Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945 -- Review

DIETRICH BONHOEFFER 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance.  By Ferdinand Schlingensiepen. Translated by Isabel Best. New York: T & T Clark, 2010. xxix + 439 pp.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become an almost mythical being. His death at the hands of Nazi thugs has proven to be so inspirational that everyone wants to claim him as their own. Therefore, Death of God theologians of the 1960s could build a theology on Bonhoeffer’s theological musings about a “religionless Christianity” and a world “come of age.” On the other hand, radical antiabortionists have claimed his mantle and appealed to his involvement in the plot against Hitler as a rationale for their acts of violence directed at abortion clinics and their personnel. There is also the recent attempt by a biographer of Bonhoeffer to turn him into an American Evangelical. Yes, Bonhoeffer has become of the great modern saints, standing alongside Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Bonhoeffer’s life story and his theology are much more complex than any of these attempts to use his legacy would suggest. When you consider that he died at the age of 39, you can only wonder where his life and his theology would have gone had he lived a full life. This is especially true of this theology, which seems to have been bursting with new ideas in the closing years of his life, years spent in prison. All that we can do is speculate on where these threads might lead. There is, of course, there is sufficient material available that suggest that Bonhoeffer was on the verge of becoming one of the great and most creative theologians of the modern age. He interacted closely with theologians and biblical scholars such as Barth, Tillich, Harnack, Bultmann, and Niebuhr, and he left us with tantalizing clues to his agendas and concerns, clues that have proven fruitful for theological reflection since his death.  Indeed, because he did not live long enough to complete his own theological journey, posterity has tried to pull the threads in directions that have gone in many directions, both right and left.  One wonders where he would have taken his theology, especially in light of his interest in a "religionless Christianity" and his ponderings of what theology would look like in a world "come of age." 

The most important custodian of Bonhoeffer’s legacy has been his close friend and former student at the Finkenwalde Seminary, Eberhard Bethge. Bethge gathered together and published many of Bonhoeffer’s unpublished works, and wrote what has been to this point the most definitive biography, but the time has come for a new definitive biography. Ferdinand Schlingensiepen has written a full, fair, respectful, and theologically sophisticated assessment of his life. The author is a theologian who has deep regard for Bonhoeffer and his legacy, having been a founder of the International Bonhoeffer Society, and was a close friend of Eberhard Bethge. What stands out from this book is the author’s seemingly intentional decision not to claim Bonhoeffer for any particular contemporary ideological party or movement, but instead seeks to reveal to us in great detail the complexity that was Bonhoeffer’s life.

Schlingensiepen’s biography rests deeply in the collected works of Bonhoeffer, which are now largely available in English translation. He has made good use of these writings to give us a picture of Bonhoeffer’s life story, including his social and familial context, his travels to places as diverse as Rome, Mexico, London, and New York, as well as ministries with German churches in Barcelona and London, his deep involvement with the Ecumenical Movement, his involvement with and frustration with the Confessing Church, and his own complex theology that was forged in difficult times. We learn about a man who had deeply held pacifist views, who struggled with what to do with the requirement for military service (there was in Nazi Germany no room for conscientious objectors) and yet decided to join in the conspiracy against Hitler.

The Bonhoeffer who emerges from this biography is both a deeply rooted German and yet a man of the world. He was the product of an elite upper middle class family, with his mother, the daughter of a pastor, providing his initial religious instruction, though the family was by and large not particularly religious. His neighbors included figures such as Adolph Von Harnack, who would be one of his teachers at the University of Berlin.

Theologically, Bonhoeffer was his own man. Although attracted to Karl Barth’s theology, Bonhoeffer chose not to study with Barth, and ultimately he chose to take things in his own direction. Inspired by his visit to Rome, he chose to study ecclesiology, as is seen in his doctoral dissertation Sanctorum Communio. Later he would write practical theological texts that emerged from the church struggle and his need to provide resources for his students. His involvement in the struggle against Hitler would define his theological work, including his Ethics, while prison allowed him to look into the future and wonder where theology might go once the war was over and people began to recognize that the old ways had died with him.

Many Americans know of Bonhoeffer’s visits to the United States, including a final visit that could have saved his life, had he chosen to remain in America. But while he was fascinated by life in the United States, he found the American church and American theology frustrating and even shallow. While he held the African-American church in high regard, found Americans, both liberal and conservative, lacking in theological acumen, with little interest in questions of dogmatics.  Of course, his own theology had been forged in the church struggle against the Nazi movement, and he acutely understood that a rich theology was needed if the church was to survive the Nazi encroachment, which he believed was imposing a foreign ideology on the church that had nothing to do with Jesus Christ.

