Christian Moral Action: Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Overview & Early Life
Key Focus: Impact and Childhood
Significance: Outstanding 20th-century academic theologian who lived a life that attempted to embody Christian moral principles and spiritual life, profoundly impacting both Protestant and Catholic theology.
Birth: Born 4 February 1906 in Breslau, Germany (now Poland) to Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer.
Family Background: Moved to Berlin in 1912 (father became a professor of psychiatry/neurology). He had an idyllic childhood but it was disrupted by WWI and the traumatic death of his elder brother, Walter, who was killed in action in 1918.
Path to Theology: His family was not a church-going household, though they kept to Lutheran traditions. Walter’s death likely persuaded him to study theology. By age 13, he had a vision of how the Church should be transformed, convincing his parents to let him pursue it.
University & Theological Shifts
Key Focus: Academic Foundations & Critiques of Church/State
Education: Attended Tübingen University in 1923, then Berlin University a year later. Completed his doctoral thesis (Act and Being) in 1930 and became a lecturer at Berlin.
Radical Christianity: Began developing a radical form of Christianity, arguing that the Church should actively challenge the state to achieve justice rather than letting the state make all major decisions.
Critique of German Tradition: Challenged the historical German understanding of Luther’s "Two Kingdoms" argument (which viewed Church and state as separate spheres). Bonhoeffer argued this gave too much power to the state, undermined Christianity's true purpose, and misinterpreted Luther. Much of his later work was a radical reinterpretation of Luther.
Experience in America
Key Focus: Global Influence & Racial Justice
Timeline: Travelled to New York in September 1930 to study with influential US theologians.
Critique of US Theologians: He felt they focused on Christian social responsibility but underestimated the depths of human goodness/sinfulness.
The Black Church Influence: Introduced to members of Black churches. Their vibrant Christianity (vastly different from his own Lutheran tradition) showed him how the Church needed to build relationships across racial and geographical borders.
Outcome: Even before Hitler came to power, Bonhoeffer’s theology had already established a radical challenge to traditional concepts of Church and state.
Resistance to Nazism
Key Focus: Opposing Hitler and Taking Action
The Radio Broadcast (1 Feb 1933): Just two days after Hitler became Chancellor, Bonhoeffer delivered a radio talk called "The Younger Generation's Altered View of the Concept of the Führer". He openly criticized the 'leadership principle', warning that if people gave power to an earthly leader (Führer), they turned him into an idol and a "misleader" (Verführer). His microphone was cut off mid-broadcast.
Two Fronts of Active Resistance: From this point on, he worked actively for the demise of the state in two distinct ways:
The Confessing Church: He became a member of this breakaway group of clergy who refused to accept the Nazi policy that only Aryan Germans could be church members, declaring allegiance to Christ alone.
The Resistance (Widerstand): He joined the political/military resistance movement, which he considered the most momentous decision of his life.
The 1939 Dilemma & Return to Germany
Key Focus: Flight, duty, and the decision to face the Nazi regime.
Context: Before June 1939, Bonhoeffer had already endured several years of investigation by the Gestapo due to his role training clergy in the Confessing Church.
The Dilemma: In June 1939, he returned to America for a brief visit as a theology lecturer in New York. This was a short-term escape from a massive problem: he was about to be called up to serve in Hitler's army. Refusing would condemn him as a pacifist and damage the reputation of the Confessing Church.
The Decision: He quickly realized that staying in America was a mistake. To be true to his teachings, he had to return to Germany and actively try to overthrow the Nazi regime.
Letter to Reinhold Niebuhr (July 1939): He wrote to his American theologian friend explaining that he had no right to help rebuild Christian life in Germany after the war if he did not share the trials of this time with his people.
Theological Shift – Critique of Pacifism
Key Focus: Rejecting non-resistance in the face of absolute evil.
Re-evaluating Pacifism: Up to 1939, Bonhoeffer thought of himself as a pacifist, but he realized this stance was a form of "secular pacifism" rather than a true Christian view.
Secular Pacifism: A term invented by Bonhoeffer to describe a false, non-religious belief that society can achieve a state of non-violence simply by refusing to use force. He called it a "scandal" because it fails to acknowledge that true justice and peace do not belong to this world, meaning it fails to tackle active evil and instead perpetuates lies and injustice.
