Discerning Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The Angel Studios distributed film, Bonhoeffer: Pastor Spy Assassin is being marketed as a faith-based film by several figures in rightwing media and Evangelicalism. Similar to Sound of Freedom, Angel Studios is trying to sell movie tickets that will not be realized to inflate the box office performance. But where Sound of Freedom tells a story highlighting the disgusting underbelly of human trafficking, Bonhoeffer is yet another WWII movie, but one that celebrates a teacher who lacked sound doctrine and practice. The movie is a romanticized version of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and every clip Angel Studios has promoted features horrendous acting, cartoon villains, and cheesy inspirational dialog. This is a faith-based film more than a war film, like the Tom Cruise Valkyrie movie. But it’s worth noting including “assassin” in the title of the Bonhoeffer movie completely overstates his contribution to attempts on Adolf Hitler’s life.

Evolution Of Theology

It’s necessary to point out that Dietrich Bonhoeffer had perhaps three theological phases in his life, pre-1931, the middle period through 1939, and the final period of his life which features many of his prominent writings from prison. The central claim to the Bonhoeffer romantics is that he had a theological shift from overt liberalism as was customary in the University of Berlin to a renewed respect for Scripture and sound doctrine in the 1930s. However, the appearance of sound doctrine would recede in his later writings towards the end of his life. Whether these shifts are authentic is a subject of debate.

To understand Bonhoeffer, one must understand Karl Barth the chief theological influence of Bonhoeffer who is not a celebrated figure in Evangelicalism despite glaring theological similarities. Karl Barth believes that Christ alone is infallible and denies the inerrancy of Scripture which is therefore textbook theological liberalism. Indeed Barth represented a third way between orthodoxy and abject liberalism that came to be known as neo-orthodoxy. This was basically a third-way compromise but of the early-to-mid-20^th century. Even modern liberals, such as The Gospel Coalition deny that Karl Barth could be considered an inerrancist.

Bonhoeffer’s Pluralism

In “Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity,” Bonhoeffer fundamentally misunderstands the Christian religion equating it to all other religions in the conclusion to his 1928 writing.

That is the meaning of Good Friday and Easter Sunday: the way of God to people leads back to God. In this way Jesus’ own concept of God is joined together with Paul’s interpretation of the cross. Thus the cross becomes the central and paradoxical symbol of the Christian message. A king who goes to the cross must be the king of a wonderful kingdom. Only the one who understands the deep paradox of the idea of the cross can understand the entire meaning of the word of Jesus: my kingdom is not of this world. Jesus had to reject the king’s crown that was offered him, had to deny the idea of the Roman imperium which would have been a temptation for him at every turn, if he were to remain true to his idea of God which led him to the cross.

The answer to another pressing question follows from this interpretation of the cross of Christ: what are we to think of other religions? Are they as nothing compared to Christianity? We answer that the Christian religion as religion is not of God. It is rather another example of a human way to God, like the Buddhist and others, too, though of course these are of a different nature. Christ is not the bringer of a new religion, but rather the one who brings God. Therefore, as an impossible way from the human to God, the Christian religion stands with other religions. Christians can never pride themselves on their Christianity, for it remains human, all too human. They live however, by the grace of God, which comes to people and comes to every person who opens his or her heart to it and learns to understand it in the cross of Christ. And, therefore, the gift of Christ is not the Christian religion, but the grace and love of God which culminate in the cross. [GS, V, pp. 134-54]

It is worth noting that Diedrich Bonhoeffer underwent changes to his theology over the course of his lifetime. The story goes that this took place in 1931 whereby he had a zeal for the Scriptures, most specifically the Sermon on the Mount.

In 1934, Bonhoeffer wrote to Hindu Nationalist, Mahatma Gandhi to request his advice “to learn from Gandhi’s movement ‘the meaning of Christian life, of real community life, of truth and love in reality’.” Here there is a greater emphasis on the Sermon on the Mount, but there is also an appeal to a pagan to assist the church in being Christian, a grotesque notion.

Bonhoeffer On Creation

Bonhoeffer’s view of Creation is rooted in theological liberalism and higher criticism. Perhaps going further than Barth who was not specific about the errors he claimed the Bible to have had, in Creation and Fall (1932) Bonhoeffer blatantly denies the accuracy of the Genesis account.

Here we have before us the ancient world picture in all its scientific naïveté. While it would not be advisable to be too mocking and self-assured, in view of the rapid changes in our own knowledge of nature, undoubtedly in this passage the biblical author stands exposed with all the limitations caused by the age in which he lived. The heavens and the seas were not formed in the way he says: we would not escape a very bad conscience if we committed ourselves to any such statement. (27-28)

The context of Bonhoeffer’s derisive comments is the idea of God speaking creation into existence.

