 Bonhoeffer in Germany, circa 1930s | |
| Born | February 4, 1906 Breslau, Germany |
| Died | April 9, 1945 (age 39) Flossenbürg concentration camp |
| Education | Doctorate in theology |
| Church | Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union Confessing Church |
| Writings | Author of several books and articles (see below) |
| Congregations served | Zion's Church congregation, Berlin German-speaking congregations of St. Paul's and Sydenham, London |
| Offices held | Associate lecturer at Frederick William University of Berlin (1931–36) Student pastor at Technical College, Berlin (1931–33) Lecturer of Confessing Church candidates of pastorate in Finkenwalde (1935–37) |
| Title | Ordained Pastor |
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German pronunciation: [ˈdiːtʁɪç ˈboːnhœfɐ]; February 4, 1906 – April 9, 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr. He was also a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and a founding member of the Confessing Church. His involvement in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler resulted in his arrest in April 1943 and his subsequent execution by hanging in April 1945, 23 days before the Nazis' surrender. His view of Christianity's role in the secular world has become very influential.[1]
Contents
[hide]- 1 Family and youth
- 2 Academic training
- 3 Bonhoeffer in Harlem
- 4 Confessing Church
- 5 London ministry
- 6 Finkenwalde Seminary
- 7 Return to the United States
- 8 Double agent of Abwehr
- 9 Arrest
- 10 Imprisonment
- 11 Execution
- 12 Legacy
- 13 Works by Bonhoeffer
- 14 Works about Bonhoeffer
- 15 See also
- 16 References
- 17 External links
Legacy
Bonhoeffer's life as a pastor and theologian of great intellect and spirituality who lived as he preached — and his martyrdom in opposition to Nazism — exerted great influence and inspiration for Christians across broad denominations and ideologies, including figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Overshadowed by his life and death, his theology has nevertheless remained very influential, although interpretations are necessarily often based on speculations and projections; Comboni missionary Father Ezechiele Ramin was specially influenced by it. Because of Bonhoeffer's early death, his theology had an unsystematic and fragmentary nature and was subject to diverse and often contradictory interpretations. His Christocentric approach appealed to conservative, confession-minded Protestants; while his commitment to social justice as a cardinal responsibility of Christianity appealed to liberal Protestants.
Central to his theology is Christ, in whom God and the world are reconciled. Bonhoeffer's God is a suffering God, whose manifestation is found in this-worldliness. He believed that the Incarnation of God in flesh made it unacceptable to speak of God and the world "in terms of two spheres" — an implicit attack upon Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms. Bonhoeffer stressed personal and collective piety and revived the idea of imitation of Christ. He argued that Christians should not retreat from the world but act within it. He believed that two elements were constitutive of faith: the implementation of justice and the acceptance of divine suffering.[36] Bonhoeffer insisted that the church, like the Christians, "had to share in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world" if it were to be a true church of Christ.
In his prison letters, Bonhoeffer also raised tantalizing questions about the role of Christianity and the church in a "world come of age", where human beings no longer need a metaphysical God as a stop-gap to human limitations; and mused about the emergence of a "religionless Christianity", where God would be unclouded from metaphysical constructs of the previous 1900 years. Influenced by Barth's distinction between faith and religion, Bonhoeffer had a critical view of the phenomenon of religion and asserted that revelation abolished religion (which he called the "garment" of faith). Having witnessed the complete failure of the German Protestant church as an institution in the face of Nazism, he saw this challenge as an opportunity of renewal for Christianity.
Years after Bonhoeffer's death, some Protestant thinkers developed his critique into a thoroughgoing attack against traditional Christianity in the "Death of God" movement, which briefly attracted the attention of the mainstream culture in the mid-1960s. However, some critics — such as Jacques Ellul and others — have charged that those radical interpretations of Bonhoeffer's insights amount to a grave distortion, that Bonhoeffer did not mean to say that God no longer had anything to do with humanity and had become a mere cultural artifact. More recent Bonhoeffer interpretation is more cautious in this regard, respecting the parameters of the neo-orthodox school to which he belonged.
