Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin.

That’s the title of a movie that did the rounds a few months ago. It would have been good to do a review of it, but we operate in a much slower timeframe than mainstream media, so as a result nobody would be able to see the movie after reading the review. However, Glyn Cardy, minister of St. Lukes Presbyterian Church in Remuera, Auckland, has published a well-written review on Facebook, which you can read here:

1. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Bonhoeffer was very clear from the beginning that he was in unconditional opposition to the ‘Arian paragraph’ in Nazi legislation, which excluded Jews from public office and church ministry. While most churches caved in and removed pastors of Jewish ethnicity from service, and the Confessing Church was mainly concerned with the purity of its gospel, seeing such exclusion as anti-gospel, Bonhoeffer said “Only he who shouts for the Jews can sing Gregorian chant” (Bethge p 361). In other words, don’t work on making the liturgy more relevant and interesting without at the same time being adamantly against racist anti-Jewish policies.
2. The movie showed Bonhoeffer giving the Nazi salute, but in a very different setting. His companion Bethge was shocked when this happened and wondered what was going on. Once they were alone together, Bonhoeffer explained that the time was past when one could publicly oppose the Nazi regime. Opposition now needed to be hidden and secret. He was already involved with the circle of conspirators but could not reveal this.
3. Bonhoeffer wasn’t just a ‘spy’ but a full-on double agent. He was employed by the German Abwehr and his role was to report on Allied troop movements for which his participation in ecumenical conferences was useful. That was his overt role and was ethically ambivalent as you can imagine. Any hints that other conference attendees might drop could be passed on to the Abwehr and used to further the German war effort. His covert role was as one in a circle of conspirators within the Abwehr that aimed to eliminate Hitler. Bonhoeffer explained that if it fell to him to do the deed, he would resign from the church beforehand, to avoid the church being caught up in the controversy that would follow. It’s probably hard for us to appreciate how difficult it would be for any German to assassinate Hitler, given that it meant helping to defeat one’s own country. Just to make it clear: Bonhoeffer was a double agent, first as an agent of military intelligence (which was traditionally German but not pro-Hitler) but also as a secret conspirator in the failed assassination of Hitler.
4. In this double role, Bonhoeffer visited Bishop George Bell and tried through him to get the British Parliament to declare itself willing to negotiate with the rest of Germany if Hitler was assassinated. Bell worked hard at this but the result was clear: Britain required the unconditional surrender of Germany and was inclined to dismiss any conspiracy to take out Hitler as the egoism of disgruntled army officers. It is important to realise how difficult this made it for the conspirators. Elsewhere, those working against the German occupation were well supported by the Allies. For any opposition within Germany, there was no support.
5. The movie goes into almost no detail about Bonhoeffer’s theology. Indeed, it has him declare at one point, “I’m done with theology.” In fact it was an egregious error to oppose theology and activism; for Bonhoeffer the activism flows from his theology. Particularly annoying is the absence of any mention of his theologizing in prison, in which he developed the concepts of religionless Christianity, God-of-the-gaps and humanity come of age. Since I read Bonhoeffer decades ago, more of his work has been published, including the sixteen volumes of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works.
6. The Cost of Discipleship is the first theological work I want to draw attention to. In it, Bonhoeffer articulates what it means to be a follower of Jesus. In particular it means rejecting the ‘cheap grace’ common in the Lutheran church of his time. Cheap grace means cut price forgiveness, the absence of any need to change your life and a bland following of one’s political leaders. Real discipleship is costly and it involves political action.
7. In Life Together, Bonhoeffer articulates the result of his work leading a seminary for the training of Confessing Church pastors. While such training in Germany typically was very academic, individualistic and emotionally empty, Bonhoeffer emphasized the practical business of reading the bible, confessing sins, even face-to-face with another and just generally being a Christian community. While the German Lutheran church was practically a state church and required little financial support from its members, the Confessing Church was completely dependent on such support. This was a new experience and the seminary found help from well-meaning lay people until the Nazi authorities shut it down.