In his letters from prison, Bonhoeffer appears as an avowed Darwinian Evolutionist.

Now I will try to go on with the theological reflections that I broke off not long since. I had been saying that God is being increasingly pushed out of a world that has come of age, out of the spheres of our knowledge and life, and that since Kant he has been relegated to a realm beyond the world of experience. Theology has on the one hand resisted this development with apologetics, and has taken up arms – in vain – against Darwinism, etc. On the other hand, it has accommodated itself to the development by restricting God to the so-called ultimate questions as a deus ex machina; that means that he becomes the answer to life’s problems, and the solution of its needs and conflicts. (p. 341-342)

Bonhoeffer was a theological liberal on the most pressing of proxy issues.

Bonhoeffer On The Resurrection

One thing to keep in mind about Bonhoeffer is that his writings are riddled with philosophical babble, a fact made abundantly clear in his references to Kant and other famous philosophers. But Bonhoeffer has a low view of the historicity of the Bible which calls into question his view of the Resurrection.

The Cost of Discipleship makes it abundantly clear that Bonhoeffer does not believe that the Bible is an accurate retelling of history, even on its most central event. Richard Weikart in an academic journal examining Bonhoeffer’s view of Scripture and myth writes:

Only two passages in The cost of Discipleship clearly reveal Bonhoeffer’s view on the unhistorical character of the Bible. One is only part of a sentence: “We cannot and may not go behind the word of scripture to the real events….”

The other is a footnote that is couched in philosophical language, and, while comprehensible to those having studied theology or philosophy, it is probably unintelligible to the average non-philosophically inclined evangelical reader. The footnote is enlightening, because it occurs in a passage in which Bonhoeffer affirmed the truth, reliability, and unity of the scriptures in the strongest possible way. To avoid misunderstanding he added a clarifying note denying the literal resurrection of Jesus in the past.

He wrote: ‘The confusion of ontological statements with proclaiming testimony is the essence of all fanaticism. The sentence: Christ is risen and present, is the dissolution of the unity of the scripture if it is ontologically understood…. The sentence: Christ is risen and present, strictly understood only as testimony of scripture, is true only as the word of scripture.

According to Bonhoeffer, the resurrection and other events in the Bible are thus not true as empirical facts of history.

The indirect babbling of Bonhoeffer’s writing emphasizes that the proclamation of Scriptural testimony is fundamentally different from independent truths that can be experienced or speculated on. The truth of Christ’s Resurrection and presence is true only as it is presented in the Scriptures, and should not be elevated beyond its Scriptural context. But when Bonhoeffer does not believe the Bible to be an accurate historical account, it’s difficult to pin down whether he believes in a literal bodily Resurrection.

If you were to ask Bonhoeffer whether believing in the literal, historic event of Christ being crucified, buried, and resurrected on the third day was necessary salvation, he would answer no, based on all his writings because these are ontological claims of Christianity.

Religionless Christianity

It is often claimed that by the end of Bonhoeffer’s life his theology was improved when compared to his years at the University of Berlin. However, towards the end of his life Bonhoeffer imagined a religionless Christianity.  This concept has been championed by Eric Metaxas as well as a slew of overtly theological liberals.

“So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matthew 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.” (p. 359-361)

Bonhoeffer’s later writing makes clear his misunderstanding of the Christian faith. Even his emphasis on doing good unto others neglects the Greatest Commandment, “love the Lord your God.” As Christians, we aspire to worship God, a habit neglected in Bonhoeffer’s aspirations. The idea that man is without a working hypothesis of God is also nonsensical because of both general and special revelation point to our Creator who we know to be omnipresent and omnipotent.

Bonhoeffer further denies the power of Christ, which is a Christological error, attributing God’s ability to help us not with the willingness to die on the cross, let alone perform miracles, but rather weakness in letting it happen.

Perhaps the subjective question Bonhoeffer poses in a letter to Eberhard Bethge from prison that is so eerily foreshadowing of the postmodernist church messaging that was to come:

You would be surprised, and perhaps even worried, by my theological thoughts and the conclusions that they lead to: and this is where I miss you most of all, because I don’t know anyone else with whom I could so well discuss them to have my thinking clarified. What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience – and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more. Even those who honestly describe themselves as ‘religious’ do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by ‘religious.’

