Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a Conscripted Cultural Icon for Christian Nationalism

Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a Conscripted
Cultural Icon for Christian Nationalism

by R.E. Slater

I started this morning praying about the conscription of words (noun, compulsory enlistment for state service, typically into the armed forces). Of the church placing ideas into the cauldron of public awareness which purport truth but in actuality lead away from it to some other land of apology (sic, "defensive ideation") meant to preserve and extend the church's unease with secularism.

But not the secularism it thinks it is preserving itself from, but a kind of secularism which it has chosen to bath in not thinking of the soaps and bath waters it is using as anything more than "biblical and God-honoring." Which in truth it is not. It is simply another form of secularism. How ironic.

Indeed the church has taken in the world exactly as it has preached against it for so many years by conscripting words and ideas that play into its form of biblicism and religiosity. As a result, the very kind of secularism that it has accused other Christians of living in has become its own adopted milieu as well.

In fact, it would be nearly impossible not to be culturalized into the society one lives in. All the more so for those claiming they are not when they are. In today's terms the church has bathed itself in the culturalization of "fear, uncertainty, and hate" which is now being played out in American democratic society under Trumpian Christianity as a form of heavy-handed politics against the very people who are Americans but not white Americans nor white Christian Americans.

Anti-thetic Americans (adjective; of the nature of, or involving, antithesis; directly opposed, contrasted, opposite) are of every color, race, culture, and religion except the white majority color, race, culture and religion. The deaths of Ahmed Aubrey and George Floyd have accentuated America's divide over its state of blendedness, acceptance, and embrace.

   

Unfortuanately, the very church which should be standing in front of the societal lines of support and demonstration is off to the side saying nothing, doing nothing, and speaking against the wrongful deaths of black Americans espousing "law and order" over basic human and first amendment rights of speaking out against social injustice. The church's voice is silent. Gravely silent, bereft of support or involvement.

But not all the church. Church's declared liberal or progressive (more negative labels!) are on the front lives protesting, serving, aiding, and ministering to those hurting and demonstrating against the divide of fear, anarchy, and hatred espoused by the government-backing silent churches of America.

The problem with labels

The problem with labels is that they do exactly what we wish them to do. They can defend (or, apologise, in Christian lingo) our position; serve as capstones which exclude others from conversation so they go unheard; and camp down in racist forms and expressions using conscripted, or unscrupulous, positions declaring "this thing is secular and this thing is not." Which, of course, only heightens the secularity of that position.

The church of the living Christ's only Christian "laws" are to love God and love one another. When this is not done then a nation, as well as its societies, come under the harsher laws of "what ye have sown ye shall also reap." If fear, anarchy, and hate are chosen as the paths to travel then it comes out in unusual but expected ways. Ways that are not socially just, that are publically oppressive, and which overtaxes its greater populations of difference in abusive political and social policies leaning towards white justification.

As such, secularization has occurred within the church by its unwary approval and silent testimony of vouchsafing white nationalism or Christian nationalism (you choose the expression) over the testimony of the Lord's directive to love one another.

Eric Metaxas

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eric Metaxas

In this regard, Christianity will chose its representatives it will listen to. Who it thinks best defends its faith and speak its words to the world around it. One such name is Eric Metaxas known for his conscription of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's testimony to love one's enemies while also resisting their evil. Having done that, Dietrich died an ugly death of torture and cruel hanging by piano wire for his testimony to share Christ's love for humanity by opposing Nazism in its many ugly forms of justified Christian secularity.

Metaxas took a stellar witness to the "costly discipleship of grace" exampled by Bonhoeffer by declaring Christian jihad on liberal and progressive Christians. He conscripted Bonhoeffer's education, training, testimony, ministries, and voice by chasting those Christians and churches he considered anathema to the Word of God. He rapidly became the conservative and right-wing church's hero.

He did this by portraying Bonhoeffer as the "traditionalized" Christian who opposed "liberalism" in religious affairs. Metaxas turned Bonhoeffer into a culture warrior for Christians determined to resist the encroachment of what he thought "secular liberalism" was according to popular church ideology.

The result? Black Lives didn't Matter; Trumpian churches integrated empire politics into its own sectarian, if not cultic, doctrines of Christian faith; it conscripted its ideas of the Kingdom of God into political policies; and allowed with blind eye and deaf ears racism and injustices to continue apace, if not enhanced, by approved government policies creating what amounted to modern day concentration camps for unwanted Hispanic border people separating children from their families and parents from their loved ones. All in the name of Christ.

A Tree and Its Fruit (Context Matthew 7)

15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

I Never Knew You

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Eric Metaxas might be compared with DaVinci Code author Dan Brown; both are exciting writers to read, they tell a great story, and their books are hard to put down. But like Dan Brown, Eric Metaxas has taken history, twisted it into a new tale that isn't as true as the reader thinks, and when done, you've come away satisfied but further away from the truth then when you first began. - re slater

The Problem with Defending One's Faith

It was quickly seen by Bonhoeffer scholars that Eric Metaxas had made Dietrich's image into an image wholly unlike who he was and what he stood for. Claiming "the liberals" had misinterpreted Bonhoeffer, Metaxas had made Bonhoeffer into his own image. Metaxas was the very one who had misinterpreted Bonhoeffer forcing his German Lutheran legacy into the polarizing fictions of the American church's idea of itself and its gospel.

Claiming Bonhoeffer was not a Marxist, a pacifist, nor post-Christian humanist who was hijacked by the hard left, by agnostics and atheists, Metaxas encouraged conservative Christians to consider Bonhoeffer in the recreation of their own image. He incorrectly identified the "death of God" theologians to the secular left and conflated mainstream Bonhoeffer scholars as liberal and atheistic. In essence, the dominant form of conservative Christianity's cultural ethos forced his interpretation of Bonhoeffer's legacey into his own conscripted uses of that legacy.

By exaggeration and distortion, Metaxas had created an identity of Bonhoeffer that the American conservative church approved off; which best correlated with how it saw itself both in mission and resolution. It was simplistic, misinformed and polarizing but it was the kind of formulation which the conservative church could adopt and roll with. In essence, not only Metaxas, but the church itself, was driven both by theological and political agenda. Metaxas had laid in 2010, with the help of other dissident voices, the foundations for a cultural Christian Civil War with contemporary democratic American society. In determined idealistic reforms it sought to secede (verb, withdraw formally from membership of a federal union, an alliance, or a political or religious organization) from its inherited American cultural identity which ironically it had but only appropriated upon itself without realising it in select, chosen forms.

When done, the church could now justify its position as excluding American culture and any duty it might have to the society it lives within. More aggressively, it could now begin implementing its own cultural ethos of Kingdom Ethics and Culture - more commonly known as Christian Dominionism or Christian Reconstruction:

"Dominion theology (also known as dominionism) is a group of Christian political ideologies that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians based on their understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of achieving governing authority are varied. For example, dominion theology can include theonomy, but does not necessarily involve advocating Mosaic law as the basis of government. The label is applied primarily toward groups of Christians in the United States.

"Prominent adherents of these ideologies are otherwise theologically diverse, including Calvinist Christian reconstructionism, Roman Catholic Integralism, Charismatic-Pentecostal Kingdom Now theology, New Apostolic Reformation, and others. Most of the contemporary movements labeled dominion theology arose in the 1970s from religious movements asserting aspects of Christian nationalism.

"Some have applied the term dominionist more broadly to the whole Christian right. This usage is controversial. There are concerns from members of these communities that this is a label being used to marginalize Christians from public discourse.

"An example of dominionism in reformed theology is Christian reconstructionism, which originated with the teachings of R. J. Rushdoony in the 1960s and 1970s. Rushdoony's theology focuses on theonomy (the rule of the Law of God), a belief that all of society should be ordered according to the laws that governed the Israelites in the Old Testament. His system is strongly Calvinistic, emphasizing the sovereignty of God over human freedom and action, and denying the operation of charismatic gifts in the present day (cessationism); both of these aspects are in direct opposition to Kingdom Now Theology."

Summary

And so we have an ideal example of one's theology adapting to what one prefers to believe and live out. Rather than using outside (the dreaded liberal or progressive) sources to help critique its theological ideations, conservative and right-wing Christians have insulated themselves from critique while at the same time justifying their unbiblical positions of theonomy (authoritarian law and order) over the American democratic culture of working together towards a just and preferred outcome of fairness and equality. Even if it takes denying or removing or revising the US Constitution in achieving its ends.

