Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor in the 1930’s and ‘40’s whose opposition to Adolf Hitler and Naziism cost him his life as he was hanged in April 1945 just one month before the end of World War II. Bonhoeffer had been a key founding member of the “Confessing Church”, a counter-movement within the Lutheran, Reformed, and United churches in Germany to Hitler’s takeover of the “German Evangelical Church”, a takeover which resulted in churches becoming an instrument of Nazi politics and propaganda (such as the Nazi doctrine of the racial superiority of so-called “Aryans”, the persecution of Jews, and widespread, forced euthanasia, the removal of the Jewish Old Testament from the Bible, and that Christ, not the Fuhrer, was the head of the church). In opposition to the takeover of the German Protestant Churches, in 1933, Bonhoeffer and others courageously founded the movement that led to the “Confessing Church”. Thus, in practice, two Protestant churches developed in Germany: the one under state control and the Confessing Church, which the state did not recognize. Within weeks of its founding, more than a third of German pastors had joined what would become the Confessing Church, but belonging to the Confessing Church involved incredible courage. Leaders and congregants such as Bonhoeffer never faltered, though increasingly the Confessing Church was forced underground and many of its leaders arrested or threatened.
Bonhoeffer was an academic genius but in his mid-20’s he underwent a personal conversion to Jesus Christ, as he changed from being a theologian primarily attracted to the intellectual side of Christianity, to being a dedicated man of personal faith, resolved to literally carry out the teachings of Christ, revealed in the Gospels.
His 1937 book, The Cost of Discipleship, was based on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (from Matthew 5,6,7). This hugely impactful (to this day) book finds Bonhoeffer attacking “cheap grace” as a cover for ethical laxity against the virtues of “costly grace”. race. He contends that Christians have relied so much on Christ’s forgiveness that they do not challenge themselves enough in actually following his word to their best ability, instead relying on God’s grace to save them when they fal. Bonhoeffer says that Christians are instructed to strive to follow the Word of God. Only then – after they strive to the best of their ability – should God’s grace come into play. He contrasts cheap grace with costly grace, writing: ‘Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son.
Continuing with this idea, Bonhoeffer discusses the idea of simple obedience. He admonishes Christians who come too quickly to the conclusion that God could not possibly have meant his commands literally. Bonhoeffer cites the example of the rich man who asks Jesus how he can enter the kingdom of heaven. He writes that people often simply assume that Jesus did not mean literally to leave everything and follow him and that instead it was a matter of faith or a command to be inwardly detached. Bonhoeffer writes that God says exactly what he means, and that Christians need to follow simple obedience to him by following divine commands as they are written. He writes “only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes”.
As a committed Christian pacifist opposed to the Nazi regime, he could never swear an oath to Hitler and would never commit any violence or fight in Hitler’s army, though refusal to do so was potentially a capital offense. He worried also about consequences his refusing military service could have for the Confessing Church, as it was a move that would be frowned upon by most nationalist Christians and their churches at the time. Bonhoeffer decided against fleeing Germany. He wrote these words, “I must live through this difficult period in our national history along with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people … Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that a future Christian civilization may survive, or else willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization and any true Christianity. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from a place of security.”
In Germany, though, Bonhoeffer was harassed by the Nazi authorities as he was forbidden to speak in public and was required regularly to report his activities to the police. In 1941, he was forbidden to print or to publish anything. Influenced by a brother-in-law, Bonhoeffer joined an anti-Nazi group, the Abwehr, whose goal was to overthrow Hitler. In the face of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and other minorities, the full scale of which Bonhoeffer learned through the Abwehr, he concluded that “the ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself from this whole affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to survive and live for Truth.” He agreed to plots to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer did not justify his action but wrote, “When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it… Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace.”
On 5 April 5th, 1943, Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law Dohnányi were arrested and imprisoned. For a year and a half, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned at Tegel Prison awaiting trial. There he continued his work in religious outreach among his fellow prisoners and guards. Sympathetic guards helped smuggle his letters out of prison to Bethge and others, and these uncensored letters were posthumously published in Letters and Papers from Prison. One of those guards, a corporal named Knobloch, even offered to help him escape from the prison and “disappear” with him, and plans were made for that end; eventually Bonhoeffer declined it, fearing Nazi retribution against his family, especially his brother Klaus and brother-in-law Dohnányi, who was also imprisoned.
On 4 April 1945, the diaries of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, were discovered, and in a rage upon reading them, Hitler ordered that all members of the Abwehr, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer be executed. Bonhoeffer was led away just as he concluded his final Sunday service and remarked to one of the congregants, “This is the end—but for me it is the beginning of Life!” Bonhoeffer was summarily executed, along with five others, by hanging at dawn on April 9th.
Eberhard Bethge, a student and close friend of Bonhoeffer, writes of a man who saw the execution: ‘I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer… kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.’ The disposition of Bonhoeffer’s remains is not known. His body may have been cremated outside the camp along with hundreds of other recently executed or dead prisoners, or victorious American troops may have placed his body in one of several mass graves in which they interred the unburied dead of the camp. His family learned of his death weeks after his execution by listening to a radio broadcast of a worship service in England in which Bonhoeffer’s life was honoured and his death announced. In any case, the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer lives on and should encourage us to be courageous and determined in our stand for the Lord.