Bonhoeffer anticipates a religionless age which might be derided as “loser theology” in his dismal view of the Great Commission and the ever-expanding Kingdom of God due soley to his personal situation. It’s sort of an immature “take my ball and go home” approach to church in which if his methods proved unsuccessful then a new methodology must take preeminence, one that sacrifices the metaphysical language of Christianity. If you cannot beat the secularist, join them. Yet this would prove not to be the case in the United States, who has measurably avoided the mass secularization that plagued Europe due to the outcome of the Second World War.

It means that the foundation is taken away from the whole of what has up to now been our ‘Christianity’, and that there remain only a few ‘last survivors of the age of chivalry’, or a few intellectually dishonest people, on whom we can descend as ‘religious’. Are they to be the chosen few? Is it on this dubious group of people that we are to pounce in fervour, pique, or indignation, in order to sell them our goods? Are we to fall upon a few unfortunate people in their hour of need and exercise a sort of religious compulsion on them? If we don’t want to do all that, if our final judgment must be that the western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? Are there religionless Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity – and even this garment has looked very different at times – then what is a religionless Christianity?

The question is moot as Christ is Lord of all and will exact justice in this life and or the next. Bonhoeffer hypothesizes a new flavor of Christianity that will adapt to the age. While the flavor of Bonhoeffer’s imagination might not have manifested, the syncretism of Christianity with broader culture and popular psychology do appear to gain institutional credibility from the ‘heroic martyrs’ famed “religionless Christianity.

Bonhoeffer, in this regard, goes further in his desire to secularize Christianity than Karl Barth “who is the only one to have started along this line of thought, did not carry it to completion, but arrived at a positivism of revelation, which in the last analysis is essentially a restoration.”

The attack by Christian apologetic on the adulthood of the world I consider to be in the first place pointless, in the second place ignoble, and in the third place unchristian. Pointless, because it seems to me like an attempt to put a grown-up man back into adolescence, i.e. to make him more dependent on things on which he is, in fact, no longer dependent, and thrusting him into problems that are, in fact, no longer problems to him. Ignoble, because it amounts to an attempt to exploit man’s weakness for purposes that are alien to him and to which he has not freely assented. Unchristian, because it confused Christ with one particular stage in man’s religiousness, i.e. with a human law.

Bonhoeffer views Christian resistance to “religionless Christianity” or secularism as an unchristian attempt to regress mankind to a more primitive stage of development.

The only thing that is common to all these is their sharing in the suffering of God in Christ. That is their ‘faith’. There is nothing of religious method here. The ‘religious act’ is always something partial; ‘faith’ is something whole, involving the whole of one’s life. Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.

After listing examples in the New Testament of faith, Bonhoeffer clearly overlooks Christ’s commands concerning the ordinance of communion “do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19). Bonhoeffer would similarly have to contend that Baptism is a nonessential element to Christianity. Bonhoeffer was ahead of his time with the religion vs relationship false dichotomy, although he would replace “relationship” with the sharing of the suffering of Christ.

But what does this life look like, this participation in the powerlessness of God in the world? I will write about that next time, I hope. Just one more point for today. When we speak of God in a ‘non-religious’ way, we must speak of him in such a way that the godlessness of the world is not in some way concealed, but rather revealed, and thus exposed to an unexpected light. The world that has come of age is more godless, and perhaps for that very reason nearer to God, than the world before its coming of age. (p. 361-362)

Bonhoeffer feels more comfortable talking about God with unbelievers elsewhere specified non-evangelistically than he does with believers. He then concludes this letter by stating that a more godless world will be nearer to god. Bonhoeffer’s argument requires the existence of a paradox that does not exist, no can it be substantiated by history or Scripture.

The question how there can be a ‘natural piety’ is at the same time the question of ‘unconscious Christianity’, with which I’m more and more concerned. (p. 373)

Ultimately, the religionless Christianity of Bonhoeffer is more works based piety than it is of a spiritual regeneration. Perhaps, he credits God with this renewal, but Christians have continuously confessed that we live for the glory of God, and Bonhoeffer’s mindset is the opposite of this principle, believing that people have no appetite for, as an example, an athlete praising God after a win. The Christian mindset of giving glory to God even in the little things is opposed by the mindset to live a live pretending God is powerless and not present. What Bonhoeffer’s view of faith amounts to is an oxymoronic and incoherent secular mysticism.

The idea of Religionless Christianity bears resemblance to Andy Stanley’s attempts to “unhitch” the Old Testament from the New Testament and subsequently the Resurrection from all of Scripture. In other words, Andy Stanley is attempting to tear down barriers to people accepting Christianity by throwing out Christian distinctives. Bonhoeffer did likewise almost a century prior.