The "Terrible Alternatives": Joining the resistance was not a choice between "good" and "bad," but a choice between "terrible alternatives" where all options inevitably carry bad consequences. For German Christians, the choice was either willing the defeat of their nation so Christian civilization could survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying Christian civilization.
Key Quote (The Cost of Discipleship): "If we took the precept of non-resistance as an ethical blueprint for general application, we should indeed be indulging in idealistic dreams: we should be dreaming of a utopia with laws which the world would never obey."
The Abwehr & Underground Resistance
Key Focus: Espionage and humanitarian aid.
The Cover: Upon his return to Germany in 1940, Bonhoeffer joined the Abwehr (the Counter Intelligence Section of the Armed Forces).
The Partner: He joined alongside his brother-in-law, Hans Dohnanyi.
Underground Work: Unofficially, both men used their positions within military intelligence to work for the Resistance and plot the overthrow of Hitler's regime.
Key Actions: Together, they gathered crucial information to aid the Resistance and actively supported the victims of Nazism, specifically helping Jewish people escape.
Key Terms
Utopia: Literally means 'no place' or 'good place'; refers to an ideal, perfect state that represents an unrealistic view of the world.
Secular Pacifism: The false belief that a state of absolute non-violence can be achieved by society without relying on a Christian worldview or confronting active evils.
The Abwehr: The German military intelligence department that Bonhoeffer infiltrated to act as a double agent for the resistance.
Arrest and Execution
Key Focus: Imprisonment and final days.
The Arrest: On 5 April 1943, the Gestapo arrested and imprisoned Bonhoeffer and his brother-in-law Hans Dohnanyi for helping Jewish immigrants escape to Switzerland.
Tegel Prison: He spent 18 months in Berlin's Tegel Military Prison, writing many letters, a play, and a novel.
Concentration Camps: After a failed Resistance assassination attempt on Hitler (24 July 1944) implicated them, they were moved through several prisons, including Buchenwald concentration camp.
Execution: In 1945, Hitler ordered all resisters to be annihilated. The Gestapo tracked Bonhoeffer to Flossenbürg concentration camp. Shortly before US liberation, he was given a mock trial and hanged on 9 April 1945. His brother Klaus and Hans Dohnanyi were executed weeks later on 23 April.
The Role of the State and Church
Key Focus: When the state loses its purpose.
Obedience to Government: Bonhoeffer agreed with Luther that a Christian's baseline duty is to obey the government, whose job is to maintain law and order against human disorder.
The Problem of Tyranny: When a state gathers too much power, subordinates justice to its own policies, or claims it is the embodiment of justice to justify its actions, it inflates its own self-importance.
Ultimate Limits: A state fails if it does not acknowledge its obedience to God’s will. It can never represent God's will perfectly and must never assume ultimate power.
Church's Role: The Church must not become an arm of the state; its job is to keep the state in check.
Knowing the "Will of God"
Key Focus: Discerning right action in crisis.
Biblical Standard: Traditional teaching relies on passages like Mark 12:17 ("Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's...") and Romans 13:1 ("Let every person be subject to the governing authorities...") to argue Christians must obey the state.
The Core Question: Bonhoeffer asks: At what point is the state acting so unjustly that it is a Christian's duty to disobey?
Beyond "Good and Bad": In Ethics, he writes that a Christian shouldn't just ask abstract questions like "How can I be good?" or "How can I do good?", but must instead ask the ultimate question: "What is the will of God?"
Moment of Action: In No Rusty Swords, he argues God’s will is only clear in the moment of action. Discerning it requires a complete surrender of personal ambition, self-interest, and safety, submitting entirely to God in an act of faith.
Critique of Autonomy: Bonhoeffer rejected human-based moral principles or treating "love" as an autonomous, self-evident human rule, arguing this reduces God to a human idea. True liberating action responds directly to God's will.
Leadership vs. Tyranny
Key Focus: True leadership vs. the Führer concept.
True Leadership: True leadership is grounded in and responsible to the community. A genuine leader can be rationally justified and remains accountable to a specific person or principle.
The German Führer Fault: By contrast, Hitler’s style of leadership operated completely divorced from society. It invented an "imperfect father and teacher" dynamic where the leader is treated as extraordinary and absolute.
