Bonhoeffer on the Christian Life E-Book

Stephen J. Nichols

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 337

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

The abundance of conferences, lectures, and new books related to Dietrich Bonhoeffer attests to the growing interest in his amazing life and thought-provoking writings. The legacy of his theological reflections on the nature of fellowship, the costliness of grace, and the necessity of courageous obedience has only been heightened by the reality of how he died: execution at the hands of a Nazi death squad. In this latest addition to the popular Theologians on the Christian Life series, historian Stephen J. Nichols guides readers through a study of Bonhoeffer's life and work, helping readers understand the basic contours of his cross-centered theology, convictions regarding the Christian life, and circumstances surrounding his dramatic arrest and execution. Part of the Theologians on the Christian Life series.

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“How I rejoice to see thinkers of Stephen Nichols’s caliber applying their fine minds to the life and thought of the inimitable Dietrich Bonhoeffer. There’s so much yet to be written about this great man. A hungry readership awaits!”

Eric Metaxas,New York Times best-selling author, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“This book will quicken your pulse as you are drawn into the story and the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Stephen Nichols brings a long and complex life to a point of ongoing personal application. This book prompted me to pray for the kind of courage that comes only after intense communion with the living God. Read and be strengthened.”

Russell D. Moore, President, the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

“‘Human weakness paves the way for God’s grace.’ So writes Stephen Nichols, using Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a guide to the Christian life. But how could a man who stood up to Hitler be considered weak? That’s what makes Bonhoeffer so fascinating, and why he deserves your attention. Nichols helpfully brings Bonhoeffer’s Christ-centered insights to bear on issues where we need to grow in grace, such as confession, freedom, and love.”

Collin Hansen, Editorial Director, The Gospel Coalition; coauthor, A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories That Stretch and Stir

“Bonhoeffer was a unique man who understood the power of both conviction and compassion, clarity and ambiguity, narrative and poetry. Through this man the church is powerfully reminded that all theology is lived theology. In this book, Steve Nichols takes us into Bonhoeffer’s complex world and offers a rich set of reflections on such crucial themes as cross, community, and the living Word. Here the reader discovers a wonderful mixture of fair-minded historical reconstruction and wise pastoral counsel.”

Kelly M. Kapic, Professor of Theological Studies, Covenant College

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life illustrates the truth that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. His courageous stand against the Nazi regime is a powerful testament to his cross-centered theology and belief that weakness is the starting point for Christian spirituality. With insight, clarity, and wisdom, Stephen Nichols guides us through the life and work of this humble yet heroic pastor, whose example shows that all Christian living flows from God’s grace in the cross of Christ.”

Justin Holcomb, Executive Director, Resurgence; author, On the Grace of God

B O N H O E F F E R

on the Christian Life

THEOLOGIANS ON THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

EDITED BY STEPHEN J. NICHOLS AND JUSTIN TAYLOR

Schaeffer on the Christian Life: Countercultural Spirituality, William Edgar

Warfield on the Christian Life: Living in Light of the Gospel, Fred G. Zaspel

Bonhoeffer on the Christian Life: From the Cross, for the World

Copyright © 2013 by Stephen J. Nichols

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Josh Dennis Cover image: Richard Solomon Artists, Mark Summers

First printing 2013 Printed in the United States of America

The author’s Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture marked KJV is from the King James Version of the Bible.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-1188-2 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-1190-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-1189-2 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2398-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nichols, Stephen J., 1970–     Bonhoeffer on the Christian life : from the cross, for the world / Stephen J. Nichols.         pages cm. — (Theologians on the Christian life)     Includes bibliographical references and index.     ISBN 978-1-4335-1188-2 (tp)     1. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 1906–1945. I. Title.     BX4827.B57N525    2013

230'.044092—dc232013000954

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

SH   23 22  21  20  19  18  17  16  15  14  13 15  14  13  12  11  10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

