Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

A significant focus of Bonhoeffer’s theological work was the question, “What is the church?” This appeared both in his doctoral thesis work and his later experiments in communal Christian living in the seminary program at Zingst and Finkenwalde. Rather than identifying the church with any single institution, organization, or denomination, Bonhoeffer believed it was revealed in the shared life of any group of believers who were committed to living out the faith of Jesus as expressed in the Bible. This belief underscored his participation in the ecumenical movement, as he regarded the true church as extending beyond his own denomination. This conception of the church was not universally inclusive, however, as it excluded any group (like the Reichskirche under German Christian influence) which aligned itself with Nazism.

In Christian theology, to call a group of Christians “confessing” means that they are defined by their confession of faith. In traditional practice, this identifier was linked to the ancient creeds of the Christian tradition, particularly the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Creed. In 1930s Germany, Bonhoeffer helped found the Confessing Church, a body of churches who rejected the Hitler-focused messianism of the Reichskirche.

Discipleship (in German, Nachfolge), is the practice of living as a disciple (that is, a follower) of Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer conceived of Christian identity as a person being committed to actively modelling oneself on what he regarded as Jesus’s central ethical teachings. He argued that to be a disciple is to be a follower, one who not only believes certain doctrines about Jesus, but seeks to put them into practice.

The term ecumenical is based on a Greek word meaning “universal” (literally, “the whole inhabited world”) and has been used by Christians since the earliest days of the faith to speak of the binding unity of all believers in Christ. Beginning in the early 1900s, Christian denominations began seeking ways to promote unity amongst themselves, rather than the constant divisions and polemics that had marked intra-Christian doctrinal disputes for centuries. The ecumenical movement sought to accomplish this goal, calling together meetings of representatives from many different denominational bodies to hold dialogues and pass resolutions on matters pertaining to the whole Christian community. The World Council of Churches was one of the main institutional embodiments of the ecumenical movement.

In the context of this biography, “German Christians” does not refer to all Christians of German nationality, but rather to a particular movement within German Protestantism. The German Christians were an influential group which sought to align German Protestant church doctrine and practice with the values of the Nazi party, especially emphasizing nationalism, antisemitism, and personal fealty to Adolf Hitler. They also sought to reinterpret traditional Christian virtues which they saw as weak—meekness, peace, gentleness and so on—and to replace them with more Nazi-inclined virtues, like strength and patriotic valor. The German Christian movement’s influence was resisted by Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church, but the movement would eventually see its agenda come into play through the Nazi-sponsored establishment of the Reichskirche.