Bonhoeffer and the Apostle’s Creed

Perhaps the most disturbing degradation in Bonhoeffer’s theology, a most blatant of red flags is his denial of the Apostles Creed which is as follows:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; 
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, 
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. 
He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; 
He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. 
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. 
Amen.

In the outline for the book that would thankfully be lost to history, but preserved nonetheless in his letters from prison, Bonhoeffer raises the Apostle’s Creed as a problem for Chapter 2 of his manuscript.

What do we really believe? I mean, believe in such a way that we stake our lives on it? The problem of the Apostles’ Creed? ‘What must I believe?’ is the wrong question; antiquated controversies, especially those between the different sects; the Lutheran versus Reformed, and to some extent the Roman Catholic versus Protestant, are now unreal. They may at any time be revived with passion, but they no longer carry conviction. There is no proof of this, and we must simply take it that it is so. All that we can prove is that the faith of the Bible and Christianity does not stand or fall by these issues. Karl Barth and the Confessing Church have encouraged us to entrench ourselves persistently behind the ‘faith of the church’, and evade the honest questions as to what we ourselves really believe. That is why the air is not quite fresh, even in the Confessing Church. To say that it is the church’s business, not mine, may be a clerical evasion, and outsiders always regard it as such. It is much the same with the dialectical assertion that I do not control my own faith, and that it is therefore not for me to say what my faith is. There may be a place for all these considerations but they do not absolve us from the duty of being honest with ourselves. We cannot, like the Roman Catholics, simply identify ourselves with the church. (This, incidentally, explains the popular opinion about Roman Catholics’ insincerity.) Well then, what do we really believe? Answer: see (b), (c), and (d). (p. 380-383)

Bonhoeffer claims that the Apostle’s Creed is problematic but does not specify here. Earlier in his letters, Bonhoeffer laments Christianity being a religion of redemption and scoffs at the idea of hope in the Resurrection at the end times. Moreover, Bonhoeffer may also take issue with the empirical claims of the Creed. The third and final chapter of his manuscript outline doubles down on denying the Apostle’s Creed.

Conclusions: The church is the church only when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. The clergy must live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others. In particular, our own church will have to take the field against the vices of hubris, power-worship, envy, and humbug, as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak of moderation, purity, trust, loyalty, constancy, patience, discipline, humility, contentment, and modesty. It must not under-estimate the importance of human example (which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus and is so important in Paul’s teaching); it is not abstract argument, but example, that gives its word emphasis and power. (I hope to take up later this subject of ‘example’ and its place in the New Testament; it is something that we have almost entirely forgotten.) Further: the question of revising the creeds (the Apostles’ Creed); revision of Christian apologetics; reform of the training for the ministry and the pattern of clerical life.

In addition to the Apostles Creed denial, he also envisions a revision of perhaps other creeds along with apologetics entirely, which he previously criticized as vanity for combatting Darwinian Evolution.

Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the church as a body of believers is also lacking, as he appears to infuse the church with a poverty gospel-esque social mission. Again, we see no real ambition to worship or give glory to God. Bonhoeffer’s denial of the Apostle’s Creed is his final heresy, and thus proof that false teachers are unsanctified and decay over time.

Conclusion

Even some of the worst heretics of modern day, like an Andy Stanley, would affirm the Apostle’s Creed. Indeed, many modern liberals preface their faith by affirming ecumenical creeds in order to insert their degenerate theology. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as revealed in his private writings does not pay lip service to sound doctrine or genuine conviction. His overstated role in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler has him elevated to the status of martyr in the church under the Post-War Consensus. However, we know from Scripture and the history of the church that the martyrs died for their belief in the Resurrection of Christ, Stephen being the original example. Dietrich Bonhoeffer cannot be a Christian martyr because Dietrich Bonhoeffer cannot articulate a belief in the Resurrection, among other Christian distinctives.

The Confessional Church denomination was a liberal splinter of the German Christians, led in large part by Karl Barth and followers. Yet Bonhoeffer was even too liberal for the so-called Confessional Church. The fact that Christians would lionize a man that they would never let sniff a pulpit demonstrates a thick shroud of myth that surrounds the man Bonhoeffer himself. Discernment is needed with historical figures, and researching Bonhoeffer has revealed his unhealthy influence in legitimizing attempts to secularize the church and syncretize Christianity to the world. Under no circumstances should Bonhoeffer be thought a hero of the faith or even the least of these my brother. Rather he has served as a test of the church, and its discernment, one that the church may soon finally pass in the eyes of God.