Dietrich Bonhoeffer Issue 32 | 1991

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Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968) rocked the world of theology when he published his commentary on Romans in 1919. His focus on God as truly God and his return to Scripture “destroyed the older liberalism,” in one scholar’s words. Later, Barth helped draft the Barmen Declaration (1934) that declared the true German church could never give ultimate allegiance to the Nazi state.

How much did Barth influence Bonhoeffer, who was twenty years younger?

Theologian Karl Barth, in about 1930. After reading Bonhoeffer’s doctoral dissertation, The Communion of Saints, Barth declared it “a theological miracle.”

Bonhoeffer studied theology at the great liberal faculties of Tübingen and Berlin. At the University of Berlin, he was especially stimulated by his study of Martin Luther. But the greatest theological influence on Bonhoeffer came from the writings of a Swiss theologian who was then teaching in Germany—Karl Barth.

Bonhoeffer never studied with Barth, but he devoured his writings. Barth led the new “dialectical theology” movement that was rediscovering the great themes of the Reformation and the “strange new world” within the Bible.

Like Barth, Bonhoeffer rejected the nineteenth century’s liberal theology, with its focus on human religion. He embraced Barth’s theology of grace revealed in Jesus Christ as the Word of God, attested by Scripture and proclaimed by the church. Barth’s battle cry, “Revelation, not religion!” would remain a fundament of Bonhoeffer’s theology to the end. (But, like Luther, Bonhoeffer would stress that God’s revelation is deeply hidden “in the likeness of sinful flesh.”)

Bonhoeffer finally met Barth in the summer of 1931. “I was even more impressed by his discussion than by his writings and lectures,” Bonhoeffer ...