Eleven years ago Eric Metaxas penned Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, a biography of German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945).(1) Bonhoeffer was a pivotal German figure who resisted the Nazification of the Church. Metaxas’ 600 page volume follows him to his aged 39 murder just days before Germany’s surrender. Bonhoeffer’s thinking had to travel an enormous distance. Germany had a state church, and with the rise of the third reich German Christians had arrived at the inevitable moment requiring the strictest church-state separation—a test many would fail. His experience may be the single most needful thing for us to understand in our day as we face the incursion of the state into the church.
Adolph Hitler was voted into power via a democratic election and took office in 1933. His minions burned the Reichstag(2) less than a month later, and through an emergency declaration and following “synchronization”, Hitler ruled until his death. The Nazis worked relentlessly to take over the church, with most Germans happy with their new leader. Rules were eventually made requiring all pastors to take an oath of obedience to the Fuhrer. This is the oath:
I swear that I will be faithful and obedient to Adolph Hitler, the Fuhrer of the German Reich and people, that I will conscientiously observe the laws and carry out the duties of my office, so help me God.(3)
This oath may sound comical to you, but, realize that while many pastors refused and imprisoned, most took the oath.
But even before this came a crisis over “the Aryan paragraph”—a new government rule which barred Jews from state-affiliated institutions. Metaxas describes its expansion after the April 7 introduction of this rule:
On April 22, Jews were prohibited from serving as patent lawyers, and Jewish doctors from working in institutions with state-run insurance. Jewish children were affected too. On April 25, strict limits were placed on how many of them could attend public schools. On May 6, the laws were expanded to include all honorary university professors, lecturers, and notaries. In June all Jewish dentists and dental technicians were prohibited from working with state-run insurance institutions. By the fall, the laws included the spouses of non-Aryans. On September 29, Jews were banned from all cultural and entertainment activities, including the worlds of film, theater, literature, and the arts. In October all newspapers were placed under Nazi control, expelling Jews from the world of journalism.(4)
In the church, even ordained pastors of Jewish descent were fired. By 1935 all members of church congregations who had Jewish lineage were barred from attending worship there.
Bonhoeffer, early and clear-headedly, opposed these ungodly rules imposed upon the church. In March of 1933 Bonhoeffer gave the presentation, “The Church and the Jewish Question.” Consider this extended description by Metaxas:
If the state is creating ‘excessive law and order,’ then ‘the state develops its power to such an extent that it deprives Christian preaching and Christian faith… of their rights.’ Bonhoeffer called this a ‘grotesque situation.’ ‘The church,’ he said, ‘must reject this encroachment of the order of the state precisely because of its better knowledge of the state and of the limitations of its action. The state which endangers the Christian proclamation negates itself.’
Bonhoeffer then famously enumerated ‘three possible ways in which the church can act towards the state.’ The first, already mentioned, was for the church to question the state regarding its actions and their legitimacy—to help the state be the state as God has ordained. The second way—and here he took a bold Leap—was ‘to aid the victims of state action.’ He said that the church ‘has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society.’ And before that sentence was over, he took another leap, far bolder than the first—in fact, some ministers walked out—by declaring that the church ‘has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.’ Everyone knew that Bonhoeffer was talking about the Jews, including Jews who were not baptized Christians. Bonhoeffer then quoted Galatians: ‘Do good to all men.’ To say that it is unequivocally the responsibility of the Christian church to help all Jews was dramatic, even revolutionary. But Bonhoeffer wasn't through yet.
The third way the church can act toward the state, he said, ‘is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.’ The translation is awkward, but he meant that a stick must be jammed into the spokes of the wheel to stop the vehicle. It is sometimes not enough to help those crushed by the evil actions of a state; at some point the church must directly take action against the state to stop it from perpetrating evil. This, he said, is permitted only when the church sees its very existence threatened by the state, and when the state ceases to be the state as defined by God. Bonhoeffer added that this condition exists if the state forces the ‘exclusion of baptized Jews from our Christian congregations or in the prohibition of our mission to the Jews.’(5)
This was utterly shocking to most who heard or read it, yet timely. And is there application for God’s people today? At this moment we seem to be in an interim, in many places, a respite, from the restrictions imposed on citizens in the past 24 months. But can we be sure that the state would not pressure us to compromise our faith by barring from our worship or our employ those who are unvaccinated or those choosing not to wear masks?