The ideals of God when harshly implemented are a misplaced means to a bad end. God is love, not judge, not purger of societal culture in the name of Christ. He does not implement Christian inquistions, crusades, or injustices. It is through standing up for societal reform in loving and persuading ways of rightness and respect, listening and togetherness, that the church's testimony to the God it espouses is the more powerful voice for socially just freedom and liberty.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 English Standard Version (ESV)

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

The church's mission is not to forcibly overtake a societal culture but to adapt to its strengths and outlooks as it declares not a God interested in dominating a culture with ancient Hebraic laws but a God partnering and guiding a culture towards Christ's relevant examples of love and ministry. There is a big difference here. One is jack-booted in its approach and the other is weak and humble in approach and message.

This latter is also careful not to colonize its assumed cultural identity by presumptuously believing its secularized form of Christianity is the more "godly" or "holy" form of culture expression and implementation. In fact, every culture can teach us something strong and good and beautiful if we learn to listen to it arightly with respect and openness. To a gospel-centered church interested in sharing Christ's atoning love it is this approach of assimilating Christ's message of loving caretake into a culture within which it might seek to minister by appropriation of that culture by exampling cultural respect, a listening ear, and learning heart. That is Christ's message to cultural assimilators. It is not cultural dominionism or reconstruction.

So then, the church is not to dominate its cultural form of political persuasion or bible misrepresentation upon a foreign society alien to its dominionist religious message. If so, it is creating the same kind of conscription that its own apologists such as Eric Metaxas have done by serving to the American church its own story of dominion theology as opposed to a loving theology full of grace, truth, and compassion.

R.E. Slater

June 4, 2020

The Barmen Declaration

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Hijacking Bonhoeffer

https://www.christiancentury.org/reviews/2010-09/hijacking-bonhoeffer

by Clifford Green

October 4, 2010

You have to read Eric Metaxas with bifocals. With the upper lens you read the Metaxas of the book, an engaging narrative by an experienced writer who presents Bonhoeffer as a Christian hero led by God to struggle against an evil regime and against his wayward church. With the lower lens you read the Metaxas revealed in numerous web interviews in which he gives his account of Bonhoeffer's "staggering" significance today.

Metaxas first read Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship at the time of his evangelical conversion some 20 years ago. Formerly a staff writer for Chuck Colson's BreakPoint, he appears frequently as a cultural commentator on Fox News and CNN. He founded and hosts Socrates in the City, a monthly event in New York featuring prominent speakers on "life, God, and other small topics." He presumably treats such topics in his trilogy of popular apologetics, the first being Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask). In 2007 he published Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, which made the New York Times best-seller list and was the companion book to the film Amazing Grace.

Readers coming to Bonhoeffer for the first time will likely be carried along by Metaxas's engaging narrative and admiration for his subject. A talented writer, he depends heavily on Eberhard Bethge's biography— 40 years old but still an unsurpassed source. His new material comes especially from the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works English edition, which contains eight volumes of Bonhoeffer's letters, sermons and papers. Metaxas quotes copiously from the five volumes that have only recently been translated. Also built into the narrative are letters between Bonhoeffer and his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer, published in 1994 as Love Letters from Cell 92. Other sources include various memoirs written by Bonhoeffer's [twin] sister Sabine and by acquaintances such as Paul Lehmann, Reinhold Niebuhr and George Bell. Martin Doblmeier, maker of the film Bonhoeffer, calls the book "a masterpiece that reads like a great novel" and its author "the preeminent biographer of Christianity's most courageous figures."

I will not linger over the numerous factual errors, including problems with the German words sprinkled throughout the text (even the notorious names Buchenwald and Dachau are misspelled). I will not fret about the problems infecting the copious endnotes, especially the missing, incomplete and garbled sources. I will not dwell on the fact that a critical assessment of sources is absent. (Metaxas repeats the pious and probably self-serving statement of the Flossenbürg camp doctor about Bonhoeffer's death and the canard about Bonhoeffer's radio speech on the Führer being cut off as if he were a marked man from the beginning of Hitler's rule, when in fact he just went over the time limit.) One of the signs that the book was rushed through the press to appear on the 65th anniversary of Bonhoeffer's death is found in the news that Bonhoeffer crossed the Atlantic in the "thirty-three-ton ship" Columbus.

Informed readers will attend to what else is missing. Contrary to claims in the publicity, there is no new research in this biography. Bonhoeffer scholars are thanked but only mentioned in their role as editors; their research and writings are never discussed. (Disclosure: I have edited several volumes in the Bonhoeffer Works.) Because research has found new documents and new interpretation has been written since Bethge's book, one can indeed make a case for a new biography. (Ferdinand Schlingensiepen has just undertaken this serious task in Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance.) And given the tendency of evangelicals and liberals to focus on different parts of Bonhoeffer's theology and witness, the challenge is to transcend theological polarization and present an integrated and compelling picture.

NYC Union Theological Seminary

But that is not Metaxas's approach: polarization is a structural motif of the whole narrative, because his mission is to reclaim the true Bonhoeffer from "liberals" who have "hijacked" the theologian. Consider the treatment of Bon­hoeffer's year at Union Theological Seminary in 1930-1931. It is true that Bonhoeffer was very critical of theology at Union as well as the preaching he heard in white churches like Riverside Church. What Metaxas highlights, however, is Bon­hoeffer's experience at Abyssinian Baptist Church, where, he implies, Bonhoeffer had a conversion experience and became a serious Christian. In volume 10 of the Bonhoeffer Works I present new evidence of Abyssinian's deep personal impact on Bonhoeffer. But that is to complement, not disparage, the decisive impact of Bonhoeffer's friends at Union Seminary.

At Union, as Bonhoeffer himself reports, he engaged in life-changing discussions with Lehmann, Jean Lasserre, Erwin Sutz and Frank Fisher, discussions about the Sermon on the Mount, peace and "learning to have faith." These led directly and quickly to work on his book Discipleship. There, too, he got to know several Social Gospel radicals—pacifists and socialists—about whom he continued to inquire in letters years later. Metaxas tells us nothing of all this. Why? Because his Union Seminary is a construct of his polarizing worldview in which evangelicals are pitted against liberals.

This same simplistic approach governs Metaxas's writing about German theology and about the church struggle under [German] National Socialism. He flippantly compares the theological controversy between Harnack and Barth to the conflict between latter-day Darwinians and proponents of Intelligent Design. He presents the Confessing Church as if it were an American denomination founded by Bonhoeffer. Indeed, he describes the battles of American fundamentalists and of the Confessing Church as essentially the same. Bonhoeffer, Metaxas tells us, "equated the fundamentalists with the Confessing Church. Here they were fighting against the corrupting influences of the theologians at Union and Riverside, and at home the fight was against the Reich church."

Two aspects of Bonhoeffer are so disturbing to Metaxas that he has to deny them outright or try to explain them away. Bonhoeffer, he insists, was not a pacifist. While pacifism as usually understood is not a good word to describe Bonhoeffer's position, his Christian peace ethic was rooted in the core doctrines of his theology—his Christology and his understanding of discipleship, his interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and his doctrine of the church. He did not abandon his peace ethic while working to kill Hitler and end the Nazi regime. Just one sign of this stance is the fact that even during the war Bonhoeffer wrote in his Ethics and spoke to his fiancée in support of conscientious objection. These matters of theology and ethics are too subtle for Metaxas; consequently his treatment of the Lasserre-Bonhoeffer friendship in New York falsifies the sources and wallows in sentimentality.

Worse, if possible, is Metaxas's embarrassment about Bonhoeffer's writing in Letters and Papers from Prison about "religionless Christianity." In a Trinity Forum interview he even stated that Bonhoeffer "never really said it," but then had to retract that because, well, Bonhoeffer did say it. But, Metaxas continues, he wrote it privately in a letter to Bethge and never intended anyone to see it because it was "utterly out of keeping with the rest of Bonhoeffer's life." He calls Bonhoeffer's theological prison reflections a "few bone fragments . . . set upon by famished kites and less noble birds, many of whose descendants gnaw them still."

Descending to insult, even insulting the subject of his own book, is a sure sign that an author is in trouble. Why does he do this? Ostensibly because the death-of-God theologians, those "liberals," have "hijacked" Bonhoeffer. But why whip a few writers who made a brief splash 40 years ago and who have had little or no influence on theology or the church? Because they function as straw men in his polarizing narrative about "orthodox Christians" and "liberals." His real target is liberals, and not just theological liberals, but political liberals too.

