that has also taken place in South Africa, which was already multicultural by nature. How can democracy work, its opponents argue, when not everyone shares the same background, plays by the same cultural and religious rules, and has had a reasonable education? Bonhoeffer may not provide an answer to that problematic question whether in modern Europe or South Africa, let alone the United States, but he does provide a theological perspective informed by political realism that can guide the church and the Christian citizen in exercising public responsibility. This has to do with human dignity, especially that of the “other.”

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WHY IS THE DIGNITY OF THE “OTHER” FUNDAMENTAL? From the time Bonhoeffer wrote Sanctorum Communio, as we have seen, the question of the “other” was at the center of his theological reflections and informed his understanding of how the church and society should be structured. As Josiah Ulysses Young III reminds us in No Difference in the Fare, the theological groundwork for Bonhoeffer’s growing openness to the “other,” and notably to people of color, was prepared from the time he worked on his dissertation. 63 So I bring my conversation with Bonhoeffer to a conclusion by returning to where it started. By way of reminder, in Sanctorum Communio Bonhoeffer said that God confronts us with an ethical choice in our encounter with the “other,” whether understood as an individual or “collective person.” How we respond determines whether we become responsible human beings and communities. 64 But the “other” is not merely a vehicle through whom God acts because that reduces the “other” to a metaphysical entity whether defined philosophically or racially. The “other” is bodily present to us and addresses us in his or her own right as a human being and neighbor. The “other” is a subject not an object to be used or abused. Respecting the dignity of the “other” is, then, a precondition for authentic human relationships and the building of a sustainable community. If atomistic individualism is the danger of liberal democracy, treating people en masse is the danger of communism, Nazism, and “vulgar democracy.” But, says Bonhoeffer, “God does not want a community that absorbs the individual into itself, but a community of human beings.” 65 Terry Eagleton, with good reason, warns us about the danger of absolutizing such concepts as “difference” and the “other,” because although “some forms of otherness are to be esteemed . . . others . . . are not.” He goes on to say that “there is nothing in the least irrational about being occasionally fearful of the other.” In fact, for him, it is as dangerous to romanticise as it is to demonise the “other.” But Eagleton’s further point, namely that hybridity “may well be worth cultivating when it comes to ethnic matters” even if “it is not usually so,” must be interrogated. 66 Hybridity is not just “worth cultivating,” it is essential that we do so for the sake of future generations and also do so by respecting diverse identities at the same time. Building border walls and strengthening border controls might control the flow of refugees and immigrants, and it may be necessary to do so to some degree, but it cannot reverse reality on the ground. In the global village every “other” has become neighbour to every “other.” This means that for Christians it is not only a political, or even a moral issue, but a profoundly theological, indeed, Christological issue. It has to do with human dignity, in fact, with both “who Christ is actually for us today?” and “who am I?” In a sermon preached in London on Trinity Sunday in 1934, Bonhoeffer spoke of the mystery of the human person, which becomes greater the

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nearer that person is to us. 67 The person who is far away in “darkest Africa” or the “mystical Orient” can be kept at a distance, studied under the rubric of comparative religion and cultural anthropology, and economically and politically manipulated in an impersonal way, much as in modern warfare or global capitalism where the “other” is the enemy or the worker. But when the distant “other” confronts us here and now we are literally faced with an inescapable personal and ethical challenge because the “other” is a human being with the same needs, fears, loves, and hopes we have. Whether in terms of gender and sexual orientation, culture or ethnicity, religious faith or lack of it, the difference of the “other” demands our respect. And whether that respect is forthcoming will determine the future of the community in which we have to live together, it will also determine who each of us become. Bonhoeffer recognized the importance of multicultural awareness when, in prison, he reflected on his life and asked Bethge a rhetorical question: “Isn’t a knowledge of other countries and a deeper encounter with them a much more important element of education for us today than knowing the classics?” And he went on to suggest that “perhaps it’s one of our tasks to make encounters with other peoples and countries a real cultural experience that goes beyond politics or business, beyond snobbery.” 68 Writing to his friend Helmut Rößler after his return from America in 1931, Bonhoeffer remarked that his travel experiences had made the situation as well as theology in Germany and Europe “seem so local, and one just can’t imagine that in all the world it should be Germany, and there only a few men, who should have understood what the gospel is.” At the same time, he does not “see a gospel message from anywhere else” for how can the American missionary endeavor succeed if the American church back home is failing? 69 It is then that he talks about his desire to visit India to see if the solution will come from there, and more questions trip off his tongue: Is our time over? Has the gospel been given to another people, perhaps proclaimed with completely different words and actions? How do you see the eternal nature of Christianity in light of the world situation and our own way of living?

He then asks what, for him, was existentially the critical questions: How should preach such things to these people? Who still believes that anymore?” The critical issue is, as always for Bonhoeffer, visibility. It is no good believing in the “invisible church” or an invisible “new humanity,” they must become concrete realities. So, he tells Rößler, “invisibility is ruining us. If we cannot see in our personal life that Christ has been here, then we want at least to see it in India, but this madness of being constantly thrown back to the invisible God himself—no one can stand that anymore.” 70 Bonhoeffer concludes his letter by saying that Helmut’s young

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son “must make you see many things differently. The perspective on the future must be a completely different one.” 71 The next generation must help us to see things differently! One of the grand ironies of European history is that although Christendom since medieval times tried to exclude people of other faiths, in more recent history we have witnessed the demise of Christendom in Western Europe and the resurgence of other religions as well as new forms of Christianity within its borders. Bonhoeffer explored the antecedents of this irony in “Heritage and Decay,” tracing its origins to the expulsion of the Jews from the West. 72 The process, which began in Spain and reached its nadir in the Holocaust was, as Bonhoeffer put it, the “driving out of Christ” from the West. 73 If it was the evangelization of Europe that united Christendom, the expulsion of Jesus the Jew led to its decay, and Islam became a constant external threat lurking on its eastern borders. Bonhoeffer’s earliest encounters with Islam occurred in North Africa during his first year as a university student and his vicariate in Barcelona. His youthful comparison of the Abrahamic faiths may be surmised from occasional snippets in his correspondence. 74 But in “Heritage and Decay,” Bonhoeffer really demonstrates an acute awareness of the challenge presented to Christianity by the religious “other.” It is not the challenge feared by Christendom and countered by inquisition and crusade, but the challenge of an incisive critique of so-called Christian nations that exposes the chasm between their faith claims and their actions. Bonhoeffer quotes the Muslim leader Ibn Saud, the founder of modern-day Saudi Arabia, with telling effect: I do not close myself off from European civilization. But I use it in a way that corresponds to Arabia, the Arabian soul, and the will of God. . . . I have procured machines from Europe, but I do not want its irreligiosity. The Muslim peoples . . . need weapons, but the strongest weapon is faith in God, humble obedience to the divine laws. Hate does not come from God. Europe, filled with hate, will annihilate itself with its own weapons. 75

In sum, the West has lost its soul to secularism. Or, as he tells his friend Erwin Sutz in a letter written in May 1932 to tell him about his plans to go to India: “there must be other people on earth who know more than Christians in Europe!” 76 Religious pluralism confronts us, then, with issues in which matters of spirituality, ethics, and belief are inextricably intertwined with those of politics and democracy. For this reason, interfaith understanding is an urgent necessity not only in establishing and maintaining human community but also in deepening its quality of life. Bonhoeffer was aware that a genuinely democratic order in which equity, freedom, and justice are inseparable has to be secular, but he was equally aware that secularization and a reliance on technology has under-

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mined the spiritual foundations necessary for the salvation of the West and the shaping of the world that the next generations will inherit. 77 Without this, global peace will remain elusive. Thus, the chief reason why Bonhoeffer wanted to visit Gandhi was to learn from him about the way of peace because the churches in Europe had so dismally failed to prevent the rearmament of the nations and the outbreak of war. That is why the realities and opportunities presented by religious pluralism within the framework of global politics not only force us to broaden the horizons of ecumenical endeavor but also enrich that endeavor in struggling for a more just world. For without the spiritual and moral resources necessary for building and sustaining of just societies, we will continue to destroy the earth and ourselves. Who, then, “is Jesus Christ actually for us today?” For Christians, as for Bonhoeffer, he cannot be other than our cantus firmus . But does this not immediately shut down conversation with the “other” whether religious or secular. Or is it, perhaps, precisely Bonhoeffer’s Christology that enables us to be open to the “other”? 78 For it is not just we who ask, “who is Christ actually for us today?” the “other” also asks us. For Bonhoeffer, the true Christ is the one who was pushed out of the world, beyond the boundaries of the city, into the ghetto, and onto the cross. The Christ who is Lord is the crucified one. Rather than providing justification for ecclesial power and giving its support to present-day military adventures of the “Christian West,” the Christ whom Bonhoeffer proclaims, provides a radical critique of such power. Jesus Christ is God’s ultimate word on everything that dehumanises people and destroys God’s creation. Hence the way in which we Christians and the church respond to the “other,” whether religious or secular, along with all victims of oppression and injustice, will demonstrate who Christ truly is, for us, today. Undoubtedly, Bonhoeffer would have framed his “core questions” very differently if he had not been a Christian and had he not lived in a different historical context. But for him they were all connected in Christ, the cantus firmus of his life, and in the expectation that in the end, the mystery into which he was being led would be finally and fully revealed in Christ. In the meantime, the conversation must continue from one generation to the next. NOTES 1. Berlin, 365–66. 2. August 2, 1941 Bonhoeffer, Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 200–201. 3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV/xx/32. The Library of Christian Classics, vol. XXI (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1520. 4. “Bonhoeffer, Calvinism and Civil Disobedience,” in de Gruchy, Bonhoeffer and South Africa, 91–122.

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5. The Kairos Document, 23. 6. de Gruchy, Bonhoeffer and South Africa, 91–122. 7. For biographical details, see Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Johannesburg: Macdonald Purnell, 1994). See also Nelson Mandela, The Struggle Is My Life: His Speeches and Writings Brought Together with Historical Documents and Accounts by Fellow Prisoners (London: IDAF Publications, 1990). On Mandela and Methodism, see Dion Foster, “Mandela and the Methodists: faith, fallacy and fact,” in Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae, August 2014, 40, Supplement, 87–115. 8. Heinz Eduard Tödt, Authentic Faith: Bonhoeffer’s Theological Ethics in Context (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 187–89. 9. Thomas G. Karis and Gail M. Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964 – 1979. A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882–1990, vol. 5 (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 1997). 10. Heinz Eduard Tödt, Authentic Faith, 184ff. 11. July 13, 1934, London, 184. 12. Rasmussen, “Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, and Resistance,” 50–51. 13. London, 229. 14. Mandela, “Second Court Statement, 1964,” 169. 15. Mandela, “Second Court Statement, 1964,” 171. 16. Nelson Mandela, “Second Court Statement, 1964,” in The Struggle Is My Life, 168. 17. Mandela, “Second Court Statement, 1964,” 181. 18. Published in Thomas G. Karis and Gail M. Gerhart, From Protest to Challenge: Nadir and Resurgence, 1964–1979. A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882–1990 (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 1997), 356. 19. de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South Africa, 123–34. 20. See de Gruchy, The Church Struggle in South Africa, 123–34. 21. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 625. 22. Moses, The Reluctant Revolutionary, 143. 23. Hauerwas, Performing the Faith, 36. 24. Harvey, Taking Hold of the Real, 277. 25. Letters and Papers from Prison, 42. 26. Ethics, 283–84. 27. Letters and Papers from Prison, 41. 28. Ethics, 284. 29. Ethics, 284. 30. Letters and Papers from Prison, 41. 31. Robin Lovin, Christian Realism and the New Realities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 96. 32. Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure and Consequences of National Socialism (London: Penguin Books, 1973), 538; see also Larry Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Reality and Resistance (Nashville: Abingdon, 1972). 33. Ethics, 219–98. 34. Ethics, 22. 35. Ethics, 51, 80 36. Larry Rasmussen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: His Significance for North Americans (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), 139–43. 37. See Brown, Bonhoeffer: God’s Conspirator. 38. See Green, Introduction to Ethics, 11–16. 39. See Moses, The Reluctant Revolutionary, 27–42. 40. Ethics, 390 n. 8. 41. See Wolfgang Huber, Gerechtigkeit und Recht: Grundlinien christlicher Rechtsethik, (Gütersloher: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1996). 42. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 502–28. 43. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 527. 44. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 528.

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45. Robin W. Lovin, “The Christian and the Authority of the State: Bonhoeffer’s Reluctant Revisions,” in Ethical Responsibility: Bonhoeffer’s Legacy to the Churches, ed. John D. Godsey and Geffrey B. Kelly (Toronto, Canada: Edwin Mellen Press, 1981), 120–22. 46. Ethics, 374. 47. See the Afterword to Ethics, 426. 48. Ethics, 126. 49. See John W. de Gruchy, Christianity and Democracy: A Theology for a Just World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 55–128. 50. Theological Education Underground, 452. 51. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 168. 52. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 200–201. 53. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 219. 54. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 220. 55. Published by SCM, London, in 1941. See, Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 533–39. 56. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 536. 57. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 536. 58. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 539. 59. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 537. 60. Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 537. 61. See de Gruchy, Christianity and Democracy, 34–39. 62. See Laurie Ackermann, Human Dignity: Lodestar for Equality in South Africa (Cape Town: Juta, 2013). 63. Young III, No Difference in the Fare: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Problem of Racism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1998), 15–17 64. Sanctorum Communio, 54f. 65. Sanctorum Communio, 80. 66. Terry Eagleton, Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 32. 67. London, 360. 68. Letters and Papers from Prison, 321–22. 69. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 54. 70. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 55. 71. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 55. 72. Ethics, 105. 73. Ethics, 105. 74. The Young Bonhoeffer, 117–19, 121. 75. Ethics, 117. 76. Bonhoeffer, Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work, 121. 77. Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 21; Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Scribner, 1944), 159. 78. See Christiane Tietz, “Bonhoeffer’s Strong Christology in the Context of Religious Pluralism” in Clifford J. Green and Guy Carter, eds., Interpreting Bonhoeffer: Historical Perspectives, Emerging Issues (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 181–96.

Postscript: One Last Question

God meets us not only as Thou but also in the “disguise” of an “It,” so my question is basically how to find the “Thou” in this “It” (i.e., “fate”), or in other words . . . —how “fate” really becomes “the state of being led.” —Letter to Bethge, February 21, 1944 1 Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine. Whoever I am, thou knowest me; O God, I am thine! —Last lines of “Who am I?” July 1944 2

Bonhoeffer’s “core questions” are universal: what does it mean to be human, who am I, is there room for God, and how will future generations live? Of course, he asks them from a specifically Christian point of view because they all have to do with who Christ is for us today. He would have thought about them differently if he had not been a Christian, as well as a theological witness to Christ, a prophet of God’s justice and peace, and a Christian humanist. But because, for him, Christ was the cantus firmus of the polyphony of his life, he believed that all his questions would finally be resolved in the mystery of God into which he was being led “in Christ.” This did not mean that for him Christianity provides all the answers to life’s great questions because the Christ of faith is greater than the confines of any religion. But through our conversation with Bonhoeffer, we now know better who this Christ is for us today, and therefore, we know that doing justice is the way to achieving peace in the world; that embracing the “other” makes us more fully human; and that happiness can be found even in a world of suffering and in times of personal sorrow. All Bonhoeffer’s questions are challenging, but none more so than his final question, an inescapable universal question and, therefore, our last question also. How do we understand and, therefore, approach death? This is about more than whether there is any meaning in suffering; it is about whether there is any meaning in death, and therefore whether, in approaching death, we are at the mercy of fate or God? This question obviously became uppermost in Bonhoeffer’s mind as his days in prison passed, and his trial was delayed time and again, forcing him to accept that in all probability he would not be released any time soon, if at all. His future was out of his hands, and increasingly dependent on whether 175

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the plot on Hitler’s life was successful and, therefore, whether the war would end sooner rather than later. In the same way as Bonhoeffer dealt with all his “core questions,” for this is certainly another, there is no straightforward answer forthcoming. As always, only now more immediately and intensely, he believed that the answer lay in his sense of being led into the mystery of God and the restoration of all things in Christ. But how could it possibly be that he was being so led when it seemed that he was at the mercy of unpredictable fate and the decisions of evil men? While he “hoped against hope,” in turning these questions over in his mind from one day to the next, it was becoming more and more difficult to resist (widerstehen) fate and submit (ergeben) to the will and mercy of God. Bonhoeffer’s use of these words to describe his struggle so struck Bethge that when he sought a title for the German edition of what became Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, he chose Widerstand und Ergebung. Bonhoeffer explicitly brought the words together in a letter he wrote to Bethge in February 1944 in which he wrote, “we must stand up to ‘fate’ . . . as resolutely as we must submit to it at a given time. Only on the other side of this twofold process can we speak of ‘being led.’” He then goes on to say: God meets us not only as Thou but also in the “disguise” of an “It,” so my question is basically how to find the “Thou” in this “It” (i.e., “fate”), or in other words . . . —how “fate” really becomes “the state of being led.” So the boundaries between resistance and submission can’t be determined as a matter of principle, but both must be there and both must be seized resolutely. Faith demands this flexible and alive way of acting. 3

This is one of the most remarkable passages in Letters and Papers from Prison, shedding further light on how Bonhoeffer came to understand faith in Christ, only now it was faith coming to terms with the inevitability of death. But his response is as nuanced and paradoxical as always. Faith is a flexible, living way of acting in and through which we discern “God in disguise” (the “hidden God” of the cross) even in cold, foreboding, impersonal fate. Just as in Sanctorum Communio God as “Thou” met us in the “other” and even in the “it,” so death becomes the final way of “being in a state of being led” into the mystery of God. Let me not romanticize death, especially the death of the young or those in the prime of life as was Bonhoeffer, age thirty-nine. The Bonhoeffer family did not do that, neither did Dietrich. He had lost a brother during the First World War, and he knew that many of his students and colleagues had been killed on the battle fields of the Second. Those of us who have lost children under tragic circumstances also have some sense of the grief experienced by Dietrich’s parents when they heard on BBC news several weeks after the end of the war, that he had died. That

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Bonhoeffer was eventually named as a martyr does little to take away the sting of death or expunge the evil that brought it about. And yet, Bonhoeffer believed that somehow fate would not have the final word. As he wrote in “After Ten Years,” in a passage that often gave us hope in the struggle against apartheid, and one to which I have returned again and again: God can and will let good come out of everything, even the greatest evil. For that to happen, God needs human beings who let everything work out for the best. I believe that in every moment of distress God will give us as much strength to resist as we need. But it is not given to us in advance, lest we rely on ourselves and not on God alone. In such faith all fear of the future should be overcome. I believe that even our mistakes and shortcomings are not in vain and that it is no more difficult for God to deal with them than with our supposedly good deeds. I believe that God is no timeless fate but waits for and responds to sincere prayer and responsible actions. 4

As far as we know, the last conversation Bonhoeffer had was with Captain Payne-Best, a British officer and fellow prisoner he had met in Buchenwald. It took place on Sunday, April 8, 1945, after a short service conducted by Bonhoeffer for those who were traveling together with him under military escort toward Flossenbürg. According to Best, Bonhoeffer had just finished his final prayer when he was summoned “by two evillooking men” and told to go with them. “We bade him good-bye,” writes Payne-Best, then “he drew me aside––’this is the end,’ he said, ‘for me the beginning of life.’” 5 The next day Bonhoeffer was hanged in Flossenbürg. NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Letters and Papers from Prison, 304. Letters and Papers from Prison, 460. Letters and Papers from Prison, 304. Letters and Papers from Prison, 46. S. Payne Best, The Venlo Incident (London: Frontline Books, 2009), 200.

Chronology

Unless otherwise indicated, all the references are to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 1906

February 4

Dietrich and his twin sister Sabine born in Breslau

1912

The family moves to Berlin

1914–1918

First World War

1918

April 28

Bonhoeffer’s brother Walter dies of war wounds

1923

Student at Tübingen University

1924–1927

Student at Berlin University

1927

Sanctorum Communio

1928–1929

Vicariate in Barcelona

1930

Act and Being

1931

September

Student at Union Theological Seminary, New York

July

Returns to Germany; meets Karl Barth for the first time

November

Ordained as pastor

Winter

Appointed assistant lecturer at the University of Berlin

1932

Summer

Lectures on “Creation and Fall”

1933

January

Hitler elected chancellor of the Third Reich

April

Essay on “The Church and the Jewish Question”

Summer

Lectures on “Christology”; seminar on “Hegel”

October

Begins pastorate in London

May

Barmen Synod and Declaration

August

Attends Ecumenical Conference in Fanø, Denmark

April

Returns to Germany

1934

1935

Finkenwalde Seminary commences; meets Bethge for first time

1937

1938

1939

July

Article on “The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement”

September

Finkenwalde closed by the Gestapo

November

Discipleship published

February

First contact with leaders of the Resistance

September

Writes Life Together

March

Visits London to meet Niebuhr, Bell, and Visser ‘t Hooft

179

180

1940

Chronology June–July

Second visit to New York

September 1

World War II begins

August

Forbidden to lecture, publish, and speak in public

September

Begins work on Ethics

October

Assigned to Abwehr office in Munich

1941–1942 1943

1944

1945

Travels to Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden for the Resistance January 17

Engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer

April 5

Arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Tegel military prison

May 15

Wedding of Eberhard and Renate Bethge

January

Bethge posted to Italian warfront

April 30

First “theological letter” written to Bethge from prison

May 19

Eberhard and Renate Bethge visit Bonhoeffer

June 27

Maria visits Bonhoeffer

July 20

Assassination attempt on Hitler fails

October 8

Taken to the Gestapo prison on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse

October 30

Bethge taken under military escort to Berlin and imprisoned

February 7

Sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp

38–April 3–8

Moved to Flossenbürg

April 9

Executed

April 30

Hitler commits suicide

1948

National Party elected in South Africa; implements apartheid

1949

First German edition of Ethik published

1951

First edition of Widerstand und Ergebung published

1953

First English edition of Letters and Papers from Prison

1955

First English edition of Ethics published

1960

1961

March 21

Sharpeville Massacre, South Africa

December 7–14

World Council of Churches (WCC) Sponsored Cottesloe Conference in Johannesburg

January

Bethge’s Alden-Tuthill Lectures in Chicago

December 16 African National Congress (ANC) launches armed struggle in South Africa 1963

Beyers Naudé founds the Christian Institute Mandela imprisoned on Robben Island

1967

Publication of Bethge’s biography, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Chronology

181

1968

Publication of the Message to the People of South Africa by the South African Council of Churches

1969

Launch of the Black Consciousness Movement led by Steve Biko

1971

Founding Congress of the International Bonhoeffer Society, Kaiserswerth, Germany, attended by Beyers Naudé

1973

May

Eberhard and Renate visit South Africa

1976

May

Second International Bonhoeffer Congress, Geneva, and Bonhoeffer’s seventieth birthday celebration

June 16

Soweto Uprising

1977

Murder of Biko by Security Police and banning of Beyers Naudé and Christian Institute

1975

Publication of the Kairos Document

1989

Fall of the Berlin Wall; ANC in South Africa unbanned

1990

Nelson Mandela leaves prison after twenty-seven years

1994

April 27

Mandela inaugurated as president of South Africa

1996

January

Seventh International Bonhoeffer Congress, Cape Town

1989–1999

Publication of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke

1998–2014

Publication of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English

2000

March 18

Death of Eberhard Bethge

2020

January

Sixteenth International Bonhoeffer Congress, Stellenbosch

Bibliography

PRIMARY TEXTS Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology, ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr. DBWE 2; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996. ———. Barcelona, Berlin, America 1928–1931, ed. Clifford J. Green. DBWE 10; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008. ———. Berlin 1932–1933, ed. Larry J. Rasmussen. DBWE 12; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009. ———. The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ed. Isabel Best. DBWE 17; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012. ———. Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945, ed. Mark S. Brocker. DBWE 16; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. ———. Creation and Fall: A Theological Exposition of Genesis 1–3, ed. John W de Gruchy. DBWE 3; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997. ———. Discipleship, eds. Geffrey B. Kelly and John D. Godsey. DBWE 4; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. ———. Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work: 1931–1932, eds. Victoria J. Barnett, Mark S. Brocker, and Michael B. Lukens. DBWE 11; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012. ———. Ethics, ed. Clifford Green. DBWE 6; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005. ———. Fiction from Prison, ed. Clifford J. Green. DBWE 7; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000. ———. Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. John W. de Gruchy. DBWE 8; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. ———. Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible, ed. Geffrey B. Kelly. DBWE 5; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996. ———. London 1933–1935, ed. Keith Clements, DBWE 13; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007. ———. Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, ed. Clifford J. Green. DBWE 1; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998. ———. The Young Bonhoeffer 1918–1927, eds. Paul Duane Matheny, Clifford J. Green, and Marshall D. Johnson. DBWE 9; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002. ———. Theological Education at Finkenwalde: 1935–1937, ed. H. Gaylon Barker and Mark S. Brocker. DBWE 14; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013. ———. Theological Education Underground, ed. Victoria J. Barnett. DBWE 15; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, and Maria von Wedemeyer. Love Letters from Cell 92. London: Harper-Collins, 1994.

SELECTED SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS Barth, Karl. Community, State, and Church: Three Essays. Garden City, NY: Doubleday/ Anchor, 1960. ———. The Epistle to the Romans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. ———. Fragments Grave and Gay. London: Collins, 1971.

183

184

Bibliography

———. Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century. London: SCM, 1972. ———. The Word of God and the Word of Man. New York: Harper and Row, 1957. Barnett, Victoria. After Ten Years: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Our Times. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017. Bethge, Eberhard. Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr, ed. John W. de Gruchy. London: Collins, 1975. ———. Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Contemporary. London: Collins, 1970. ———. Friendship and Resistance: Essays on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Geneva: WCC, 1995. ———. “The challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and theology.” The Chicago Theological Seminary Register 51, no. 2. February 1961. Also published in World Come of Age, edited by Ronald Gregor Smith (London: Collins, 1967). 22–88. Bosanquet, Mary. The Life and Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1968. Brown, Peta. Bonhoeffer: God’s Conspirator in a State of Exception. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Clements, Keith. A Patriotism for Today: Love of Country in Dialogue with the Witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. London: Collins, 1984. ———. Bonhoeffer. London: SPCK, 2010. ———. Bonhoeffer and Britain. London: Churches together in Britain and Ireland, 2006. ———. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ecumenical Quest. Geneva: WCC, 2015. ———. What Freedom? The Persistent Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Birmingham: Church Enterprise Print, 1990. Cloete, G. D., and D. J. Smit, eds. A Moment of Truth: The Confession of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church, 1982. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984. Dahill, Lisa E. Reading from the Underside of Selfhood: Bonhoeffer and Spiritual Formation. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2009. de Gruchy, John W. Being Human: Confessions of a Christian Humanist. London: SCM, 2006. ———. “Beyers Naudé: South Africa’s Bonhoeffer? Celebrating the centenary of the birth of Beyers Naudé, 1915–2015.” Stellenbosch Theological Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, 2015. 79–98. ———. “Bonhoeffer among the ‘glorious company of the prophets’—Bonhoeffer as prophetic theologian.” In Christiane Tietz and Philip G. Ziegler, eds., Engaging Bonhoeffer in a Global Era. Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 2020. ———. “Bonhoeffer and Public Ethics: South African Notes.” In Clifford J. Green and Guy C. Carter, eds., Interpreting Bonhoeffer: Historical Perspectives, Emerging Issues. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2013. 15–24. ———. Bonhoeffer and South Africa: Theology in Dialogue. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; London: Paternoster, 1984. ———. “Bonhoeffer and South Africa: With special reference to Calvinism and the problem of Christian civil disobedience.” In John Godsey and Geoffrey B. Kelly, eds., Ethical Responsibility: Bonhoeffer’s Legacy to the Churches. Toronto: Edwin Mellen, 1981. 231–256. ———. “Bonhoeffer, Apartheid, and Beyond: The Reception of Bonhoeffer in South Africa.” In John W. de Gruchy, ed., Bonhoeffer for a New Day. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 353–356. ———. “Bonhoeffer in South Africa.” In Bethge. Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr. 26–42. ———. “Bonhoeffer’s legacy and Kairos-Palestine.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, No. 143, July 2012. 67–80. ———. “Christian witness in South Africa in a time of transition.” In Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr. and Charles Marsh, eds., Theology and the Practice of Responsibility: Essays on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1994. 283–393. ———. Christianity and Democracy: A Theology for a Just World Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ———. “Christianity, democracy and new realities: Bonhoeffer’s political witness then and now.” In Cristen Busch Nielsen, Ralf K, Wüstenberg, Jen Zimmermann, eds., A

