Blogging Bethge Chapter 10

Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Chapter Ten

“Finkenwalde: 1936-1937” pgs. 493-586

Other Works consulted:

The Way to Freedom: Letters, Lectures and Notes, 1935-1939, Edited by Edwin Robertson, Cleveland: Collins-World, 1977.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures, the Centenary Edition, Fortress, 2006.

Daring, Trusting Spirit: Bonhoeffer’s Friend Eberhard Bethge by John W. de Gruchy, Fortress, 2006.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Life in Pictures, the Centenary Edition, edited by Renate Bethge and Christian Gremmels is a “must-have” when going through Bethge. It offers a pictorial chronology of every person, event, and writing pertinent to the time. By way of example, pg. 100-101 offers photos of Bethge lecturing at the Behrenhoff estate in 1936 and the cover of the issue of Evangelische Theologie where Bonhoeffer’s article “On the Question of Church Membership” appeared. With such a complex chapter as this one, I think you’d do well at times to peruse the wider angle lens that this book offers.

The first paragraph of Bethge’s chapter ten is a reflection on the seminary’s role in the three stages of the German church struggle. Just where Finkenwalde ends abruptly its’ significance is interwoven with the life of the church. Bonhoeffer is left without a building, its occupants are conscripted or imprisoned, but his mission remains unchanged: be a Christian and serve the church! Chapter ten concentrates more heavily than nine on the changes within the Confessing church that weakened it to outside pressure. In the end, the closure of the seminary took place very quickly and unexpectedly. In my reading I felt so belabored by the weight of changes within the church as a whole, that when the expected arrests, searches, and imprisonments finally took place the outcome was a severe drop in the momentum. The action continued for as long as possible, and then it stopped.

Bonhoeffer and the Finkenwaldians were so dedicated to their task, so firm in their resolve, that their faith seems to overwhelm the outcome itself. Yes they are physically removed from their work, very similar to nonviolent resistance itself. And why can’t it be seen that way? Their work itself was a form of resistance without arms against the State. They worked the democratic process at the very point at which that process was denied. Later in the chapter, after the arrests and closures have begun, we find a very unique act of civil disobedience. Bethge writes:

“No attempt was made to prevent Bonhoeffer’s return to Finkenwalde on 5 July. He sent a delegation from the seminary to Dahlem, where an important service of intercession was planned for 8 August. This developed into an open street demonstration because the police had cordoned off the church. The protest march by the excluded congregation was one of the very few instances of spontaneous “revolt” against National Socialism during the thirties. That evening, after vain attempts to disperse the crowd, the police made a large number of arrests. About 250 of the demonstrators, including some ordinands from Finkenwalde, were taken in trucks to the prison in Alexanderplatz where they were temporarily detained.” (580)

A “still life” scene stands out to me from this chapter. On July 1, 1937, Bethge and Bonhoeffer entered Martin Niemoller’s parsonage only to find that he’d just been taken away by the Gestapo. Upon their arrival they found themselves, together with Franz Hildebrandt and Eugen Rose, under house arrest. Bethge wrote:

“Thus they became involuntary witnesses to a seven-hour search in which every corner of Niemoller’s study was painstakingly examined; it eventually led to the discovery, behind a picture, of a safe containing thirty thousand marks that belonged to the Pastors’ Emergency League. Everyone was astounded at the meticulous tidiness of Niemoller’s desk, which contained neatly written verbatim copies of his sermons; it was something no one had expected of the spirited man.”

That little touch of humanity jumps out of the text at me. With darkness all around, in the face of tremendous fear, these pastors all noticed the unexpected tidiness of their friend’s desk. In my work through chapter ten (and remember with my reading its not just this chapter its all the other texts I can get as well) I couldn’t feel content with just the facts as they were. I must find the touchstone, the connection between my own place in the twenty first century and this time I’m reading about, such as things like music making, vacations, illness, or the weight of travel.

I have found in John deGruchy biography of Eberhard Bethge a third angle to the events Bethge writes about in chapter ten. In Daring, Trusting Spirit (pgs. 28-43) I learned of the significance of the vacation where Dietrich and Eberhard learned of Finkenwalde’s closure. From this new outside look we can see the community formed between these two men that carried them beyond their seminary’s physical closure and provided a linchpin for their continued work. Bonhoeffer needed someone worthy of trust who could keep him grounded and focused. The bond between these men began at Finkenwalde, deepened in the Collective Pastorates, and then continued through the conspiracy and imprisonment.

“The fifth session at Finkenwalde ended on 11 September 1937. The two friends spent the next two months at Marienburger Allee 43 with Bonhoeffer’s parents and took a holiday together during October in southern Germany. This pattern of vacationing together at the conclusion of the Finkenwalde sessions was now firmly established, and it would continue for the next few years in the new context for the seminary, the “collective pastorates” in Koslin and Gross-Schlonwitz.”

With key insights from the as-yet untranslated letters between Bonhoeffer, Bethge, and others, deGruchy brings out this special bond between the two men that Bethge himself doesn’t seem to relate in his biography of Bonhoeffer. Bethge is himself the important missing key to understand how easily it seems Bonhoeffer moved from Finkenwalde to the collectives.

The book we know as Life Together began as lectures given during the height of Finkenwalde’s influence, and became a working manuscript after the seminary was closed. What sort of godly hope fills this work, which began with a distinct audience of German students whose end was the German front line and imprisonment! It is pretty clear that without the tragic end of Finkenwalde and yet the strong belief in the little books contents to form new community again we wouldn’t have this book at all. Before reading this chapter of Bethge I had a certain impression of Life Together as a rather naïve attempt at community that lacked any trial by fire. How wrong could I be?!! The whole book was tried by fire. The adherents held on to its principles in the face of great fear and loss. The practices laid out in this book stayed with its writer and editor, long after Finkenwalde closed. As a gift to the Church, Life Together has managed to speak to the Church across time and culture in ways that never could have been imagined.

Tags: Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fortress Press, John deGruchy, Life Together, Germany

Blogging Bethge's Bonhoeffer Chapter Nine "Preacher's Seminary: 1935"

Eberhard Bethge, Chapter Nine "Preacher's Seminary: 1935" pgs. 419-491

I feel like I've been over Chapter Nine before. I prepared a paper for the Cornerstone Mag website in March of 2005 titled "Dietrich Bonhoeffer as we understand him at Jesus People Covenant Church." For that paper I used chapter nine and Craig Slane's "Bonhoeffer as Martyr" as key resources in understanding the importance of the Finkenwalde period on Bonhoeffer. So when I looked again at my blogging, I was startled and a bit dismayed that I hadn't really blogged it before! Because of all this previous work, and because I've been reading further than I've been blogging, I honestly thought I was up to Chapter 10.

Eberhard Bethge writes that "Bonhoeffer had reflected about community life for four years now; now he could put his ideas into practice." (pg. 419) We've already noted to what length Bonhoeffer researched his interest in community. He visited several communities in England to get ideas. There is more background info on these visits from friends who were there in the little book, I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is important to recognize what he had in mind here. He had always loved the sacraments, the monastic orders, the hymns, and the Scriptures. With his students from Berlin I made note that he had already adopted a sort of communal identity. In this chapter Bethge heavily weighs in the political and academic elements involved. Only in the sections "Finkenwalde" (425-440) and "The House of Brethren" (460-472) does he directly treat in detail the communal life and activity. While I intend to blog Bethge as it is written, I want to say straight out that I find the method he employs of chronicling this period quite frustrating! Chapters nine and ten represent what I consider to be the most interesting period in Bonhoeffer's life. Eberhard Bethge was a student at this time and became Bonhoeffer's friend around this time. These two chapters represent almost 1/6th of the overall content of the entire book (167 of 933 pgs). It is disheartening to me that in these two chapters there is far less personal narrative of the Finkenwalde community than there is a laboring description of the larger church, political, and ecumenical times and their effects. I understand that the brief Finkenwalde experiment is really only a small part of Dietrich's story, but I wish that it were written more linear here. As it is, I feel like I have to dissect the material from the larger work and then piece it together to understand it. The index in the back is little help. In short, concentrating on Finkenwalde in the two chapters that cover it, is hard work!