The simplest way to refute Metaxas's dismissal of the prison theology is to note Bonhoeffer's answer when Bethge asked him how the book he was writing on religionless Christianity related to the unfinished Ethics. Bonhoeffer answered that the book he was writing in prison was "in a certain sense a prologue to the larger work [Ethics] and, in part, anticipates it." So, pace Metaxas, Ethics and the prison theology belong together.

A lot of nonsense has been written about Bonhoeffer's prison theology, but the answer to that is good interpretation, not pretending that the prison theology is a dirty little secret. Why is the Christ-centered worldly theology of the Letters so threatening to Metaxas? Because it can't be forced into a conservative evangelical mold—or a so-called liberal one either.

Metaxas writes as an omniscient narrator, a mind reader who knows Bonhoeffer's every thought and feeling. (Is this just a literary device, or does it reveal how much the author pro­jects his own views into the mind and actions of his subject?) For example, at the height of the church struggle, Bonhoeffer caused an uproar when he wrote: "Whoever knowingly separates himself from the Confessing Church separates himself from salvation." Metaxas assures us that Bonhoeffer did not think this was explosive and "never imagined that it would become a focal point of the lecture."

One curious problem parades itself in the sub-subtitle: Bonhoeffer is presented as "A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich." With this phrase Metaxas takes sides with a group that has advocated for Bonhoeffer to be recognized as a "righteous gentile" by Jerusalem's Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem. Whatever one believes about the merits of the case, this element of the book is a piece of provocative posturing since there is no new information about the issue, or even discussion of it, in the book.

This brings us back to the bifocals and the Internet interviews. Bonhoeffer was a "theologically conservative evangelical," Metaxas told Christianity Today. Born again at Abyssinian, Bonhoeffer was called by God to be in his own time a prophet like Jeremiah, Metaxas told Christianbook.com. In an e-mail to the Catholic News Agency, Metaxas stated that Bonhoeffer has "staggering" relevance today: "Just as the Third Reich was bullying the German church, [so] the Ameri­can government is today trying to bully the church on certain issues of sexuality" and on "abortion and euthanasia and stem-cell research. . . . We would do well to take our lead from him in our own battle on that front."

Lauren Green of FoxNews.com wrote that Metaxas showed how Bonhoeffer's legacy was "the untold dangers of idolizing politicians as messianic figures . . . today as well." Reading this, a blogger wrote: "That's Obama and his followers he was warning us about." If you think that's a stretch, read Metaxas's comments last December on Fox Forum discussing White House Christmas celebrations, in which Obama is connected—in­directly, of course—to Herod.

Given all this, the most descriptive and honest title for Metaxas's book would perhaps be Bonhoeffer Co-opted. Or better: Bonhoeffer Hijacked.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Introduction to Study Class

Enroll - 

https://homebrewedchristianity.lpages.co/riseofbonhoeffer/

The Rise of Bonhoeffer: Ethics & Empire
in a Post-Truth Era

an Online Pop-Up Learning Community

Lectures - Reading - QnA - Forum

June 2020 - 5 Weeks

We live in a time of crisis upon crisis and yet the church is silent. The need, or better put, the demand, for a new trajectory of faith is clear. Where do we begin? Is there a starting point for considering faith beyond Christendom?

In this class we will carry these questions to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a genius of the 20th century church cut short because of his resistance to Nazi Germany and its ecclesial partners. Too often Bonhoeffer is claimed as an ally in this task without sitting long enough with his actual texts and witness. Here we will work through sections from his major texts and end up reading them in light of current situation, from COVID-19, to Trump, the ecological crisis, and beyond.

Introduction

1A

1B

2A

2B

3A

4A

4B

4C (1)

4C (2)

5A

INSTRUCTIONS

Enroll - https://homebrewedchristianity.lpages.co/riseofbonhoeffer/

UPDATE: May 29, 2020 By Tripp Fuller

~ Over 2000 have signed up! ~

The Schedule & Readings

To download the readings as PDFs you just need to right click and save as.

A Timeline of Bonhoeffer’s life and times. 

This will help you locate the different readings.

• Session 1 (6/2) : Sloppy Agape, Greasy Grace, and the Cost of Missing the Point: Bonhoeffer on Discipleship | READING 1 HERE | READING 2 HERE
• 
  
• Session 2 (6/9): Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Bonhoeffer’s Ethics | READING 1 HERE | READING 2 HERE
• 
  
• Session 3 (6/16): God’s Not Dead, but May As Well Be | READING HERE
• 
  
• Session 4 (6/23) Bonhoeffer in Charlottesville: Bonhoeffer and Political Theology | READING HERE  | READING 2 HERE | READING 3 HERE
• 
  
• Session 5 (6/30) The Bonhoeffer Eric Metaxas Never Knew: Bonhoeffer as Rorschach Test | READING 1 HERE |READING 2 HERE | READING 3 HERE

Each of the sessions will stream at 5pm eastern. Following the video and audio will be emailed to each class member.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - An Introduction

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Born	4 February 1906 Breslau, Province of Silesia, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire (now Wrocław, Poland) 51.110788°N 17.071616°E
Died	9 April 1945 (aged 39) Flossenbürg concentration camp, Nazi Germany 49.73496°N 12.35577°E
Cause of death	Execution by hanging
Citizenship	German
Education	Staatsexamen (Tübingen), Doctor of Theology (Berlin), Privatdozent (Berlin)
Alma mater	Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Friedrich Wilhelms University of Berlin
Religion	Lutheranism
Church	Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union (1906–1933) Confessing Church (1933–1945)
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 (1931–1936) Student pastor at Technical College, Berlin (1931–1933) Lecturer of Confessing Church candidates of pastorate in Finkenwalde (1935–1937)
Title	Ordained pastor

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German: [ˈdiːtʁɪç ˈbɔn.høː.fɐ]; 4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential, and his book The Cost of Discipleship has been described as a modern classic.^[1]

Apart from his theological writings, Bonhoeffer was known for his staunch resistance to Nazi dictatorship, including vocal opposition to Hitler's euthanasia program and genocidal persecution of the Jews.^[2] He was arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel prison for one and a half years. Later, he was transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp.

After being accused of being associated with the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was quickly tried, along with other accused plotters, including former members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office), and then hanged on 9 April 1945 as the Nazi regime was collapsing, 21 days before Adolf Hitler committed suicide.

Contents

• 1Early life
  • 1.1Childhood and early life
  • 1.2Studies in America
• 2Career
  • 2.1Confessing Church
  • 2.2Ministries in London
  • 2.3Underground seminaries
  • 2.4Return to the United States
  • 2.5Abwehr agent
  • 2.6Imprisonment
  • 2.7Execution
• 3Legacy
  • 3.1Theological legacy
• 4Writings
  • 4.1Fortress Press editions of Bonhoeffer's works
  • 4.2Various works in the Bonhoeffer corpus individually published in English
• 5Bibliography
• 6Further reading
  • 6.1Books
  • 6.2Films
  • 6.3Plays
  • 6.4Choral theater
  • 6.5Verse about Bonhoeffer
  • 6.6Opera
  • 6.7Oratorios
  • 6.8Songs
• 7References
• 8External links

Early life

Childhood and early life

Bonhoeffer was born on 4 February 1906 in Breslau, Germany into a large family. In addition to his other siblings, Dietrich had a twin sister, Sabine Bonhoeffer Leibholz: he and Sabine were the sixth and seventh children out of eight. His father was psychiatrist and neurologist Karl Bonhoeffer, noted for his criticism of Sigmund Freud; and his mother Paula Bonhoeffer, née von Hase, was a teacher and the granddaughter of Protestant theologian Karl von Hase and painter Stanislaus von Kalckreuth. Bonhoeffer's family dynamic and his parents values enabled him to receive a high level of education and also encouraged his curiosity, which in turn impacted his ability to lead others around him, specifically in the church setting.^[3] His oldest brother Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer became a chemist, and, along with Paul Harteck, discovered the spin isomers of hydrogen in 1929. Walter Bonhoeffer, the second born of the Bonhoeffer family, was killed in action during World War I, when the twins were 12. The third Bonhoeffer child, Klaus, was a lawyer until he was executed for his involvement in the 20 July plot.^[4][5][6]

Both of Bonhoeffer's older sisters, Ursula Bonhoeffer Schleicher and Christel Bonhoeffer von Dohnanyi, married men who were eventually executed by the Nazis. Christel was imprisoned by the Nazis but survived. Sabine and their youngest sister Susanne Bonhoeffer Dress each married men who survived Nazism. His cousin Karl-Günther von Hase was the German Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1977.^{[citation needed]} His nephew, Christoph von Dohnanyi, son of Hans von Dohnanyi and Christel Bonhoeffer von Dohnanyi, is a prominent orchestral conductor, most notably Musical Director of the Cleveland (OH) Orchestra from 1984-2002, and the London Philharmonia Orchestra.

Bonhoeffer completed his Staatsexamen, the equivalent of both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree, at the Protestant Faculty of Theology of the University of Tübingen. At the age of 21, he went on to complete his Doctor of Theology degree (Dr. theol.) from Berlin University in 1927, graduating summa cum laude.

Studies in America

Still too young to be ordained, at the age of twenty-four Bonhoeffer went to the United States in 1930 for postgraduate study and a teaching fellowship at New York City's Union Theological Seminary. Although Bonhoeffer found the American seminary not up to his exacting German standards ("There is no theology here."),^[7] he had life-changing experiences and friendships. He studied under Reinhold Niebuhr and met Frank Fisher, a black fellow-seminarian who introduced him to Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, where Bonhoeffer taught Sunday school and formed a lifelong love for African-American spirituals, a collection of which he took back to Germany. He heard Adam Clayton Powell Sr. preach the Gospel of Social Justice, and became sensitive to not only social injustices experienced by minorities, but also the ineptitude of the church to bring about integration.^[8]

Bonhoeffer began to see things "from below"—from the perspective of those who suffer oppression. He observed, "Here one can truly speak and hear about sin and grace and the love of God...the Black Christ is preached with rapturous passion and vision." Later Bonhoeffer referred to his impressions abroad as the point at which he "turned from phraseology to reality."^[7] He also learned to drive an automobile, although he failed the driving test three times.^[9] He borrowed a 1924 Oldsmobile sedan from a member of the Greenville Community Church in Westchester County in order to drive to Mexico.^[10]

Career

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on a weekend getaway with confirmands of Zion's Church congregation (1932)^[11]

After returning to Germany in 1931, Bonhoeffer became a lecturer in systematic theology at the University of Berlin. Deeply interested in ecumenism, he was appointed by the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches (a forerunner of the World Council of Churches) as one of its three European youth secretaries. At this time he seems to have undergone something of a personal conversion from being a theologian primarily attracted to the intellectual side of Christianity to being a dedicated man of faith, resolved to carry out the teaching of Christ as he found it revealed in the Gospels.^[12] On 15 November 1931—at the age of 25—he was ordained at Old-Prussian United St. Matthew, Berlin-Tiergarten [de; St. Matthew] in Berlin-Tiergarten.

Confessing Church

Bonhoeffer's promising academic and ecclesiastical career was dramatically altered with the Nazi ascension to power on 30 January 1933. He was a determined opponent of the regime from its first days. Two days after Hitler was installed as Chancellor, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio address in which he attacked Hitler and warned Germany against slipping into an idolatrous cult of the Führer (leader), who could very well turn out to be Verführer (mis-leader, or seducer). He was cut off the air in the middle of a sentence, though it is unclear whether the newly elected Nazi regime was responsible.^[13] In April 1933, Bonhoeffer raised the first voice for church resistance to Hitler's persecution of Jews, declaring that the church must not simply "bandage the victims under the wheel, but jam a spoke in the wheel itself."^[14]

In November 1932, two months before the Nazi takeover, there had been an election for presbyters and synodals (church officials) of the German Landeskirche (Protestant historical established churches). This election was marked by a struggle within the Old-Prussian Union Evangelical Church between the nationalistic German Christian (Deutsche Christen) movement and Young Reformers—a struggle which threatened to explode into schism. In July 1933, Hitler unconstitutionally imposed new church elections. Bonhoeffer put all his efforts into the election, campaigning for the selection of independent, non-Nazi officials.

Despite Bonhoeffer's efforts, in the rigged July election an overwhelming number of key church positions went to Nazi-supported Deutsche Christen people.^[15] The Deutsche Christen won a majority in the general synod of the Old-Prussian Union Evangelical Church and all its provincial synods except Westphalia, and in synods of all other Protestant church bodies, except for the Lutheran churches of Bavaria, Hanover, and Württemberg. The non-Nazi opposition regarded these bodies as uncorrupted "intact churches," as opposed to the other so-called "destroyed churches."

In opposition to Nazification, Bonhoeffer urged an interdict upon all pastoral services (baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc.), but Karl Barth and others advised against such a radical proposal.^[16] In August 1933, Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse were deputized by opposition church leaders to draft the Bethel Confession,^[17] a new statement of faith in opposition to the Deutsche Christen movement. Notable for affirming God's fidelity to Jews as His chosen people, the Bethel Confession was so watered down to make it more palatable that Bonhoeffer ultimately refused to sign it.^[18]

In September 1933, the national church synod at Wittenberg voluntarily passed a resolution to apply the Aryan paragraph within the church, meaning that pastors and church officials of Jewish descent were to be removed from their posts. Regarding this as an affront to the principle of baptism, Martin Niemöller founded the Pfarrernotbund (Pastors' Emergency League). In November, a rally of 20,000 Deutsche Christens demanded the removal of the Old Testament from the Bible, which was seen by many as heresy, further swelling the ranks of the Emergency League.^[19]

Within weeks of its founding, more than a third of German pastors had joined the Emergency League. It was the forerunner of the Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church), which aimed to preserve traditional, Biblically based Christian beliefs and practices.^[20] The Barmen Declaration, drafted by Barth in May 1934 and adopted by the Confessing Church, insisted that Christ, not the Führer, was the head of the church.^[21] The adoption of the declaration has often been viewed as a triumph, although by Wilhelm Niemöller [de]'s estimate, only 20% of German pastors were supporting the Confessing Church.^[22]

Ministries in London

When Bonhoeffer was offered a parish post in eastern Berlin in the autumn of 1933, he refused it in protest of the nationalist policy, and accepted a two-year appointment as a pastor of two German-speaking Protestant churches in London: the German Lutheran Church in Dacres Road, Sydenham,^[21][23] and the German Reformed Church of St Paul's, Goulston Street, Whitechapel.^[24][25] He explained to Barth that he had found little support for his views—even among friends—and that "it was about time to go for a while into the desert.” Barth regarded this as running away from real battle. He sharply rebuked Bonhoeffer, saying, "I can only reply to all the reasons and excuses which you put forward: 'And what of the German Church?'" Barth accused Bonhoeffer of abandoning his post and wasting his "splendid theological armory" while "the house of your church is on fire," and chided him to return to Berlin "by the next ship."^[26]

Bonhoeffer, however, did not go to England simply to avoid trouble at home; he hoped to put the ecumenical movement to work in the interest of the Confessing Church. He continued his involvement with the Confessing Church, running up a high telephone bill to maintain his contact with Martin Niemöller. In international gatherings, Bonhoeffer rallied people to oppose the Deutsche Christen movement and its attempt to amalgamate Nazi nationalism with the Christian gospel. When Bishop Theodor Heckel [de]—the official in charge of German Lutheran Church foreign affairs—traveled to London to warn Bonhoeffer to abstain from any ecumenical activity not directly authorized by Berlin, Bonhoeffer refused to abstain.^[27]

Underground seminaries

In 1935, Bonhoeffer was offered a well-sought-after opportunity to study non-violent resistance under Gandhi in his ashram. However, remembering Barth's rebuke, Bonhoeffer decided to return to Germany instead, where he was the head at an underground seminary in Finkenwalde for training Confessing Church pastors. As the Nazi suppression of the Confessing Church intensified, Barth was driven back to Switzerland in 1935; Niemöller was arrested in July 1937; and in August 1936, Bonhoeffer's authorization to teach at the University of Berlin was revoked after he was denounced as a "pacifist and enemy of the state" by Theodor Heckel.

Memorial of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in front of St. Peter's Church, Hamburg

Bonhoeffer's efforts for the underground seminaries included securing necessary funds. He found a great benefactor in Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. In times of trouble, Bonhoeffer's former students and their wives would take refuge in von Kleist-Retzow's Pomeranian estate, and Bonhoeffer was a frequent guest. Later he fell in love with Kleist-Retzow's granddaughter, Maria von Wedemeyer,^[28] to whom he became engaged three months before his arrest. By August 1937, Himmler decreed the education and examination of Confessing Church ministry candidates illegal. In September 1937, the Gestapo closed the seminary at Finkenwalde, and by November arrested 27 pastors and former students. It was around this time that Bonhoeffer published his best-known book, The Cost of Discipleship, a study on the Sermon on the Mount, in which he not only attacked "cheap grace" as a cover for ethical laxity, but also preached "costly grace."

Bonhoeffer spent the next two years secretly traveling from one eastern German village to another to conduct "seminary on the run" supervision of his students, most of whom were working illegally in small parishes within the old-Prussian Ecclesiastical Province of Pomerania. The von Blumenthal family hosted the seminary on its estate of Groß Schlönwitz. The pastors of Groß Schlönwitz and neighbouring villages supported the education by employing and housing the students (among whom was Eberhard Bethge, who later edited Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison) as vicars in their congregations.^[29]

In 1938, the Gestapo banned Bonhoeffer from Berlin. In summer 1939, the seminary was able to move to Sigurdshof, an outlying estate (Vorwerk) of the von Kleist family in Wendish Tychow. In March 1940, the Gestapo shut down the seminary there following the outbreak of World War II.^[29] Bonhoeffer's monastic communal life and teaching at Finkenwalde seminary formed the basis of his books, The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together.

Bonhoeffer's sister, Sabine, along with her Jewish-classified husband Gerhard Leibholz and their two daughters, escaped to England by way of Switzerland in September 1940.^[30]

Return to the United States

In February 1938, Bonhoeffer made an initial contact with members of the German Resistance when his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnányi introduced him to a group seeking Hitler's overthrow at Abwehr, the German military intelligence service.

Bonhoeffer also learned from Dohnányi that war was imminent and was particularly troubled by the prospect of being conscripted. As a committed pacifist opposed to the Nazi regime, he could never swear an oath to Hitler and fight in his army, though not to do so was potentially a capital offense. He worried also about consequences his refusing military service could have for the Confessing Church, as it was a move that would be frowned upon by most Christians and their churches at the time.^[27]

It was at this juncture that Bonhoeffer left for the United States in June 1939 at the invitation of Union Theological Seminary in New York. Amid much inner turmoil, he soon regretted his decision despite strong pressures from his friends to stay in the United States. He wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr:

I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people ... Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security.^[31]

He returned to Germany on the last scheduled steamer to cross the Atlantic.^[32]

Abwehr agent

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's study

Back in Germany, Bonhoeffer was further harassed by the Nazi authorities as he was forbidden to speak in public and was required to regularly report his activities to the police. In 1941, he was forbidden to print or to publish. In the meantime, Bonhoeffer joined the Abwehr, a German military intelligence organization. Dohnányi, already part of the Abwehr, brought him into the organization on the claim his wide ecumenical contacts would be of use to Germany, thus protecting him from conscription to active service.^[33] Bonhoeffer presumably knew about various 1943 plots against Hitler through Dohnányi, who was actively involved in the planning.^[33] In the face of Nazi atrocities, the full scale of which Bonhoeffer learned through the Abwehr, he concluded that "the ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically from the affair, but how the coming generation shall continue to live."^[34] He did not justify his action but accepted that he was taking guilt upon himself as he wrote, "When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it... Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace."^[35] (In a 1932 sermon, Bonhoeffer said, "The blood of martyrs might once again be demanded, but this blood, if we really have the courage and loyalty to shed it, will not be innocent, shining like that of the first witnesses for the faith. On our blood lies heavy guilt, the guilt of the unprofitable servant who is cast into outer darkness."^[36])

Under cover of the Abwehr, Bonhoeffer served as a courier for the German resistance movement to reveal its existence and intentions to the Western Allies in hope of garnering their support, and, through his ecumenical contacts abroad, to secure possible peace terms with the Allies for a post-Hitler government. His visits to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland were camouflaged as legitimate intelligence activities for the Abwehr. In May 1942, he met Anglican Bishop George Bell of Chichester, a member of the House of Lords and an ally of the Confessing Church, contacted by Bonhoeffer's exiled brother-in-law Leibholz; through him feelers were sent to British foreign minister Anthony Eden. However, the British government ignored these, as it had all other approaches from the German resistance.^[37] Dohnányi and Bonhoeffer were also involved in Abwehr operations to help German Jews escape to Switzerland. During this time Bonhoeffer worked on Ethics and wrote letters to keep up the spirits of his former students. He intended Ethics as his magnum opus, but it remained unfinished when he was arrested. On 5 April 1943, Bonhoeffer and Dohnányi were arrested and imprisoned.

Imprisonment

On 13 January 1943, Bonhoeffer had become engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer, the granddaughter of his close friend and Finkenwalde seminary supporter, Ruth von Kleist Retzow. Ruth had campaigned for this marriage for several years, although up until late October 1942, Bonhoeffer remained a reluctant suitor despite Ruth being part of his innermost circle.^[38] A large age gap loomed between Bonhoeffer and Maria: he was 36 to her 18. Bonhoeffer had first met his would-be fiancée Maria, when she had been his confirmation student at age eleven.^[39] The two also spent almost no time alone together prior to the engagement and did not see each other between becoming engaged and Bonhoeffer's 5 April arrest. Once he was in prison, however, Maria's status as fiancée became invaluable, as it meant she could visit Bonhoeffer and correspond with him. While their relationship was troubled,^[40] she was a source of food and smuggled messages.^[41] Bonhoeffer made Eberhard Bethge his heir, but Maria, in allowing her correspondence with Bonhoeffer to be published after her death, provided an invaluable addition to the scholarship.

For a year and a half, Bonhoeffer was imprisoned at Tegel military prison awaiting trial. There he continued his work in religious outreach among his fellow prisoners and guards. Sympathetic guards helped smuggle his letters out of prison to Eberhard Bethge and others, and these uncensored letters were posthumously published in Letters and Papers from Prison. One of those guards, a corporal named Knobloch, even offered to help him escape from the prison and "disappear" with him, and plans were made for that end. But Bonhoeffer declined it, fearing Nazi retribution against his family, especially his brother Klaus and brother-in-law Hans von Dohnányi, who were also imprisoned.^[42]

After the failure of the 20 July Plot on Hitler's life in 1944 and the discovery in September 1944 of secret Abwehr documents relating to the conspiracy, Bonhoeffer was accused of association with the conspirators. He was transferred from the military prison Tegel in Berlin, where he had been held for 18 months, to the detention cellar of the house prison of the Reich Security Head Office, the Gestapo's high-security prison. In February 1945, he was secretly moved to Buchenwald concentration camp, and finally to Flossenbürg concentration camp.

On 4 April 1945, the diaries of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, were discovered, and in a rage upon reading them, Hitler ordered that the Abwehr conspirators be destroyed.^[43] Bonhoeffer was led away just as he concluded his final Sunday service and asked an English prisoner, Payne Best, to remember him to Bishop George Bell of Chichester if he should ever reach his home: "This is the end—for me the beginning of life."^[44]

Execution

Flossenbürg concentration camp, Arrestblock-Hof: Memorial to members of German resistance executed on 9 April 1945

Bonhoeffer was condemned to death on 8 April 1945 by SS judge Otto Thorbeck at a drumhead court-martial without witnesses, records of proceedings or a defense in Flossenbürg concentration camp.^[45] He was executed there by hanging at dawn on 9 April 1945, just two weeks before soldiers from the United States 90th and 97th Infantry Divisions liberated the camp,^[46][47] three weeks before the Soviet capture of Berlin and a month before the surrender of Nazi Germany.

Bonhoeffer was stripped of his clothing and led naked into the execution yard where he was hanged, along with Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Canaris's deputy General Hans Oster, military jurist General Karl Sack, General Friedrich von Rabenau,^[48] businessman Theodor Strünck, and German resistance fighter Ludwig Gehre. Bonhoeffer's brother, Klaus Bonhoeffer, and his brother-in-law, Rüdiger Schleicher, were executed in Berlin on the night of 22–23 April as Soviet troops were already fighting in the capital. His brother-in-law Hans von Dohnányi had been executed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp on April 9.