To Allan Fisher in honor of his decades of service in Christian publishing

CONTENTS

Series Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

PART 1    INTRODUCTION

  1    Meeting Bonhoeffer

PART 2    FOUNDATIONS

  2    In Christ: Life from the Cross

  3    In Community: Life in the Church

PART 3    DISCIPLINES

  4    Word

  5    Prayer

  6    Confession

PART 4    LIFE

  7    Worldliness

  8    Freedom

  9    Love

PART 5    LITERATURE

10    Reading Bonhoeffer

Appendix A: A Time Line of Bonhoeffer’s Life

Appendix B: Summary of Bonhoeffer on the Christian Life

SERIES PREFACE

Some might call us spoiled. We live in an era of significant and substantial resources for Christians on living the Christian life. We have ready access to books, DVD series, online material, seminars—all in the interest of encouraging us in our daily walk with Christ. The laity, the people in the pew, have access to more information than scholars dreamed of having in previous centuries.

Yet for all our abundance of resources, we also lack something. We tend to lack the perspectives from the past, perspectives from a different time and place than our own. To put the matter differently, we have so many riches in our current horizon that we tend not to look to the horizons of the past.

That is unfortunate, especially when it comes to learning about and practicing discipleship. It’s like owning a mansion and choosing to live in only one room. This series invites you to explore the other rooms.

As we go exploring, we will visit places and times different from our own. We will see different models, approaches, and emphases. This series does not intend for these models to be copied uncritically, and it certainly does not intend to put these figures from the past high upon a pedestal like some race of super-Christians. This series intends, however, to help us in the present listen to the past. We believe there is wisdom in the past twenty centuries of the church, wisdom for living the Christian life.

Stephen J. Nichols and Justin Taylor

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Book buyers incur debts. So too book writers. As the writer of this one, I gladly take on much debt of gratitude. I am thankful for my friends who helped me either directly or indirectly with this book, including Keith Krueger, Tim Larsen, Chris Larson, Sean Lucas, and Jeff Trimbath. I am also thankful to Dale Mort, who read through an earlier manuscript and offered most helpful comments and corrections.

I remain indebted to the community of Lancaster Bible College for generously supporting my work. Thanks especially to Drs. Peter Teague and Philip Dearborn for unflagging encouragement. My students also deserve a word of thanks for allowing me, even if involuntarily, to interject Bonhoeffer into nearly every class for the last three years. Two students in particular, Michael Bauer and Andrew Keenan, read through the final stages of the manuscript. Thank you both.

Thom Notaro at Crossway proved an astute and careful editor. And there’s Justin Taylor, coeditor of this series and a most valued friend. Working on this series with you, Justin, and on this book in particular, has been a delight. I am much in your debt, again.

I also remain in debt to my family. They keep all these book-related things in perspective. To Heidi especially, thank you.

Finally, I need to start paying on the debt I owe to Allan Fisher. For decades, Al has been a fixture in the Christian publishing world, first at Baker, then at P&R, and for the last eight years at Crossway. Al welcomed me into this business and so graciously helped me along every step of the journey for these past dozen years that I have been writing. I and so many authors and readers are in his debt. Bonhoeffer once spoke of our inability to express ourselves at certain moments, saying “all desire for great words fades away.” So let me simply say to you, Al, thank you.

ABBREVIATIONS

DBWE

1

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 1, Sanctorum Communio

DBWE

2

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 2, Act and Being

DBWE

3

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 3, Creation and Fall

DBWE

4

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 4, Discipleship

DBWE

5

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 5, Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible

DBWE

6

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 6, Ethics

DBWE

7

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 7, Fiction from Tegel Prison

DBWE

8

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 8, Letters and Papers from Prison

DBWE

9

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 9, The Young Bonhoeffer: 1918–1927

DBWE

10

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 10, Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931

DBWE

11

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 11, Ecumenical, Academic, and Pastoral Work: 1931–1932

DBWE

12

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 12, Berlin: 1932–1933

DBWE

13

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 13, London: 1933–1935

DBWE

15

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 15, Theological Education Underground: 1937–1940

DBWE

 16

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition. Vol. 16, Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945

LPP

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Enlarged edition. Edited by Eberhard Bethge. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.

LT

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together. Translated by Jon W. Doberstein. San Francisco: Harper, 1954.

Note: The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition, all published by Fortress Press, Minneapolis, are translations of the sixteen-volume set, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, ed. Eberhard Bethge et al. (Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1986–1999).