Bonhoeffer’s decision to join the resistance movement, which led ultimately to his execution even as American artillery was heard in the background, emerged from his theology and his deep love of Germany. Although many Germans would view him as a traitor, even after the war, he acted out of his desire to participate in the rebuilding of Germany. He used his ecumenical contacts in an unsuccessful effort to reach out to the Allies, in the hope that they would spare Germany a punishing blow, if only Hitler could be removed. This effort required him to pretend to support the war effort and even make the Hitler salute, so as to cover his activities. Once he was imprisoned, he devoted his life to theological exploration and ministry to his fellow prisoners. The closing weeks of his life are known to us only through the stories told by survivors, but these stories prove poignant as they are retold in this book. One of the stories is that Bonhoeffer continued working on a now lost theological manuscript up until the day of his death. We have an outline, which suggests that he was in the midst of a deeply creative theological moment, one that would have offered us a revolutionary turn in Christian theology for a world “come of age.”

Although the book concludes with an epilogue that speaks of how news of Bonhoeffer's death became known to the outside world, the final paragraph is brief and pointed.  In part this is because there is little information that is available from those final days.  What we know from official records is laid out accordingly:

During the morning hours of 9 April, Wilhelm Canaris, Hans Oster, his colleagues Theodor Strunk and Ludwig Gehre, Karl Sack and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were hanged and cremated.  Friederich von Rabenau was to follow them a few days later.  Their ashes, together with those of many thousands of other victims of Hitler's regime, form the now grass-grown pyramid in the middle of the former concentration camp at Flossenburg (p. 378).

In a footnote to the book (p. 406), Schlingensiepen dispenses with the oft told story about Bonhoeffer's last day, wherein he supposedly was seen in in his cell by an SS doctor kneeling at prayer.  The author notes taht this story is a fabrication as the doctor in question would not have had access to the cell, nor would he have seen Bonhoeffer offering prayers before mounting stairs to the gallows as there were no stairs.  Indeed, this doctor's duty was keeping prisoners alive so as to prolong their agony. 
Bonhoeffer is in the eyes of many a martyr, but it is unlikely that he would have seen himself in that light.  After all, besides Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of his brothers and two brothers-in-law were also executed as a result of their involvement in the conspiracy against Hitler.  He did what he believed he had to do, and he died like so many others because he dared to oppose an evil regime. 

This isn’t a quick read, but neither is it a ponderous one.  It's neither  a hagiography nor the remaking of  a life for ideological purposes.  It is a book written by one who is deeply devoted to the legacy of a man who has impacted the lives of so many in the years following his death at such a young age.  Therefore, it requires of us deep thought and reflection.  Even as it demythologizes the man, by bringing his life into clearer focus, it reveals to us a person whose life and work shines even brighter as the mythological layers are removed.

Anyone wishing to know Bonhoeffer’s story or needing a context in which to read Bonhoeffer’s collected works will find in this book much food for thought and reflection.  My only suggestion is that it be read with John Moses’ The Reluctant Revolutionary, (Bergahn Books, 2009), which gives greater attention than does this biography to the way in which Bonhoeffer challenged the ideological roots of German nationalism and anti-Semitism in ways that were ahead of their time.  He also goes into greater depth than does Schlingensiepen in laying out Bonhoeffer's post-war reception, especially in Germany, where he was considered by many a traitor to his nation for his participation in the attempt to overthrow Hitler.   His light shined brighter earlier outside of Germany than inside.   Read together, however, the reader will get a full-orbed picture of one of the most intriguing figures of modern history and modern theology.

• A briefer version of this review can be found at the Christian Century blog.

• Those interested in Bonhoeffer’s biography and know of the book authored by Eric Metaxas would be well served checking out these two reviews of that book, each written by editors of the English translation of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Works, and thus very familiar with Bonhoeffer's life and theology.
• Clifford Green in the Christian Century
• Victoria Barnett in the Association of Contemporary Church Historians Quarterly. 

