Personalities for April 14, 2005
By Chris Herlinger
When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 39, quietly strode toward Nazi prison gallows as the Second World War neared its end, he could hardly have known that 60 years later, his life, memory and legacy would remain the subject of keen debate and fascination-not to mention outright reverence.
Indeed, since his April 9, 1945, execution for his role in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Bonhoeffer has become something of a universal, and utterly rare, phenomenon.
He is one of the few theologians to have his life dramatized in films and plays. He has been the subject of documentaries and numerous biographies. But perhaps most importantly, Bonhoeffer is one of the few 20th century Christian figures whose writings continue to be read, quoted and appropriated by liberal and conservative Christians alike.
In that sense, Bonhoeffer has been likened to a kind of theological “Rorschach test,” as the liberal theologian Harvey Cox once described him.
“Dietrich Bonhoeffer's equivocal theological residue elicits wildly different interpretations,” Cox said. “In the current enthusiasm to decode the anagram and declare ‘what Bonhoeffer really meant,' we learn at least as much about the sleuths as about the mystery itself.”
And what a varied group of “sleuths” they have been: Bonhoeffer's memory and example were evoked by black liberation theologians in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, just as they are now by some conservative evangelical Christians committed to ending abortion. James Dobson is among the conservatives who have cited Bonhoeffer as an example of a Christian who took a stand for moral truth.
Liberals see the German theologian as a prophet and admire his commitment to ecumenism and social action; conservatives see Bonhoeffer as an apostle who moved in the world with a keen love and reverence for Jesus Christ.
Both liberals and conservatives view Bonhoeffer as a martyr. But according to scholar Stephen Haynes, who has a new book on Bonhoeffer, “getting at” him means having to examine the various roles Bonhoeffer has assumed in the religious imagination: “seer, prophet, apostle, hero, bridge, martyr and even saint.”
“Each portrait has a continuity to it and is compelling. And each one can survive on its own,” said Haynes, author of the The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint.
In writing about the ways Bonhoeffer's life, memory and work have been used by widely different interpreters and religious communities, Haynes is sometimes unsparingly honest in acknowledging that it isn't necessarily theology that draws people to Bonhoeffer; it is the sheer drama of a life which, as Haynes notes, has an almost cinematic quality to it.
Clues to Bonhoeffer's thinking are in the books he wrote, most notably Ethics, The Cost of Discipleship and Letters and Papers From Prison.
“[The American theologian] Reinhold Niebuhr had a lot of intellectual capital, but not the same kind of moral capital [as Bonhoeffer],” Haynes said in an interview, contrasting the two major 20th century Protestant figures. “Everyone wants some of that.”
“There is just a sort of seamlessness between Bonhoeffer's life, his work and the decisions he made. He was single-minded and consistent,” said Haynes, who teaches religion at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn.
Bonhoeffer was a product of a solidly privileged Prussian background in pre-war Germany who traveled intermittently. He lived for a year in New York City, where he studied at Union Theological Seminary as a student of Niebuhr's and attended worship services in Harlem.
Bonhoeffer seemed destined for a secure life in the German Lutheran church or the academy.
But the baleful events of his day intervened, forcing the young Lutheran pastor to face moral responsibility-his, his nation's and his church's-in the wake of the mounting evil of Nazism.
In the book, Haynes is careful to note that there are real perils in appropriating Bonhoeffer for contemporary purposes-in the “compulsion to make his life and times analogous to our own.”
Haynes is critical of the more extreme claims made to evoke Bonhoeffer's legacy in the cause of anti-abortion activism; he doesn't believe Bonhoeffer's embrace of the plot to assassinate Hitler is analogous to the call by some-but not Dobson-to kill doctors who perform abortions.
Likewise, Haynes writes that liberals “have been as guilty as anyone of ascertaining Bonhoeffer's relevance for contemporary political life by portraying their governments in Nazi images.”
Given the extremes to which the Bonhoeffer legacy has sometimes been used and interpreted, Haynes says the 60th anniversary of Bonhoeffer's death on April 9 might offer a moment for reflection, allowing Bonhoeffer's life and example to act as a bridge between the widely differing religious groups that appropriate his memory and “reside on distant cultural shores.”
“One of the things that makes this possible is that nearly everyone acknowledges that it's Bonhoeffer's life-rather than his theology-that makes him a man worthy of honor and emulation,” said Haynes, who grew up, by his own description, “in an evangelical subculture” and describes himself now as “a liberal Protestant with an empathy for conservative Christians.”
“Maybe Bonhoeffer is a reminder that the measure of true faith is the way we treat each other and the sacrifices we are willing to make to learn about, communicate with and defend each other.”
Religion News Service
Chris Herlinger writes for RNS.