PART 1

INTRODUCTION

Today I’m supposed to learn how to play golf.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER TO HIS BROTHER KARL-FRIEDRICH BONHOEFFER, FROM PHILADELPHIA, 1930

CHAPTER 1

MEETING BONHOEFFER

I believe that nothing meaningless has happened to me and also that it is good for us when things run counter to our desires. I see a purpose in my present existence and only hope that I fulfill it.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER 11

On a hot summer’s day in July 1939, Dietrich Bonhoeffer stepped off the steamship Bremen and onto the docks of New York City’s harbor. The harbor was busy that year. New York City was playing host to the World’s Fair, an event altogether eclipsed by the tensions of the pending world war. By September, a United States Navy fleet had moved in to protect the harbor, and mines had been placed along the coast in fear of a German submarine attack. Bonhoeffer knew all too well the tension. He had lived with much worse for some time and was now on his way to America to escape.

Bonhoeffer had been to the United States before. His first trip had come nine years earlier. Already with a doctorate in hand, Bonhoeffer thought he might benefit from studying American theological developments firsthand before settling in to his faculty position at Berlin. So off he went to spend a year at Union Seminary in New York. During that first stay, he had forged deep friendships. One of those friends, Reinhold Niebuhr of Union’s faculty, now led the way in arranging for Bonhoeffer’s second trip to America. Niebuhr hurriedly posted letters to his academic colleagues throughout America to cobble together a lecture tour for Bonhoeffer, in part to fund his stay and in part to shake out a more substantial and permanent teaching offer. At thirty-three years of age and with an impressive list of accomplishments already, Bonhoeffer had a bright career ahead of him.

Bonhoeffer, though, would elude Niebuhr’s efforts. The moment Bonhoeffer stepped off the ship, he knew that he had made a mistake. He belonged back in Germany. His diary bears the record, “The decision has been made.”2 “I have made a mistake in coming to America,” he wrote to Niebuhr. “I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the Christian people of Germany.”3 To their mutual friend Paul Lehmann, Bonhoeffer wrote, “I must be with my brothers when things become serious.”4

Bonhoeffer anticipated that Germany would survive the war. He also realized that the German church, like the nation itself, would need to be rebuilt. After all, how could he play a role in rebuilding the church if he abandoned it during its hour of deepest need? No, he could not stay in America.

Writing to Lehmann, Niebuhr could only say of Bonhoeffer’s decision, “I do not understand it all.”5 Who can understand Bonhoeffer’s decision? What kind of person would be more at ease in facing down a totalitarian regime on the brink of destruction than conducting a college lecture tour in a free and democratic society an ocean away from the tumult and wreckage of war? What’s more, this was no isolated decision, no adrenaline-charged heroism. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s willingness to return to Germany, his willingness to face Hitler and the Nazi regime, ultimately his willingness to die, all stemmed from a deeply honed reflex. He could no more walk away from Germany in 1939—when he had opportunity to do so—than you or I can stop our hearts from beating. To understand Bonhoeffer’s decision in the dog days of a New York summer of 1939, you need to understand Bonhoeffer.

We should not take this episode as evidence of Bonhoeffer’s heroism. The impulse is understandable, even tempting, but would be a misunderstanding. The letters and his diary point in an entirely different direction. This was no act of blazoned courage. Rather, his decision reveals a brash faith. See him as humble, not heroic. See him as dependent upon God. As he writes in his diary, “God certainly sees how much personal concern, how much fear is contained in today’s decision, as courageous as it may appear. . . . At the end of the day, I can only pray that God may hold merciful judgment over this day and all decisions. It is now in God’s hands.”6 If we flip back a few pages to earlier in his American diary, we see that being in God’s hands means being a recipient of God’s mercy through and in Christ. The opening pages of his American diary bear the testimony, “Only when we ourselves live and speak entirely from the mercy of Christ and no longer at all out of our own particular knowledge and experience, then we will not be sanctimonious.”7