The Seminary among the Seminaries (419-424)
In many ways this was a doomed project from the start. The state of the Confessing Church was beyond question in peril. This seminary was conceived to meet a need within an emergency situation. By all accounts it was an attempt to rescue a new kind of ministry to a Church at odds within itself.

State Church policies (421)
The German Church and Confessing Church were coming under the complete financial control of the Nazi government. The fate of the Seminary's governing body- the Old Prussian Union- was uncertain. Bethge takes up these policies again in chapter ten on page 493.

It is here, at the beginning, that I think some of my pacifist friends who sympathize with Bonhoeffer's communal impulse should look. He is already too tied into the State by virtue of his active ecclesial and political actions. His criticism of the state and even of the Confessing Church's path are not enough. One friend claimed that Andre Trocme and his congregation in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon rather than Finkenwalde was our model of a faith embodied community. (I guess this german lutheran was too german for us today, too lutheran, and cared too much about his church!) I have heard the charge that Bonhoeffer's community failed to foster the kind of spirituality that could stand against the Nazi state. Further, his decision to join the Abwehr resistance finally severed him from his peace activities and signaled an abandonment of the Church. I think this judgment does not take into account Bethge's detailed documentation of Bonhoeffer's work within the Church struggle. At every turn up to 1935, Dietrich has worked within the Confessing Church for an embodied ecclesiology wherein the Church would truly act as Christ's body toward the State. Up to 1935 most of what he wrote concerning this was for ecumenical gatherings, theological journals, and pastoral leagues. With this new seminary he would finally be training and modeling this ecclesiology for pastors-to-be.

There's not time here for a full comparison between Trocme and Bonhoeffer, but two things are readily apparent. Trocme is a French Hugenot who began sheltering Jews in 1942. That's rather late in the game compared to Bonhoeffer. Secondly, while France was under German Military Occupation in 1942, is it really fair to compare a French Hugenot congregation to a German Lutheran one? What did each man have to work with? I think it is far better to say that each faith community had its own story of sin and obedience for the decisions they were given. It is clear that Bonhoeffer's legacy involved a discipleship that fostered the Church through to the post world war era.


Bethge takes us month by month through the drastic changes that effect the Old Prussian Union within the Confessing church. In March of 1935 the Prussian state government set up a finance department allegedly to protect property and charities, but aparently to bring the churches under state jurisdiction. In June the Legislative Authority is set up to stop Confessing church appeals to the regular courts. In July the Ministry of Church Affairs comes under the leadersthip of Hanns Kerrl. The "Law for the Protection of the German Evangelical Church" is set up. Seventeen clauses led to the disintegration of the Confessing church by creating irreparable schisms among its membership.

Bethge writes:

Thus the year in which Bonhoeffer's seminary was founded was also one of fundamental changes in the course of the church struggle. The previous resistance against the German Christians and their methods now seemed simple by comparison. That resistance had never lost a certain vigor and joy, and it had given the old concept of heresy a new lease on life. Now, however, the issue was whether to directly oppose thte state and disobey its laws. . . . Things now became far more dangerous and insidious, for the regime had discovered its opponent's weak spot. (p. 422)

At this point, in his discussion of the Old Prussian Seminaries, (423) Bethge compares the two kinds of churches within the Confessing church as "intact" and "destroyed." Destroyed churches were ones in which German Christians had gained enough power to disrupt the Confessing influence. In these churches "emergency" administrations had to be set up to counteract the German Christians. So the bitterness is very real. Lutherans call Confessing members "Dahlemites" (radical fanatics) and Confessing members deny the German Christians the right to call themselves "confessing" at all.

Within all this Bonhoeffer is commissioned to direct a seminary for these "fanatics" to train new pastors. He remained official capacity until the day he was executed in 1945. Bethge tells us that Wilhem Rott, named as Dietrich's assistant director, "adhered to the principle that 'of course things could be done another way.'" They had a "magnamimous" relationship that complimented each others' authority. This is a little window for us into the authority structure at Finkenwalde. The majority of students came from Dietrich's old teaching area of Berlin-Brandenburg (urban area), but some were from Saxony (rural area)--including a young Eberhard Bethge himself. These Saxons were expelled from the Wittenburg seminary by the Reich bishop for refusing to obey Ludwig Muller's church government authority. (Finkenwalde is the first stop on the main railway line from Stettin to the east,(425) is the site of another private school that had met National Socialist disfavor, and they invite in just-expelled students! How's that for laying low from the Gestapo?! Something bad is bound to happen, and they all know it.)

The location of the seminary at Zingst was only 100 yards from the beach and the dunes. We should not overlook this little community's affection for nature. In May when the sun was warm enough Bonhoeffer would take the students outside for their discussion or to sing in choral rounds. I think I have more of a personal fondness for this section of chapter nine (pgs. 426-433) than any other. Beginning with the students' appeal for funds in poetry, to the miraculous permit for the slaughter of a pig, to the ways they decorated and furnished the rooms and finally the way Bonhoeffer gave his own beloved library or very valuable books (428)--never to see them all in one place again(!)--the prose here is magnificent! I can't help but feel like the reading here has a holy effect on me. Granted, I always love biographies of community, but here we have described the way in which an Ekklesia (called out people) lived to be different. Their activities were desperate and dangerous and very different from the way most Germans understood the church. That is special, and dare I say, makes for holy reading!
In the description of Dietrich's daily working routine we find that he had his students read biographies aloud during their evening meal (429). This importance ascribed to biography makes me wonder aloud whether the reading of Bonhoeffer's biography itself places us as readers into some special communion of saints.

I love it when I read that not all of Bonhoeffer's ideas met with success. When Bethge says that something met with insurmountable opposition, it says something about Bonhoeffer's personality. He was not so domineering that the students' opinions did not count. As he did with the teenagers in the youth clubs years before, Bonhoeffer found creative ways of leading by example, by telling stories, by winsome descriptions rather than loud and direct orders. Which is not to say there weren't heated arguments. It seems to me that every member of this little seminary was seen to count. Entrance and exit mattered. No one was shunned or excluded. When crucial differences arose over important issues (like a sympathy for the National Socialist positions) the pain of difference was very real. I expect to revisit that in chapter ten.

Music was so important to Bonhoeffer. Bethge writes:

"His love of making music was truly impressive, whether he was persuaded to perform for the others or was inspired to explore musical areas hitherto unknown to him. His romantic heritage was strongly evident in his playing of Chopin, Brahms, and excerpts from the delightfully stylish Rosenkavalier. But he never turned down a request to join in playing one of Bach's concertos for two pianos. . . . All this was clearly part of the practice of communal living and the personal training of future preachers; it occurred more through indirect suggestions than explicit words."

I've heard Dietrich described as "hopelessly inaccessible" because of his assumed abstract dogmatism. The irony in this is that Bonhoeffer himself had a lifelong passion for concrete expression. He studied the ins and outs of social connections. He longed to be able to communicate these to anyone, from children to prisoners. He was convinced that we meet God in that place where we are encountered by persons we can't understand. This 'practice of communal living and personal training' is Dietrich's pragmatic realization of his inner longing. He can be himself entirely for others. Through his music, cleaning the kitchen, making beds, and patiently conversing with students, he demonstrated a Christian faith that can countermand the National Socialist bastardization of all that was sacred.

The section titled "Discussion Evenings" (431) is particularly interesting as it relates to the question of Finkenwalde's stance on war. In 1935 Military Conscription had just been reintroduced and Germany was once again a world military power. When Bonhoeffer raised the issue of conscientious objection he met with heated opposition. Bonhoeffer finally succeeded in instilling in them a healthy respect for anyone refusing to fight out of obedience to Christ's command. His presumed pacifism only made his critics in the Confessing church that much more suspicious.

Bonhoeffer's friendship with Herman Stohr of Stettin, secretary of the German Fellowship of Reconciliation is also worth a mention. He defended Stohr to his students even though Stohr's own position was centered in universal disarmament rather than theology. Bonhoeffer tried unsuccessfully to save Stohr when he was later prosecuted (and then executed) as a conscientious objector.