Hijacking Bonhoeffer

Like many Christians, I have great regard for Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  I've read many of his works, am a subscriber to his Complete Works, took a class on Bonhoeffer in seminary, have read Eberhard Bethge's monumental biography, have read several others including John Moses' study The Reluctant Revolutionary, which I reviewed for the Christian Century, and Ferdinand Schingensiepen's new biography from T & T Clark (a review of which has been submitted to the editor of the Christian Century blog).  It is from that background that I sat down one day to skim the wildly popular "biography" of Bonhoeffer written by Eric Metaxas.  Just skimming through the book, aided by the index, I was horrified by what I found.  Bonhoeffer was none other than a conservative American Evangelical, whose battle with the German Christians can be compared to the battle between Intelligent Design folks (good people) and Evolutionists (bad people).  Barth is good, Harnack is bad -- though the Barth he describes seems far distant from the one I've read and studied.  

Now I didn't have the patience or desire to read the entire book, but I had hoped someone would write a response.  That response can be found in the most recent issue of the Christian Century.  Although the online version is available only to subscribers, Clifford Green, the Executive Editor of the English edition of Bonhoeffer's works offers a strongly worded and greatly needed response (is rebuke too strong a word) noting in some detail how Metaxas has hijacked Bonhoeffer in the name of rescuing Bonhoeffer from liberals, which, Green suggests is accomplished by downplaying Bonhoeffer's time spent at Union Theological Seminary and even more importantly basically dismissing the theological work he did while in prison.  Green writes:

Worse, if possible, [Metaxas's attempt to redefine Bonhoeffer's pacifist leanings] is Metaxas's embarrassment about Bonhoeffer's writing in Letters and Papers from Prison  about "religionless Christianity."  In a Trinity Forum interview he even stated that Bonhoeffer "never really said it," but then had to retract that because, well, Bonhoeffer did say it.  But, Metaxas continues, he wrote it privately in a letter to Bethge and never intended anyone to see it because it was " utterly out of keeping with the rest of Bonhoeffer's life."  He calls Bonhoeffer's theological prison reflections a "few bone fragments . . . set upon by famished kites and less noble birds, many of whose descendants gnaw them still" (CC, pp. 37-38).  

As Green points out those "few bone fragments" are directly connected to Bonhoeffer's Ethics.  While a lot of bad interpretation has taken place over the years, two wrongs don't make a right, and Metaxas's interpretation is at best self-serving.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer deserves much better!

If you want to truly know the nature of Bonhoeffer's life, then you would be better served reading Schlingensiepen's biography.  It may not be as rip-roaring a ride, but you'll get a better sense of the real Bonhoeffer than you ever will from Metaxas! 

Bad Company

Heather Cox Richardson

Like Randall, I’ve been keeping bad company lately.

My unsavory companion has been South Carolina’s James Henry Hammond, a leading figure before the American Civil War, who served as a US Senator from 1857 to 1860. Hammond was one of the South’s wealthiest planters, owner of hundreds of slaves, a member of the South’s elite. He was also arrogant, clueless, and a sexual predator.

On March 4, 1858, Hammond stood up in the Senate and delivered a speech that most people know for its famous line: "Cotton is king."

Historians tend to point to this speech for its misguided conviction that, if the tensions between the sections came to war, the South would win handily. In his speech, Hammond pointed out that the South encompassed 850,000 square miles—more territory than Great Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Spain—with a population more than four times what the colonies had had when they successfully revolted against England. The South had fine soil and good harbors, and it grew the crop on which industrial societies depended: cotton. If the South withheld its cotton from market for a year, entire countries would fall to their knees, Hammond declared. Cotton was king, indeed, according to Hammond.

As notable as this speech was for its assertion of Southern power, it was even more astonishing for its view of human society. It was here that Senator Hammond outlined what Abraham Lincoln later called the "mudsill" version of life. According to Hammond, all societies were made up of two classes. On the bottom were the "mudsills": drudges who were lazy, stupid, loyal, and happy with their lot. On this class rested civilization: the wealthy, educated, cultured men who advanced society—men like Hammond. This class should always lead society, for only its members knew what was best for a nation. If the mudsills ever got power, they would demand wealth redistribution, and human progress would halt.

This was, of course, the same era that saw extraordinary upward mobility in the United States. Immigrants were pouring into the North, beginning their climb to economic security or even prosperity. Young men and women were moving west, pushing Indians out of the way to improve their own lot, as well. At a time when wage workers were actually moving upward at an extraordinary rate, Hammond dismissed them as dimwits, condemned to drudgery to support the lifestyle of people like him.

