Who is dietrich bonhoeffer wiki

Bonhoeffer also became a part of a plot to overthrow, and later to assassinate, Hitler. As his tactics were changing, he had gone to America to become a guest lecturer. But he couldn't shake a feeling of responsibility for his country. Within months of his arrival, he wrote theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, "I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the Christian people of Germany.

I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people. Bonhoeffer, though privy to various plots on Hitler's life, was never at the center of the plans. Eventually his resistance efforts mainly his role in rescuing Jews was discovered.

On an April afternoon in , two men arrived in a black Mercedes, put Bonhoeffer in the car, and drove him to Tegel prison. Bonhoeffer spent two years in prison, corresponding with family and friends, pastoring fellow prisoners, and reflecting on the meaning of "Jesus Christ for today. In another passage, he said, "To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to make something of oneself a sinner, a penitent, or a saint on the basis of some method or other, but to be a man—not a type of man, but the man that Christ creates in us.

It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life. On April 9, , one month before Germany surrendered, he was hanged with six other resisters. A decade later, a camp doctor who witnessed Bonhoeffer's hanging described the scene: "The prisoners … were taken from their cells, and the verdicts of court martial read out to them.

Through the half-open door in one room of the huts, I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God.

I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed.

His death ensued in a few seconds. Bonhoeffer is unique in this regard. His work on ethics began while he was actively involved in the German resistance to National Socialism and ended with his arrest in He fully expected that others would see his work in the conspiracy as intrinsically related to the plausibility of his ethical views. When it comes to ethics, Bonhoeffer noted, " i t is not only what is said that matters, but also the man who says it" Ethics, p.

Third, like Aristotle, Bonhoeffer stays as close to the actual phenomenon of making moral choices as possible. What we experience, when faced with a moral choice, is a highly concrete and unique situation. It may share much with other situations, but it is, nevertheless, a distinct situation involving its own particulars and peculiarities, not excluding the fact that we are making the decisions, and not Socrates or Joan of Ark. And finally, again like Aristotle, Bonhoeffer sees judgments of character and not action as fundamental to moral evaluation.

Evil actions should be avoided, of course, but what needs to be avoided at all costs is the disposition to do evil as part of our character. To lie is wrong, but what is worse than the lie is the liar, for the liar contaminates everything he says, because everything he says is meant to further a cause that is false. The liar as liar has endorsed a world of falsehood and deception, and to focus only on the truth or falsity of his particular statements is to miss the danger of being caught up in his twisted world.

This is why, as Bonhoeffer says, that " i t is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie" Ethics, p. A falling away from righteousness is far worse that a failure of righteousness.

To focus exclusively on the lie and not on the liar is a failure to confront evil. Nevertheless, the central concern of traditional ethics remains: What is right conduct? What justifies doing one thing over another? For Bonhoeffer, there is no justification of actions in advance without criteria for good and evil, and this is not available Ethics, p.

Neither future consequences nor past motives by themselves are sufficient to determine the moral value of actions. Consequences have the awkward consequence of continuing indefinitely into the future. If left unattended, this feature would make all moral judgments temporary or probationary, since none are immune to radical revision in the future. What makes a consequence relevant to making an action right is something other than the fact that it is a consequence.

The same is true for past motives. One motive or mental attitude surely lies behind another. What makes one mental state and not an earlier state the ultimate ethical phenomenon is something other than the fact that it is a mental state. Since neither motives nor consequences have a fixed stopping point, both are doomed to failure as moral criteria. Without a reason for the relevance of specific motives or consequences, all moral judgments become hopelessly tentative and eternally incomplete.

What is more, general principles have a tendency to reduce all behavior to ethical behavior. To act only for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or to act only so that the maxim of an action can become a principle of legislation, become as relevant to haircuts as they do to manslaughter. All behavior becomes moral behavior, which drains all spontaneity and joy from life, since the smallest misstep now links your behavior with the worst crimes of your race, gender, or culture.

Ethics cannot be reduced to a search for general principles without reducing all of the problems of life to a bleak, pedantic, and monotonous uniformity. The "abundant fullness of life," is denied and with it "the very essence of the ethical itself" Ethics, p. Reliance on theory, in other words, is destructive to ethics, because it interferes with our ability to deal effectively with evil.

Bonhoeffer asks us to consider six strategies, six postures people often strike or adopt when attempting to deal with real ethical situations involving evil and vicious people. Any of these postures or orientations could employ principles, laws, or duties from ethical theory. But, in the end, it makes little difference what principles they invoke.

The ethical postures themselves are what make responsible action impossible. A resort to the dictates of reason, for example, demands that we be fair to all the details, facts, and people involved in any concrete moral situation Ethics, p. The reasonable person acts like a court of law, trying to be just to both sides of any dispute.

In doing so, he or she ignores all questions of character, since all people are equal before the law, and it makes no difference who does what to whom. Thus, whenever it is in the interest of an evil person to tell the truth, the person of reason must reward him for doing so.

The person of reason is helpless to do otherwise, and in the end is rejected by all, the good and the evil, and achieves nothing. Likewise, Bonhoeffer argues, the enthusiasm of the moral fanatic or dogmatist is also ineffective for a similar reason. The fanatic believes that he or she can oppose the power of evil by a purity of will and a devotion to principles that forbid certain actions.

Again, the concern is exclusively on action, and judgments of character are seen as secondary and derivative. But the richness and variety of actual, concrete situations generates questions upon questions for the application of any principle. Sooner or later, Bonhoeffer notes, the fanatic becomes entangled in non-essentials and petty details, and becomes prone to simple manipulation in the hands of evil Ethics, p.