Surrendering Freedom: Because the German public viewed Hitler this way, the collective group surrendered its own freedoms and identity in blind obedience to a tyrant.
Justification of Civil Disobedience
Key Focus: The limits of compliance.
Secular Institutions: In Ethics, Bonhoeffer notes that state, family, and economy are worldly orders subject to God. They are secular institutions that exist for the sake of Christ, meaning a Christian's ultimate responsibility is to a Christian ethic that transcends these systems.
Responsibility to the State: Christians have a "responsibility to the state," but this does not mean turning a blind eye to evil if the state creates "unreasonable situations".
The Nazi Context: In Germany, the state was seduced by Nazism, marginalized minorities, and forced gross distortions of God's order. Therefore, civil disobedience became an active requirement.
Tyrannicide & Rejecting Consequentialism
Key Focus: The ethical weight of plotting to kill Hitler.
Tyrannicide: The deliberate killing of a tyrant for the common good. Bonhoeffer concluded that this was a Christian duty to establish social order, reinterpreting it as an act of 'suffering disobedience'.
Rejecting Self-Righteousness: He emphasized that disobedience is never easy to justify; no one can claim their actions are purely "good" or "moral" on their own merits. He deeply criticized anyone who tried to completely sanitize or safely justify their actions.
Rejecting Consequentialism: He dismissed consequential ethics (the belief that the 'end justifies the means'). Humans can never accurately predict or weigh the final outcomes of their actions to declare them "right". Instead, killing Hitler was a necessary leap of faith, accepting guilt to prevent absolute evil from prevailing.
Key Quote (Letters and Papers from Prison): "But when men are confined to the limits of duty, they never risk a daring deed on their own responsibility, which is the only way to score a bull's eye against evil and defeat it."
The Church as a Moral Community
Key Focus: Beyond the middle-class institution.
Solidarity: Bonhoeffer agreed with Kant that moral action cannot occur in isolation; acting out of duty means acting in solidarity with all humankind.
The Church's Purpose: The Church's true role is to be a moral and spiritual community that equips individuals with the tools and attitudes needed to live morally in the world.
Stripping False Pretence: He argued that the Church must stop being the comfortable, middle-class institution it had become over the centuries. It needs to shed its false pretences of religiosity, grow up, and fully engage with a religionless world.
Religionless Christianity
Key Focus: Faith in a world "come of age."
Democratic Outlook: While critical of certain elements of liberal societies, Bonhoeffer fully supported personal autonomy and democracy as essential for choosing a happy life.
World Come of Age: He used this phrase to describe how modern Western culture had grown up, discarding childish, superstitious practices of religion in favor of a rational view of the world.
The Western Void: Discarding religion left a moral and spiritual vacuum—a "Western void." This void allowed dangerous, toxic ideologies like National Socialism (Nazism) to fill the gap and effectively become a new "religion."
Definition: Religionless Christianity is Bonhoeffer's term for a pure form of Christianity stripped of the historical baggage of the past and completely unpolluted by contemporary ideological beliefs.
No Rusty Swords & The Confessing Church
Key Focus: Outworn ethics and ecclesiastical division.
No Rusty Swords: A metaphor used by Bonhoeffer to describe outworn, outdated ethical attitudes. He argued that old theological ideas have no use today; Christians must rethink ethics theologically to challenge the contemporary world.
The Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche): Formed as a direct reaction against the Nazified "German Christian" movement (Deutsche Christen), which had blended Christianity with Aryan nationalism.
The Aryan Paragraph: When Hitler’s state ordered the removal of all non-Aryan descent clergy from the Church, Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller organized a breakaway opposition group.
The Barmen Declaration (1934): Formulated largely by Karl Barth, it stated that a Christian's primary duty is to Christ, and explicitly denied that the state could override Nazi-opposed theological truths.
Disillusionment and Finkenwalde
Key Focus: Underground training and the calling of the Church.
Late Disillusionment: In prison, Bonhoeffer grew deeply critical of the Confessing Church. He felt it had become too defensive, too isolated, and too focused on its own institutional survival rather than actively engaging with the world to topple Hitler.
Finkenwalde (1935): After returning from the USA, Bonhoeffer took charge of an underground seminary at Finkenwalde to train ministers for the Confessing Church, bypassing Nazi-controlled state churches.
