I have been reading the excellent biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
by Eric Metaxas entitled Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy; A Righteous
Gentile vs. The Third Reich (Thomas Nelson, 2010). This book has been very interesting,
enjoyable and enlightening and much is relevant for today given the overreach
of various governments into civil and ecclesiastical spheres in their response
to the Covid19 ‘pandemic’ that is continuing around the globe.
Bonhoeffer was unique in his prescience into the
possibilities the laid ahead for Germany after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in
early 1933 when he was democratically elected as Chancellor of Germany. At the earliest stages he began fighting
against rights violations perpetrated by the Nazis when many in the church saw
the issues as ‘minor’ and not worth taking a stand over. Bonhoeffer is an excellent example of taking
a stand at the earliest possible moment; he was intent to curb the Nazis as
soon as he could, even when others were not aware of the danger. This was shown through the essay he published
in March 1933 which Metaxas presents and comments upon in his book. I have paraphrased some passages of the book
and present them below for consideration:
Bonhoeffer addressed and answered a vital question relating to the Church’s role for the state in his essay entitled “The Church and the Jewish Question”. This essay was published shortly after March 1933 as a response to the Nazis ‘Aryan Paragraph’ which removed Jews from the civil service. It was presented In this essay Bonhoeffer outlined the role of the Church when the State has overstepped it’s bounds: The church must continually ask the state whether its actions can be justified as legitimate actions of the state.
In other words the Church's role is to help the state be the
state, according to its God ordained limits.
If the state is not creating an atmosphere of law and order, as the
scripture says it must, then it is the job of the church to draw the state’s
attention to this failing. And if, on
the other hand, the state is creating an atmosphere of “excessive law and
order,” it is the Church’s job to draw attention to that too. The Church can never accept a situation in
which “excessive law and order” deprives the right to Christian practice. Bonhoeffer called this “a grotesque situation”.
“The church,” Bonhoeffer said “must reject this encroachment of the order of
the state precisely because of its better knowledge of the state and the
limitations of its legitimate actions.
The state which endangers the Christian proclamation negates itself”.
Bonhoeffer then went on to enumerate two additional responsibilities of the church in response to state actions that stray from their legitimate role. Firstly, the Church is “to aid the victims of state action”. He said that the church “has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society”. This for Bonhoeffer extends to those even outside the Christian community – he was here referring to the Jews in the specific context. “Do good to all men” he quoted from the book of Galatians.
Secondly, Bonhoeffer describes that for the church it “is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself”. The translation is awkward, but in essence Bonhoeffer is envisioning a stick being jammed into the spokes of a wheel to stop the vehicle’s motion. It is not enough to help those crushed by the evil actions of the state; at some point the church must directly take action against the state to stop it from perpetrating evil. This is permitted only when the state ceases to be the state as defined by God (i.e. goes beyond punishing wrongdoers) and threatens the practices of the church. “A church which includes within itself a terrorized church has lost its most faithful servant” - for Bonhoeffer, a state which persecutes or curtails the church’s worship and sets itself against Gospel proclamation has negated itself.
In the spring of 1933 at the first beginnings of Jewish persecution by the Nazis in Germany Bonhoeffer was declaring the duty of the Church to stand up for the oppressed. At the time this seemed radical even to Bonhoeffer’s most staunch allies in the Church, since the persecutions seemed ‘only minor’ and the horrors that the Jews would suffer later on had not entered people’s minds.
Bonhoeffer’s three conclusions: the church must question the state, help the state’s victims, and work against the state if necessary, were almost too much for everyone at the time. But for Bonhoeffer they were inescapable and, in time, he would do all three.
(Eric Metaxas: Bonhoeffer Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy; A Righteous Gentile vs. the Third Reich pg. 152-155)
(Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis for his role in a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler)