When Karl Barth fought the oath to Hitler and lost his teaching position, it became an important object lesson at Finkenwalde. Barth’s theological reasoning made it more than a political issue. A copy of the farewell letter to Hermann Hesse was copied and distributed to the students. The final passage reflected both Bonhoeffer and Barth's sympathies on the Confessing church's selfishness at that time:

"...the Confessing church has as yet shown no sympathy for the millions who are suffering injustice. It has not once spoken out on the most simple matters of public integrity. And if and when it does speak, it is always on its own behalf."

Bethge says that rather than give Karl Barth a position at one of the Confessing church’s seminaries, many within the Confessing church were happy to see him leave at this point. (432) What happened here showed the students that there could no longer be a visible separation of Christian action from politics in the face of State incursion. Karl Barth’s request to restate his oath to say “in so far as it is possible for me as a Christian” brilliantly set forth the reign of Christ over Hitler.

There is much more in this chapter than I can possibly cover in a blog entry. The next twenty five pages covered Finkenwalde as a Spiritual Center, and descriptions of Pomerania and the Saxony province as they influenced Bonhoeffer and the school. These are followed by a lengthy description of the Syllabus (lesson plan) for students. He divides it into four sections which cover Homiletics (441-444), Ministry and Church (444-447), Confessional Writings , or the Reformation creeds from where they stood, (447-450) and then finally “Discipleship,” which of course became the book Nachfolge or (for us) the Cost of Discipleship(450-460).

It pains me not to walk through all of these, but let me point out the significance of the section Ministry and Church to our discussion of how Finkenwalde prepared its students for a Biblical outlook on war and injustice. Bethge writes:

“On the issue of the church’s legal authority Bonhoeffer taught that this could not be possessed externally, but only internally in the form of church discipline over its own members. Externally all the church could do was confess and suffer.”(444)

As I see it, this puts Finkenwalde squarely in the same place as the historic peace churches. Bonhoeffer knew that they had no legal authority within the State and that it was only a matter of time before their dangerous situation would turn deadly. Even so, as they saw it, they were compelled to faithfulness to Christ regardless of the consequences. I think we could find many more applications for our times from this section, if it were to be worked through. Much of it is legal and historical and so, any extraction has to be careful and deliberate.

All I’m going to say about the “Discipleship” section is that if Cost of Discipleship is your introduction to Bonhoeffer, you owe it to yourself to read these ten pages. I am fascinated by a friend of mine who told me recently that while he was reading Ethics, he really didn’t give a care about Bonhoeffer as a person. I knew this wasn’t strictly true as he’d devoured and loved Saints and Villains, the fictional account of his life. For the last sixty years the world has delighted in expounding on Bonhoeffer’s importance without much real knowledge of him. That might annoy me, but I can’t help but think Dietrich would be bemused by it. He was misunderstood for just about every direction he took during his life, why should it be any different after his death?

After the Syllabus section, Bethge writes about the House of Brethren. Wait a second, weren’t we talking about the Finkenwalde community already? Well, there was community at the seminary, then there’s a smaller live-in community with a more rigorous devotion to meditation and confession. These separate sections serve to highlight the content over the form. Not all the students could accept the rigorous way of life layed out in what became the book Life Together. If you want to know more about this manner and life and Bonhoeffer’s proposal to the church for its need, read about it in my article here. If you’re reading Life Together, you should read Bethge pgs. 460-472.

Within this section are some revealing insights into Bonhoeffer’s take on groups similar to American Evangelicals. Bonhoeffer spared no disdain in his regard for the Oxford Movement. (470) And his comments on Count Zinzendorf’s hymns (whom Karl Barth regarded highly) also have bearing here:

“By the time I’d finished, I felt really depressed. What a musty cellarful of piety. . . . And all this in hymns! Yes, such are people---pious people! I have a horror of the consequences of this finitum capax infiniti! We must have the pure and genuine air of the Word around us. And yet we are incapable of getting away from ourselves. But for goodness’ sake let’s turn our eyes away from ourselves!”

Maybe it is these sentiments that make me so angry when I think of Richard J. Foster’s placement of Bonhoeffer in the Holiness tradition of his book Streams of Living Water. That was a serious error in judgment that someone, maybe Martin Marty (who wrote the Foreword), should have called him on. I fear that most Evangelicals read enough of Cost of Discipleship to think Bonhoeffer is like the revivalist singer Keith Green on steroids. (That’s honestly what I thought.) Somehow they never get to the end discussion of the Lord’s Supper, or how a personal “conversion experience” is not as important as accepting the truth in faith. Bonhoeffer was no revivalist.

Let me insert a final point here on Bonhoeffer and community. Eberhard Bethge has this remark at the end of his House of Brethren section:

“When Bonhoeffer was working in Ettal at the end of 1940 he encountered the monastic wisdom of the Benedictines as one who was no stranger to it himself. Biographically the time of community life was over, but this was not so in practice. In 1943 and 1944, when he was compelled to lead a cruelly lonely existence, the exercises he had practiced in Finkenwalde proved an invaluable solace, and made him frank and open-minded toward his agnostic fellow sufferers.”

At some point I would love to write a full paper that explores Bonhoeffer’s interest in community from Sanctorum Communio up to the end. Or at least I think someone should. It would take into account his large family, his earliest ecclesiology, its development in his theological sociality (as Clifford Green points out) through to its realization in Finkenwalde, the Collective Vicorates and then finally in his relation to his fellow prisoners. Here’s a brief chronology of Bonhoeffer’s continued use of Meditation, Lectio Divina and Confession up to the end:

1935-1937 Finkenwalde

1938-1940 Collective Vicorates (Life Together published in 1939)

1940 Benedictine monastery at Ettal

1943-1944 we know he continued to practice in prison.

Community always had a distinctive place in Bonhoeffer’s faith. To claim that Finkenwalde was a failed experiment or of little consequence to his students and himself after it was closed is an obvious conjecture from ignorance. Its sad that more folks can’t get the full picture beyond the simple outline of Life Together. I guess there’s far too much reading involved.

The Ecumenical World (472-486)
To summarize this section, Bonhoeffer gets edged out of his youth conference work because of he wanted to further the topics of conscienscious objection and use of coercion and its rights and limitations. He is pushed out in favor of an American(!), Eugene Espy, who quickly makes it known that they’ve gotten rid of Bonhoeffer and will gladly follow Geneva’s plan. From this point on Berlin and Geneva enjoy normal (German Christian) relations (476-8). The Chamby conference fully recognized the German Church entourage headed by Bishop Heckel. Bethge says Heckel “had the field to himself.” On the Jewish question Heckel lied that “it was being dealt with much more openly and that plans in hand were on the way to fulfillment.” Now don’t those “reassuring words” sound downright ominous?

Bishop Bell raised Fano’s resolution again to maintain close fellowship with the Confessing Church and Heckel replied that of course Fano was still good---yeah, right.

This follows with a lengthy review of Bonhoeffer’s essay “The Confessing Church and the Ecumenical Movement.” Here’s the final statement from this essay:

“He concluded the essay by asking whether an ecumenical council would ‘speak a word of judgment about war, race hatred and social exploitation, whether, through such true ecumenical unity among Protestant Christians of all nations, war itself will one day become impossible. What is demanded is not the realizations of our own aims but obedience.’” (Bethge, 485)

For Bonhoeffer, in view of the times, this word of judgment gave the work its legitimacy.

The Steglitz Resolutions (486-491)
Shortly after the Nuremberg laws of 15 September, Bonhoeffer’s old friend Franz Hildebrandt called to sound an alarm regarding resolutions to be decided in Steglitz. He warned of the possibility of the council adopting a measure that winked at the new laws and the Aryan clause. He warned that if this happened he would leave the Confessing church. So Bonhoeffer and the entire seminary went to the meetings and sat in the balcony. They heckled the Reich representative before and after his speech on finances. In spite of their pressure, Steglitz tabled the Aryan clause issue while affirming a comment on the rights of Jews to be baptized. This was an embarrassment. Bonhoeffer left Steglitz very depressed. He’d just received a letter from his grandmother about the plight of his twin sister’s Jewish family.

