![]() 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."īonhoeffer, though privy to various plots on Hitler's life, was never at the center of the plans. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the Christian people of Germany. Within months of his arrival, he wrote theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, "I have made a mistake in coming to America. But he couldn't shake a feeling of responsibility for his country. ![]() Bonhoeffer also became a part of a plot to overthrow, and later to assassinate, Hitler.Īs his tactics were changing, he had gone to America to become a guest lecturer. Now he signed up with the German secret service (to serve as a double agent-while traveling to church conferences over Europe, he was supposed to be collecting information about the places he visited, but he was, instead, trying to help Jews escape Nazi oppression). To this point he had been a pacifist, and he had tried to oppose the Nazis through religious action and moral persuasion. But after the seminary was discovered and closed, the Confessing Church became increasingly reluctant to speak out against Hitler, and moral opposition proved increasingly ineffective, so Bonhoeffer began to change his strategy. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."ĭuring this time, Bonhoeffer was teaching pastors in an underground seminary, Finkenwalde (the government had banned him from teaching openly). In the meantime, Bonhoeffer had written The Cost of Discipleship (1937), a call to more faithful and radical obedience to Christ and a severe rebuke of comfortable Christianity: "Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. ![]() Together with other pastors and theologians, they organized the Confessing Church, which announced publicly in its Barmen Declaration (1934) its allegiance first to Jesus Christ: "We repudiate the false teaching that the church can and must recognize yet other happenings and powers, personalities and truths as divine revelation alongside this one Word of God. Hitler's anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions intensified-as did his opposition, which included the likes of theologian Karl Barth, pastor Martin Niemoller, and the young Bonhoeffer. He then spent a year in America, at New York's Union Theological Seminary, before returning to the post of lecturer at the University of Berlin.ĭuring these years, Hitler rose in power, becoming chancellor of Germany in January 1933, and president a year and a half later. Then it was back to Germany to write a dissertation, which would grant him the right to a university appointment. Timelineįreud publishes first work on psychoanalysisĭietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prisonīonhoeffer graduated from the University of Berlin in 1927, at age 21, and then spent some months in Spain as an assistant pastor to a German congregation. When at age 14, Dietrich announced he intended to become a minister and theologian, the family was not pleased. Bonhoeffer's skill at the piano, in fact, led some in his family to believe he was headed for a career in music. His mother was daughter of the preacher at the court of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his father was a prominent neurologist and professor of psychiatry at the University of Berlin.Īll eight children were raised in a liberal, nominally religious environment and were encouraged to dabble in great literature and the fine arts. From pacifist to co-conspiratorīonhoeffer was not raised in a particularly radical environment. One exception was theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was determined not only to refute this idea but also to topple Hitler, even if it meant killing him. So despondent had been the German people after the defeat of World War I and the subsequent economic depression that the charismatic Hitler appeared to be the nation's answer to prayer-at least to most Germans. Another pastor put it more succinctly: "Christ has come to us through Adolph Hitler." … Hitler is the way of the Spirit and the will of God for the German people to enter the Church of Christ." So spoke German pastor Hermann Gruner. It is because of Hitler that Christ, God the helper and redeemer, has become effective among us. "The time is fulfilled for the German people of Hitler. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate." "Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.
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