To understand Bonhoeffer, we must understand, on the one hand, the limits of oneself and, on the other hand, the utter absence of limits of God. Bonhoeffer saw himself as limited in his understanding, limited in his experience, limited in his resolve, limited in his strength. To trust in himself would be purely—and merely—sanctimony, the religion of Pharisees. But to trust in God would be altogether different. To understand Bonhoeffer, we must first and foremost understand living by faith.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote that to live by faith (he would say to live truly) means “living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities.”8 He wrote of the great cost of cheap grace to the church and its disciples in the modern world. He saw far too many examples of a culturally accommodated and culturally captive Christianity. He longed for a costly discipleship. So he compelled the church and its disciples to consider costly grace, to consider the cost of discipleship. Costly discipleship is held captive to Christ; it is Christ-centered. He might have even coined a German word to express this, Christuswirklichkeit, a living in the one realm of the Christ reality.9 Bonhoeffer also wrote persuasively of how this Christ-centered or Christ-reality living is the “life together,” the life of community, centered on our common union with Christ. No, we are not individual heroes achieving greatness—an unfortunate but prevalent model of living the Christian life in our day. Instead, we live together in Christ by faith.

Understanding Bonhoeffer, however, entails more than seeing this life of faith in Christ theologically. It also involves seeing how this theological center manifests itself in his life, in his daily comings and goings. Bonhoeffer was a theologian and a churchman, but he was also a person.

Bonhoeffer wrote poems, for example:

Distant or near,

in joy or in sorrow,

each in the other

sees his true helper

to brotherly freedom.10

He tried his hand at a novel. He had a twin sister. He was, for a time, a youth pastor who could play the guitar. He frequented the theater, knew his way around an art gallery. He had opinions on art, music, and architecture. “You’re quite right,” he wrote from his prison cell, “about the rarity of landscape painting in the South generally. Is the south of France an exception—and Gauguin?”11 He was a professor of theology at the University of Berlin. He took on a rather rough band of youth on a different side of the tracks from which he had come of age. He prepared them for their first communion and, when the time had come for it, bought them all new suits for the occasion.

Bonhoeffer led an underground seminary, often looking out the window during his early afternoon lectures. On more than one day, with sun shining and a cool breeze gently bending tree limbs, he would grab a soccer ball on his way out the door and his students would fall in behind.

He was a spy. He helped Jews escape from the Nazis. He became part of a ring of conspirators in plots to assassinate Hitler.

He became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer in January 1943, and three months later he was imprisoned at Tegel. During the fall months of 1944, he was transferred to the Gestapo prison in Berlin. He spent the final weeks of his life listening to sirens signaling the incessant dropping of bombs while cut off from his books, paper, pens, and ink.

He was a martyr.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, both in his life and in his writings, draws us in. He demands our attention—not like the tantrums of a two-year-old, but like the quiet, trusted voice of a wise friend. That voice of Bonhoeffer’s, though quiet, has never been silent. A century after his birth, it resounds with clarity and grace. Historian and biographer David McCullough has said, “We are shaped by those we never met.” That’s quite true—or at least it should be.

Perhaps Bonhoeffer shapes us best by showing us in word and in deed, as a theologian and in his life, how to live the Christian life, how to be a disciple of Christ, how to live in the Christuswirklichkeit. His book The Cost of Discipleship gets all of the attention on this score, and rightfully so. The Cost of Discipleship would be a legacy in and of itself. But Bonhoeffer offers us more. We owe it to ourselves, as well as to the honor of his memory, to widen our attention. This present book on Bonhoeffer on the Christian life proposes to do just that.

From The Cost of Discipleship we learn of the difference between a Christianity that asks nothing of us and one that requires a 180-degree turn from all that comes naturally. We learn of the difference between cheap grace and costly grace.

From Life Together and from his doctoral thesis, Sanctorum Communio (The Communion of Saints), written as he was not yet twenty-one, we learn that the Christian life is lived both alone and together. It is the together part that can be a challenge for us. It is also the together part that has become in our day the buzzword of community.

For Bonhoeffer, community was more than a trendy word; it was his life. In Letters and Papers from Prison, edited by Eberhard Bethge and published posthumously, Bonhoeffer teaches us that “it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith,” words he wrote while living in a six-by-nine-foot prison cell.12 We also learn from his unfinished and unpublished novel, written during his imprisonment, about the true nature and task and mission of the church. Academic books, like his unfinished magnum opus Ethics, as well as his numerous essays, lectures, sermons, and even his diaries and scribbled-down rough thoughts from his imprisonment, round out what Bonhoeffer has to offer us in words.