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Index of Subjects

Aarau Conference, 83–4, 88 Abortion, 36 Abwher (Military Intelligence), 23, 28, 179 Aesthetic existence, 24, 100, 119, 128–9, 131 African National Congress, 155–8, 161 African: Christians/ity, 55, 80, 109, 119, 155; renaissance, 14, 80; theologians, 43, 119; traditional religion, 14, 109. See also South Africa African-American Christianity, 45 Afrikaner, 144; History, 68, 144; nationalism, 68, 155; theologians, 11, 14; volk, 68 “After Ten Years,” 13, 19, 177 Alden-Tuthill Lectures (Bethge), 8, 12, 159 America/an: Christianity, 34, 45–7, 86, 109, 169; culture wars, 34–5; missions, 169; Protestantism, 45, 164. See also United States Anabaptist, 50, 87, 140–4, 146, 164 Analogia relationis, 47 Anti-Semitism, 148 Anti-Judaism, 54, 148 Apartheid, 11–4, 24, 36, 71, 79, 80, 157, 162; Anti-Apartheid Movement, 156; justification of, 122, 138–9. See also South Africa Arcane discipline, 132 Aryan Legislation, 53, 69, 87 Baptism, 42–3, 121, 126 Barcelona, 24, 59, 60, 62, 65, 84, 101, 107, 115, 138 Barmen: Declaration, 71; Synod of, 53 Beauty, 102–3, 113, 129 Berlin Wall, 13, 81 Bethel Confession, 53

Bible, 22, 30, 32, 44, 46, 64, 64, 83, 86, 104, 107, 131; Hebrew, 54; Interpretation of, 104–5, 140, 143, 149; New Testament, 43, 61–2, 68, 70, 121, 127; Old Testament, 53–5, 61, 69, 72, 123, 129, 131, 140 “Biblical Questions, Insights and Vistas” (Barth), 83 Biographies: Bonhoeffer, of, 3, 18, 29, 31–5, 41 Black consciousness, 12–3 Black theology, 13 Bonhoeffer’s books: Sanctorum Communio, 8–11, 15, 47, 70, 92, 102–4, 107, 125, 167, 176; Act and Being, 9, 85, 102, 104, 120; Creation and Fall, 46–8, 104, 144; Discipleship, 7, 8, 43, 50, 78, 121–3, 128, 132–3, 141; Life Together/Prayer Book of the Bible, 45, 123; Ethics, 59, 60, 69, 82, 96, 127, 135, 149, 153–4; Letters and Papers from Prison, 8–9, 35, 38, 121, 160 Bonhoeffer’s lectures and poems: “Christology,” 37–43, 59, 78–80, 131; “Concerning the Christian idea of God,” 89; “Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity,” 75; “Night Voices,” 55; “On the Question of Church Communion,” 115; “Protestantism without Reformation,” 154; “Stations on the Road to Freedom,” 122; “The Church and the Jewish Question,” 42, 137–8, 143, 150; “The Death of Moses,” 63; “The Theology of Crisis and Its Attitude toward Philosophy and Science,” 94, 101; “The Tragedy of the Prophetic,” 49, 55; “Thoughts on the Day of Baptism of Dietrich

189

190

Index of Subjects

Bethge,” 49, 54, 61, 123; “Thy kingdom come!,” 128; “What should a student of theology do today?,” 91; “Who am I?,” 15, 29 British imperialism, 58

Conspiracy, against Hitler, 28, 53, 159 Creation, 46, 48, 44, 91, 104, 114, 139, 140, 145, 146, 171; Orders of, 144 Cuba, 11 Czechoslovakia, 52

Chalcedon, Council of, 39, 40, 120 “cheap grace,” 59, 111–4, 118, 123 “cheap reconciliation,” 3, 59 Christ: Aryan Christ, 79; Cantus firmus, as, 161, 129; church-community, as, 82–3, 104; center of history, 38–41, 82, 140; confessing, 42–4, 77, 149; cosmic, 42; exaltation of, 41; humanity of, 41–2, 80; humiliation of, 41–2, 161; mediator, 39; faith, of, 40–1, 79; passion of, 53; pro-me, 39; resurrection, 1, 33, 79, 83, 99, 112, 116, 123, 130; sacrament, as, 40, 43, 94; Stellvertreter/ung , 37, 82; twonatures of, 104; Word as, 31, 37, 39, 41–2, 50, 61, 73, 78–9, 94, 97, 103. See also Incarnation, Christology

Democracy/tic, 30, 143–159, 163, 166, 170–2; Constitutional, 13, 80, 138–9, 163–4, 166; Economic, 164; Liberal, 18, 164–5, 168; Populist 163; South African, 14, 167; social, 86–7, 155, 163; Transformation of, 14, 167; Transition to, 166–7. See also Germany, South Africa, United States Demythologization, 109–110 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English, 3 Discipline, 124–5, 132; secret, 132–3 Discipleship, 50, 121–4, 131. See also Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship Dr Faustus (Mann), 102

Christianity and Civilization” (Brunner), 78–9 Christian formation, 44, 82, 123, 126, 149, 155, 161 Christendom, 45, 137–50, 143–4, 170–1 Christology: Anabaptist, 49, 141; Negative, 51; non-religious, 23, 108–110; positive, 51; weak, 45, 47, 52, 89. See also Incarnation “church theology,” 69 Church/es: Catholic, 8–9, 84, 91, 104, 122, 125; false/true, 20–1, 122, 126; for others, 133; new humanity, as, 10, 92, 115, 125–6; political witness, 145–7; prophetic, 70, 147; sphere of freedom, as, 119, 128, 131. See also Confessing Church, German, South Africa Church and state, 49, 138–143 Civil Rights Movement, 11 Colonialism, 12, 43, 81, 138, 157 Compromise, 53, 67, 146 Conscience, 85 Consciousness: Black, 12–3; Humanist, 80, 87; Kairos, 83; Religious, 83

Earth, 129–30, 132, 137–40, 142–4, 147, 153, 165, 171 Ecumenical movement, 44, 66, 70 Edinburgh, 28, 78 Enlightenment, 9, 22, 84, 108, 113, 143, 163 Environmental crisis, 20, 46, 81 Epistemology, 99, 101–2, 104 Eschatology, 30 Ethics: Christian, 8, 45, 49, 85, 87, 138, 170; free responsibility, of, 56, 161–2; resistance, of, 159, 161–2, 164, 176. See also Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, political Ethnicity, 166, 169 Euthanasia, 36 Faith, 3, 7, 9, 36, 55, 83, 99–101, 103–4, 106, 109–10, 112, 114, 120–5, 128, 130, 169; confessing faith, 63, 66, 79, 137; community of faith, 9, 71, 132–3; fides directa/reflecta , 120, 126; justification by faith, 121–2, 146; faith and politics, 137–150; faith and sanctification, 121–2, 146 Faith and Order Movement, 66

