Twenty-eight years ago this year (April 9, 1945) Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hung to death at the youthful age of 39. An eye-witness account by the camp doctor in the Flossenburg concentration camp in
For 12 years, the years of the great holocaust’s dark night, Bonhoeffer had been a marked man.
He was cut off the air in
He was a catalyst in the organizing of the Pastors’ Emergency League.
He was a leader in the
He served as the director of an illegal seminary.
His seminary was dissolved by the Gestapo.
He was forbidden to speak or preach by the Gestapo.
He was forbidden to publish.
He carried on an assignment as an intelligence agent in Hitler’s own military counterespionage operation.
He was engaged by night in political resistance activity.
He was a go-between on behalf of the resistance movement and contacts outside
His word from the resistance by way of Bishop George Bell of Chichester was relayed to Anthony Eden, to Sir
He prayed for the defeat of his own country in war.
On April 5, 1943, he was arrested by the Gestapo
He spent the last two years of his life under guard—first in prison cells, then in the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp, and finally in the Flossenburg concentration camp.
He was executed at Flossenburg, together with such other resistance figures as Admiral Canaris and General Oster.
His brother-in-law and partner in conspiracy, Hans von Dohnanyi, was murdered
the same day at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Less than two weeks later, his brother, Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer, and another brother-in- law, Rudiger Schleicher (father of Mrs. Eberhard Bethge) was shot to death by SS men.
A telegram from Willem Visser ‘t Hooft in
Sadly, the timing in the telegram was a bit off; it wasn’t the middle of April. It was April 9. If it had been the middle of April, Bonhoeffer might be alive today because only one week after he was executed, the Allied forces liberated the Flossenburg camp. If he had lived, he would still be only 66 years today, just beginning to enjoy the first fruits of retirement, or perhaps teaching a seminar in a theological seminary on “Letters and Papers from Prison.”
One can pick up any writing of Bonhoeffer and locate an epigrammatic text. He is so quotable.
For example, from No Rusty Swords: “One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.”
Or, from The Cost of Discipleship: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting for costly grace … When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die.”
Or, from Ethics: “To be conformed with the Incarnate, that is to be a real man. It is man’s right and duty that he should be man … Ethical discourse cannot be conducted in a vacuum, in the abstract, but only in a concrete context.”
Or, from Letters and Papers from Prison: “What is bothering me so incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today.”
Among the most tantalizing of Bonhoeffer’s final thoughts occur in his “Outline for a Book,” included in Letters and Papers from Prison. He had hoped to write a book that would entail three chapters: A Stocktaking of Christianity, The Real Meaning of the Christian Faith, and Conclusions. There is some reason to believe that a hefty section of the book was written before his death, but the prison guards who had no earthly conception of the sublime value of the manuscript might subsequently have destroyed it without leaving a trace. In his all-too-brief “Conclusions,” Bonhoeffer offers these glimpses into the nature of the Church of Jesus Christ:
The church is the church only when it exists for others. To make a start it should give away all its property to those in need … The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others … It must not underestimate the importance of human example (which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus and is so important in Paul’s teaching); it is not abstract argument, but example, that gives its word emphasis and power. (I hope to take up later this subject of example and its place in the New Testament; it is something that we have almost entirely forgotten.)
Bonhoeffer was disappointed with the performance of the churches during their time of testing under Hitler—not only the masses of people in their blind obedience to Nazi tyranny, but also the Confessing Church which had shown such great courage and promise a decade earlier. The years of pressurized existence in a totalitarian state had taken its toll so that not more than one out of ten Christians remained faithful and obedient no matter what the cost.
Reformation time in the church year is always an opportune period for stocktaking among the people of God. What does this affirmation say to us in the now: “The church is the church only when it exists for others”? How does this word judge our Christian stewardship? What does it say to our church schedules? What message does it have in our ministry to people where they hurt—to the unchurched, the hungry, the poor, the voiceless, the exploited, the disenfranchised? What meaning does it have for our own personal Christian lifestyle—the clothes we buy, the food we eat, the house in which we live, the way we use our leisure time, our identification with the struggles of people around us?
The word of Benjamin Reist, a provocative interpreter of Bonhoeffer’s thought, is on target:
In its own way, the “Outline for a Book” symbolizes the promise of Bonhoeffer. We must fill it out on our own, not worrying about how he might have done it, but rejoicing rather in the task that we can carry forward because of his prior effort … Dietrich Bonhoeffer served the Man for others by becoming a man for others. So must we all, for we, too, have a promise to share.
The church is the church only when it exists for others. It must tell persons of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others. This is surely a significant implication of what it means to be the body of Christ today.
Reprinted by permission from the “Covenant Companion,”
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