As for what Bonhoeffer offers us in deeds, both in his life and in his death he shows us how to love and serve God. Like Paul, Bonhoeffer knew firsthand both extremes of plenty and of want (Phil. 4:12). Growing up he enjoyed the life of moderate wealth. Childhood was punctuated with long vacations at the summer home, governesses, and family oratorios performed in their very own conservatory, which doubled as the family parlor. He started his academic career at the prestigious University of Berlin. But along came Hitler. Bonhoeffer lost his license to teach, and he traded in Berlin for Finkenwalde. Yes, Finkenwalde was an estate, but better to think run-down monastery than paneled walls and luxurious rooms. And then he was sent to prison. While in prison he once wrote of his longing to hear birds and see color. He knew all too well what it meant to be in want.

Or am I only what I know of myself,

restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage.

struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat.

yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,

thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness.13

And, like Paul, these experiences of plenty and want led Bonhoeffer to contentment. He expressed this in a poem marking the occasion of the New Year in 1945. Bonhoeffer had spent the whole of 1944 in Nazi prisons. “The old year,” he writes of 1944, “still torments our hearts.”14 By December he was in Berlin, and his precious flow of letters and books in and out had been cut to a mere trickle.

In one of those rare letters, allowed to be sent to his mother on her birthday, he tucked in his New Year’s poem entitled “The Powers of Good.”

Should it be ours to drain the cup of grieving

even to the dregs of pain, at thy command,

we will not falter, thankfully receiving

all that is given by thy loving hand.

But should it be thy will once more to release us

to life’s enjoyment and its good sunshine,

that which we’ve learned from sorrow shall increase us,

and all our life be dedicated as thine.15

It was Christ who gave us the ultimate paradox of life: in the keeping of our life we lose it, but in the giving of our life we find it (Matt. 10:39). Christ spoke these words immediately on the heels of telling his disciples to take up their cross (10:38). From the very beginning that has been the call to discipleship, the call to live the Christian life. Bonhoeffer, as well as or if not better than any other person in the twentieth century, understood this and lived it, both in darkest night and in the full light of the sun. He understood what it meant to be unreservedly dedicated to Christ, to live by faith.

Consequently, Bonhoeffer deserves a place among theologians of the past who can serve as guides for us in the present for living the Christian life. He literally wrote the book on discipleship, but he also, as mentioned above, has more to offer than his classic text The Cost of Discipleship. He lived discipleship. An old Carter family song croons, “It takes a worried man to sing a worried song.” I think that means authenticity matters. And the stakes regarding authenticity could not be higher than when it comes to discipleship. This lyric from the Carter song also means you can spot a fake. And Bonhoeffer was no imposter. He was a disciple, so he could well sing—and preach and write—of discipleship.

In our current day we have more material on living the Christian life—in the form of books, seminars, conferences, and DVDs—than at any other time in the history of the church. Much of that material focuses on the individual, on our personal prayer life and our private devotional time. Much of that material also focuses on duty—the roll-up-your-sleeves, get-it-done-by-grit-and-determination approach. Further still, much of this talk of spirituality also sounds rather otherworldly, disconnected from the twists and turns of daily life. Rodney Clapp writes of this otherworldly emphasis as resulting in a spirituality for angels, not for flesh-and-blood humans.16 Especially in the context of North American evangelicalism, we tend to define living the Christian life and spirituality along these individualistic, works- or performance-oriented, and detached/otherworldly lines. More often than not, following these kinds of approaches to discipleship leaves us defeated and discouraged. Humans have a hard time performing on the level of angels.

While Bonhoeffer does speak of the personal spiritual disciplines, the “life alone” as he calls it, he also speaks of the “life together,” reminding us of our union with Christ and the common union we share with one another in the body of Christ, the church. While Bonhoeffer does speak of duty, he also heralds grace. He is, after all, a Lutheran, so he knows a thing or two about grace. Finally, while Bonhoeffer does speak of the life to come, his is a “worldly discipleship,” deeply connected to the ups and downs of life in this fallen world. This voice from the past can help us avoid missteps on our walk with Christ in the present. We owe it to ourselves to meet him and to listen to what he has to say—both in word and in deed.