Hammond’s vision was troubling enough, but his arrogant elitism was worse. When Hammond spoke, the nation was convulsed over a civil war in Kansas. Events there were very complicated, but by 1858 it was clear to everyone that the machinations of a pro-slavery legislature had enabled a rigged convention to draft a state constitution that the vast majority of settlers in Kansas loathed. This presented a legal conundrum, but while different sides argued, people died, in particularly brutal ways. Kansas was the issue of the day, and had been for almost four years.

What did sitting Senator Hammond, one of those to whom society should be trusted, say about this horror?

"The whole history of Kansas is a disgusting one, from the beginning to the end. I have avoided reading it as much as I could. Had I been a Senator before, I should have felt it my duty, perhaps, to have done so; but not expecting to be one, I am ignorant, fortunately, in a great measure, of details; and I was glad to hear [Senator Stephen Douglas's speech], since it excuses me from the duty of examining them."*

Why should he have bothered to learn anything about the major issue of the day? He already knew how a successful society should work. He didn’t have to bother about facts.

Julian of Norwich (Amy Frykholm) -- Review

JULIAN OF NORWICH: A Contemplative Biography. By Amy Frykholm. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010. xix + 147 pages.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were marked by political, cultural, religious, and social turmoil. The crusades continued in one form or another, with Spain being the center of the battle between Christian and Muslim forces. The Byzantine Empire was crumbling and the plague took a heavy toll on Europe. This was the era of the Avignon Papacy and the Great Schism, eras when politics played a central role in the life of the Western Church. This was also the era of John Wyclif and Jan Hus, proto-reformers who challenged the ecclesiastical foundations of the Church and set the stage for Luther and his contemporaries in the sixteenth century.

It was into this world, one in which superstition and fear made themselves felt, and where dissent was viewed with suspicion and the voice of an educated woman voice was rarely welcomed that Julian of Norwich appeared on the scene. Although there were few places where a woman, especially an inquisitive one, could safely explore intellectual and spiritual ideas, the convent and the anchorage provided that kind of safe space. Julian of Norwich has become a well-known figure in the modern age among those who desire to engage the mystical side of the Christian faith. Although not as well known as Catherine of Sienna or Teresa of Avila, Julian was one of the earliest women spiritual and theological writers in England.

According to Amy Frykholm, a journalist and member of the staff of the Christian Century, Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love was the first book composed in English by a woman in an era when books written in English were still uncommon. It may help to realize that this was the era of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Indeed, according to Frykholm this book, also known as the Showings, “remains one of the greatest theological works in the English language” (p. ix).

Despite the importance of Julian’s book, we know little about her, including her true name, which could possibly be taken from the church where she served as an anchorite – St. Julian’s in Norwich. Although her life largely remains a mystery, except for the clues that emerge out of her own writings, Frykholm has done an excellent job of ferreting out from her own writings and from what we know about the historical context to offer us a rather compelling picture of Julian’s life. In part because Julian was a contemplative herself, Frykholm has chosen to write a contemplative biography.

What we do know about Julian is that she was born around 1342 in Norwich, which was then the second largest city in Britain. Second only to London, it was a major commercial and industrial region, known for its wool trade. But, this city also suffered a devastating blow from the plague during the fourteenth century that cut the population nearly in half. It is possible that she had been married, but there’s no record of this. Then in 1373, at the age of thirty, she began to receive visions, which she discerned were coming to her from God. But, concerned about the nature of these visions she sought guidance from an Augustinian friar who lived in a monastery nearby. This friar served as a spiritual guide and teacher, introducing her to the great theological writings of the church, including the works of Augustine and the Scriptures themselves. After a time she began, under the guidance of this teacher, to write down her visions. But, because it was dangerous for a woman to be known as a mystic and writer – outside the confines of ecclesiastically recognized entities, her spiritual director suggested that she become an anchorite.

Sometime around the age of fifty, she attached herself to the church of St. Julian in Norwich. Although we do not have direct information about the nature of her installation, we do know how such events transpired, and so Frykholm imaginatively describes what likely occurred in Julian’s case. There she lived until her death around 1416, spending her life in prayer and in writing down her visions. An anchorage was a solitary cell, in which a devout person would spend their lives, essentially cut off from the outside world. As Frykholm tells it, the typical anchorage was a single room, with possibly three windows, one of which would have opened up to the church, so that the anchorite could hear the mass. Another open would have opened up to the quarters of the servant, who cared for the needs of the anchorite, and finally there would have been a window opening up to a porch, where the anchorite received visitors, including visitors seeking her spiritual guidance. A box would be placed on the porch, where members of the community might leave alms for her support. Members of the community provided food for her, in exchange for her prayers. She would have been assigned a servant, who lived in quarters attached to the anchorage, and who tended to her physical needs. It appears that she was able to leave the anchorage to attend services, but beyond that her world was contained behind walls and dark curtains until the day of her death, after which her book of visions began to gain a readership.