Index of Subjects Fanø, Denmark, 767 Finkenwalde Seminary, 29, 35–6, 44, 55, 62, 68, 86, 114, 133, 156 Flossenberg, 45, 177 Frankfurter Schule, 86–7 Freedom, 10, 24, 73, 77–8, 85, 89–90, 127, 129, 132, 157, 164–6, 170 Friendship, 17, 24, 29, 34, 66, 119, 128, 131 Fundamentalism, 23, 104 Future generations, 18–9, 24, 79, 139, 154, 170, 175 Gender relations, 71, 166, 169 Geneva, 7–8, 99, 108 German/y: Christians (Deutsche Christen), 69; Confessing Church, 126; Evangelical Church of the Union, 43; History, 68, 144; Idealism, 88–9, 103; Kirchenkampf, 7, 12, 32, 46, 70, 101, 125, 128, 133; Nationalism, 84, 133. See also Nazism; Protestantism, 39, 32, 53–4, 71, 84, 86–7, 89, 104, 122, 126; Reichsbischof, 36, 53, 69; Reichskirche, 66, 70, 126, 144, 126, 144; Resistance, 23, 28–9, 32–3, 35, 43–45, 56, 123, 148, 155–6, 161–2, 164; Third Reich, 32, 43, 52, 89, 144, 163; Weimar Republic, 14, 68, 164, 165 Gestapo, 17, 23, 27, 29, 149 God: absence of, 103, 111–3, 140; belief in, 3, 99, 106, 121, 124; biblical, 22, 46, 44, 59, 104, 107, 140, 143; blessing of, 129–131; creation, of, 46; death of, 34, 102; debate about, 14, 22–3, 46, 85,105–6; fatherhood of, 89; freedom of, 85, 87–8; grace of, 147; hiddenness of, 51; humanity of, 78–9, 85, 88–9, 92; holiness of, 115–6. See also Holy Spirit; hypothesis, 22, 99–101, 111–2; image of, 44, 47, 93; Incarnate, 46, 48–9, 50–2, 77–8, 89, 110, 113, 124; Christology; judgment of, 56, 93, 153; justice of, 2, 61–3, 71, 77, 83, 175; kingdom of, 30, 56, 62, 68, 83, 138, 142–4, 147; knowledge of, 47, 98–124; listening to, 46; love, as, 70, 114–5, 121, 142; Trinity;

191

mystery, as, 48, 113–5; Trinity; names for, 46; other, as, 10, 168–171; peace of, 66–7; prophetic; political, as, 122, 145–6, 163–4; providence of, 33, 39, 129; religion, of, 22; stop-gap, as, 111–2; Subject, as, 83; Suffering, 51, 63, 66, 91–2, 114; Trinity, 52, 114–6; via negativa, 113; Wholly Other, as, 83; Word of, 44, 46, 48–9, 53, 59, 63, 70, 83, 107–8, 121; world, and, 92, 99, 103–6, 109, 113–4, 131, 145, 149, 160 Government: Christian, 107, 164; democratic, 165–6; illegitimate, 13; mandate, 145; overthrow of, 147; policy, 4; state and, 163. See also mandates, politics, secular Guilt, 65, 111, 148, 161 Happiness, 129, 131 Hermeneutics (“new language”), 32, 44, 59, 71–2, 106, 109–10, 114 Heresy, 53, 86; Apartheid as, 13, 53, 68 History: beginning of, 47; colonial, 157; purpose in, 67, 71. See also Afrikaner, Christ, Germany, kairos History of the Prussian Academy (Harnack), 86 Holocaust, 32, 148–9, 170 Hope, 23, 35, 61, 64, 66, 72, 92–3, 107, 112, 129–30, 146, 176–7; Messianic, 62 Holy, 62, 103, 121, 123. See also God, sanctification Holy Spirit, 59, 122, 133. See also prophecy, Word Honest to God (Robinson), 8 Human: agency, 153; autonomy, 108; becoming truly, 23–4, 44; being, 10; community, 10, 29 116; desire, 124; dignity, 19, 88, 92–3, 163–4, 166–8; experience, 101; in Adam, in Christ, 47, 92; need, 109–111; rights, 13, 77, 81, 93, 163; stupidity, 20–1. See also freedom, responsibility, sin, Incarnation, humanism Humanism/t: Bonhoeffer as, 24, 77, 79, 81, 83, 85–6, 88–9, 91–2, 189; Christian, 14, 78–80, 82, 86–7;

192

Index of Subjects

Classical, 78–9; Critical, 80; enemy, as, 85; crucified, of the, 87, 89–92; German, 81–3, 86, 91; God’s, 78, 85, 88–9; Incarnational, 88, 92; Liberal, 88, 96, 98, 102–3; Renaissance, 78, 80; restoration of, 99, 93, 176; scientific, 110–2; secular, 78–9, 86–7, 91; social, 86–7, 92; “Supra-national,” 84; “third humanism,” 84; values of, 112 Humboldt University (Berlin), 46, 69, 82, 84 Humanist Imperative in South Africa (de Gruchy ed.), 80 Hybridity, 168 Idealism, 88–9, 103 Idolatry, 61–2, 70 India, 11, 21, 156, 169 Individualism, 92, 109, 164, 166, 168 International Bonhoeffer Society: Congresses, 12–3, 154 Interpreting Bonhoeffer, 30–7 Institutes of the Christian Religion (Calvin), 143 Integral Humanism (Maritain), 79 Intellectual integrity, 111–2 Islam, 14, 160 Israel: Ancient, 61–2, 139–40; State of, 148 Italy, 5, 47, 130, 165 Jesus of Nazareth, 49–50, 89, 141; “being for others,” 124–5, 127, 133. See also Christology “Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity” (Harnack), 85 Jesusology, 89 Joy, 102, 129 Judaism, 148. See also anti-Judaism Justification by faith. See faith Justice, 13–4, 30, 61–2, 77, 90, 92–3, 111, 137, 139–40, 142, 161–4, 170, 174; Economic, 164 Kairos, 62, 67–9, 71–2 Kairos Document, 13, 71, 154 Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, 70, 73

Kingdom of God/heaven. See God Liberal/ism, 35–6, 155; Christianity, 9, 34, 88–9, 104. See also democracy, humanism, theology Life: affirmation of, 64, 91–3, 109, 111–2, 136, 124,129; changing, 12, 120; Christian, 22, 33, 43, 70, 119, 123–4, 126, 128–9, 131–3; enjoyment of, 33; eternal life, 52, 107; fragmentary, 130; future of life, 19, 20, 140; good, 91, 129; meaning of, 31, 48, 106, 108; source of, 46–7. See also polyphony London, 28, 41–2, 44, 48, 53–4, 87, 97, 115, 149, 156, 168 Love, 10, 67, 88–9, 92, 115, 122, 130, 133, 142, 146, 149 Lutheran/s, 98, 132; Church, 19, 135, 154; Theology, 136, 154; Tradition, 46, 97, 131, 151, 173 Mandates, 24, 145 Martyrdom, 33, 43–4, 55–6, 78, 121, 177 Marxism, 86–7, 155 Metanoia, 71, 147. See also repentance Miracles, 109, 114, 121 Multicultural/ism, 138, 166–7, 169 Music, 41, 100–3, 116, 129–31; Romantic 103 Mystery, 44, 48–52, 103–5, 168, 175–6; religions, 85 Myth, 109–10; ancient, 105 Namibia, 11 Nationalism, 81, 164; African nationalism, 68; Right-wing, 23, 34, 36, 52, 81–4, 154–5. See also Afrikaner, German Nazism (National Socialism), 21, 28, 34, 43, 53, 59, 71, 81, 86, 88, 127, 143–4, 147, 149, 155, 168 New Humanism Conference (Geneva), 78–9, 80, 88 New humanity. See church New York, 8, 18, 81, 107; Bonhoeffer’s visits to, 28, 45, 85, 104, 120, 142; World Trade Center, 81 Nicene Creed, 89

