BONHOEFFER: A PERSON FOR OUR TIMES (Post 2)

Who is Jesus for Bonhoeffer the resister of the Nazi’s?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a person for our times.

Many Christians today are bewildered by the current political landscape. The more we voice opposition, the less people listen, and the more dug in people become. Bonhoeffer faced similar circumstances in Nazi Germany, and he resisted with a life lived in integrity, truth, love for his neighbor and connection with people. And he died doing it. Bonhoeffer is truly a person for our times.

After Bonhoeffer returned to Germany from NYC in 1930/31, through various navigations, he remained resolute in his resistance against the Nazi cultural forces. His daily consistent faithful Christian response was remarkable. I suggest that if there’d been a few thousand more Bonhoeffers as pastors and a few thousand more Finkenwaldes (the learning community Bonhoeffer planted) in Germany in the thirties, Hitler would never have happened. And so Bonhoeffer’s theology is worth reading, understanding, and allowing oneself to be formed by in preparation for living in these times.

This is my 2^nd of 5 posts (intro post was last post) addressing Bonhoeffer’s theology in terms of 1.) his personal piety and devotional life, 2.) Jesus as teacher of principles or as Lord?, 3.) Jesus as restorer of creation, 4.) the role of the church in engaging injustice and evil, not necessarily in this order. I’m drawing entirely from Mark Thiessen Nation’s book Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis. Mark details carefully Bonhoeffer’s theology as it maps on to the course of his life. And so the book enables us to see how Bonhoeffer’s theology shaped how he lived. In the process, we are forced to examine our own theology, and the way it shapes us to live in these challenging times.

There are many more important pieces to Bonhoeffer’s theology beyond the four mentioned above. But these I find most pressing. Many ex-evangelicals today, having left the evangelical church and moved over into the progressive spaces, hoping to engage injustice/fascism with more integrity than their former white evangelical spaces, put their hope in a brand of theology/social activism that uses social media, and various platforms to ‘speak truth to power.’ They may be surprised to learn that Bonhoeffer, though he did some of these things, rejected an activism that was detached from the embodied presence of the church, and a dependence upon Jesus as center of all work for justice. It’s a theology that challenges both a.) mainline evangelicalism, b.) mainline progressive protestantism and offers a stunning alternative that I can’t turn my eyes away from. Again, it’s why I suggest Bonhoeffer is a person for our times.

Who is Jesus for Bonhoeffer?

Let us begin with Bonhoeffer’s Christology (no.2 in my list above). Who was Jesus for Dietrich Bonhoeffer? This is the question Bonhoeffer forces upon us. Who is Jesus for you? And how does this Jesus shape your social activism?

For Bonhoeffer, Jesus was not merely a belief about Jesus, or a set of ethics from Jesus, to then be lived and advocated for. Jesus is the risen Lord Jesus Christ. The same could not be said for most German protestant Christians of Bonhoeffer’s time including the theologians of Berlin he studied with. For them, Jesus was a set of ethics, that eventually got amalgamated with a nation state culture. Bonhoeffer’s Christology rejected that. Heavily influenced by his dialogues with Barth, Jesus the risen present Lord shaped his whole life, his approach to social justice, and his response to Nazi Germany.

Thiessen-Nation, in chapter four, exposits Bonhoeffer during his writing of Discipleship (originally The Cost of Discipleship in English). He notes that Bonhoeffer names “our sole concern” to be “Jesus himself” in the opening sentences of the book. “Because Jesus is the Christ,” to quote Bonhoeffer, “he has authority to call and demand obedience to his word.” And here is the zinger: “Jesus calls to discipleship, not as a teacher and a role model, but as Christ, the Son of God” (57). “This means completely breaking through anything pre-programmed, idealistic, or legalistic. No further content is possible because Jesus is the content.” (p. 97 MTN)

As such, the life Bonhoeffer lived in resistance to Hitler was grounded in a direct and confident submission to the Lordship of Christ over the world and the living presence of Christ over his life in every concrete situation. Bonhoeffer had lived with the Jesus of German Protestantism of his professors at Berlin and found it wanting. Here Jesus had become a teacher only, a symbol of an ethic or a justice, and now ethics and justice becomes the purview of human effort, human ego, the nation state and eventually war. The church becomes a cultural Christianity incapable of distinguishing its volkish political agendas from the discipleship of following Jesus.