Eighty-nine years ago Bonhoeffer came face-to-face with that which has come in our day: the incursion of state power into the space God has allotted His Church. But, as one wrote penetratingly in 1996,
Anyone looking for black shirts, mass parties, or men on horseback will miss the telltale clues of creeping fascism. In any First World country of advanced capitalism, the new fascism will be colored by national and cultural heritage, ethnic and religious composition, formal political structure, and your political environment… In America, it would be super modern and multi-ethnic—as American as Madison Avenue, executive luncheons, credit cards, and apple pie. It would be Fascism with a smile… I am worried by those who fail to remember—or have never learned—that Big Business-Big Government partnerships, backed up by other elements, where the central facts behind the power structures of old fascism in the days of Mussolini, Hitler, and the Japanese empire builders.(6)
Bonhoeffer anticipates for us these dilemmas because what he actually faced was similar. It was not long before much of the German Lutheran church had been essentially Nazified. Bonhoeffer, along with figures like Karl Barth, participated in preparing the Barmen Declaration. Here are two samples from the Declaration offered by Metaxas:
We reject the false doctrine, as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ, but to other lords—areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.(7)
We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions.(8)
At another, earlier point Bonhoeffer had participated in the drafting of what was to be called the Bethel Confession. But Metaxas tells what happened:
After three weeks of work, Bonhoeffer was satisfied, but then the document was sent to twenty eminent theologians for their comments. By the time they were through, every bright line was blurred; every sharp edge of difference filed down; and every point blunted. Bonhoeffer was so horrified that he refused to work on the final draft. When it was completed, he refused to sign it. As would happen so often in the future, he was deeply disappointed in the inability of his fellow Christians to take a definite stand. They always erred on the side of conceding too much, of trying too hard to ingratiate themselves with their opponents. The Bethel Confession had become a magnificent waste of words.(9)
After the Barmen Declaration, there was a split; the Confessing Church was formed. But the river of blood that was Nazi Germany continued to flow, and Bonhoeffer continued to resist in a variety of ways. He ran illegal seminaries training small groups of pastors. Eventually he was arrested. He even in measure participated in a plot to assassinate Hitler. From 1943-1945 he was imprisoned. He was hanged just before the end of the war.
It is difficult to know how best to evaluate morally everything Dietrich Bonhoeffer participated in. How many of us have had to make the kinds of decisions he faced? Yet as we look not just to the future but to the present, his legacy is important. The state encroached and the church mostly complied. Bonhoeffer resisted inhumanities against Jews and others while so many spiritual leaders allowed themselves to be carried along both mentally and emotionally in the flow. Public-private partnerships operating in Germany created some of the darkest moments in history—moments many have forgotten. And, in these—our dread days—workers are needed who understand the times and who know how intelligently to deploy their vertebrae in service to His majesty King Jesus.
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, contains many pages, but there is so much to consider. I recommend it for those ready to take on a large volume and who are willing to think differently.
Larry Kirkpatrick serves as pastor of the Muskegon and Fremont MI Seventh-day Adventist churches. His website is GreatControversy.org and YouTube channel is “Larry the guy from Michigan.” Every morning Larry publishes a new devotional video.
Notes
1. Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, (Thomas Nelson, 2011), 604 pp.
2. William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1959), pp. 191-208.
3. Metaxas, p. 235.
4. Ibid., p. 160.
5. Ibid., pp. 153-154, italics original.
6. John Whitehead, “The Rise of Global Fascism and the End of the World as We Know It,” https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_rise_of_global_fascism_and_the_end_of_the_world_as_we_know_it_short, op. cit. Bertram Gross, “Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America.”
7. Metaxas, p. 225.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 185.