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Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Bonhoeffer and Lessons for Today



Why the silence from icons of the religious and political left? Eric Metaxas gives us nearly 600 pages (Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy) that debunk liberal myths since World War II that Bonhoeffer was one of them, demonstrated by his much misquoted statement, in a letter from prison in 1944, that "religionless Christianity" is the hall-mark of true Christian faith.

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I well remember heated debate: Liberals hailed the comment as advocacy of post-dogma religion; some evangelicals thought it registered departure from the Christian heritage. In fact, Bonhoeffer was bemoaning the purely cultural religion that had failed Europe in contrast to deep personal faith in Christ and commitment to him. This theme was pervasive in his preaching, teaching, and conversations with his family, colleagues, church leaders, and politicians. Early in his career as a 22-year old theologian he had declared that he could live without Jesus as a religious genius or ethicist, or without Plato and Kant; however if, in fact, God has spoken in Christ and became present in Christ, then Christ has not only relative but absolute, urgent significance for me (83). This Christo-centricity paralleled that of the Neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth whom Bonhoffer regarded as his dearest theological mentor. Bonhoeffer practiced daily devotions and was more biblically minded than the liberal theologians who claimed him as their own, and more biblically minded than many evangelicals today. His last book The Prayerbook of the Bible (1940) was a dramatic theological and political declaration. He rejected as theologically inadequate liberal dismissal of the Old Testament as tribal myths and Nazi rejection of the Old Testament because of its Jewish provenance. The Psalter teaches us to pray God's prayers not our own, he said. The Book of the Psalms was the worship manual of early Christianity. One may note that before modern hymnody they were for many Christians their manual of worship, such as the Scottish Presbyterian metrical versions of the Psalms, some of which appear in Christian hymnaries to this day. The Moravian Losungen, scripture Watchwords for the Day, were his devotional manual. These, with a published circulation of over 1,000,000 copies annually in our own time, were first assembled under Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf on his estates at the Herrnhut retreat center in Saxony and are still prepared there. They represent the pre-Reformation influence of John Hus in Bohemia which extended also to England through Wycliffe. These are solidly part of the pre- and post-Reformation pietist tradition, which today is mostly part of evangelical Christianity. As a student in Adolf von Harnack's seminars, Bonhoeffer had politely but insistently argued with him, the greatest literary critic of the times. For Bonhoeffer, the faith of the church embraced the Scriptures as a sacred canon, not merely as historical sources. They were the vehicle through which God speaks to us. He was uncomfortable as a graduate student at Union Seminary (1930-31) and could not bear the liberal sermons of Harry Emerson Fosdick at the nearlyRiverside Church. Both institutions were then, and continue to be, bastions of Liberal theology and churchmanship. Instead of attending Riverside, Bonhoeffer sought out the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and was overwhelmed by the positive emphasis on the Gospel, worship and the spirituals. He took back recordings of "Negro Spirituals" to play often for his students in Germany. Conservatives have welcomed this book but American liberals have been strangely silent on the core biblical-faith elements, the anti-secularist, the anti-humanist, the anti-Liberalism aspects of Bonhoeffer's life. In his review of the book in the Christian Century (October 5, 2010) Clifford Green accuses Metaxas of making polarization his central motif--Bonhoeffer against the liberals. But Bonhoeffer's ardent espousal of public, costly discipleship puts him in the ring with Barth on the centrality of the Gospel against liberal theology and ethics. Why are America's leftist elites so quiet about this separation of the real man from liberal myths about him? It should be borne in mind that during the 1930s not a few in Europe, England, and America admired the rise of Hitler and his and Mussolini's early Fascism--President Roosevelt had to recall Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., America's Ambassador to Britain, because of Kennedy's comments favoring Fascism. There are significant lessons to be learned from Bonhoeffer's intellectual formation and his confrontation with Hitler's despotism. Lessons, that is, especially for the educated classes in Canada and America. First, Bonhoeffer came from an upper-crust German intellectual and professional family. His father was Germany's most prominent psychiatrist at that time, was culturally high-German but was not a Christian believer. Bonhoeffer's ancestors were from the proud, well-educated German families of Prussian Germany (now part of Poland). He was raised in Berlin where his father worked, and was educated in the best schools. Germany's upper classes and the Lutheran and Catholic churches were unwilling at the time to note the warning signs as to who and what Hitler really was. Only after Hitler started attacking and killing Jews, and harassing and arresting his opponents, did some of them wake up. Even then some of them thought that this was the price that had to be paid for Germany to recover its former prime position in Europe and the world after Germany's defeat in World War I. Why did that happen? Secular intellectuals find it almost impossible to face up to the reality of, and potential for, evil in their own hearts regarding matters of personal behavior and of public policy as well as in the hearts of others. Today, how can a physician kill live-aborted babies by severing their spinal columns with a pair of scissors? Consider carefully some of the statements in the past and at present of czars with whom President Obama surrounded himself. Second, assumptions about the stability of a heritage and deep-seated loyalties to that heritage inhibit understanding that a heritage of freedom can quickly be subverted, and that one's criticisms of subversion can quickly be criminalized. The upper military class and the upper middle and professional classes of Germany were hesitant to oppose Hitler because of their deep-seated loyalties to German culture and nationhood, and what it meant to be a true German. Their uncertainty on what to do, their hesitance, their bumbling, were fatal to any attempt to bring down Hitler. In the end it cost most of them their lives as the tyrant reacted mercilessly. Hitler survived until his own suicide in his bunker as the Allies surrounded Berlin. Freedom in an educated society can be sabotaged when a heritage of fundamental values, natural law and a constitution are dismissed by a new elite accompanied by the blandishment that "change" is needed, and how persistent and decisive opposition to tyranny must be to conserve hard-won liberties.


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Dr. Samuel J. Mikolaski -- Bio and Archives

</em>Dr. Samuel Mikolaski, is a retired theological professor.  His curriculum vitae and published work are on his website: drsamstheology.com</em>


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