We will begin our explorations of all that Bonhoeffer has to offer fellow disciples by looking at the foundations of the Christian life. He commends to us the cross-centered life. Bonhoeffer scholars speak of “Christo-ecclesiology” as the center of Bonhoeffer’s thought, which is to say that Bonhoeffer has both christology (the doctrine of Christ) and ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church) at the center of his theology, like the hub of a wheel. It might even be better to say that Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology flows from, naturally and necessarily, his christology. So we start with Bonhoeffer’s christology (chap. 2) and then move to Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology (chap. 3).

Bonhoeffer takes a page from his favorite theologian, Martin Luther. For Luther, too, Christ is at the center. And at the center of the center is Christ on the cross. Early on and then throughout his life Luther spoke of a theology of the cross, as does Bonhoeffer. So theology, Christian living—all of reality—flows from the cross.

This life from the cross (Bonhoeffer’s christology) and life in the church (his ecclesiology) together lead to the disciplines of the Christian life. We will explore three of them: reading and obeying Scripture, prayer, and the practice of theology. I have chosen these three because Bonhoeffer, speaking in the context of the underground seminary he led in the late 1930s, saw this trilogy of disciplines as the essential ingredients for a ministerial education. He desired only that his students knew how to read anddid read the Bible, that they knew how to and did pray, and that they both thought and lived theologically. For him seminary was about imparting knowledge (referred to as scientia by the ancients) and about spiritual formation and life (referred to as formation by the ancients). And this illustrates that what’s good for the goose is indeed good for the gander. In other words, what’s good for ministers is good for all of us. These three are the essential practices of the Christian life, and all of them constitute worship.

In chapter 4, we will see Bonhoeffer’s doctrine of Scripture—a significant item in the debate over whether Bonhoeffer was a conservative, even evangelical, theologian or a liberal theologian. But we will also explore Bonhoeffer’s own practice of reading Scripture and what we stand to learn from it. Next comes prayer (chap. 5), paradoxically the easiest but also the hardest discipline of the Christian life. Finally, we look at the role of thinking theologically and then living theologically (chap. 6). Theology sometimes gets pitted against Christian life. One is theory, the other practice. Bonhoeffer will help us see the unity of the two and not fall prey to a deadly divide.

This life from the cross not only leads to these three disciplines of Scripture, prayer, and theology but also leads us out into the world. We would better say that it leads us to live for the world. The final three chapters explore what this means by looking first at Bonhoeffer’s curious but delightful phrase “worldly Christianity.” Worldliness (chap. 7) is something we should avoid—after all, we are not “of the world,” and we should not be “conformed to the world” (John 15:19; Rom. 12:2)—but we first need to listen carefully to what Bonhoeffer really means. Next comes freedom, camouflaged as service and sacrifice, as chapter 8 looks at Bonhoeffer’s spirit of service and the call to sacrifice. The classic text on living the Christian life, Romans 12:1–2, calls us to be living sacrifices. For Bonhoeffer this first entailed sacrificing his position as he lost his post at Berlin, then sacrificing his freedom as he was imprisoned, and then sacrificing his life as he was hanged at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp on April 9, 1945.

But his death should not have the final word. That goes to love, the subject of chapter 9. All of this—the service, the sacrifices, the worldliness, the Scripture reading, prayer, and practice of theology, that is, the life in community and the life from the cross—all of it is accentuated by love. Jesus laid down this characteristic as the hallmark of discipleship and of the church (John 13:34–35). Bonhoeffer called it the “extraordinary.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer died in his thirty-ninth year, a time when most people are just beginning to faintly understand life. He was, however, a quick study. Some of that had to do with circumstance, the utterly harsh and despicable experiences he endured. Think of the remarkable insight of the so young Anne Frank. Challenging circumstances can lead people into profound depths of understanding, no matter what their age. But in Bonhoeffer’s case not all such depths can be chalked up to his mere experiences. Bonhoeffer so well understood how to live because he so well understood the cross on which Christ died. Bonhoeffer also grasped the all-encompassing implications of the cross for human existence. He lived from the cross for the world. This is why he’s worth meeting.

