Dietrich Bonhoeffer with students, 1932 Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Grace in Hitler’s Germany
Jonathan Doering considers Dietrich Bonhoeffer
‘We must learn to regard people… more in the light of what they suffer.’ These words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian who died at the hands of the Nazis, first appear somewhat morally forbidding. However, Friends who find Bonhoeffer’s legacy over-facing, or who do not identify themselves as Christian, may still find cause for thought and reflection here.
His work and beliefs
Bonhoeffer was, undeniably, a Christian – he held two doctorates in theology and worked as a pastor in four countries during his short life – and held strong, pure values that appear to connect him to early Friends. He also practised what he preached to the ultimate level – through his work as a pastor amongst a wide variety of congregations, directing several seminaries and as a leading member of the German intellectual resistance. This led to his death at the age of thirty-nine.
Food for both thought and guilt. However, in his zealous hunger for truth, rigour and transcendent spirituality, Bonhoeffer still challenges us today and offers an inspiring and thought-provoking model – not least because of his concept of ‘cheap grace’, which he contrasts with vital ‘costly grace’.
Bonhoeffer shared much with evangelical, Bible-based Christians. His insistence on the need for daily Bible study and prayer, for life within Christian communities and his emphasis on the need for moral confession to receive God’s forgiveness are extremely Christo-centric and morally conservative by today’s relativistic standards. Yet he was also a scion of one of Germany’s most impressive intellectual families and applied standards of intellectual labour, analysis and unflinching honesty to himself, his relationships and his work.
This meant that, although a traditional Christian himself, he delivered a heartfelt encomium at the funeral of Adolf von Harnack, a leading liberal theologian who had argued against Christ’s divinity, the Bible’s primacy, and the virgin birth. The reason for his respecting someone of such clearly different beliefs was that these conclusions had been reached after years of painstaking work and reflection; they were sincerely built on sound intellectual foundations and so were worthy of respect. Likewise, Bonhoeffer’s own theology was based on years of effort and thought.
‘Cheap grace’
In his writings, Bonhoeffer emphasised the danger of what he called cheap grace: ‘…the grace we bestow on ourselves… grace without discipleship…’ Cheap grace is saying that we believe in something but not living that belief, or even worse, claiming a belief but then denying it with our actions.
Looking outward, we see so many political slogans illustrating this: the Conservatives’ ‘Vote Blue and Go Green’ or New Labour’s claim of a new ethical foreign policy spring to mind. But we might also find examples looking inwards: putting a coin in a collection box and enjoying a surge of virtuous emotion whilst stepping around the beggar in the street; fretting over the environment whilst continuing with our overreliance on oil products.
In Hitler’s Germany
Although a strongly evangelical Christian, Bonhoeffer’s open-mindedness and open-heartedness led him beyond the narrow precepts of conservative Christian dogma to a dedication to truth and compassion that transcended petty denominational demands. He tirelessly challenged attempts by so-called ‘German Christians’ to sever the theological ties between Christians and Jews in order to lay the groundwork for the Holocaust. He passionately reminded his congregations and many others that the duty of the true Christian is to protect the abused and dispossessed, and especially to support Jews as fellow people of faith.
He shone a pitiless light on the moral eye-closing that was occurring under Hitler: ‘We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds… we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence’. Dogmatic application of self-interested moral codes was itself mere self-justification: ‘Judging others makes us blind… we blind ourselves to our own evil and the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.’
Active pacifism
A dedicated pacifist, he actively preached and practised peace, bringing himself into direct conflict with the Nazis. Only the intervention of friends within the German Abwehr intelligence organisation (parts of which were inimical to Hitler’s plans) saved him, temporarily, from a capital treason charge. As a nominal German intelligence officer, he attempted to forge links that might avert war and bring Hitler down. Through this work he became involved in ‘Operation Seven’, an action to evacuate a group of German Jews to safety, one of the activities that finally led to his death.
To follow God requires a dying to selfishness and self-interest and to one’s own comfort and desires. He is clear that this is not easy or pleasant, but essential if one is to truly come into the Kingdom of God. And yet, through all of this was an awareness of God’s love for his creation: ‘God loves human beings. God loves the world.’ No matter what concept of God or Spirit we may possess, there is a sense of a loving power that is ever-present: ‘While we distinguish between… good and evil… God loves real people without distinction.’
Inspiration
That this lays responsibility on us is unquestionable, but the moral outcome should be positive: ‘…less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will.’ Surely a call to live adventurously?
At whatever level we might choose to engage with these beliefs, powerful inspiration is offered. There is passionate and articulate Christian argument, but argument that goes beyond the cheap grace of exclusive and prejudiced religiosity. He calls us, rather, to begin the arduous work of building the costly grace of self-denial, and to work for others and for God (whoever and whatever God may be to us). Although by no means a Quaker, Bonhoeffer had dealings with American Friends, and remarked, ‘To be silent… means to breathe in the will of God.’
Like Quakers, he clearly grappled with the moral and ethical complexities of engaging with the world whilst trying to avoid being drawn into sin, accepting the importance of the struggle: ‘There is not a place to which the Christian can withdraw from the world, whether it be outwardly or in the sphere of inner life. Any attempt to escape from the world must sooner or later be paid for with a sinful surrender to the world.’ Bonhoeffer believed that the Kingdom of God lies both within and beyond this world – and our working towards it should begin now.