The Himmler Decree (August 1937): The Nazi regime declared the training of Confessing Church ministers illegal, and the Gestapo closed Finkenwalde down in September 1937.
The Five Practices of Finkenwalde
Key Focus: Building a community of disciples.
Discipline: Strictly managing oneself in relationship with others, focusing on practical Christian virtues and physical exercise (such as long community bicycle rides).
Meditation: Developing a deep, intentional foundation for prayer.
Bible: Centering daily life on frequent reading, discussion, evening lectures, and intelligent scriptural study.
Brotherhood: Binding the community together through mutual love and the Holy Spirit, ensuring former students stayed connected via regular reports and letters.
Community for Others: Insisting that the Church must be an outward-looking community of the forgiven (not the perfect), reflecting how Christ died for all human beings by actively engaging with the secular world.
The Cost of Discipleship & Ethics as Action
Key Focus: Practical christology and the rejection of abstract systems.
The Core Focus: Bonhoeffer’s unique contribution to ethics was focusing entirely on obeying the will of God right now, rather than getting bogged down in abstract philosophical debates about good versus evil.
Everyday Grounding: Christianity is not an otherworldly, abstract system of human thought. It is fundamentally grounded in the everyday, concrete world.
The Influence of Karl Barth: Bonhoeffer’s time with Swiss Calvinist theologian Karl Barth reinforced the idea that humans cannot know God through abstract thought alone.
The Ultimate Question: Rather than building a safe, general moral code, Christians must constantly ask practical, Christ-centered questions like: "Who is Christ for us today?"
Supreme Revelation: God chooses to reveal Himself not through a general rulebook, but through a definitive, concrete act: the historical person and real-world life of Jesus Christ.
Key Vocabulary
Liberal Societies: Systems developing laws on the principle that humans flourish when granted maximum freedoms and minimal government control.
The Barmen Declaration: A 1934 document setting out the basic beliefs of the Confessing Church in opposition to Nazism, heavily influenced by Karl Barth.
The Western Void: A moral vacuum left in the West when secularization discarded traditional Christianity, leaving room for dangerous ideologies to take hold.
Ethics, Action, and Conscience
Key Focus: Criticing passive hearing vs. liberating action.
Critique of Barth: Bonhoeffer agreed with Karl Barth but argued he didn't go far enough; if humans are merely passive recipients of revelation, they resemble the Pharisees who heard God’s commands but failed to act.
Mary vs. Martha (Luke 10:38–42): Jesus criticized Martha because she acted but failed to truly listen to his teaching. In Ethics, Bonhoeffer argues that hearing the law must directly entail being a doer of the law.
Conscience as Disunity: Conscience is the psychological experience of disunity within oneself, with God, and with others. It brings a moment of sharp self-knowledge, forcing a decision (as Bonhoeffer experienced when choosing between America and the "terrible alternative").
Love (Agape): Ethical decisions always involve conflict; the active choice distinguishes between good and evil. Love overcomes human disunity and is revealed solely through God's concrete deed for humanity in Jesus Christ.
Cheap Grace vs. Costly Grace
Key Focus: The baseline of authentic, religionless Christianity.
Reformer Roots: Pulling from Luther and Calvin, Bonhoeffer asserted true Christianity relies on three fundamentals: only Christ, only scripture, and only faith.
The Illusion of Religion: Because structural religion, politics, and political parties are mere human inventions, the Church must remain separate and free from state control to prevent being weaponized for personal or political ends.
Cheap Grace: The preaching of forgiveness without requiring personal repentance, baptism without church discipline, and communion without confession. It treats God's grace like a cheap, commercial commodity obtained simply by going through Christian rituals.
Costly Grace: Costly because it calls a person to follow Jesus, costing a man his life while giving him the only true life. Most importantly, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son.
Sacrifice, Suffering, and the Theology of Crisis
Key Focus: The cross in a world "come of age."
Embracing Suffering: Christianity's engagement with the world is fundamentally reflected in the suffering of the cross. Bonhoeffer’s favorite verse was Psalm 119:71: "It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes."
The Weak God: In a world come of age, God is not a supreme, authoritarian leader; as revealed in Christ, God is weak and powerless in His struggle against the world, acting in solidarity with his creatures.