The End of the first Finkenwalde course:
Ordinands returned to their home churches to be soon ordained, but as “illegals.” Hardly any could expect a regular pastorate with a nice house and garden. If they’d wanted that, Finkenwalde was the wrong seminary! The German Christian consistories barred anyone from seminaries of the Councils of Brether from a regular, salaried ministry. Instead they had the following options:

They could find an independent patron with limited funding from the Council. The could get an assistant pastorate, which surely meant permanent apprenticeship. One of the new congregations could call them to fight for use of a church and building. Finally, they could travel and form emergency churches in private homes which Bethge notes, was becoming much more dangerous.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer promised to continue supporting them with letters, visits, and informal study conferences.

Finally, let me point to a theme recurrent in much of the material that I glossed over:

Bonhoeffer was torn between the reality of what he’d begun and what it had become. He sought for Action from the Confessing Church on behalf of the Jews. He sought for legitimacy, representation and action from the Ecumenical delegations on behalf of the Confessing Church. He never stopped believing in the power of the true Church to act. He never lost faith in the use of theology to accomplish all this. He did this knowing that the whole situation was changing and that everything he worked for would likely be lost. Even so he tried to act quickly with the resources he still had.

Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eberhard Bethge, 1935, Finkenwalde, community, Franz Hildebrandt, Karl Barth, Andre Trocme, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon

Between posts

I continue to work through chapter nine of Bethge's Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography. I have a few paragraphs written for a post but I keep editing and deleting and rewording. Sunday morning I got hit with the writing bug. Then Monday and Tuesday my sisters came to town with their families and we've been going over to my mom's to be with them each day. Yesterday morning I finally got out on a nice long walk down a beautiful stretch of rural road. Manuevering down a hilly blacktop takes a lot of concentration! With Lucinda William's "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" on my ipod I briskly walked and ran for a straight hour. I got better exercise than my typical six mile walk along the bike path in Chicago. The change of scenery was a welcome treat. Beautiful skies, stars at night, hilly pastures, its all a luxury I wish I could take home. I'll be traveling with my dad and daughters today. I plan to bring along DB and a notebook. We'll see how far I get.

I just have to say that while DB has been one of my most richly rewarding reads its also the most work I've ever put into a single book. Maybe a better mind than mine wouldn't find it this hard, but I spend a lot of time working the angles. I read and reread a lot. This is a book I'll no doubt continue to struggle along with for years to come. The reading and plodding really stretch my mind into new places. Its like mental weight lifting. Trouble comes in finding other folks who can really share my interest in the material. I have met exactly one other person this year who has been entirely through this book. I met him by chance in a bookstore over the summer. If you've been all the way through DB, chime in here too.

Tags: walking, reading, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eberhard Bethge, Lucinda Williams

Bethge: Chapter Eight, London: 1933-1935

Blogging Bethge
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Revised Edition, by Eberhard Bethge, Fortress Press, 2000.
Chapter Eight, London: 1933-1935 pg. 325-419

It is disheartening to find our 'theologian of community' standing alone. From all that I've observed blogging Bethge up to this point, it is clear that Dietrich Bonhoeffer's belief in God depends upon relationship between persons. For this reason the amount of angst he must have internalized around this time regarding his dogmatic resistance to the Aryan Clause must have been unbearable. His words to Karl Barth are telling:

"I feel that in some way I don't understand, I find myself in radical opposition to all my friends; I became increasingly isolated with my views of things, even though I was and remain personally close to these people. All this has frightened me and shaken my confidence so that I began to fear that dogmatism might be leading me astray---since there seemed no particular reason why my own view in these matters should be any better, any more right, than the views of many really capable pastors whom I sincerely respect---and so I thought it was about time to go into the wilderness for a spell. . . . It seems to me that at the moment it is more dangerous for me to make a gesture than to retreat into silence." (326)

If leaving Berlin for London was an evasion, Bethge assures us "This attempt at evasion, however, was completely unsuccessful." (327) Bonhoeffer couldn't "win even a week's respite from the turbulence in Berlin." He traveled every few weeks back to Berlin. His phone bill was so high that the local post office reduced it to a manageable size. Bethge gives us a wonderful picture of Bonhoeffer's parish ministry in London. He vividly describes where Dietrich lived, studied, worked, and played his Bechstein piano. The windows and doors never shut completely. He battle colds and flu. The house was overrun with mice. Even so, it sounds as though this house was busy with the joy of friends and relatives. The church youth met here to practice their nativity play, to sing, or sometimes just to listen to his large record collection.

Bonhoeffer's work in the parish, his sermons and discipling work, reflected his involvement in the church struggle. We are blessed to have his London sermons. (A Testament to Freedom, 213-252) In chapter eight Bethge carefully takes us through Bonhoeffer's work against the Reich Church government and the formation of his relationship with Archbishop George Bell. This chapter describes some of his most important ecumenical work. Far from retreating from the Church Struggle Bonhoeffer's position as an expat pastor in London allowed him to use his ecumenical connections to embarrass the German church before the eyes of the watching world. At different times I got the distinct feel that Bonhoeffer enjoyed being a jerk to the church authority, namely one Bishop Heckel.

Bethge sets the Barmen Declaration of May 1934 squarely within Bonhoeffer's ecumenical work. It gives it a totally different perspective. Bonhoeffer worked on a letter with Bishop Bell to be sent to the representatives of the Universal Council for Life and Work regarding the German Evangelical Church. Bonhoeffer had to make the differences clear between the Confessing Churches and the German Churches. The Ecumenical planners needed to know exactly who represented the Church in Germany. Bethge says,

"the letter did spell out the essential grievances unequivocally: the Fuhrer principle, a violent regime, disciplinary measures, and racial discrimination "without precedent in the history of the Church . . . incompatible with the Christian principle."(370)

With Bell's ecumenical support the opposition churches in German were fortified for their Barmen Synod on May 29. This is where Bonhoeffer's help lay for Barmen. Despite all his work he was misunderstood both by his friends in the Confessing Church and in the ecumenical world. His Confessing friends could not understand his emphasis on the Sermon on the Mount. Among his ecumenical friends he felt isolated for his emphasis on confession and opposition to heresy. He saw the needed connection between both of these worlds but was alone with that vision. (372)

I'd like to draw your attention to two articles on the Barmen Declaration and its' significance since 1934. Victoria Barnett, Church historian and author of For the Soul of the People: a history of the Confessing Church wrote an article for the Christian Century on the fiftieth anniversary of Barmen. This has to be the most important treatment I've read. Very indepth and insightful, giving Barmen's strengths and weaknesses for subsequent generations.

The second article is a lengthy revisiting by Ulrich Mauser for Theology Matters, a publication of Presbyterians for Faith, Family and Ministry. Dr. Mauser taught New Testament at Princeton T.S. but is a native German working with the original source material. His background info for Barmen is amazing. The Epilogue begins a dialogue with Barmen and specific PCUSA discussions concerning homosexuality.

Dietrich's work in London was effective. He got his church and others to turn to the Confessing church. Sadly this didn't stick after he left. There were financial considerations and Germany had them by the purse strings. In the end Bonhoeffer was called home to begin a preacher's seminary. He had been still working on plans to go to Ghandi in India. But his dedication to the Confessing churches took over.

In the end Bonhoeffer's course was not his own to take. His love for the Church was more important than his practical plans to teach Germans nonviolent resistance. Was this a godly choice? Was this God's will? We can't take Bonhoeffer out of his place in the church. Even in a church that in the end took the wrong course and left him stranded alone.

