Re-examining the Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Third Reich’s Slaughtered Saint

The key question: Does he pass the fruit test?

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Nazi Germany provided a lot of fodder for people who have something to say about Christianity.

For one thing, there’s Adolf Hitler, who claimed to be a Christian. We can dispense with that claim pretty quickly, though: it wasn’t backed up by his fruit.

The Bible quotes Jesus as saying, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. By their fruits you will know them.” (Matthew 7:15–17, New King James Bible)

The fruit test disqualifies Hitler as a Christian.

But what about people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer — those who look like they pass the fruit test?

Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, ecumenist, and peace activist. He wrote about Christian faith, community, grace, and ethics. Appalled by Nazi atrocities, Bonhoeffer joined (an obviously unsuccessful) conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. Imprisoned for the last two years of his life, he was hanged at age 39, just weeks before the end of the war.

Growing up in the Lutheran church, I’d always heard of Bonhoeffer spoken of with the highest respect. He was held up as a martyr and quasi-saint. Actually, I had the vague notion that he’d died because, like Corrie Ten Boom and her selfless family, he was sheltering Jews.

Whoops. Guess not.

Apparently, Bonhoeffer died more for his complicity in the plot to exterminate the Führer than anything else. Granted, Adolf Hitler did unspeakable evil, but was it Bonhoeffer’s place to seek Hitler’s death?

Again, going back to that troublesome text, the Bible, we read, “Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, ‘I will take revenge; I will pay them back,’ says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19, New Living Translation (NLT))

Anyway, at least Bonhoeffer, motivated by faith in Christ, spoke up for the Jews. That’s something that most German Christians, to their shame, didn’t do.

But was it faith in Christ that motivated him? Or was it faith in something else?

A reader who commented on one of my stories, Anthony Deryabin, presented evidence that led me to believe that Bonhoeffer wasn’t motivated by faith in Jesus Christ.

Christians can hold different beliefs on things like what will happen at the end of the world (the last book of the Bible, Revelation, is notoriously difficult to interpret). But classical, orthodox Christianity has a few core beliefs.

First, everyone has done, said, and thought wrong things, which is known as sin. God is holy and just and can’t live with sin. However, He’s also merciful and sent His Son, Jesus, to earth to die for our sins. As fully man and fully God, Jesus was the only perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins. When we put our trust in Him, we’re saved from our sins and become Christians.

In his “Letters and Papers from Prison,” Bonhoeffer discounted those Biblical basics. His words sounded Christian, but they had distinctly un-Christian meanings. So, when you look and listen closely, his fruit is lacking.

Just because you claim to be a Christian doesn’t mean you are one.

That holds true for both Hitler and Bonhoeffer.

In Bonhoeffer’s outline for a never-published book, he talks about “the coming age of mankind.” In this coming age, he says:

“But the spiritual force is lacking. The question is: What protects us against the menace of organization? Man is again thrown back on himself. He has managed to deal with everything, only not with himself. He can insure against everything, only not against man. In the last resort, it all turns on man.”

How does anyone who reads the Bible arrive at the conclusion that it all turns on man? (I don’t know that Bonhoeffer read the Bible, though; that’s a stereotype I have of preachers.) But wait, there’s more:

“The religionlessness of man who has come of age. ‘God’ as a working hypothesis, as a stop-gap for our embarrassments, has become superfluous (as already indicated).”

Bonhoeffer’s doublespeak is so convoluted that it would be almost comical if it didn’t deal with such serious matters. The Creator of the universe, the Redeemer of mankind, is the be-all and the end-all, the Alpha and the Omega. He’s essential, not superfluous.

Bonhoeffer continues, “Generally in the Confessing Church: standing up for the church’s ‘cause’, but little personal faith in Christ. ‘Jesus’ is disappearing from sight.”

That may describe what’s happening in the culture, but it’s not something that should be promoted. Actually, though, I don’t think Jesus is disappearing. People like to have him on their side, but they prefer the sanitized, tame-teacher version.

In the second chapter of the book he planned to write, Bonhoeffer says, “…Faith is participation in this being of Jesus (incarnation, cross, and resurrection). Our relation to God is not a ‘religious’ relationship to the highest most powerful, and best Being imaginable — that is not authentic transcendence — but our relation to God is a new life in ‘existence for others’, through participation in the being of Jesus. The transcendental is not infinite and unattainable tasks, but the neighbour who is within reach in any given situation. God in human form — not, as in oriental religions, in animal form, monstrous, chaotic, remote, and terrifying, nor in the conceptual forms of the absolute, metaphysical, infinite, etc., nor yet in the Greek divine-human form of ‘man in himself’, but ‘the man for others’, and therefore the Crucified, the man who lives out of the transcendent.”

Huh? What does that even mean? Talk about using Christian-sounding rhetoric to obscure the true meaning of the Cross!

Yes, we’re supposed to love others as ourselves, but that should flow from a heart that loves God. When Jesus was asked to name the greatest commandment, he replied: “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew 26:36–40, NLT)

In essence, Bonhoeffer proposed an ear-tickling, man-centered, social justice theology. It all sounds warm and fuzzy, but Jesus came as a sacrifice for sinners, not as a cure for poverty. Read the Gospels (the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) in the Bible, and take note of how few mentions Jesus made of the poor.

Not that helping the poor isn’t a good thing. It’s just that Jesus is the main thing.

If Bonhoeffer ever knew that, he’d abandoned that belief by the end of his life.

I would say Bonhoeffer was courageous in many respects. We can celebrate him for that. But that doesn’t mean we should celebrate him as a Christian martyr.

Bonhoeffer didn’t die for Christianity. He died for a faith of his own formulation.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your comments (keep them respectful, please). I based much of this story on information provided in Anthony Deryabin’s exhaustive treatment of the subject. For the full scoop, read his stories. You can start here:

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