WITNESS OF FAITH AND THEOLOGICAL INNOVATOR

EKD Chairperson on the Theologian and Resistance Warrior Bonhoeffer

Interview with Wolfgang Huber

[This interview from March 20, 2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.ekd.de/aktuell/442_2005_03_29_rv_epd_interview_bonhoeffer.html.]

[April 9 was the 6oth year since the death of evangelical theologian and Nazi opponent Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945). He was hung in the Flossenberg concentration camp north of Regensberg because he joined in the resistance against Hitler. After the Second World War, Bonhoeffer was the best known and most quoted theologian in Germany through his books and writings. The chairperson of the Evangelical church in Germany (EKD), the Berlin bishop Wolfgang Huber, discusses Bonhoeffer’s significance today.


epd (evangelical press service): A statute of Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands in your study. What is fascinating about him?

Huber: The inner connection between biography and theology is fascinating in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the connection between a life story that made him a witness of faith and a theological work that at the beginning of the 21st century still offers great stimulation and orienting power.

epd: When did the theologian Bonhoeffer begin to think politically?

Huber: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s testimony revealed that he discovered the Sermon on the Mount in an unparalleled way in 1932. He referred his clear and straightforward political stance to the obligation of the Sermon on the Mount to peace and justice. He did not first begin to think politically at age 26. His basic orientation in freedom and human dignity originated from his educated middle class family. However it gained intensity and clarity through encounter with the Sermon on the Mount. This contributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer being among the first in 1933 to diagnose what had happened with the surrender of power in Germany to the Nazis.

epd: Was Bonhoeffer completely immune from the National Socialist orientation and anti-Semitism?

Huber: Anti-Semitism was totally foreign to him. That he was immune does not mean that he was completely free from the anti-Jewish thought patterns that marked evangelical theology altogether for centuries and made it susceptible for anti-Semitism. Bonhoeffer’s attitude was expressed in the sentence: “Only one who cries for the Jews may sing Gregorian.”

epd: In his early years, Bonhoeffer had many experiences abroad. He had lived in Spain and the US and was active for the ecumene. Did these experiences strengthen his position?

Huber: On one hand, the obligation for peace between the nations was the main theme of his personal conduct. He worked in the “world alliance for friendship of the churches.” On the other hand, he knew he was so obligated to Germany that in his real life-moving historical decision of 1939 he returned from the US where he could have remained. He returned to join in the resistance and help in building another Germany after the collapse of the National Socialist regime.

epd: He paid for that decision with his life. Was it wrong from a contemporary perspective?

Huber: No. Everyone must ask: Would you have been capable of comparable courage? Are you as courageous in the little essential decisions that you make?

epd: When may a pastor call to forcible resistance up to the murder of tyrants?

Huber: Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not call to active resistance. He joined in it; he bore the pangs of conscience of his fellow-conspirators and showed them a way to assume responsibility. He recognized there are extreme situations of personal responsibility where the question how a future generation can live is primary, not how one can come out of the affair blamelessly.

epd: How important was Bonhoeffer’s martyrdom for the evangelical church in finding an identity after the Second World War?

Huber: Some have as hard a time with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s death as with other martyrs of National Socialism. The objection in Bonhoeffer’s case is that he died as a political resistance fighter, not as a witness of faith. The church was even inclined for a long time to approach him at a distance. The publication of “Letters from Prison” caused the breakthrough and helped Bonhoeffer to a greater effect.

epd: Is Bonhoeffer an evangelical saint?

Huber: We should remember saints “so we believe as they did and do good according to our commission.” In this sense, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an “evangelical saint” all over the world, not only for Christians in Germany.