Eberhard Bethge, a student and friend of Bonhoeffer's, writes of a man who saw the execution: "I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God."^[49]

This is the traditional account of Bonhoeffer's death, which over the decades went unchallenged.^[50] However, many recent biographers see problems with the story, not due to Bethge but his source. The purported witness was a doctor at Flossenbürg concentration camp, Hermann Fischer-Hüllstrung,^[51] who may have wished to minimize the suffering of the condemned men to reduce his own culpability in their executions. J.L.F. Mogensen, a former prisoner at Flossenbürg, cited the length of time it took for the execution to be completed (almost six hours), plus departures from camp procedure that would probably not have been allowed to prisoners so late in the war, as jarring inconsistencies. Considering that the sentences had been confirmed at the highest levels of Nazi government, by individuals with a pattern of torturing prisoners who dared to challenge the regime, it is more likely that "the physical details of Bonhoeffer's death may have been much more difficult than we earlier had imagined."^[52]

Other recent critics of the traditional account are more caustic. One terms the Fischer-Hüllstrung story as "unfortunately a lie," citing additional factual inconsistencies; for example, the doctor described Bonhoeffer climbing the steps to the noose, but at Flossenbürg the gallows had no steps. Moreover, it appears that "Fischer-Hüllstrung had the job of reviving political prisoners after they had been hanged until they were almost dead, in order to prolong the agony of their dying."^[53] Another critic charges that Fischer-Hüllstrung's "subsequent statement about Bonhoeffer as kneeling in wordy prayer ... belongs to the realm of legend."^[54]

The disposition of Bonhoeffer's remains is not known.^[55] His body may have been cremated outside the camp along with hundreds of other recently executed or dead prisoners,^[56] or American troops may have placed his body in one of several mass graves in which they interred the unburied dead of the camp.^[55]

Legacy

Gallery of 20th Century Martyrs at Westminster Abbey. From left, Mother Elizabeth of Russia, Martin Luther King Jr., Óscar Romero and Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Bonhoeffer's life as a pastor and theologian of great intellect and spirituality who lived as he preached—and his being killed because of his opposition to National Socialism—exerted great influence and inspiration for Christians across broad denominations and ideologies, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the anti-communist democratic movement in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa.

Bonhoeffer is commemorated in the liturgical calendars of several Christian denominations on the anniversary of his death, 9 April. This includes many parts of the Anglican Communion, where he is sometimes identified as a martyr,^[57][58][59] and other times not.^[60][61] His commemoration in the liturgical calendar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America uses the liturgical color of white,^[62] which is typically used for non-martyred saints.^[63][64][65] In 2008, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, which does not enumerate saints, officially recognized Bonhoeffer as a "modern-day martyr." He was the first martyr to be so recognized who lived after the Reformation, and is one of only two as of 2017.^{[66][67][68][69]}

The Deutsche Evangelische Kirche in Sydenham, London, at which he preached between 1933 and 1935, was destroyed by bombing in 1944. A replacement church was built in 1958 and named Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Kirche in his honor.^[70]

Theological legacy

Overshadowed by the dramatic events of his life, Bonhoeffer's theology has nevertheless been influential. His theology has a fragmentary, unsystematic nature, due at least in part to his untimely death, and is subject to diverse and contradictory interpretations, sometimes necessarily based on speculation and projection. So, for example, while his Christocentric approach appeals to conservative, confession-minded Protestants, his commitment to justice and ideas about "religionless Christianity"^[71] are emphasized by liberal Protestants.

Sculpture by Edith Breckwoldt, The ordeal. No man in the whole world can change the truth. One can only look for the truth, find it and serve it. The truth is in all places. citation by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Central to Bonhoeffer's 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. Bonhoeffer 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.^[72] 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 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.^{[citation needed]} Bonhoeffer also influenced Comboni missionary Father Ezechiele Ramin.^[73][74]

Writings

English translations of Bonhoeffer's works, most of which were originally written in German, are available. Many of his lectures and books were translated into English over the years and are available from multiple publishers. These works are listed following the Fortress Press edition of Bonhoeffer's writings. The English language edition of Bonhoeffer's Works contains, in many cases, more material than the German Works series because of the discovery of hitherto unknown correspondence.^{[citation needed]}

All sixteen volumes of the English Bonhoeffer Works Edition of Bonhoeffer's Oeuvre had been published by October 2013. A volume of selected readings entitled The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Reader which presents a chronological view of Bonhoeffer's theological development became available by 1 November 2013.^[75]

Fortress Press editions of Bonhoeffer's works

• Sanctorum Communio. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Clifford Green, Editor Translated by Reinhard Krauss and Nancy Lukens. Hardcover, 392 pp; ISBN 978-0-8006-8301-6 and paperback, 386 pp; ISBN 978-0-8006-9652-8. Bonhoeffer's dissertation, completed in 1927 and first published in 1930 as Sanctorum Communio: eine Dogmatische Untersuchung zur Soziologie der Kirche. In it he attempts to work out a theology of the person in society, and particularly in the church. Along with explaining his early positions on sin, evil, solidarity, collective spirit, and collective guilt, it unfolds a systematic theology of the Spirit at work in the church and what it implies for questions on authority, freedom, ritual, and eschatology.
• Act and Being. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Wayne Whitson Floyd and Hans Richard Reuter, Editors; Translated by H. Martin Rumscheidt. Hardcover, 256 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8302-3. Bonhoeffer's second dissertation, written in 1929–1930 and published in 1931 as Akt und Sein, deals with the consciousness and conscience in theology from the perspective of the Reformation's insight into the origin sinfulness in the "heart turned in upon itself and thus open neither to the revelation of God nor to the encounter with the neighbor." Bonhoeffer's thoughts about power, revelation, Otherness, theological method, and theological anthropology are explained.
• Creation and Fall. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 3. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; John W. De Gruchy, Editor Translated by Douglas Stephen Bax. In 1932, Bonhoeffer called on his students at the University of Berlin to focus their attention on the word of God, the word of truth, in a time of turmoil. Hardcover, 214 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8303-0. Paper, 224 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8323-8.
• Discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 4. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; John D. Dodsey and Geffrey B. Kelly, Editors. Originally published in 1937, this book (generally known in English by the title The Cost of Discipleship) soon became a classic exposition of what it means to follow Christ in a modern world beset by a dangerous and criminal government. Hardcover, 384 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8304-7. Paper, 354 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8324-5.
• Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 5. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; James H. Burtness and Geffrey B. Kelly, Editors; Translated by Daniel W. Bloesch. Hardcover, 242 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8305-4. Paper, 232 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8325-2. Life Together is a classic which contains Bonhoeffer's meditation on the nature of Christian community. Prayerbook of the Bible is a classic meditation on the importance of the Psalms for Christian prayer. In this theological interpretation of the Psalms, Bonhoeffer describes the moods of an individual's relationship with God and also the turns of love and heartbreak, of joy and sorrow, that are themselves the Christian community's path to God.
• Ethics. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 6. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Clifford Green, Editor; Translated by Reinhard Krauss, Douglas W. Stott, and Charles C. West. The crown jewel of Bonhoeffer's body of work, Ethics is the culmination of his theological and personal odyssey. Hardcover, 544 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8306-1. Paperback, 605 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8326-9.
• Fiction from Tegel Prison. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 7. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Clifford Green, Editor Translated by Nancy Lukens. Hardcover, 288 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8307-8. Writing fiction—an incomplete drama, a novel fragment, and a short story—occupied much of Bonhoeffer's first year in Tegel prison, as well as writing to his family and his fiancée and dealing with his interrogation. "There is a good deal of autobiography mixed in with it," he explained to his friend and biographer Eberhard Bethge. Richly annotated by German editors Renate Bethge and Ilse Todt and by Clifford Green, the writings in this book disclose a great deal of Bonhoeffer's family context, social world, and cultural milieu. Events from his life are recounted in a way that illuminates his theology. Characters and situations that represent Nazi types and attitudes became a form of social criticism and help to explain Bonhoeffer's participation in the resistance movement and the plot to kill Hitler.
• Letters and Papers from Prison. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; John W. de Gruchy, Editor; Translated by Isabel Best; Lisa E. Dahill; Reinhard Krauss; Nancy Lukens. This splendid volume, in many ways the capstone of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, is the first unabridged collection of Bonhoeffer's 1943–1945 prison letters and theological writings. Here are over 200 documents that include extensive correspondence with his family and Eberhard Bethge (much of it in English for the first time), as well as his theological notes, and his prison poems. The volume offers an illuminating introduction by editor John de Gruchy and an historical Afterword by the editors of the original German volume: Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge. Hardcover, 800 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-9703-7.
• The Young Bonhoeffer, 1918–1927. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 9. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Paul Duane Metheny, Editor. Gathers Bonhoeffer's 100 earliest letters and journals from after the First World War through his graduation from Berlin University. Hardcover, 720 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8309-2. This work gathers his earliest letters and journals through his graduation from Berlin University. It also contains his early theological writings up to his dissertation. The seventeen essays include works on the patristic period for Adolf von Harnack, on Luther's moods for Karl Holl, on biblical interpretation for Professor Reinhold Seeberg, as well as essays on the church and eschatology, reason and revelation, Job, John, and even joy. Rounding out this picture of Bonhoeffer's nascent theology are his sermons from the period, along with his lectures on homiletics, catechesis, and practical theology.
• Barcelona, Berlin, New York: 1928–1931. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 10. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Clifford Green, Editor. This period from 1928 to 1931, which followed completion of his dissertation, was formative for Bonhoeffer's personal, pastoral, and theological direction. Hardcover, 790 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8330-6.
• Ecumenical, Academic and Pastoral Work: 1931–1932, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Works, Volume 11, is a translation of Ökumene, Universität, Pfarramt: 1931–1932. Hardcover, 576 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-9838-6.^[76]
• Berlin: 1932–1933. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Larry L. Rasmussen, Editor. Translated by Isabel Best, David Higgins, and Douglas W. Stott. Berlin documents the crisis of 1933 in Germany as Bonhoeffer taught "on a faculty whose theology he did not share." Hardcover, 650 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8312-2.
• London, 1933–1935. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Works, Volume 13. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Keith C. Clements, Editor. Translated by Isabel Best. Includes records and minutes of his congregational meetings, reports from international conferences from 1934, more than 20 sermons he preached in London, and more. Hardcover, 550 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8313-9.
• Theological Education at Finkenwalde: 1935–1937, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Works, Volume 14, is a translation of Illegale Theologenausbildung: 1935–1937, was released on 1 October 2013. The publishers description of the volume is thus: "In the spring of 1935 Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned from England to direct a small illegal seminary for the Confessing Church. The seminary existed for two years before the Gestapo ordered it closed in August 1937. The two years of Finkenwalde's existence produced some of Bonhoeffer's most significant theological work as he prepared these young seminarians for the turbulence and risk of parish ministry in the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer and his seminarians were under Gestapo surveillance; some of them were arrested and imprisoned. Throughout, he remained dedicated to training them for the ministry and its challenges in a difficult time. This volume includes bible studies, sermons, and lectures on homiletics, pastoral care, and catechesis, giving a moving and up-close portrait of the Confessing Church in these crucial years—the same period during which Bonhoeffer wrote his classics, Discipleship and Life Together."^[77]
• Theological Education Underground: 1937–1940, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Works, Volume 15, is a translation of Illegale Theologenausbildung: 1937–1940. Hardcover, 750 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-9815-7.^[78]
• Conspiracy and Imprisonment 1940–1945. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 16. Dietrich Bonhoeffer; Mark Brocker, Editor Translated by Lisa E. Dahill. Hundreds of letters, including ten never-before-published letters to his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer, as well as official documents, short original pieces, and his final sermons. Hardcover, 912 pp: ISBN 978-0-8006-8316-0.

Various works in the Bonhoeffer corpus individually published in English

• The Bonhoeffer Reader, edited by Clifford Green and Michael DeJonge. Fortress Press, 2013. ISBN 0-8006-9945-9. A representative collection of all Bonhoeffer's theological works in a single volume.
• Christology (1966) London: William Collins and New York: Harper and Row. Translation of lectures given in Berlin in 1933, from vol. 3 of Gesammelte Schriften, Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1960. retitled as Christ the Center, Harper San Francisco 1978 paperback: ISBN 0-06-060811-0
• The Cost of Discipleship (1948 in English). Touchstone edition with introduction by Bishop George Bell and memoir by G. Leibholz, 1995 paperback: ISBN 0-684-81500-1. Critical edition published under its original title Discipleship: John D. Godsey (editor); Geffrey B. Kelly (editor). Fortress Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8006-8324-2. Bonhoeffer's most widely read book begins, "Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace." That was a sharp warning to his own church, which was engaged in bitter conflict with the official Nazified state church. First published in 1937 as Nachfolge (Discipleship), it soon became a classic exposition of what it means to follow Christ in a modern world beset by a dangerous and criminal government. At its center stands an interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount: what Jesus demanded of his followers—and how the life of discipleship is to be continued in all ages of the post-resurrection church.
• Life Together. The stimulus for the writing of Life Together was the closing of the preachers' seminary at Finkenwalde. The treatise contains Bonhoeffer's thoughts about the nature of Christian community based on the common life that he and his seminarians experienced at the seminary and in the "Brother's House" there. Life Together was completed in 1938, published in 1939 as Gemeinsames Leben, and first translated into English in 1954. Harper San Francisco 1978 paperback: ISBN 0-06-060852-8
• Ethics (1955 in English by SCM Press). Touchstone edition, 1995 paperback: ISBN 0-684-81501-X. This is the culmination of Bonhoeffer's theological and personal odyssey, even though the book was not completed and was not the Ethics which Bonhoeffer intended to have published. Based on careful reconstruction of the manuscripts, freshly and expertly translated and annotated, the critical edition features an insightful introduction by Clifford Green and an afterword from the German edition's editors. Though caught up in the vortex of momentous forces in the Nazi period, Bonhoeffer systematically envisioned a radically Christocentric, incarnational ethic for a post-war world, purposefully recasting Christians' relation to history, politics, and public life.
• Letters and Papers from Prison (Edited originally by Eberhard Bethge; first English translation 1953 by SCM Press). This edition translated by Reginald H. Fuller and Frank Clark from Widerstand und Ergebung: Briefe und Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft. Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag (1970). Touchstone 1997 paperback: ISBN 0-684-83827-3. In hundreds of letters, including letters written to his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer (selected from the complete correspondence, previously published as Love Letters from Cell 92 Ruth-Alice von Bismarck and Ulrich Kabitz (editors), Abingdon Press (1995) ISBN 0-687-01098-5), as well as official documents, short original pieces, and a few final sermons, the volume sheds light on Bonhoeffer's active resistance to and increasing involvement in the conspiracy against the Hitler regime; his arrest; and his long imprisonment. Finally, Bonhoeffer's many exchanges with his family, fiancée, and closest friends, demonstrate the affection and solidarity that accompanied Bonhoeffer to his prison cell, concentration camp, and eventual death.
• A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1990). Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson, editors. Harper San Francisco 1995 2nd edition, paperback: ISBN 0-06-064214-9
• "Von guten Mächten": "By Gracious Powers," a prayer he wrote shortly before his death. Various English translations.^[79][80]
  • Bonhoeffer's papers are held in the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary.^[81]

Bibliography

• Bethge, E.; Barnett, V.J. (1999). Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-1-4514-0742-6.
• Bonhoeffer, D.; Barnett, V.; Schulz, D. (2011). Theological Education Underground, 1937–1940. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Series. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-1-4514-0683-2.
• Marsh, Charles (2014). Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26981-2.
• Schlingensiepen, Ferdinand (2010). Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906–1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance. Continuum/T & T Clark. ISBN 978-0-7735-1531-4.
• Root, A. (2014). Bonhoeffer as Youth Worker: A Theological Vision for Discipleship and Life Together. Baker Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4412-2131-5.