One of the reasons why Julian may have become so popular in the modern age is that her vision of God is one of love and grace. The Jesus who appeared to her spoke in gentle tones and rarely if ever was the focus of the visions on topics such as hell, purgatory, or sin, which stood at the forefront of much of the religious teaching of the era. Frykholm writes of the theology that emerges from her visions:

She herself had received no visions of hell or of purgatory. “God is all love,” she offered. “He is all mercy and all grace. There is no wrath in God.” She often felt that she was speaking to the black curtain alone and that her words floated no farther than an inch from her mouth. They wanted her to tell them that she had seen this or that loved one saved from the jaws of hell by the flight of angels or that Mary had come to her and personally whispered the name of the one who would be saved. Julian did not see these kinds of visions, and she could only tell them honestly that she saw no wrath in God. She felt their disappointment, but she hoped that something of God’s love might echo for them, long into the future (pp. 97-98).

There was a significant dissonance between her visions and the belief systems of her contemporaries, which led some to fear that her visions would prove disruptive to a church that not only taught a theology of fear but used it to keep control of the people. Reflecting on the concerns of a critic, the fear was that opening oneself to love, might lead a person into the arms of the heretics (p. 111).

Whether one has read the works of Julian of Norwich, Frykholm provides an enjoyable and readable look at a significant figure in the life of the church. Since Julian left few traces of her own life, except her writings, Frykholm must fill in the gaps with accounts of life in the era in which Julian made her presence known. One can read this as an introduction to Julian’s life, and to the spiritual life of the middle ages. In either case, the book is a worthy gift to the modern Christian pursuing the contemplative life, or the person seeking to understand the mystical tradition that has been passed down from one generation to the next.

Publishing Mark Twain's Long-Awaited Autobiography

Randall Stephens

W. D. Howells wrote his long-time friend Mark Twain: "I wonder why we hate the past so?" Twain snapped back "It's so damned humiliating." Mark Twain had a few choice things to say about history.

"I said there was but one solitary thing about the past worth remembering, and that was the fact that it is past-can't be restored."*

Elsewhere he paraphrased Herdotus: "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects."


Twain was a cynic. A very funny one at that. His views on religion were so volatile in his day--and he feared enough for his own reputation and for that of his immediate family--that he chose not to air them. Though a skeptic, he made observations like this: "All that is great and good in our particular civilization came straight from the hand of Jesus Christ." The bloody theology of Christianity along with its particularity, in his view, was repulsive. He confided to his notebook in 1896: "If Christ was God, He is in the attitude of One whose anger against Adam has grown so uncontrollable in the course of . . . If Christ was God, then the crucifixion is without dignity. It is merely ridiculous, for to endure several hours."

In the autobiography he worked on, Twain meditated on religion, writing, the West, his acquaintances, and more. (See the PBS Newshour segment on the autobio embedded here.)

The editors of the Mark Twain Project at Berkeley have their hands full. The projects website explains:

Housed in the midst of the archive is the Mark Twain Project, a major editorial and publishing program of The Bancroft Library. Its six resident editors are at work on a comprehensive scholarly edition of all of Mark Twain's private papers and published works. More than thirty of an estimated seventy volumes in The Works and Papers of Mark Twain are currently available, all published by the University of California Press.

Twain stipulated that the autobiography could be published one-hundred years after his death. "He used the autobiography as a chance to disburden himself of a lot of feeling," says Benjamin Griffin in the Newshour piece. "He left this out of the final version of the autobiography." For example, as a staunch anti-imperialist, Twain took aim at Teddy Roosevelt for his role in the massacre of Filipino guerrillas during the Spanish-American War.

"[Roosevelt] knew perfectly well that to pen 600 helpless and weaponless savages in a hole like rats in a trap and massacre them in detail during a stretch of a day-and-a-half from a safe position on the heights above was no brilliant feat of arms. He knew perfectly well that our uniformed assassins had not upheld the honor of the American flag."

I look forward to reading the completed version. (Or at least thumbing through it.) Not a light read, I'm sure.