I finished reading Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy last night. If you haven’t already, you should check it out.
Namely, because Bonhoeffer – and he’d probably refuse this statement – is a model disciple in so many ways. He followed God’s call wherever it took him. He tirelessly studied the Word. He staunchly refused to compromise, even when it cost him almost everything, and through it all his friends and family report a man at peace with God’s will as manifested through a consistently positive, gentle and humble personality.
The doctor at the concentration camp where Bonhoeffer was executed later wrote of the morning of his death,
“… I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking of his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his 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 steps to the gallows, brave and composed. … In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly even seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God” (Loc 10461).
Secondly, the book is a fascinating perspective of Hitler’s rise to power.
We rarely hear the story told from inside Germany. Rarer still do we hear the story through the life, correspondence, and preaching of a patriotic German with international experience and contact throughout the rise of the Third Reich.
The behind-the-scenes experience of the dismantling of the Church in Germany, and the restructuring of a society broken by war, is amazing. Many of the atrocities committed by the Nazi party were, technically speaking, legal.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the book is, in a way, a scathing review of the modern Western Church.
The parallels between so much of the “Christianity” that we see in America today, and the Church in Germany that stepped aside for Hitler and the Nazi party, are frightening. There’s a subtle, eschatological prophet speaking through these pages that we can’t afford to ignore.
For example:
“Some church leaders felt the church should make peace with the Nazis … They didn’t agree with him [Hitler] on everything, but they believed that if the church’s prestige were restored, they might be able to influence him in the right direction” (Loc 3130).
“After four hundred years of taking for granted that all Germans were Lutheran Christians, no one really knew was Christianity was anymore (Loc 3584).
“Werner’s decree that all German pastors must take this ‘oath of allegiance’ to Hitler brought bitter division to the … Church … Many … pastors were tired of fighting, and they thought that taking the oath was a mere formality, hardly worth losing one’s career. … But Bonhoeffer and others saw it as a cynical calculation on Werner’s part, and pushed the … Church to stand against it. But the church did not” (Loc 6095).
The theme that fueled Bonhoeffer’s life, and that may have crippled the Third Reich in it’s infancy if the Church in Germany had grasped it, seems to be the call to both know the Word of God – deeply and intimately – and then to live it out.
It was either theological ignorance, or high-minded theology that locked up scripture as mere philosophy, that pushed back against Bonhoeffer’s calls to action, over and over and over again. We have to know God’s character and God’s will so that we can act according to it, but knowing it, we have to act.
On Bible study: