The Idealisms of Pacifism: Its Force of Argument as a Singular Ethic for All of Life's Dilemmas

 

 

 

Continued from earlier posts -

 

When Pacifism Meets Reality: Examining Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Hitler-Dilemma"

 

The Continuing Debate to Bonhoeffer's German Resistance and Its Implications for Jesus' "Kingdom Ethics"

By way of a conclusion to this series of discussions, I find in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ethical dilemma regarding his resistance, and possible active subversiveness to German atrocities during World War II, a natural, inherent repulsion to the evil he saw everywhere about. Bonhoeffer, along with several friends and relatives, elected to work for the German military agency Abwehr, second in power and rank to the German SS. As a conscientious objector to the war he had hoped to avoid killing opposing combatants on fields of battle. He would soon discover, however, the intricate complicities of his choice to be no less a terrible burden than the one he had chosen to avoid. Here, in Dietrich's life story we have a recent Christian example of a German Lutheran pastor wishing to minister to his disciples and congregants, and prevented from doing so by an oppressive, dictatorial government at war with itself as much as it was at war with the world. The information Dietrich soon discovered would overwhelm his gentle soul for the misery it led to and the lives it would take.

As Germany pressed on in its campaigns of terror and destruction Bonhoeffer steadily found himself working for an evil oppressor that required his ethical response - one more than simply accepting his role within it, without some kind of reciprocal participation against it. His conflict lied with Jesus' commands in the Sermon on the Mount which he took very seriously (basically, to do no harm, to help and assist where needed, to love and forgive seventy times seven). His further conflict was whether the Kingdom of God could practically become a reality within sinful mankind, to which Christian (Niebuhr) realism had said, "No." The best one can do is to attempt to live Jesus' commands and wait for His return. At which point you begin to ask yourself just what can be my response while on this good earth gone bad?

Consequently, pacifist groups look to Bonhoeffer as a Christian martyr who stood by his principles to love and do no harm to others, respecting their rights and warrants, whereas other pacifist and non-pacifist groups alike broke Bonhoeffer's idealism down into a scale of moral considerations requiring varying responses of non-violence, non-aggression, passive resistance, dove-like street campaigns and marches, sit-ins, etc, just short of active violence. Moving further away from pacifism's ideals would next come militant groups with their own observations of whether one should do nothing in the face of oppression as people are harmed. Advising the right to defend oneself and homeland. How, and where, this could be done. And presenting historical accounts of societal extinctions when no practical resistance or defense was initiated on behalf of oneself, one's families, clans, tribes, and faith.

Hence, the question, "What did Dietrich Bonhoeffer do?" Did he do nothing? Or did he so well hide his own thoughts on this subject that even his closest confidants could discern no visible move away from his preferred position of pacifism. Regardless, Bonhoeffer was implicated as a double agent in a plot of conspiracy against the Fuhrer and was hanged as an alleged assassin. His biographer stated that Dietrich did eventually choose to actively resist without actually participating in a plot of assassination of Adolf Hitler while contemporary arguments are stating that though Dietrich was conflicted, he did not move from his earlier beliefs of living out the Sermon on the Mount, and showed no inclination to join in a plot to kill the Fuhrer.

My own further question is to ask whether Jesus' Kingdom ethics necessarily entail pacifism or not. To which I think the further answer is dictated by the circumstances one finds himself or herself in, along with one's personal abilities and temperament, societal connections, and the kind of needs requiring action. Within any given situation there is a right way and a wrong way to approach a problem. Hollywood has made an industry of these ethical dilemmas and I do not expect that there can be any one given answer(s) to the depth of any circumstance requiring our response. Like King David we may become bloody in the battle and forbidden the desire of our heart to build a temple for our God. Like King Solomon we might have peace all about us so that a temple might be built. Even as in the prophets examples they wished to tear a profane temple down, to be then rebuilt by hands under Ezra and Nehemiah. Ultimately, with Jesus' incarnation that temple was both striped of its authority and rebuilt as a spiritual temple through the cross of Calvary. Every era, every people, every societal response requires something different in its time. Ethics. Its what one does or doesn't do even as they can do or wish not to do. That's the long and short of it.

Thus, we see agencies such as International Justice Ministries, Save the Whale organizations, Stop Hunger movements, and an endless variety of domestic and international anti-civil war liberation agencies attempting to protect the poor and innocent from the harms and wickedness of gangs, tyrants, and governmental oppression. Even at home, here in America, the Christian church is actively debating to what extent it should become involved in civil governance and the care of its citizenry in health, housing, clothing, feeding, education, and industry. It is the eternal question and one not so easily answered by simply looking at the response of one man, or a group of men, perilously attempting to contribute practical ways to stop Nazism from its evil deeds and horrendous abuses.

 

And so, whether or not we can answer Bonhoeffer's state of mind, or in what form he conducted his brand of pacifism throughout Hitler's homeland genocides, the better question to ask may be how we might re-enact Jesus' commands of Kingdom ethics now as especially presented in His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. Practically, it seems to start with the little things in life between one another so that once a Kingdom attitude is in place at the ground level between neighbor and friend, ally and enemy, it might grow-and-enlarge like the proverbial mustard seed to encompass world ethics, civil governance, and political denouement in proportionate response to our ability to enact its formidable severity and auspicious hope.

 

Theoretically, it is hoped that love, grace, good judgment, and wisdom prevail in the face of wickedness and evil. Pragmatically I doubt it will ever be as simple as we pray and hope. The capacity of the human nature for sin and pride is rooted deep and strong. Our simplest relationships with one another seem a jumble of turmoil and brokenness. Even so, according to God's commands through His Son Jesus, who is our Savior and resurrected Lord, we must try with the ability and gifts that we are given.

 

To that end, church theologians are practically discussing what they think they know about a humble German citizen/pastor (Bonhoeffer) caught on the horns of a dilemma in the face of overwhelming hate and evil. Mark Nation (professor of theology at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, Virginia) began the discussion by saying Dietrich Bonhoeffer refused any involvement in his group's plot of assignation of Adolf Hitler according to his Lutheran beliefs in living out Jesus' Kingdom commands. Roger Olson (professor of theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor University) challenges this thought, using Bonhoeffer's closest remaining confident, and biographer, Bethge, as to his testimony that Dietrich pitched his pacifism to the winds upon seeing Hitler's bloody atrocities being committed everywhere about his beloved homeland. Now, today, comes a measured response by Scot McKnight, NT professor of Theology at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois, in restatement of the Mennonite view that there may be a bit of truth between both ideas, but a truth that we can never know so cautious one needed to live within those perilous times. As such, McKnight concludes that Dietrich Bonhoeffer remained a committed pacifist regardless of the pointed testimony of his confident and biographer Bethge, who in fact says Dietrich had changed his mind and did reluctantly enter into a conspiracy pact to kill Hitler.

To us non-Mennonites who hold a large sympathy to this Christian way of thinking about the idea of pacifism, we must reason (a) Dietrich's fatalist response should he not have given in to his desire to stop a deadly German regime even against (b) his purported meager participation in an underground group of political subversives who were eventually found hidden within the German military intelligence group Abwehr. Whether Dietrich dithered in a kind of moral impasse; or attempted some kind of personal resistance; or whether he was appropriately guilty by association by identifying with an underground group of patriots actively plotting Hitler's removal is to ask something we may never be able to answer. It is a question of futility lost to a life martyred for his Christian faith striving to serve his faithful church of disciples of his beloved homeland gone to wreck and ruin.

And so, we must ask, was Dietrich "Guilty of doing nothing?" Hopefully not. And if he was, "Does it matter?" Not in the slightest because despite all the back-and-forth that will result between these forthcoming discussions, it still is laid upon the Church today, and upon us specifically, to determine what it means to love one's neighbor as oneself. We might use helpful sources of information (though Dietrich's biography in this regard seems murky at best) to help assimilate an appropriate respect and response to God's Kingdom ethic. But at the last, where evil and wickedness is present it seems incumbent upon the Church to make an appropriate response rather than to look away, or run from its demand under the cloth of Christ, that it might provide defense to the defenseless, help to the helpless, and protection of life in general to any evil present.

 

What place justice in the face of crime and violence? And, what place judgment to abused children, the weak, or the victim for crimes they receive at the hands of wicked men? For me, my support will lie in producing more honest policemen, compassionate social workers, counselors, teachers, and responsibly elected, and ethical, officials, through the use of every social tool at hand to produce a governance of people that may be free to pursue life, liberty, and justice for all. Discipline, enforcement, and judgment will be necessary, but the better course is to attempt to get ahead of the generations of youth before they are lost.

Naïve? Maybe. Necessary? Aye, verily. If one doesn't reach out to every succeeding generation in every way possible by whatever means possible than we have given up and given in to injustice's heavy mantle. The Kingdom of God may be an ideal but it can also become a reality when we submit to the Holy Spirit with all the resources He has given to us within ourselves, our community, and nation. May God give us the humble wisdom and ability to thus obey and create God's Kingdom here amongst men by His Spirit's help. Where tolerance and freedom is respected, irenic debate necessary, and appropriate force used in measured response to all injustice.

 

R.E. Slater

October 28, 2013
edited, November 1, 2013

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Pacifism: A Place to Begin

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/28/pacifism-a-comment/

 

by Scot McKnight

Oct 28, 2013

Comments

 

An excerpt from my Sermon on the Mount [see Sidebar to your right], but just an excerpt, and this one opens up the “Live the Story” section on Matthew 5:38-42. (The issue here is kingdom living vs. “realism,” the view that one must live responsibly in this world in light of this world’s realities over against the idealisms of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. Realism has its varieties, and we begin here with Luther’s incredible comment.) Now to the excerpt:

Our antithesis on the lex talionis is a watershed when it comes to how to live out the Sermon on the Mount. Luther has his followers and contended famously that the problem here is the failure to “to distinguish properly between the secular and the spiritual, between the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the world.”[1] Some of the saddest lines I have ever read by a Christian, let alone one of Luther’s status, are these:[2] 

[In speaking of “holy martyrs”…] When they were called to arms even by infidel emperors and lords, they went to war. In all good conscience they slashed and killed, in this respect there was no difference between Christians and heathen. Yet they did not sin against this text. For they were not doing this as Christians, for their own persons, but as obedient members and subjects, under obligation to a secular person and authority. But in areas where you are free and without any obligation to such a secular authority, you have a different rule, since you are a different person. 

Utter nonsense. Another Lutheran responds: “But this distinction between a private person and bearer of an office as normative for my behavior is foreign to Jesus…. ‘Private’ and ‘official’ spheres are all completely subject to Jesus’ command. The word of Jesus claimed them undividedly.” Is it realistic? Of course Jesus knows the reality of sin and “Jesus calls evil evil and that is just why he speaks to his disciples in this way.”[3] This command, as Bonhoeffer routinely observes, is anchored in the cross that Jesus himself bore. Which is why Bonhoeffer can also say “only those who there, in the cross of Jesus, find faith in the victory over evil can obey his command.”[4] One of the main thrusts of the ethic of Jesus is the radicalization of an ethic so that we live consistently, from the so-called “private” to the “public” spheres. There is for Jesus no distinction between a secular life and spiritual life: we are always to follow him. His ethic is an Ethic from Beyond. But others, in words not so wrong-headed as Luther’s, have continued Luther’s personal vs. public or spiritual vs. secular distinction when it comes to ethics.[5] 

Thus, Peter Craigie, himself a Mennonite: “Contrast the different spirit in the … teaching of Jesus, though the context there has do with personal behavior and attitudes and not with the courts of law.”[6] Oddly, the lex talionis antithesis is a public (not private) framework and that is what Jesus is stopping. Although he is exploring rather than expressing his view dogmatically, Dale Allison approaches this Lutheran view when he says Jesus is “speaking about interpersonal relations and declaring that it is illegitimate for this followers to apply the lex talionis to their private problems.”[7] And I would add “And to their public problems as well.” Along the same line Charles Quarles can somehow manage to convince himself of this: “No evidence suggests that Jesus intended to contradict the lex talionis of the Mosaic law.”[8] Let the word be as rugged as it really is; its ruggedness carries its rhetorical power to call his disciples into the kingdom where retaliation will end. 

The question that confronts any serious reading of the Sermon on the Mount is this: Would Jesus have seen a difference between a kingdom ethic for his followers in their so-called private life but a different ethic in public? I doubt it. Why? Because Jesus’ Messianic Ethic, an Ethic for his community of followers, is an Ethic from Above and Beyond. The question every reader of the Sermon must ask is this: Does that world begin now, or does it begin now in private but not in public, or does it begin now for his followers in both private and to the degree possible in the public realm as well?

 

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[1] Luther, Sermon, 105.

[2] Luther, Sermon, 110.

[3] D. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 134-135.

[4] D. Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, 136.

[5] Calvin’s form of the two realms thinking (Christ vs. Caesar) is not as severe as Luther’s; see Calvin, Sermon, 1.193-195; Hagner, 1.131-132; Turner, 174.

[6] P. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 270 n. 21.

[7] Allison, Sermon, 93.

[8] C. Quarles, Sermon, 146.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abwehr

The Continuing Debate to Bonhoeffer's German Resistance and Its Implications for Jesus' "Kingdom Ethics"

Bonhoeffer: Was he really involved in the attempt to kill Hitler?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/10/28/bonhoeffer-was-he-really-involved-in-the-attempt-to-kill-hitler/

 

by Scot McKnight

Oct 28, 2013

Comments

 

First, some context for me. In writing my Sermon on the Mount I struggled with how to deal with Bonhoeffer, or with which Bonhoeffer. I wrote up a section for early in the commentary that set out how I had learned to interpret Bonhoeffer’s ethics in the unfolding of his life and thought. This is what I wrote:
 

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Before offering a new way of framing the ethics of Jesus we need to consider the ethics of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man whose status has arisen of late due to the completion of the critical editions of his works and due to a popularity uptick from several recent biographies and studies. Bonhoeffer had the courage of a hero in his singular defense of Jews over against a developing German Christian movement and in his razor-sharp perception of Hitler’s manifold evils.[1]

 

His theological career can be divided into three periods:

 

Early: theological discovery (1923-1931)

 

Middle: pastoral theologian (1932-1940)

 

Late: conspirator (1941-1945).

 

Discipleship, in which his brilliant exposition of the Sermon on the Mount is found, belongs to the second period of his life when he was pastoring and teaching students in the underground seminary at Finkenwalde. His understanding of ethics grew and shifted. The middle period differs from the early period[2] and his ethics in the second period vary from his ethics in the later period. It was during that third period that two other works emerged: his Ethics and his Letters and Papers from Prison.[3]

 

The important consideration for understanding Bonhoeffer and the Sermon is that the Bonhoeffer of Discipleship is not identical to the Bonhoeffer of those latter works.[4] A case can be made that the Bonhoeffer of that later period is at odds with the Bonhoeffer of Discipleship. The contrast between the two periods, which the quotation in the next paragraph will illustrate, could be explained by Bonhoeffer’s reluctant move toward a version of the two realms in Lutheran theology.  That is, (1) in the realities of life, in the realm of the world, Bonhoeffer lived in a way at odds with (2) the ethics of the Sermon, an ethics for the kingdom of God.

 

Importantly, Bonhoeffer does not justify his life as a double agent in the Military Intelligence in his later period, a time devoted to deception, to the conspiracy against Hitler and to founding a different Germany and German church. In this later period Bonhoeffer surrenders to a kind of irresistible reality, to worldliness, that is, to the guilt and shame of German corruption in order to rid Germany of that corruption by praying and working for the defeat of Hitler.[5]

 

How he lived during this period contrasts with the vision he articulated in Discipleship. Here is how Bonhoeffer put it in the last year of his life: “For a long time…. I thought I myself could learn to have faith by trying to live something like a saintly life. I suppose I wrote Discipleship at the end of this path. Today I clearly see the dangers of that book, though I still stand by it.”[6]  There is tension here between his “this-worldliness” and his earlier Discipleship. That he has to say he still stands by the early work is a telling concession that emerged in his thinking as a result of his participation in the conspiracy.

 

Bonhoeffer knew what was involved at the deepest level of life when he chose to enter into the conspiracy. Listen to these words that reflect his experience in the conspiracy and what it was doing to character:

 

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds. We have become cunning and learned the arts of obfuscation and equivocal speech. Experience has rendered us suspicious of human beings, and often we have failed to speak to them a true and open word. Unbearable conflicts have worn us down or even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? We will not need geniuses, cynics, people who have contempt for others, or cunning tacticians, but simple, uncomplicated, and honest human beings. Will our inner strength to resist what has been forced on us have remained strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves blunt enough, to find our way back to simplicity and honesty?”[7] The admission of the need to “find our way back” is the revelation of the contrast between the two periods in his life.

 

Because Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship is one of the most important studies ever on the Sermon on the Mount, and because I will make him one of the principal scholars with whom I interact in the pages that follow, it is important to locate his classic work in its proper place in his life and theological development. Bonhoeffer’s own journey is the struggle the church has always had with how to live out the Sermon on the Mount. 

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[1] For the “German Christian” (technical expression) movement, see S. Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

[2] E. Bethge, Biography, 457.

[3]Ethics (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works; ed. I. Tödt; trans. R. Krauss; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), and Letters and Papers from Prison Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works; ed. C. Gremmels; trans. I. Best; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010).

[4] For more continuity in the relationship of Discipleship to the later Ethics, see G. Stassen, A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2012), 175-195. Because of the complexity of the relationship of the middle period to the later period and various versions of sections in Ethics, I have avoided discussion of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics.  Yet it is important to observe that Bonhoeffer did not move from youthful, Platonic idealism in Discipleship to mature realism in the conspiracy years. Instead, it was a (tragic) shift from kingdom realities to this-wordliness realities.

[5] For a full study, the one indispensable biography is the mammoth work of E. Bethge, Biography, e.g., 628, 675-678, 720-721. For Bonhoeffer’s exploratory statement on the relation of church and state, D. Bonhoeffer, Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 1940-1945 (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works; ed. J. Glenthøj; trans. L.E. Dahill; Minneapolis Fortress, 2006), 502-528.

[6]Letters and Papers from Prison, 486.

[7]Letters and Papers from Prison, 52.

 

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Because I am not a Bonhoeffer specialist, nor have I read his entire works in chronological order ever in my life, I thought it would be wise to check out what I had written with a Bonhoeffer expert. I chose Mark Thiessen Nation, professor at Eastern Mennonite University, and a leading Bonhoeffer (and Yoder) scholar. We had some exchanges, included in which was his telling me that he was at work with two others on a book about Bonhoeffer that would seek to show that Bonhoeffer was not in fact involved in any plot to assassinate Hitler. In other words, that he was not involved in the conspiracy to eliminate the Führer.

 

I was a bit stunned by his comments, not the least of which reasons was that I didn’t know how else to read the man’s life. But out of respect for Mark’s work, I chose to eliminate the above section and to modify the commentary wherever I had assumed this scheme of reading Bonhoeffer in three stages. The most important element of this scheme was that Bonhoeffer changed his mind from being a pacifist to being a (Niebuhrian) realist. I reasoned, however, that if Nation was going to prove that theory wrong, it would be wise for me to await publication of his book before I both came to a more complete understanding and published anything about it.

 

Mark Thiessen Nation, along with Anthony G. Siegrist and Daniel P. Umbel, have now published their work: Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking (Grand Rapids: BakerAcademic, 2013). They ask if Bonhoeffer was involved in the conspiracy to kill Hitler. They conclude he was not. In part two of this review I will sketch their views and respond to their proposal.
 

 

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Bonhoeffer and the Conspiracy

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2013/11/01/bonhoeffer-and-the-conspiracy/

 

by Scot McKnight

Nov 1, 2013

Comments

 

A standard reading of Bonhoeffer, one I have believed most of my academic life, is that Bonhoeffer shifted from a kind of traditional socially conservative, fairly nationalistic approach to church-state relations to a pacifist-Sermon-on-the-Mount stance but that, once he returned to Hitler’s Germany after a brief spell at Union Theological Seminary, he shifted to a kind of (Niebuhrian) realism and abandoned his former pacifist stance.

 

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Christian Realism is a philosophical perspective developed by the theologian and public intellectual Reinhold Niebuhr in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Niebuhr argued that the Kingdom of God cannot be realized on earth because of the innately corrupt tendencies of society. Due to the injustices that arise on earth, a person is therefore forced to compromise the ideal of the kingdom of heaven on earth. Niebuhr argued that human perfectibility was an illusion, highlighting the sinfulness of humanity at a time when the world was confronted by the horrors of experiences such World War ll, the reigns of both Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and the Holocaust. The movement was in part a reaction to the Social Gospel movement. Numerous political figures have been influenced by Christian realism, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Madeleine Albright, and John McCain.^[1] - Wikipedia (link here)

 

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But a new book is out, by Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. Umbel, called Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking (BakerAcademic, 2013), and this book challenges front to center this standard reading of Bonhoeffer. There’s already a bit of a dustup about the proposals in that Roger Olson thinks Nation et al have overcooked their theory, and already Mark Nation has responded back (on Roger Olson’s blog’s comments).

 

I want to summarize their theories in brief compass and not drag this post on and on.

 

1. There is no evidence from Bonhoeffer himself — in writing — that he was involved in any conspiracy to kill Hitler. Yes, his brother-in-law and friends were conspirators, but there’s nothing from Bonhoeffer’s own hand that proves it.

 

2. Yes, Bonhoeffer was involved in the Third Reich’s Abwehr, their military intelligence agency, and this could have had as its purpose participation in the conspiracy against Hitler, since a fraction there were conspirators, but the evidence we have suggests Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the Abwehr was prompted in order to prevent him from having to serve in the military on the front lines and in the killing in the name of Hitler. The evidence further suggests he used his Abwehr work to further his ecumenical work and to pass on insider information about the atrocities of Hitler to outsiders and foreigners.

 

3. The evidence that Bonhoeffer was involved in the conspiracy comes exclusively from his biographer, Eberhard Bethge (Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography), by far the best biography and done by one who personally worked with and knew well Bonhoeffer himself. Bethge says Bonhoeffer was a conspirator and that his conspiracy work involved him in “boundary work” — that is in doing things that were on the border of his ethical beliefs. The evidence, then, is based on Bethge’s memory. Roger Olson presses this point hard to argue that he trusts Bethge.

 

4. But Nation et al are arguing their case on a profoundly informed basis: they have mapped carefully the development of Bonhoeffer’s theological ethics from his early period (Barcelona in the late 1920s), the most influential Discipleship book in the late 30s when he was leading the underground seminary, and then in the later Ethics where we encounter his “worldliness.” What this book does in the middle chapters, chapters harder to read than the others, is to demonstrate that there is a decisive break between Barcelona and Discipleship, one in which Bonhoeffer shifts from anti-pacifism to pacifism on the basis of the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ teachings. What the book also demonstrates is that there is no such break or significant shift between Discipleship and Ethics, but that once one understands the role both Sanctorum Communio and Act and Being (his dissertation and habilitation) plays in his development, one sees much more continuity — a Jesus based and christologically shaped ethic — than discontinuity. To argue that Bonhoeffer changed his mind requires that he significantly changed his mind and abandoned his Discipleship themes. Bonhoeffer himself denies this and affirms that he stands by his Discipleship. Without that evidence of shift between Discipleship and Ethics, the argument about Bonhoeffer shifting just doesn’t gain traction.

 

Put differently, the issue can’t be reduced to Bethge’s words but the pro-conspiracy folks must also show that there is evidence for a clear diminishment of the ethical theories at work Discipleship in the later Ethics. So, to argue Bethge got it right one must prove that Bonhoeffer changed his mind on how to do Christian ethics. Bonhoeffer himself says he stood by Discipleship late in his life.

 

Put yet one more way: the memory of Bethge is being challenged by the concrete evidence of the texts themselves. This is methodologically reasonable.

 

My own response:

 

1. I no longer place Bethge’s words at the level I would have placed them; I don’t know what to think of Bethge’s claims. Nation et al have, so I think, made a good case for testing Bethge’s statements over against the documentary evidence and, more importantly, the themes and their development in Bonhoeffer’s ethics.

 

2. The case for seeing continuity at a deep structural level — Christology, incarnation, new context — between Discipleship and Ethics is very hard to disprove. I think Nation et al have done their work here; for me to counter this would mean some very careful reading of Ethics and a comparison with Discipleship. I do not know Ethics well enough to do this nor will my schedule likely permit such work right now. (Though I’d love to do that.) All in all, then, I don’t think there’s sufficient evidence to see a crisis of change in Bonhoeffer’s thinking for us to accept the fairly standard realist shift in Bonhoeffer’s WW2 thinking.

 

3. In summary, I consider this book a successful challenge to the ruling paradigm that sees a major shift in Bonhoeffer from his idealism of Discipleship to a realist posture in Ethics [that is, he changed his mind]. In other words, if you remember my first post on this (28 Oct), I’m glad I removed that section. I no longer think Bonhoeffer made a tragic mistake in entering into the conspiracy and so shifted from his pacifism because I’m not convinced he entered into the conspiracy. Bonhoeffer may well have sustained his pacifism.