however at a point where they separated themselves from the Reichskirche and viewed it as having lost the right to call itself church by its surrender of the realm that was properly religious by allowing its doctrine to be infected with the regime’s ideology. The Barmen Declaration of 1934, largely written by Karl Barth, is the best known document representing the Confessing Church framework and as the foundation document of the Confessing Church it centres not on a critique of Nazi policy in general but rather on the defence only of the properly religious realm from attack by the Nazis. For not opposing this, the Confessing Church through this declaration charged that the Reichskirche no longer had the right to be called church, for by taking on “alien principles” it “ceases to be the church.” The declaration rejected the idea that the church should shape its message to “the prevailing ideological and political convictions,” for no part of the church’s life can belong “to other Lords.” It further stated, “We reject as the false doctrine, as though the state over and beyond its special commission should and could become the single and totalitarian order of human life, thus fulfilling the church’s vocation as well.”
A clear example of the Confessing Church’s dualist and therefore limited opposition to the Nazis was the view they held concerning Nazi policies toward the Jews. Numerous Jews and Jewish families in Germany over the centuries had converted to Christianity and were part of the church, with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s close friend Franz Hildebrandt being one such person, having even become a pastor in the Lutheran Church. Bonhoeffer’s twin sister, Sabine, had even married such a person, Gerhard Liebholz. Bonhoeffer assisted all of them in their later escape from Germany, but one episode he deeply regretted in which he felt he had failed the Liebholz family was when under pressure from his district superintendent Bonhoeffer refused to preach at the funeral of Gerhard’s father due to his being Jewish and not being baptised as a Christian. This memory particularly haunted Bonhoeffer.
The Nazis of course viewed being Jewish not as a religious belief held concerning Judaism but rather as a gene contained within, i.e., racially, whatever one’s belief. Thus for them all those of Jewish background in the church were still Jews and Jews were being increasingly persecuted in Germany. Caught in its dualist understanding, the Confessing Church mounted a defence for those Jews within the church but was never able to rise in defence of those outside it. Bonhoeffer, although he had been among the founders of both the Pastors’ Emergency League and the Confessing Church, finally felt that the limits of its response to the increasing terror felt by the Jews at the hands of the Nazis was too narrowly premised, and his famous cry became, “only those who cry out for the Jews may also sing Gregorian chants.”2 Bonhoeffer had now moved from his early response to the regime, seen in his initial radio address two days after the Nazis had come to power in January 1933, where he critiqued the ideology of the leader (German literally “fuhrer”) when it claimed too much for itself thereby becoming idolatrous and taking the place of the one to whom praise ought be offered thereby, to a point where he was among very few in the church prepared to oppose the Nazis ethically and politically as well as for their religious policies. Bonhoeffer’s opposition was best expressed by his well known words, we “are not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.”3 For Bonhoeffer it was clearly necessary to stop the state carrying out evil not just in the religious realm but wherever and against whomever it was being perpetrated. Such thinking led to Bonhoeffer’s later involvement in the conspiracy and even to be part of the plot to assassinate the Fuhrer. The journey to such a position must not of course have been easy for one who had at one stage been so drawn to the non-violent resistance of Gandhi.
Not only did the church have difficulty opposing the Nazi regime, but the military did also. Deeply imbued by a culture of obedience to the state as legitimate authority, opposition to the regime represented a massive step for those within the military who chose to make it. That disobedience to the regime had been made even more difficult by the Nazis, who had made the military pledge an oath of obedience to Adolf Hitler as their Fuhrer. Such oaths were seriously regarded in military circles. Despite this the plots against Hitler were centred within the military, particularly in its high circles, and it is among this circle Bonhoeffer found himself as a member of military intelligence, the Abwehr. Many within those ranks of the military gave their lives for that involvement.
To return to the German church and the heritage it inherited from Martin Luther, one cannot of course pass without considering the church’s attitude to the Jews. Luther originally had been very understanding of the Jews and why they had not converted to Christianity, speaking of their non-conversion as a result of Christians acting as “beasts” toward them. He even wrote as essay on how Jesus Christ had been born a Jew. Towards the end of his life, however, he became more and more the “grumpy old man,” lambasting pretty much everything and everyone in ever more vulgar language, and that included becoming an extreme anti-Semite. Thus he advocated in his essay “On the Jews and Their Lies” setting fire to Jewish synagogues and schools, destroying homes, confiscating of Jewish prayer books, expropriating their money, and putting them to work in forced labour. The Nazis of course were to gleefully make great use of such material from the German hero, but not only the Nazis but the Protestant church attitude in general to the Jews also had been long tainted by such words from its founder. The anti-Semitism of the Nazis did not arise out of barren ground but had a long history of being planted in fertile soil.
The sort of issues with which Bonhoeffer was involved increasingly sharpened of course his theological analysis. That contextual sharpness is initially seen in his Cost of Discipleship, published November 1937. In that work Bonhoeffer contrasted “cheap grace” with “costly grace.” God’s grace, he noted, had been too easily given by the church to the whole German community with the result that it had lost any real meaning. We have baptised a nation, Bonhoeffer charged, with a cheap grace that made no demands to live in discipleship as Christians. Rather, grace was free but never cheap, as God’s giving of grace was centred in the cross of Jesus and was therefore a most costly grace. Cheap grace had only served to provide justification for whatever was carried out in the name of Christ, and made no demand for lives to be Christlike. Instead of being a recipient of cheap grace, the Christian is called to costly discipleship. “When Christ calls a person, he bids them come and die,” cried Bonhoeffer, and “only the one who believes is obedient, and only the one who is obedient believes,”4 thereby challenging the shallow and complacent religiosity passing itself as faith.
Bonhoeffer’s next major work, never actually completed, was Ethics. Clearly, in his increasing involvement in the conspiracy Bonhoeffer was moving in places where Christian ethics had little if anything to say. In this work Bonhoeffer called the Christian to go past absolute ethical ideas, which all too often serve as a means of opting out of decision making and action. Rather than maintaining moral purity by adhering to an abstract ideal, a Kantian ethical imperative, a Christian is called to action in obedience to the call and will of God. Too often, he wrote, Christians were reduced to inaction due to their often ego-centred concern for their moral purity rather than getting actively involved in a world where ethical decisions were not usually black or white and involved acting in a manner contrary to absolutes. Truth of itself, he noted, had no absolute value as a moral imperative. In order to show such, Bonhoeffer posed the example of a child asked at school in front of the class as to whether his father was a drunkard. In such circumstances Bonhoeffer charged there was no obligation to tell the truth. Equally, Bonhoeffer in his conspiratorial role in the Abwehr felt no obligation to tell the truth but rather to the Nazis would live a life of deception. What was of prime importance to him was devotion to God and the living out God’s will, and this trumped all moral and ethical imperatives. Thus Bonhoeffer felt himself increasingly called to such action even if that sullied his own moral conscience. He even spoke of how if his actions condemned him to eternal torment he must accept this, for such actions, even at the expense of one’s soul, were the disciple’s call and duty. With their own ethical questions, many in the conspiracy looked to Bonhoeffer for guidance as to their duty, and that adherence to duty was to eventually cost many in the conspiracy, including of course Bonhoeffer, their own lives.
It was while he was imprisoned in Tegel that Bonhoeffer wrote a series of theological reflections, which