Tags: Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, Victoria Barnett, Confessing Church, History, Ulrich Mauser, theology, pastoral life, ecumenical work

Blogging Bonhoeffer: Chapter Seven "Berlin 1933"

Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Revised Edition, 2000. pg. 257-324
Chapter Seven "Berlin 1933"

Maybe the clearest sign that Eberhard Bethge moved from the general to the particular in tone is when he began marking the months. Whereas in previous chapters he splits the sections topically, based on duties or ideas. Here, in 1933 he moves from January to September chronicling every action in the church struggle between the Nazi German Christians and what comes to be known as the Confessing Church---the church that by returning to the Scriptures and their foundations, tried to theologically remove a vicious poison from the faith.

The events of 1933 are renowned. The speed with which Hitler moved from being president to becoming Reich Fuhrer, using the insecurity of the German situation to obtain complete control. Did it happen overnight? No, but in overt and subtle ways every aspect of life gradually moved into compliance with the political. Bethge notes the immediate changes that thrust Dietrich into uncertainty:

The political turning point on 30 January 1933 would force Bonhoeffer's life onto a different course. It did not require a reorientation of his personal convictions or theology, but it became increasingly clear that academic discussion must give way to action. It was imperative to relinquish the shelter and privilege of the academic rostrum, as well as the protected "rights and duties of the ministry," if the power of weakness were to be credible. (Bethge, 258)

That "power of weakness" is key here. Here is where Bonhoeffer's theologia crucis, his important Christology lectures, demanded satisfaction. If God, as Dietrich says, is present where we encounter the other, then who but the Jew--the victim of Germany's Other-ing--shows us the true face of Christ? This thought developed throughout this period and later, but the important point is that Bonhoeffer committed himself to this task.

Up to now the young lecturer and preacher had not been involved in decisions concerning greater church issues. He had no voice, nor indeed had he desire any. Now at the age of twenty-seven, he found himself among those whose names had suddenly become prominent. (Ibid.)

First is Bonhoeffer's radio address which is cut off, then is the Berlin ecumenical meeting of the World Alliance and the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work. After the Reichstag burned, Hitler declared his emergency decrees. Then Dietrich's father was called on to psychologically analyze the young suspect, Marinus van der Lubbe. The Bonhoeffer family is thrust right into Germany's fate. The Reichstag Fire Edict was later used to close Finkenwalde. On April first came the boycott of Jewish businesses. By April 7 Aryan legislation was enacted. Bethge writes that "Bonhoeffer was among the very few who sat down and worked through its possible consequences, from both a political and an ecclesiastical standpoint." (Bethge, 272)

Yesterday I read "The Church and the Jewish Question." from No Rusty Swords, 217-225.

(Incidently, if you don't know of No Rusty Swords or the trilogy of books edited by Edwin Robertson from Bonhoeffer's Gessamelte Schriften, then I should let you know that they can still be had thirty years later for much cheaper than the authorized versions coming out! I see copies popping up on Abebooks.com and ebay from time to time. I recently got a copy of the second book, The Way to Freedom, for only $5.00! These are selections of the letters, lectures and notes from the German. If you want the papers first hand, this is the cheap way to go.)

Bethge (pg. 272-276) gives a lengthy treatment of this essay (prepared for a group of pastors who met at Gerhard Jacobi's house) but here is my own assessment:
Beginning with an approach to the state that almost seems to lower the church's gaze from the world, it soon becomes clear that Bonhoeffer has Christian action in the world very much as its' focus. He masterfully argues theologically for the Church's witness to the state, without itself becoming a political animal. Individual Christians will be political, but Bonhoeffer asks with what voice the Church itself should speak. In the case of Hitler, he reasoned that a Status Confessionis was in order. This would involve a prepared statement from an Evangelical Church Council. This wasn't to happen, and of course Bonhoeffer's struggle within the Church for its' stand concerning the jews was only beginning. Bethge says that "by August 1933 Bonhoeffer had concluded beyond all doubt that there would be no question of belonging to a church that excluded the Jews." (pg. 273)

>From May through to August, Bethge exhaustively details the Confessional Church fight to preserve independence from the State. Paster D. Friedrich von Bodelschwingh is elected national Bishop to counter the German Christians but Hitler makes Ludwig Muller his commissioner of affairs. By July 14 Muller pushed through the new German Protestant Church constitution. Bonhoeffer and Franz Hildebrandt worked hard to sway votes in the church election on July 23, though it was clear it was a losing battle. The story of their run-in with the Gestapo on pg. 295-6 is worthy of note. Word got around after that that Dietrich had been sent to a concentration camp! The office of the Young Reformation movement was invaded and leaflets were confiscated. At this time Bonhoeffer and Hans Jacobi actually drove to Gestapo headquarters to confront them! Some of their leaflets were returned.

On the day of the church elections, Bonhoeffer preached this sermon in the Trinity Church in Berlin.

Church Election Sermon
No Rusty Swords, Fontana, 1977
pg. 208-213

TEXT: Matt. 16:13-18


If it were left to us, we would rather avoid the decisions

which are now forced upon us; if it were left to us, we would

rather not allow ourselves to be caught up in this church

struggle; if it were left to us, we would rather not have to

insist upon the rightness of our cause and we would so

willingly avoid the terrible danger of exalting ourselves over

others; if it were left to us, we would retire today rather

than tomorrow into private life and leave all the struggle and

the pride to others. And yet-thank God-it has not been left to

us. Instead, in God's wisdom, everything is going exactly as we

would rather not have it go. We are called upon to make a

decision from which we cannot escape. We must be content,

wherever we are, to face the accusation of being

self-righteous, to be suspected of acting and speaking as

though we were proud and superior to others. Nothing shall be

made easy for us. We are confronted by a decision, and a

difference of opinion. 'For this reason, if we are honest with

ourselves, we will not try to disguise the true meaning of the

church election today. In the midst of the creakings and

groanings of a crumbling and tottering church structure, which

has been shaken to its very foundations, we hear in this text

the promise of the eternal church, against which the gates of

hell shall not prevail; of the church founded on a rock, Christ

has built and which he continues to build throughout all time.

Where is this church? Where do we find it? Where do we hear its

voice? Come all you who ask in seriousness, all you who are

abandoned and left alone, we will go back to the Holy

Scriptures, we will go and look for the church together. Those

who have ears to hear, let them hear.

Jesus went out into a deserted place with his disciples, close

to the edge of the pagan lands, and there he was alone with

them. This is the place where for the first time he promises

them the legacy of his church. Not in the midst of the people,

not at the visible peak of his popularity; but in a distant and

unfrequented spot, far from the orthodox scribes and pharisees,

far from the crowds who on Palm Sunday would cry out "Hosanna"

and on Good Friday, "Crucify him," he speaks to his disciples

of the mystery and the future of his church. He obviously

believed that this church could not be built in the first place on the scribes, the priests,

or the masses; but that only this tiny group of disciples, who

followed him, was called to this work. And clearly he did not

think that Jerusalem, the city of the Temple and the center of

the life of the people, was the right place for this, but he

goes out into the wilderness, where he could not hope that his

preaching would achieve any eternal, visible effectiveness. And

last of all he does not consider that any of the great feast

days would have been suitable time to speak of his church, but

rather he promises this church in the face of death,

immediately before he tells of his coming passion for the first

time. The church of the tiny flock, the church out in the

wilderness, the church in the face of death--something like

this must be meant.

Jesus himself puts the decisive question, for which the

disciples had been waiting: "Who do people say that the

Son of man is?" Answer: "Some say John the Baptist, others say

Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." Opinions,

nothing but opinions; one could extend this list of opinions as

much as one wanted. . . some say you are a great man, some say

you are an idealist, some say you are a religious genius, some

say you are a great champion and hero, who will lead us to

victory and greatness. Opinions, more or less serious

opinions-- but Jesus does not want to build his church on

opinions. And so he addresses himself directly to his

disciples: "But who do you say that I am?" In this inevitable

confrontation with Christ there can be no "perhaps" or "some

say," no opinions but only silence or the answer which Peter

gives now: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living: God."


Here in the midst of human opinions and views, something quite

new suddenly becomes visible. Here God's name is named, here

the eternal is pronounced, here the mystery is recognized. Here

is no longer human opinion, but precisely the opposite, here is

divine revelation and confession of faith. "Blessed are you,

Simon Bar-jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to

you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are

Peter, and on this rock I will build my church."