1 Quoted in Renate Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Brief Life (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 68.

2 Bonhoeffer, “American Diary,” June 20, 1939, DBWE 15:226. His entry on the following day reveals that he resolved the struggle over the decision by ultimately conceding, “God knows” (229).

3 Bonhoeffer to Reinhold Niebuhr, during the end of June 1939, DBWE 15:210.

4 Bonhoeffer to Paul Lehmann, June 30, 1939, DBWE 15:209.

5 Reinhold Niebuhr to Paul Lehmann, July 8, 1939, DBWE 15:216.

6 Bonhoeffer, “American Diary,” June 20, 1939, DBWE 15:227.

7 Bonhoeffer, “American Diary,” June 8, 1939, DBWE 15:217.

8 Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge, July 21, 1944, LPP, 370.

9DBWE 6:58.

10 Bonhoeffer, “The Friend,” c. August, 1944, LPP, 390.

11 Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge, March 25, 1944, LPP, 239.

12LPP, 369.

13 Bonhoeffer, “Who Am I?,” c. July 1944, LPP, 348.

14LPP, 400.

15LPP, 400.

16 Rodney Clapp, Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006).

PART 2

FOUNDATIONS

What is the “extraordinary”? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, who goes to the cross in suffering and obedience. It is the cross. What is unique in Christianity is the cross.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP, 1937

I think we’re going to have an exceptionally good Christmas. The very fact that every outward circumstance precludes our making provision for it will show whether we can be content with what is truly essential. I used to be very fond of thinking up and buying presents, but now that we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the birth of Christ will seem all the more glorious; the emptier our hands, the better we understand what Luther meant by his dying words: “We are beggars, it’s true.”

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER TO MARIA VON WEDEMEYER, FROM TEGEL PRISON, 1943

Hoc est Christum cognoscere, beneficia eius cognoscere. (To know Christ is to know his benefits.)

PHILIPP MELANCHTHON, LOCI COMMUNES, 1521

CHAPTER 2

IN CHRIST: LIFE FROM THE CROSS

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.

HEBREWS 4:15

There is a certain inclination in human nature to keep off from all problems that might make us feel uncomfortable in our own situation.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, LONDON, 1934

Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER, FROM TEGEL PRISON, 1944

As Hitler came to power and the Nazi Party gained momentum, pressure increased on the German church to acquiesce. A young Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wise well beyond his years, could see the problems acutely. Bonhoeffer championed the cause to stand against the Nazi infiltration in the church. He also championed the cause to stand against the Nazi Party’s eugenic crusade. The weak, the mentally and physically challenged, were called “useless eaters.” Medical personnel and directors of clinics were ordered to turn over the names of patients. Lists were drawn up. The Nazis mandated the sterilization of these “useless eaters,” many of whom simply disappeared. Nothing, or no one, would stand in the way of the “Programme”: the cleansing of the German people, the making of the master race. The ascendency of the Aryan race, this was Hitler’s dream.

This was not 1940. All of this was already happening in 1933. The outside world, meaning essentially every nation besides Germany, would not be fully awakened to the problem for years to come.1 Hitler’s program of eugenics would march on past the useless eaters, setting its sights on the Jews. By then the world would realize what was happening. But Bonhoeffer, and a tight circle of colleagues, knew all too well where things were headed back in 1933. A churchman by trade, Bonhoeffer looked to the church to take a stand, to lead the people to the truth and justice. But the national church in Germany balked. And then it caved. This would lead to the forming of a reform group within the church, a group of committed and genuine Christians. To Erwin Sutz, a pastor of the Reformed Swiss Church whom Bonhoeffer had met at Union Seminary in New York, Bonhoeffer wrote, “I have been completely absorbed with what is going on in the church. . . . There is no doubt in my mind that the victory will go the German Christians.”2

We need to understand the context here. In 1931, The German Christians (Deutsche Christen) were formed by Ludwig Müller, a longtime Nazi sympathizer. Hitler, having brought the Nazi Party to power in 1933, appointed Müller as his personal confidant in all matters pertaining to the national church, the German Lutheran Church. In September 1933, after the months of bitter struggle that consumed Bonhoeffer, Müller was appointed bishop of the Reichskirche (as the church had now come to be called)—and, of all things, it took place at Luther’s former cathedral in Wittenberg. Müller sought out Hitler’s favor far more than Hitler sought out Müller’s. Undeterred, Müller consistently and assiduously put the Reichskirche at the service of the Nazis and, later, at that of the Gestapo. In 1945, with Nazi hopes and ideals reduced to rubble, Müller committed suicide.

Though more of a patsy than a capable administrator, Müller did contribute something of significance by bringing the “Aryan Paragraph” (or the “Aryan Clause”) into the church, forbidding Jews membership and defrocking Jewish clergy. Müller also stood behind the propaganda campaign that claimed Jesus was not Jewish, but Aryan. In fact, Jesus in the Reichskirche and in Nazism was the Aryan, the Übermensch, the Superman.3

Bonhoeffer, though only twenty-seven at the time, took his place among the leaders of the resistance in the church to these horrid moves that would come to have unspeakable consequences during the war. So there came a split within the German church, though to call it a split overestimates Bonhoeffer’s dissenting party. Splinter fits better, as the vast majority stood by the Nazis. Bonhoeffer, and those of a like mind who formed this splinter group, called it the Confessing Church. These ministers and their parishes would swear allegiance to Christ—who was not Aryan—and not surrender the church to be captive to the political ideology of the Nazi Party.

Like John the Baptist, ministers of the Confessing Church would be the outsiders, raising their prophetic voice to the religious and political establishment. Frustrated by the Kirchenkampf (the German Church Struggle, as it was called), and even frustrated by fellow dissenters in the Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer left Germany for some time to live in London.4 There he would pastor two German Lutheran congregations. While there, he also worked tirelessly to alert the world to what was happening. And especially at this time, he was concerned more with alerting the ecclesiastical world than the political world of the reality of life in Germany. Bonhoeffer may have been living in London, but his heart was turned to Germany.

Übermensch

From 1933 through 1936 the Nazis launched a full-scale public relations war under the watchful eye of Joseph Goebbels, Reich minister of propaganda. The crown jewel of Goebbel’s efforts in these early years at his post would be the 1936 Berlin Olympics. As the eyes of the world turned to Germany, Goebbels made sure they would see a pristine, God-fearing country. A lovely church was built right by the Olympic Village.5

Bonhoeffer, meanwhile, the outsider prophet, proclaimed the truth. And he preached. His sermons from his “London sojourn,” lasting from October 1933 until April 1934, reveal one of the most formative periods in Bonhoeffer’s life. He would return to London for short stays throughout 1934 and 1935. The part of the Bonhoeffer story that captivates us is the imprisonment and the final events leading up to his martyrdom. But that prison experience and the richness of his writing during it did not come from a vacuum. Long before his imprisonment Bonhoeffer had embraced certain ideas that had fortified him, given him the courage to stand, deepened his soul, and enabled him to write the kinds of things he wrote.

As an academic, Bonhoeffer had always been intrigued by and committed to ideas. Students and colleagues testify repeatedly to his dogged pursuit of an idea. Many years later, while sitting in Tegel Prison, Bonhoeffer would scratch out a few loose thoughts. Among them he penned, “Something new can always happen in conversation.”6 It was conversations that dominated his relationship with his students. Conversations would start in the late evening and finish off in the early morning hours, as all dimensions of problems would be analyzed like some biologist’s dissecting a specimen. Students talked about his lecture style and his courses, but what they remembered the most were the times on the beach or the long walks in the woods—the times when the conversation was all about ideas, or rather a singular idea. Once Bonhoeffer got hold of an idea, he wouldn’t let go.

But that’s not the kind of embracing of an idea that forged Bonhoeffer’s mettle for the unthinkable experiences of the 1940s. Something far surpassing mental apprehension was needed, an idea penetrating Bonhoeffer’s very heart and then permeating his entire being. Here is that idea: God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. Bonhoeffer of course first learned this from Paul (2 Cor. 12:9), whose embrace of this idea, like Bonhoeffer’s, went far deeper than mental apprehension.

Sometime in 1934, Bonhoeffer preached on 2 Corinthians 12:9 in London.7