The man or woman of conscience presents an even stranger case. When faced with an inescapable ethical situation that demands action, the person of conscience experiences great turmoil and uncertainty. What the person of conscience is really seeking is peace of mind, or a return to the way things were, before everything erupted into moral chaos.

Resolving the tensions is as important as doing the right thing. In fact, doing the right thing should resolve the conflicts and tensions or it is not the right thing. Consequently, people of conscience become prey to quick solutions, to actions of convenience, and to deception, because feeling good about themselves and their world is what matters ultimately.

They fail completely to see, as Bonhoeffer notes, that a bad conscience, that disappointment and frustration over one's action, may be a much healthier and stronger state for their souls to experience than peace of mind and feelings of well being Ethics, p.

An emphasis on freedom and private virtuousness are even less capable of dealing effectively with evil. No, freedom here means the freedom to make exceptions to general rules or principles.

The free person is the person who has the where-with-all to ignore conscience, reputation, facts, and anything else in order to make the best arrangement possible under the circumstances. This is the freedom to act in any way necessary, even to do what is wrong, in order to avoid what is worse, e. On the other hand, the escape to a domain of private virtue is, perhaps, of all temptations the most dangerous to the Christian.

This is a pulling back from the petty and vulgar affairs of the world in order to avoid being contaminated by evil. This monastic urge is rejected by Bonhoeffer, because for him there is no such thing as escaping your responsibility to act. When faced with evil, there is no middle path. You either oppose the persecution of the innocent or you share in it. No one can preserve his or her private virtue by turning away from the world Ethics, p.

Bonhoeffer's last category, duty, is perhaps the most important to him, because it is the most easily co-opted by evil; and again it makes no difference what laws we introduce to determine our duty. If a devotion to duty does not discriminate in terms of character, it will end up serving evil. Bonhoeffer replaces philosophical ethics and its pursuit of criteria to justify action in advance with an ethics grounded in the emergence of Christ as reconciler.

In any given context there is always a right thing to do. This reality is a direct result of his Christology. The reality of the sensible world, with all its variety, multiplicity, and concreteness, has been reconciled with the spiritual reality of God. These two radically divorced worlds have now been made compatible and consistent in the reality of Christ Ethics, p.

Through Jesus the reality of God has entered the world Ethics, p. If an action is to have meaning, it must correspond to what is real. Since there is only the reality of Christ, Christ is the foundation of ethics. Any Christian who attempts to avoid falsehoods and meaninglessness in his or her life must act in accordance with this reality.

Furthermore, the sole guide for acting in accordance with this reality is the model of Jesus' selfless behavior in the New Testament. There are numerous dimensions to this model. First and foremost, your action can in no way be intended to reflect back on you, your character, or your reputation. You must, for the sake of the moment, unreservedly surrender all self-directed wishes and desires Ethics, p.

It is the other, another person, that is the focus of attention, and not yourself. In ethical action, the left hand really must be unaware of what the right hand is doing if the right hand is to do anything ethical. If not, your so-called good action becomes contaminated and its moral nature altered. Bonhoeffer illustrates this notion of selfless action by contrasting the behavior of Jesus in the New Testament to that of the Pharisee. The Pharisee " Every moment of his life is a moment where he must choose between good and evil Ethics, p.

Every action, every judgment, no matter how small, is permeated with the choice of good and evil. He can confront no person without evaluating that person in terms of good and evil Ethics, p. For him, all judgments are moral judgments. No gesture is immune to moral condemnation.

Jesus refuses to see the world in these terms. He lightly, almost cavalierly, casts aside many of the legal distinctions the Pharisee labors to maintain. He bids his disciples to eat on the Sabbath, even though starvation is hardly in question. He heals a woman on the Sabbath, although after eighteen years of illness she could seemingly wait a few more hours. Jesus exhibits a freedom from the law in everything he does, but nothing he does suggests all things are possible.

Although the Confessing Church took a clear stand against the German Christians, most of its leaders avoided political criticism of the Nazi regime. With few exceptions the Confessing Church remained silent about the persecution of German Jews. He outlined three stages of this opposition.

First, the church was called to question state injustice. Secondly, it had an obligation to help all victims of injustice, whether they were Christian or not. The essay reveals the complexity of Bonhoeffer's thought and action. It was one of the earliest and clearest repudiations of National Socialism, revealing his early opposition to the regime. He never explicitly abandoned this view. Bonhoeffer's outspoken political opinions isolated him within his church, and throughout the s many of his activities were focused abroad.

In September he attended the ecumenical World Alliance meeting in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he spoke about the Jewish question and the delegates passed a resolution condemning Nazi actions against Jews. Bonhoeffer took a copy of the resolution to the German consul in Sofia to prove that Nazi policies were damaging Germany's image abroad.

The leaders of the German Evangelical Church in Berlin demanded that he withdraw from ecumenical activities; Bonhoeffer refused. From September to April , Bonhoeffer served as pastor to several German-speaking congregations in London, leading them to break with the official German church and join the Confessing Church. In April , Bonhoeffer returned to Germany, where the Confessing Church was under increasing pressure from the Gestapo. Most church leaders refused to openly oppose the Nazi regime and criticized their colleagues who did.

As a result, more radical Confessing Christians found themselves embattled on all sides. Bonhoeffer began to train young clergy at an illegal Confessing Church seminary, Finkenwalde, which was closed by the Gestapo in September Bonhoeffer spent the next two years secretly travelling throughout eastern Germany to supervise his students, most of whom were working illegally in small parishes.

The Gestapo banned him from Berlin in January and issued an order forbidding him from public speaking in September Bonhoeffer became informed about different German resistance plans in through his brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, who worked in the Justice Ministry and was one of the earliest opponents of the regime.

In October , Dohnanyi used his connections to help Bonhoeffer avoid military service, obtaining an assignment for him in the office of Military Intelligence.