What is the difference between Peter and the others? Is he

of such heroic nature that he towers over the others? He is

not. Is he endowed with such unheard-of strength of character?

He is not. Is he gifted with unshakable loyalty? He is not.

Peter is nothing, nothing but a person confessing his faith, a

person who has been confronted by Christ and who has recognized

Christ, and who now confesses his faith in him, and this

confessing Peter is called the rock on which Christ will build

his church.

Peter's church--that means the church of rock, the church of the

confession of Christ. Peter's church, that does not mean a

church of opinions and views, but the church of the revelation;

not a church in which what "people say" is talked about but the

church in which Peter's confession is made anew and passed on;

the church which has no other purpose in song, prayer,

preaching, and action than to pass on its confession of faith;

the church which is always founded on rock as long as it

remains within these limits, but which turns into a house built

on sand, which is blown away by the wind, as soon as it is

foolhardy enough to think that it may depart from or even for a

moment neglect this purpose.

But Peter's church-this is not something which one can say

with untroubled pride. Peter, the confessing, believing

disciple, Peter denied his Lord on the same night as Judas

betrayed him; in that night he stood at the fire and felt

ashamed when Jesus stood before the high priest; he is the man

of little faith, the timid man who sinks into the sea; Peter is

the disciple whom Jesus threatened: "Get thee behind me Satan";

it is he who later was again and again overcome by weakness,

who again and again denied and fell, a weak, vacillating man,

given over to the whim of the moment. Peter's church, that is

the church which shares these weaknesses, the church which

itself again and again denies and falls, the unfaithful,

fainthearted, timid church which again neglects its charge and

looks to the world and its opinions. Peter's church, that is

the church of all those who are ashamed of their Lord when they

should stand firm confessing him.

But Peter is also the man of whom we read: "He went- out and

wept bitterly." Of Judas, who also denied the Lord, we read:

"He went out and hanged himself." That is the difference. Peter

went out and wept bitterly. Peter's church is not only the

church which confesses its faith, nor only the church which

denies its Lord; it is the church which can still weep. "By the

waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we

remembered Zion" (Ps. 137:1). This is the church; for what does

this weeping mean other than that one has found the way back,

than that one is on the way home, than that one has become the

prodigal son who falls to his knees weeping before his father?

Peter's church is the church with that godly sadness which

leads to joy.

It does indeed seem very uncertain ground to build on,

doesn't it? And yet it is bedrock, for this Peter, this

trembling reed, is called by God, caught "by God, held by God.

"You are Peter," we all are Peter; not the Pope, as the 'Roman

Catholics would have it; not this person or that, but all of

us, who simply live from our confession of faith in Christ, as

the timid, faithless, fainthearted, and yet who live as people

sustained by God.

But it is not we who build. He builds the church. No human

being builds the church but Christ alone. Whoever intends to

build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it;

for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing

it. We must confess-he builds. We must proclaim--he builds. We

must pray to him-that he may build. We do not know his plan.

'We cannot see whether he is building or pulling down. It may

be that the times which by human standards are times of

collapse are for him the great times of construction. It may be

that from a human point of view great times for the church are

actually times of demolition. It is a great comfort which

Christ gives to his church: you confess, preach, bear witness

to me, and I alone will build where it pleases me. Do not

meddle in what is my province. Do what is given to you to do

well and you have done enough. But do it well. Pay no heed to

views and opinions, don't ask for judgments,

don't always be calculating what will happen, don't always be

on the lookout for another refuge! Let the church remain the

church! But church, confess, confess, confess! Christ alone is

your Lord, from his grace alone can you live as you are. Christ

builds.

And the gates of hell shall not prevail against you. Death,

the greatest heir of everything that has existence, here meets

its end. Close by the precipice of the valley of death, the

church is founded, the church which confesses Christ as its

life. The church possesses eternal life just where death seeks

to take hold of it; and death seeks to take hold of it

precisely because it possesses life. The Confessing Church is

the eternal church because Christ protects it. Its eternity is

not visible in this world. It is unhindered by the world. The

waves pass right over it and sometimes it seems to be

completely covered and lost. But the victory is its because

Christ its Lord is by its side and he has overcome the world of

death. Do not ask whether you can see the victory; believe in

the victory and it is yours.

In huge capital letters our text is etched into the dome of

the great church of St. Peter's, the papal church in Rome.

Proudly this church points to its eternity, to its visible

victory over the world, across the centuries. Such splendor,

which even our Lord did not desire or bear, is denied to us.

And yet a splendor which is immeasurably greater than this

splendor in the world, is assured to us. Whether the band of

believers is great or small, low or high, weak or strong, if it

confesses Christ the victory is assured to them, in eternity.

Fear not, little flock, for it is my Father's pleasure to give

you the kingdom. Where two or three are gathered together in my

name, there am I in the midst of them. The city of God is built

on a sure foundation. Amen.


This sermon reveals a lot about Bonhoeffer's ecclesiology. The Church is home to the confession. And this is what I believe. No matter how confusing it may appear, and I have American Evangelicalism in mind, the true Church that is overlooked in our triumphant speech, the suffering Church of confession, is victorious in Christ. This Jesus may be of no real use to politicians in this election season. He doesn't fit into the usual agendas that win votes. He is too weak for Republicans or Democrats. But He is victorious in our confession.


After the July 23 election defeat Bonhoeffer left for London. His visit there presented the opportunity to take a pastorate, but he wasn't sure this was the right thing to do. In August came the Bethel Confession. Much is written about this work and it remains one of the most important Church confessions in modern history. Bonhoeffer felt very spent around this time. He felt alone and helpless toward what the church in Berlin had become. This surely influenced his decision for the pastorate in London, though it was only to last nine months, with much of that time traveling back and forth to Germany.

Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Germany, Eberhard Bethge, Berlin, Confessing Church, No Rusty Swords, election, Nazi, Hitler, victory, weakness, Bethel Confession, Trinity Church

Blogging Bonhoeffer, some preliminary thoughts to Chapter Seven

Some preliminary thoughts to Chapter Seven of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge:

1. Do not cast Dietrich Bonhoeffer vs. Adolph Hitler. They are not hero and antihero. I say this because almost every reference to Bonhoeffer that I've seen this year does this to one degree or another, such as this youtube video. I don't mean these folks aren't well-intentioned. It's just a stupidly easy characterization that takes us from our vantage point in history to theirs and back again without any real struggle!
2. 1933 is not the beginning of Bonhoeffer's true significance. To begin here is to lose real sight of him.
3. Hitler's rise to power, and the situation in Germany before him have local significance long before their universal significance.
4. We cannot judge history beginning with the Allied victory in 1945. I come to chapter seven with very mixed feelings because of my country's appeal for the War on Terror framed on a revisionist history of WWII. American Christians, like Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson view Bonhoeffer as a model Christian with a simple eye toward his opposition to Adolph Hitler. I don't see FoF or Colson with any real interest in Bonhoeffer's theology up to this point. Bonhoeffer from this vantage point is our vicarious hero in the ideological war against evil. We're on Dietrich/Jesus' side against the Hitler/Devil side. How convenient. This really ticks me off. To really enter Dietrich Bonhoeffer's world is to enter a losing situation, where pacifists and gypsies, gays and bible thumpers all suffer the same execution by hanging or firing squad. To try to score points for Jesus after the extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust is blasphemous.
5. When Hitler rose to power on January 30, 1933 the Bonhoeffer family knew they were at war long before the start of World War. (Bethge, p. 257) This brings up an important question regarding what it means to be a State. If the citizens of a country are at war with their own leadership, how are they it's citizens? And who will protect them? Before Hitler Germany had been attempting democracy since 1918. To really understand Bonhoeffer it is paramount to gain a working knowledge of Germany's frustrated government after WWI. I have Germany Tried Democracy: A Political History of the Reich from 1918 to 1933 by S. William Halperin. For a simpler reference there's Wikipedia's entry for the Weimar Republic.