Theology of Crisis: Adopting the New Testament Greek word krisis (meaning both 'dispute' and 'judgement'), this theology states that the crisis of human sinfulness (sin, dispute, waywardness) can only be overcome by God's judgement, grace, and redemption through Christ.
Not a Martyr Complex: While Letters from Prison show Bonhoeffer knew his resistance would likely cost him his life, he did not dwell on suffering or see himself as a martyr. Instead, his actions affirmed a joyful stand against evil.
Solidarity and the "Church for Others"
Key Focus: Active secular responsibility.
The Man for Others: Bonhoeffer described Jesus as 'the man for others.' Consequently, the Church must model itself as the 'Church for others', acting in active solidarity with the weak, vulnerable, and oppressed.
Failure of German Churches: He believed the German Church had failed in this role, noting its passive attitude toward the persecution of Jewish people. He argued the Church has no right to judge people's beliefs—only God can—but it must defend their lives.
The Church and the Jewish Question (1965): In this essay, Bonhoeffer outlined three explicit ways the Church must fight the evil of state-sponsored discrimination:
Question the State: The Church must question whether the state's actions are legitimate and call on it to be fully responsible for its decisions.
Help the Victims: The Church must help all victims of injustice, regardless of their faith or belief.
Stop the Machinery: The Church must be fully engaged in resistance to reverse political injustice. It is not enough to bandage victims under the wheel; the Church must "put a spoke in the wheel itself."
Solidarity with the Jewish Community
Key Focus: Real-world action against antisemitism.
Early Advocacy: In April 1933, following the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses, Bonhoeffer wrote 'The Church and the Jewish Question', explicitly criticizing the regime and calling for solidarity with all those persecuted by Nazism.
International Outreach: During that same week, he and his brother Klaus met with American theologian Paul Lehmann to draft a message to US Jewish leader Rabbi Stephen Wise.
Response to Kristallnacht: Following the 'Night of Broken Glass' (9–10 November 1938), Bonhoeffer publicly rejected the common view that the destruction of synagogues was God’s just punishment. He instead declared it an act of a godless and violent regime.
Financial Rescue and Fate: He and his brother-in-law actively collected large sums of money to assist Jewish immigrants. This specific operation directly triggered his arrest and ultimate execution.
Relevance Today – Global Politics
Key Focus: Can his localized Nazi-era ethics address global politics?
The Criticism: Critics argue that Bonhoeffer's ethics were forged under extreme Nazi tyranny and only truly apply to similar crisis scenarios. They claim he only abandoned absolute pacifism because of his extraordinary situation.
The Modern Critique: His ethics targeted a single threat to humanity, whereas today’s globalized world deals with multi-faceted threats (terrorism, US-China power struggles, Middle Eastern conflict) that localized notions of politics are unequipped to solve in stable, liberal democracies.
The Defense (Stanley Hauerwas): Conversely, Hauerwas argues Bonhoeffer's emphasis on truth provides a vital challenge to the pragmatism of Western democracies. He warns that a society practicing tolerance merely for pragmatic reasons, devoid of truth, collapses into indifference and cynicism.
The Democratic Void: Bonhoeffer noted that liberal societies can undermine truth, creating a moral 'void' that totalitarian powers quickly step in to fill.
Compatibility with Plural Moral Societies
Key Focus: Relativism vs. Absolute Truth.
Joseph Fletcher's Interpretation: In Situation Ethics (1966), Fletcher claimed Bonhoeffer as a radical situational model. He cited Bonhoeffer's praise of Mother Maria (who volunteered to die in a concentration camp to save a Jewish girl) to argue that killing innocent people isn't an absolute wrong, as the wrongness depends on the principle of Christian love.
The Counter-Argument: Critics assert Fletcher's interpretation is completely wrong. Bonhoeffer was not a moral relativist. For Bonhoeffer, truth is absolute and formed inside the discipline of the Christian community—it is not relative to a situation.
Truth-Telling: Bonhoeffer believed a lie remains a lie even if it has to be told to prevent a relationship from breaking down. He fiercely criti-cized liberal plural societies because relativizing moral values undermines the very idea of truth.
The Just Community: Defenders argue his ethics are essential today to remind non-judgemental pluralistic societies what a truly just community looks like.