Index of Subjects Nihilism, 91, 103, 164 No Difference in the Fare (Young), 168 Non-religious Christianity. See religionless Non-violence. See pacifism North Africa, 11, 170 Opus 111 (Beethoven), 102–3 Orders of creation, 144 Orders of preservation, 144 Other, the, 10, 21, 23, 31–2, 45–6, 55–6, 62, 67, 106, 115–6, 123–4, 127, 139–40, 146, 149, 124, 124, 139–40, 146, 149, 166–71, 175 “Outline for a Book,” 22, 72, 124 Pacifism, 158; Bonhoeffer’s, 121, 141, 160. See Gandhi, Sermon on the Mount Palestine/Palestinian, 143, 148 Patriotism, 82–3, 137 Peace and justice, 2, 30, 59, 61–2, 70–2, 77, 79, 81, 88, 124, 139, 161; Peacemaking, 158, 160–2, 167, 170, 175 Penultimate, 62, 102, 129, 132, 145–7. See also Ultimate Personalism, 88 Pietism, 104 Play, 24, 41, 55, 78, 119, 128, 131, 143 Politics/al: authority, 43, 63; Calvinist, 153–4; Christian involvement, 86, 122, 134, 137–8, 142, 143–9; culture, disintegration of, 19; formation, 155; Jesus, of, 141–3; martyrdom, 43; order, 18, 79, 164–5; realism, 165, 167; resistance, 12, 69, 129, 154–9; theology, 139, 168; will, 30, 172. See also democracy, government, resistance, responsibility, tyranny Politics of Jesus (Yoder), 141–3 Polyphony, 129, 130–2 Polyphony of Life (Pangritz), 129 “positivism of revelation,” 109 Preaching, 44–6, 48, 61, 107 Prophecy, 60, 70 Prophets, 55–6, 59–67, 72, 140; Old Testament, 55, 60–2, 71; New Testament, 60–1, 71; Jeremiah as model, 59, 61–6, 71–3, 131; Jesus as,

193

63, 89; John the Baptist 61-3, 72, 147; language of, 71. See also church, Kairos Document, theology Psalms, 55 Quest for the historical Jesus (Schweitzer), 30 Racism, 34, 36, 81, 158 Radical/ism, 35–6, 86, 141, 146; Bonhoeffer’s, 66, 74, 108, 124, 171; grace, 65; political, 23, 83, 86, 148. See also Anabaptists Reality, 11, 22, 62, 109, 113; Christ as, 10, 49, 70, 92, 106, 113–5, 142, 145, 150, 161; church, 10, 125; knowledge of, 85, 108; God, of, 49, 99, 101–4, 106, 112–4, 145, 150, 161; political, 14, 145, 161; transcendent, 101, 112, 114; world, 51–2, 63–4, 67–8, 71, 103, 106, 113, 145 Recapitulation, 93. See Restoration Reformation, 9, 14, 36, 45, 53, 78, 80, 83, 87, 91, 125, 133, 137, 140, 143; Radical, 164. See Anabaptist Religion, 10, 22, 45, 66–7, 82–3, 100, 106–9; African traditional, 14, 108, 119; Bonhoeffer family and, 100; Church and, 107–8, 125; Christ and, 107–8, 175; Christianity as, 55; definition of, 106–7; comparative, 168; critique of, 108–12; definition of, 106–7; God of, 22; history of, 85 Religionless Christianity, 22, 109–10, 119, 132. See also Christology, church for others, hermeneutics, secular Religious a priori, 85, 109 Religious pluralism, 171 Renaissance: African, 14, 80; European, 22, 77–8, 84, 113 Repentance, 61, 107, 123, 147 Resistance. See Germany, political Roman Catholic. See church Rome, 47, 82, 84; St. Peter’s Basilica, 9 Saint/s, 120–4 Sachsenhausen, 42

194

Index of Subjects

Sanctification, 36, 121–3; non-religious 123-5. See also holy Science, 3, 21, 99, 101, 104, 108, 110–3, 120, 127 Scientific worldview, 110–3; Bonhoeffer and, 110–3, 129 Secular: secularism, 106, 108–9, 112, 119, 133, 140; secularization, 133, 170; world, 32, 72, 108, 110. See also humanism, politics, government Sermons, 44–6; Barcelona, 101–2, 116; Berlin, 69; London, Trinity Sunday, 48, 115, 168; Pentecost, 59. See also preaching Sermon on the Mount, 69, 85, 121, 141–2, 160 Sharpeville Massacre, 12 Silence, 55, 112 Silence (Endṓ), 55 Sin, 45, 51, 112, 121, 164 Sociality, 9, 10, 47, 115 Socialism, 86 South Africa, 7–8, 12; armed struggle, 157–8, 161–2; Bethge, visit to, 12; Bonhoeffer and, 12, 42, 53, 167; Calvinism in, 154; Christian Institute, 12; church struggle, 7, 8, 11–3, 32, 53, 68, 134, 154, 177; Confessing Church in, 12, 53, 159; Cottesloe Consultation, 12; democratic, 13, 18, 80–1, 154, 187; ecumenical church, 71, 158; Constitution, 80, 138; Palestine, and, 149; Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 13. See also African National Congress, Afrikaner, apartheid, church struggle, Kairos Document, nationalism, Sharpeville, Soweto, Truth and Reconciliation Soweto Uprising, 12 “Speech from the Dock” (Mandela), 157–8 State. See government, politics Status confessionis, 13, 53, 68 Stellenbosch University, 12, 80 Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies, 80 Stupidity, 20

Technology, 2, 99, 120, 164, 170 Tegel Military Prison, 17, 29, 72, 155 Terrorism, 72, 154, 157 The Essence of Christianity (Harnack), 81 “The Road from Non-Violence to Violence,” 148 The World View of Physics (Weizsäcker), 97, 111 Theology: academic, 11; church, 69; liberal, 82–6, 110; liberationist, 139; magisterial, 139; “of the cross,” 51, 92, 129, 176; philosophical, 9, 43, 46, 49, 85, 102, 141, 168; political, 139; prophetic, 69, 139; public, 139 Transcendence, 89, 10–1, 103, 124. See also God, mystery Treason, 43, 159 Tribalism, 42 Truth, 59–60, 71, 90, 102, 105, 113, 127, 164; truth, speaking to power, 71, 142 Tübingen, 84, 101 Two Realms doctrine, 144–5 Tyranny, 18, 31, 87, 161–2 Ultimate, 62, 80, 102, 105, 114, 129, 132, 145–6, 163, 167, 171 Union Theological Seminar, 18, 28, 41, 45, 85, 111, 123, 142 United States of America, 11, 14, 33–4, 64,138, 164, 166–7 University of Cape Town, 189 Vicarious action (Stellvertretung), 10, 47, 92 Victims, solidarity with, 56, 88, 147–150, 154, 171 Violence, 20, 36, 81, 90, 141–3, 149, 158, 162 War, 2, 18, 20, 23, 30, 35–6, 64, 68, 71–2, 79, 81–4, 127, 130, 137, 140, 156–7, 161, 164–5, 171, 175–6; Just war theory, 158–61; First World War, 2, 19, 127; Second World War, 8, 19, 177; “War on Terror,” 81 Western civilization, 78–9 Westminster Abbey, 42–3