I am bemused and saddened by the way I hear Hitlerizations being bandied about in the news. I've heard President Bush referred to as a Hitler more times than I can count. I also hear Hitler characterized as a Christian. My hope is that these folks will take a serious look at the Church Struggle in it's right context and really learn from history. Here in America we have our own crisis situation. References to fascism, as much as we would like to resonate with them, really don't get us further in our own struggle. The worst part of our crisis is that we don't feel it much at all. We are kept numb by so many things. Conversations are masterfully twisted into mute points. Victory and safety from the "right" side of history has the effect of stripping our need for God or the suffering servant Jesus Christ.

Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fortress Press, Eberhard Bethge, Adolph Hitler, Focus on the Family, Chuck Colson, Weimar Republic, youtube

Blogging Bethge's Bonhoeffer Chapter 6 Lecturer and Pastor 1931-1932

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Revised Edition by Eberhard Bethge, Fortress Press, 2000.

Chapter 6 Lecturer and Pastor 1931-1932

p. 173-256

Two quotes begin the chapter and set the tone. They involve a fear of disappointing, of getting things right with the state of German public life as such.

How is one to preach such things to these people? Who still believes them? The invisibility destroys us. . . . This absurd, perpetual state of being thrown back upon the invisible God--no one can stand it any longer. (Bethge, 173.)

Bethge writes:

“Bonhoeffer’s return to Germany in 1931 represented a break in his development that was certainly sharper than the momentous political and ecclesiastical upheaval that followed two years later. The second major phase of his career began now, not in 1933. The period of learning and roaming had come to an end. He now began to teach on a faculty whose theology he did not share, and to preach in a church whose self-confidence he regarded as unfounded. More aware than before, he now became part of a society that was moving toward political, social, and economic chaos.” (173)

At age 25 he now worked in three different fields, the academic as a lecturer at Berlin University, the pastoral as a student chaplain teaching catechism, a youth club for the unemployed in Charlottenburg and, in ecumenics, as a youth secretary for the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches and the Ecumenical Council for Practical Christianity (Life and Work). These two groups were seeds of what would later be the World Council of Churches.

In the late summer of 1931Bonhoeffer does a reconnaissance mission to explore these three fields before him. Isn't that just like him? Always the need to know and be in control!

Bethge again:

Bonhoeffer indeed found it difficult to subordinate himself to those who did not meaure up to his exacting standards. . . . He had an instinctive fear of being surprised by circumstances beyond his control without first having sassured himself of an alternative. it was very difficult for him simply to "believe"; indeed, he would have described such "belief" as laziness.

On July 10 in Bonn, through his friend Erwin Sutz, Bonhoeffer finally fulfilled the longing he'd held from his student days to meet Karl Barth. Karl, at 45, is twenty years older than Dietrich at this point. Bonhoeffer wrote to Sutz:
"I have, I think, seldom regretted anything in my theological past so much as the fact that I did not go to him sooner." (Bethge, 186.) The relationship between these two men is of such importance that Bethge takes ten pages to describe it! That's typical of Bethge's writing. He often breaks into the narrative with long theological summaries. But few are as important to me as these ten pages. Bethge explains that while the two hit it off Barth never really got to know where Bonhoeffer was coming from theologically until it was too late. So where Bonhoeffer saw Barth's advice and respected him highly, he also knew they could never truly be on the same page. Barth hadn't read Sanctorum Communio or Act and Being and so knew nothing of Bonhoeffer's theologia relationis or the Lutheran emphasis on the theologia crucis.
Bethge lists four stages to their relationship in which he demonstrates how each were moving in different directions personally.

"In direct contrast to Barth, Bonhoeffer concentrated on the terrifying proximity of an actively intervening God to preserve the majesty of God from being cheapened in the pulpit, and sought to proclaim him in the concreteness of grace-filled commandment." (Bethge, 182)

Catechism (186-189)
Dietrich and Franz Hildrebrandt worked together on a Lutheran catechism from July to September 1931. Bethge notes that Bonhoeffer worked on two, one in 1931 and one in 1936. He says neither were "simple or convincing as a learning tool." Not as interested in teaching as "attempting to put into words what the Lutheran faith says today. Questions and answers are designed for concentrated reading." Hildebrandt came upon Luther's Statement of Faith and this is what their catechism was based on. I wish I could post here the entire 1931 catechism from No Rusty Swords as it is hard to come by.

Cambridge (189-202)
Bethge calls this the "most momentous of the three events."
"His interest in the ecumenical movement was at first incidental, but it took such a hold on him that it became an integral part of his being. He was soon furiously involved in the internal battles about its orientation, and he defended it enthusiastically in public. The emerging world of the Protestant ecumenical movement became a vital part of his theology, his role in the church struggle, and ultimately his political commitment."

Bethge points out that unlike in Britain, it was the academics and not church officials who first advocated ecumenical involvement. With this kind of representation to the outside, profs didn't really represent the church, but as civil servants, were in lock step with the Reich. Bonhoeffer was significant because he represented a youthful academic emphasis on the role of the church, and later as a pastor in London he used his ecumenical influence to sway the expatriate churches in London against the home German churches. But that's not for a few chapters. I'm getting ahead.

Transition from theologian to Christian (202-206)
Much has been made of Dietrich's transition. I've heard it described here in the US emphasized as a conversion. Stephen Haynes (The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon) points out that Evangelical Americans have cast Bonhoeffer in their image using this transition is a touchstone. This comment from Bethge might be a cold slap for them:

"Bonhoeffer never mentioned the biographical background of this thought to his students. They learned nothing about a conscious moment of a turning point. He had always been repulsed by the pietist' deliberately told stories of their conversions. But this did not mean that he avoided making decisions whose time had come and that held the seeds of the future, including a new responsibility for the world in the final years." (Bethge, 206)

Clifford Green in Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociality spends ten pages (p. 140-147) on what this Transition most likely meant to Bonhoeffer personally as it relates to his theological development. Green locates "the soteriological problem of the powerful ego" as a central theme throughout Bonhoeffer's early theology. And this issue of the powerful ego is worked out of Dietrich's own personal struggles.
Green writes:

"I have already demonstrated the striking connection between the soteriological problem of the powerful ego in Bonhoeffer's theology and his autobiographical memoirs and correspondence. Without suggesting for a moment that personal concerns were the only factors influencing the shape and direction of his theology, this connection is quite apparent. In Sanctorum Communio Bonhoeffer portrays human beings created in communities of mutual love, freedom, and responsibility for on another. To be human is to be essentally social, in its interpersonal and corporate aspects. This essential sociality is turned against itself by individual and collective egotism. Self-seeking, egocentricity, the dominant will, using the other as a means to the ends of the self-these destroy the primal community. The sinful person is now alone, a "solitary lord and creator" in the solidarity of egocentric individualism. Since being human is essentially being a person in sociality, the crisis of the self and the crisis of sociality is one and the same. From this loss of true humanity in sociality people are delivered by Christ. Christ is the reality of the new humanity, personally present in the social community of the church; by his Spirit of love people are freed from the isolation of their individual egocentricity and domination of others, and bonded together in a new social community characterized by "active being for one another." Both the individual person and human community are, in the church, in the process of being made over and renewed." (Green, pg. 149)

University (207-221)
Bonhoeffer spent two years as a lecturer at Berlin University. Not only did he continue his teaching about Christ located in an anologia relationis (I don't want to lose you here, this latin refers to how we encounter Christ in the boundary situation that faces us in every human relationship) but the "Bonhoeffer Circle" that formed among his students is an example in itself of Bonhoeffer's theological praxis. He did not care about dogmatics without engagement. Christ is God's answer to human estrangement. So as early as 1932 Bethge describes the rudiments of community taking place between Dietrich and his students:

"In 1932 they lugged potatoes, flour, and veg­etables on a wheelbarrow to the Stettin train station so that they could spend the weekend together in the country, first at the Prebelow youth hostel and then in a cabin in Biesenthal. They talked theology, made hesitant attempts at spiritual exercises, went for long walks, and listened to Bonhoeffer's collection of Negro spirituals. It was the first time they had spoken about things like forming fellowship, committing themselves to organized spiritual life, and the possibilities of serving in social settlement work. But there was still a long way to go before any of this was put into practice, and everything was on a free and informal basis. Bonhoeffer did not force anything. These were the hesitant beginnings of what later took shape in Finkenwalde and in Bonhoeffer's Life Together." (Bethge, 208)

I must say that one of my favorite photos of Bonhoeffer graces the cover of Green's book. He sits surrounded by his students in 1932 and there is this beautiful mix of men and women, smiling, one playing a flute. The photo describes the beauty of the theology itself! Not cold ideology, not austere irrelevant facts, but persons----in relation!