Further reading

Books

External video

Presentation by Charles Marsh on Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, July 10, 2014, C-SPAN

Discussion with Martin Marty on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison June 5, 2011, C-SPAN

• Non-fiction
  • Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Christian, Man for His Times: A Biography Rev. ed. (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2000).
  • Diane Reynolds, The Doubled Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Wipf & Stock, 2016)
  • Keith Clements, Bonhoeffer and Britain (Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, 2006). ISBN 0-85169-307-5
  • Michael P. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer's Theological Formation: Berlin, Barth, and Protestant Theology (Oxford University Press, 2012) ISBN 978-0-19-963978-6
  • Michael P. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer's Reception of Luther (Oxford University Press, 2017) ISBN 978-0-19-879790-6
  • Michael P. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer on Resistance: The Word against the Wheel (Oxford University Press, 2018) ISBN 978-0-19-882417-6
  • Peter Frick, (editor), Bonhoeffer's Intellectual Formation: Theology and Philosophy in His Thought (Mohr Siebeck, 2008) ISBN 3-16-149535-7
  • Stephen R. Haynes,The Bonhoeffer Legacy: Post-Holocaust Perspectives (Fortress Press, 2006). ISBN 0-8006-3815-8.
  • Geffrey B. Kelly & F. Burton Nelson (editors), "A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer" (HarperSan Francisco, 1990) ISBN 0-06-060813-7
  • Michael J. Martin, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Champion of Freedom series. (Morgan Reynolds Publishing, 2012). ISBN 978-1-59935-169-8. Winner of 2013 Wilbur Award for Best Book, Youth Audiences.
  • John W. Matthews, "Bonhoeffer: A Brief Overview of the Life and Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer" (Lutheran University Press, 2011)
  • John A. Moses, The Reluctant Revolutionary: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Collision with Prusso-German History (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2009).
  • Nation, Mark Thiessen; Siegrist, Anthony G.; Umbel, Daniel P. (2013). Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking. Baker Grand Rapids. ISBN 978-0-8010-3961-4.
  • Stephen Plant, Bonhoeffer (Continuum International Publishing, 2004). ISBN 0-8264-5089-X.
  • ——— (1987), The Shame and the Sacrifice: The life and teaching of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 978-0-340-41063-9.
  • Robertson, Edwin (1989), Bonhoeffer's Legacy: The Christian Way in a World Without Religion, Collier Books, ISBN 978-0-02-036372-9.
  • Elisabeth Sifton and Fritz Stern, No Ordinary Men, NYRB (2013). (Bonhoeffer and von Dohnanyi)
  • Craig J. Slane, Bonhoeffer as Martyr: Social Responsibility and Modern Christian Commitment (Brazos Press, 2004).
  • Reggie L. Williams, Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance (Baylor University Press, 2014). ISBN 978-1-60258-805-9
• Fiction
  • Denise Giardina, Saints and Villains (Ballantine Books, 1999). ISBN 0-449-00427-9. A Fictional Account of Bonhoeffer's life.
  • Mary Glazener, The Cup of Wrath: The Story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Resistance to Hitler (Frederic C. Beil, 1992). ISBN 0-913720-71-2.
  • Daniel Jándula, El Reo (Tarragona: Ediciones Noufront, 2009). ISBN 978-84-937017-0-3
  • George Mackay Brown, Magnus (Hogarth Press, 1973) A novel in which the imprisoned 10th century Orcadian saint Magnus Erlendsson is transformed into Bonhoeffer.
  • Simon Perry, All Who Came Before (Wipf and Stock, 2011), in which Bonhoeffer's ethics and actions give flesh to the historical figure, Barabbas.

Films

• Bonhoeffer^[82] – Martin Doblmeier, 2003
• Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace (2000) on IMDb Eric Till, PBS, 2000
• Hanged on a Twisted Cross (1996) on IMDb T.N. Mohan, 1996
• A View From The Underside – The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Al Staggs, 1992
• Beller, Hava Kohav (1991), The Restless Conscience, US.
• Dr. John F. Boogaert, director (1978), Bonhoeffer, A Life of Challenge, US: Panagraph.
• "Come Before Winter" (2016) Produced by Dr. Gary Blount, directed by Kevin Ekvall.
• "Holy Traitor" (2020) Produced & Directed by Spencer T. Folmar.

Plays

• Lies, Love and Hitler^[83] – an Australian play written by Elizabeth Avery Scott. Premiered 2010 at The Street Theatre, Canberra, Australia (directed by P.J. Williams).
• Bonhoeffer – a play written and performed by South African playwright, actor and human rights activist Peter Krummeck (directed by Christopher Weare) and premiered at Capitol Hill in Washington DC during the week commemorating the First Anniversary of 9/11.^[84]
• Bonhoeffer – an American play by Tim Jorgenson, available in a print edition (Xulon Press, 2002 ISBN 1-59160-343-9), premiered in 2004 at the Acacia Theatre Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• Bonhoeffer^[85] – a Finnish monologue play written and performed by Timo Kankainen and directed by Eija-Irmeli Lahti, premiered in January 2008 at the Seinäjoki city theatre.
• Personal Honor: Suggested by the Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer – by Nancy Axelrad and performed by the Ricks-Weil Theatre Company (directed by Thom Johnson), premiered 1 May 2009 at the H.J. Ricks Centre for the Arts in Greenfield, Indiana.
• The Beams are Creaking – an American play by Douglas Anderson, Baker's Plays, Boston (ISBN 0-87440-963-2). Premiered at Case Western University in October 1978. Won the Marc A. Klein Playwright Award and Wichita State National Playwright Competition that same year.
• Bonhoeffer's Cost – based on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Written by Mary Ruth Clarke with Timothy Gregory, presented by Provision Theatre, Chicago, 17 September – 30 October 2011. The play focuses on Bonhoeffer's life from the time of his arrest.
• True Patriot – BBC2 Play of the Week (TV Series) (1977) Director Ronald Wilson. Written by Don Shaw. Michael York plays Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Notable for ending with incomplete execution scene made to resemble Nazi film such as those known to have been made of the executions of actual and accused participants in the 20 July Bomb Plot, such as Bonhoeffer; Beethoven's Sonata No. 8 Op. 13 (Pathetique) Adagio cantabile accompanies the final scene. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903028/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

Choral theater

• "Bonhoeffer"^[86] – a choral theater piece by Thomas Lloyd, with text adapted from the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer. Premiered 10 March 2013 at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral (performed by the chamber choir "The Crossing" conducted by Donald Nally).
• Peter Janssens composed a musical play ("Musikspiel") Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1995 on a text by Priska Beilharz.

Verse about Bonhoeffer

• "Friday's Child"^[87] reading by W.H. Auden, 1958

Opera

• Bonhoeffer^[88] Ann Gebuhr, 2000

Oratorios

• Bonhoeffer-Oratorium – composed from 1988 to 1992 by Tom Johnson for orchestra, soloists and choir
• Ende und Anfang – composed in 2006 by Gerhard Kaufmann for orchestra, soloists and choir and based on the writings of Bonhoeffer

Songs

• The Chairman Dances included a song for Bonhoeffer on their 2016 album, Time Without Measure.^[89]

References

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4. ^ Bonhoeffer, Barnett & Schulz 2011, p. 581.
5. ^ Bethge & Barnett 1999, p. 18,625.
6. ^ Root 2014, p. 119.
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17. ^ Enno Obendiek, „Die Theologische Erklärung von Barmen 1934: Hinführung“, in: „… den großen Zwecken des Christenthums gemäß“: Die Evangelische Kirche der Union 1817 bis 1992; Eine Handreichung für die Gemeinden, Wilhelm Hüffmeier (compilator) for the Kirchenkanzlei der Evangelischen Kirche der Union (ed.) on behalf of the Synod, Bielefeld: Luther-Verlag, 1992, pp. 52–58 [57]. ISBN 3-7858-0346-X
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84. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 15 December 2013. Retrieved 17 June 2013.
85. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 1 October 2008. Retrieved 13 September 2008.
86. ^ "David Patrick Stearns: Premiere of 'Bonhoeffer' reveals an important work". articles.philly.com 2013.
87. ^ "Friday's Child". smu.edu.
88. ^ "Ann Gebuhr". anngebuhr.com. Archived from the original on 16 January 2016.
89. ^ "Time Without Measure by The Chairman Dances". Bandcamp.

External links

Dietrich Bonhoefferat Wikipedia's sister projects

• Media from Wikimedia Commons
• Quotations from Wikiquote
• Data from Wikidata

• Dbonhoeffer.org
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer at Curlie
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Encyclopædia Britannica
• Bonhoeffer Reading Room with extensive links to on-line primary and sesources, Tyndale Seminary
• Lawrence, Joel. "Bonhoeffer Bibliography. Update 2009" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 September 2010.
• Article by Douglas Huff in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Great Lives: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• See: Maria von Wedemeyer-Weller
• "Prison Writings in a World Come of Age: The Special Vision of Dietrich Bonhoeffer", Martin E. Marty, Berfrois, 12 May 2011
• Richard Beck (8 December 2010), Bonoheffer: etsi deus non daretur
• Westminster Abbey: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Why the Publication of Bonhoeffer's works in German and English is so profound
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the Greenville Community Church