Index of Subjects Wissenschaft bricht Monopole (Zischka), 110–1 Word of God. See also Christology, Bible, preaching, prophetic “World come of age,” 21–2, 71, 89, 108, 123, 128,133

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World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship, 66, 79, 82 World Council of Churches, 8, 12, 38, 156, 158; Program to Combat Racism, 158

Index of Names

Althaus, Paul, 144 Augustine, St., 153 Aune, David, 61 Bach, Johan Sebastian, 102, 130 Barnett, Victoria, 19, 33, 44, 82 Barth, Karl, 8–10, 47, 53–4, 68, 73, 78–9, 82–6, 88–9, 94, 101, 103–4, 108–21, 113, 133, 143 Beethoven, Ludwig von, 82, 102–3, 130 Bell, George, 28 Best, Payne, 177 Bethge, Dietrich, 71, 133; Eberhard, 2, 7–9, 2–3, 19, 21–3, 27–42, 35, 37, 41–2, 48, 51, 53–4, 59, 72, 79, 81, 87, 100–1, 110–1, 119–30, 123–4, 126–9, 131, 133, 148, 159 169, 175–6 Renate, 24, 32, 119, 128, 130 Biko, Steve, 12 Bonhoeffer, Klaus-Friedrich, 27, 100–1, 111 Brunner, Emil, 78 Bultmann, Rudolf, 82–3, 109 Bush, George W., 148 Calvin, John 140, 152–3 Canaris, Wilhelm, 28, 159 Clements, Keith, 34, 74 DeJonge, Michael, 128 Dewey, John, 86 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 108 Dohnanyi, Hans von, 19, 27–9, 32, 42, 159; Christel, 27, 29 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 84 du Lubac, Henri, 79 Dumas, André, 103

Endṓ, Shūsaka, 55 Erasmus, Desiderius, 80, 84, 87 Forrester, Duncan, 139 Frick, Peter, 43 Gandhi, Mahatma, 11, 21, 156, 170 Gerhardt, Paul, 93 Goethe, Johan Wolfgang, 81–5, 87, 102 Gollwitzer, Helmut, 126 Green, Clifford, 52, 89 Grünewald, Matthias, 62 Harnack, Adolf von, 9, 52, 54, 82–6, 88–9 Hegel, Friedrich, 30, 67–9, 82 Hauerwas, Stanley, 11, 141, 160 Hildebrandt, Franz, 69, 87–8, 164 Hirsch, Emmanuel, 68 Hitler, Adolf, 18, 29, 36, 42–4, 47, 52, 56, 68, 86–8, 107, 138, 144, 146–58, 155–2, 162, 175 Holl, Karl, 84 Humboldt, Alexander von, 82 Jaeger, Werner, 84 James, William, 86 Kähler, Martin, 7 Kant, Immanuel, 82–3, 103 Kaunda, Kenneth, 80 Kelly, Geffrey, 59 Kierkegaard, Søren, 24, 85, 119, 128–9 King Jr., Martin Luther, 43 Kreuzer, Leonid, 41 Lasserre, Jean, 3, 113, 142 Lehmann, Paul, 18, 153, 165 Leibholz, Gerhard, 28, 78–80

Eagleton, Terry, 168 197

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Index of Names

Leibholz (neé Bonhoeffer), Sabine, 33, 78 Luther, Martin, 51, 68–9, 5, 87, 122, 133, 1543–4, 163 Malan, D. F., 68 Mandela, Nelson, 12, 23–4, 81, 164–8, 181–2 Mann, Thomas, 87 Maritain, Jacques, 79 Marsh, Charles, 33–4 Masemola, Manche, 42–3 Matthews, Z.K., 158 Metaxas, Eric, 33–4 Michelangelo, 102 Morris, John, 130 Moses, John, 160 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 100 Müller, Ludwig, 36, 53, 69 Naudé, Beyers, 11 Nelson, Burton, 59 Ndebele, Njabulo, 80 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 28 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 156 Orobator, Abonkhianmeghe, 91 Oster, Hans, 19, 28 Pangritz, Andreas, 129 Paton, William, 165 Pinker, Stephen, 111–2

Plato, 85 Rahner, Karl, 127 Robertson, Edwin, 33 Robinson, John, 8, 33 Romero, Oscar, 43 Rößler, Helmut, 45, 70, 169 Saud, Ibn, 170 Schleicher, Hans-Walter, 21 Schlingensiepen, Ferdinand, 34–5 Schweitzer, Albert, 30–1 Slane, Craig, 56 Smith, Ronald Gregor, 92 Thomas Aquinas, 153 ‘tHooft, Wilhelm Visser, 28, 87 Tillich, Paul, 68 Tutu, Desmond, 134 Ward, Graham, 105 Wedemeyer, Maria von, 17 Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich von, 99–101, 108, 111 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 82–3 Williams, Rowan, 109 Wüstenberg, Ralf, 108 Yoder, John Howard, 49, 141–3 Young III, Josiah Ulysses, 168 Zischka, Anton, 110

About the Author

John W. de Gruchy was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in March 1939. He studied at the University of Cape Town, Rhodes University, Chicago Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago, and at the University of South Africa. An ordained minister in the United Congregational Church, he served two congregations before joining the staff of the South African Council of Churches in 1968 where he was director of Communications and Studies. In 1973 he was appointed to the faculty of the University of Cape Town (UCT) where he eventually became the Robert Selby Taylor Professor of Christian Studies and, during the last few years of his tenure, the Director of the Graduate School in Humanities. He retired in 2003 and was appointed a Senior Research Scholar at UCT and an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch. He remains active in research, publishing and mentoring. De Gruchy has a doctorate in theology and another in the social sciences, along with several honorary doctorates. In 2000 he was awarded the Karl Barth Prize by the Evangelical Church of the Union in Germany. He has lectured in many countries across the world and has authored or edited more than thirty books on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the church in South Africa, contextual, public and Reformed theology, social history, Christianity and the arts, reconciliation and justice, and Christian humanism. Among them are Christianity, Art and Social Transformation; Reconciliation: Restoring Justice; Being Human: Confessions of a Christian Humanist; John Calvin: Christian Humanist and Evangelical Reformer; and Being Led into Mystery: Faith seeking answers in life and death. An autobiography, I Have Come a Long Way, was published in 2015, and a book of reflections titled Without Apology in 2016. His books have been translated into German, Korean, Japanese, and Swedish. With his wife Isobel, de Gruchy is now a resident member of the Volmoed Community for Reconciliation and Healing near Hermanus where he writes, gives seminars, and makes furniture.

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