Bethge spends ten pages describing Bonhoeffer's university lectures. Because this blog is already no doubt the longest I've ever written, I won't take the time to describe them here. Bethge says Dietrich found "delivering monologues a burden" and that "preferring student groups and seminars. . . . the further he advanced into the unknown, the more he longed for dialogue and criticism." This indicates a certain definite style and makes it all the more interesting that his lectures from this period are lost. Did Bonhoeffer himself so little value them that he did not care that they were lost? We are left with the Christology lectures from 1933 and Creation and Fall---which he gave his students permission to publish. Quite honestly I did not find Bethge's account of the lectures here terribly inviting.

So I turned to Green to immerse myself in the lectures for this blog. Granted it's mainly Christology and Creation and Fall as they relate the earlier theological works, but Green makes the valuable point that there is a stream, a definite progression and continuity in Bonhoeffer's theology (that is sociality) that anyone really wanting to know Bonhoeffer rightly must follow. I'm not going to take you into Green's text here (pgs. 105-246) because of the length(!) but I will offer one criticism. Green focuses on Bonhoeffer up to 1933 but then offers a critical evaluation of Discipleship as a major theological extension of the early theology. He completely ignores Life Together and moves into Ethics and the Prison writings. Granted, there is lack of theological attention to how Letters and Papers and Ethics relate to Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being. But to ignore Life Together is perilous! I guess we can't have everything. For an example of how Finkenwalde (and thus Life Together) is a realization and progression of Bonhoeffer's theological development I must direct you to Craig Slane's book Bonhoeffer As Martyr (pgs. 207-250).

The Church (221-238)
Bonhoeffer was ordained in the German State Lutheran Church on November 15, 1931 in the Matthew Church near Potsdam Place. He couldn't choose his own pastorate. He was assigned a chaplaincy to the students of a technical college in Charlottenburg. This effort didn't prove very fruitful. He was also assigned a confirmation class in Wedding, a Berlin district. Now things get a bit more light hearted and fun. Bethge says:

The class was out of control; the minister responsible was at the end of his tether, and in fact died several weeks later. Bonhoeffer wrote Sutz that they had "quite literally harassed [him] to death."

Bonhoeffer's success with this group of kids is really cool. It reveals a gentle patience and strength to his personality. He also began a youth club in Charlottenburg which flourished only for a brief while and then to seek a ministry in the "overcrowded slums of east Berlin" (Bethge, 231). His desire for a church there didn't work out though as his application was denied in favor of someone else. He didn't give up and found another position in the same district. Then he found out that Aryan clause would soon be applied to that church, which would have betrayed his solidarity with Jewish Christians.

During this time Bethge says that Bonhoeffer "did not join the public on the question of ethnic nationality in the church." "He was concerned with building small groups; he was not interested in publicity or journalism."(p. 233) Instead, in 1932, he got involved with some guys who would become Martin Niemoller's Pastors' Emergency League.

Bethge spends four pages on Bonhoeffer's preaching. (234-238) I assume that he was basically an itinerant during this time, filling in as a guest for different pastors. I get the sense that Bonhoeffer believed in preaching and in the power of the sermon more than most other agencies of the Church. He locates the sermon as a sacrament of the Word, though I admit I don't fully understand this. Clyde Fant has a book called Bonhoeffer: Worldly Preaching (Thomas Nelson, 1975), which is one of the first books I ever read on Bonhoeffer. It is taken up with lectures from the Finkenwalde era.

Ecumenism (238-255)
I must admit that this final section (of this chapter) on Bonhoeffer's ecumenical was the hardest of any sections to get through. I found terribly boring! Painfully boring! But before you call me a ninny let me just say that I have very little personal connection to the work of the World Council of Churches. I'm beginning to educate myself on it, largely through the work of Lesslie Newbigen. But in the circles in which I was raised, we were ecumenical but also kept anything that smacked of universalism at arms length. So my family had no direct connection to the WCC that I know of. Reading about all these seed organizations for the WCC, with their very formal and political ways of doing everything I had to fight to stay interested!

However, Bonhoeffer's involvement here provided a much needed education and placement for his relations with Bishop Bell in the coming years. In chapter eight it all becomes clear with Bonhoeffer's pastorate in London and his full engagement in the Church Struggle.

Well that's a weak way to end this chapter, I know. I only wish I had more to say about each of these sections. I hope you get a sense of how important this two year period is and how difficult it is to unpack. In the true spirit of Bonhoeffer's sociality, I really want to hear from anyone plodding through this period. Comments please!

Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, Eberhard Bethge, Discipleship, Biography, Clifford Green, Craig Slane

Why I have not yet blogged the Bonhoeffer chapters

Though I know that excuses are not "solution-oriented" I'm going to give you some insight into what is taking so long on blogging these next few Bonhoeffer chapters. 1932, the subject of the next chapter, is a crucial year in Bonhoeffer's development and for Hitler's Reich. Bethge dedicates the whole chapter to important months in this year. It's almost like "The Reich did this---Bonhoeffer did this." We are made keenly aware that Bonhoeffer was wide awake and active as a leader to countermand the German Christian seizure of the Evangelical church.

But here's the deal: As I said before I'm reading Clifford Green's Bonhoeffer: A Theology of Sociality at the same time. Green calls this period (1932) Bonhoeffer's transition "From the Phraseological to the Real". He follows that chapter (four) with "Creation and Christology 1932-33" (chapter five). This is 141 pages of not-lite reading! While Bethge only briefly refers to the Christology lectures, Green brings me into what I really want---full encounter.

I should say that I am really up to Finkenwalde in my Bethge reading. So the truth is I've gotten lazy, mixed-up, and distracted over the last few months. Also John Franke has just released Barth for Armchair Theologians on WJK press as a guilty and fun(!) rabbit-trail for me.

I set my face like flint to finishing Bethge's Bio by December 31st on the centennial of Bonhoeffer's birth. We'll see what happens. If you're along for the ride you might learn more about my personal reading habits than about Bonhoeffer by then. Bear with me. At the end I will post easy links to all chapter submissions.

Tags: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Clifford Green, John Franke, Karl Barth

as fresh as ever

I've been reading chapter 8 in Bethge's "Bonhoeffer" on my ipod in the evenings around the campsite. Accompanying the biography I've read his lecture "The Church is Dead" from 1933 out of No Rusty Swords and his sermon "The Church and the People of the World" from the Fano ecumenical conference in 1934. The latter could have almost been written by John Howard Yoder or Stanley Hauerwas! I've been chewing over their ideas lately and was shocked to hear the same refrain here in Bonhoeffer. When I consider that all three are theological ethicists it is not so shocking. For Bonhoeffer the command of Christ for peace is not as concerned with various political considerations. It is a command to be followed. I can almost hear Hauerwas/Yoder's rants against Niebuhr in his words "He or she who questions the commandment of God before obeying has already denied God." But in being so Christocentric Bonhoeffer goes beyond Yoder and Hauerwas. In "The Church is Dead" Bonhoeffer looks squarely at the reality facing the church and says it is this reality, this church, that is called to obedience. Instead of trying to make the church something it is not, a new Kingdom on earth, a new people, it is us justified sinners who are called to obey. I also read about the Oxford Movement's idea to convert Hitler around this time. Bonhoeffer remarked that it was "not Hitler that needs conversion, but us!"

Tags: Blogging DB, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, pacifism