It reminds us all, those who have eyes to see, that the same dynamic is happening again and again, as certain forms of so-called Christianity line up with MAGA politics, or groups of progressive Christians line up their Christianity with a different version of politics. Bonhoeffer pursues another way, and it starts with Jesus the Lord, and a people submitted to His Lordship over the world, not the state’s lordship over us all depending upon which party governs.

To all of us caught in the political turmoil of our times, Bonhoeffer therefore gives us a pause. We must check our Christology. Is Jesus 1.) Lord, the living risen Christ ruling over the world? Or is He 2.) a teacher of ethics, 3.) a model for how we can ourselves do justice in the world? He certainly is 2.) and 3.). But he is so much more. And it’s questionable what happens with 2.) and 3.) when there is no 1.).

Bonhoeffer’s Christology warns that if our Christology goes to 2.) and 3.) apart from 1.) we shall be caught up in an agenda of another kind in Jesus’ name, in danger of being absorbed into the world’s violence and politics in the way the German protestants became absorbed into Hitler. In my mind, this goes equally for both MAGA evangelicals and progressive ex-post evangelicals.

Is Jesus a Principle or is He Lord?

Bonhoeffer’s Christology reshapes one’s agency in the world.

Thiessen-Nation recounts how Bonhoeffer challenges the notion of a Christian ethic. There is a tendency within German Protestantism “to move from teachings in, say, the Sermon on the Mount, to formulating ethics in terms of principles. Principles then become independent of the will of God and our relationship to God, assuming their own autonomous authority (apart from God)” (p.55). As Bonhoeffer puts it in his Barcelona 1929 lectures: “…if there were indeed a universally valid moral law, following it would involve taking the path from human beings to God … In that case, I would control my own relationship with God, as it were, and there could be ethical action without any immediate relationship to God… I would then become a slave to my principles…” 55

This may seem odd to the average Christian evangelical (or ex-evangelical) social activist. We are so used to thinking of going out into the world and working for the cause of justice on behalf of Jesus based on principles. Jesus is our teacher, our inspiration! But Bonhoeffer tells us, in so doing, we have left Jesus the Lord behind. We have not recognized Jesus is the one working in all situations Lord of the world whom we encounter and cooperate with.

Bonhoeffer expounds this notion in multiple ways throughout his entire corpus. At the opening of Ethics, fir instance, from the Genesis scene in the garden, he argues we cannot presume to know good and evil before we encounter God concretely in His command to us in each situation. The minute we take control is the minute God is no longer God. It is the encounter with Jesus in every situation that Bonhoeffer brings to the fore. It is Bonhoeffer’s mindful presence with Jesus in all situations that shapes every encounter with evil, and the disillusioned people carrying it out, and guides his actions as cooperations with Jesus. There is no ultimate justice apart from Jesus.

Who Is Jesus For You As We Seek To Navigate the Times?

Bonhoeffer, if taken seriously, reshapes how every Christian enters the world for justice. We will NOT enter to take control and see it as our own efforts to save the world (Thiessen-Nation builds a compelling case that Bonhoeffer did NOT participate in the assassination attempt on Hitler). We will cooperate with His workings to reconcile the world to Himself. Jesus cannot be relegated to merely the teacher of moral principles of justice, or as our model to imitate. He is God, Lord of the world, who has defeated death, evil and sin, and He is working in his power to set the world right. Jesus has been given “all power and authority in heaven and on earth.” But it is not a coercive, violent power. That would be worldly power. It is the power of God, revealed in Christ, working among all things to bring reconciliation, healing and renewal. And this changes the way we enter the world. This changes the way we engage the world of MAGA. This changes the kinds of people we are. There is nothing to fear. We can be a different kind of people.

It's all quite stunning.

How does Bonhoeffer’s Christology change the way you enter the world for justice?

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