Dietrich Bonhoeffer Issue 32 | 1991

ARTICLE TOOLS

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The church was silent when it should have cried out.

Christ kept himself from suffering till his hour had come, but when it did come he met it as a free man, seized it, and mastered it … We are not Christ, but if we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s largeheartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes …

In a letter from prison to his fiancee, Maria: It would be better if I succeeded in writing to you only of my gratitude, my joy, and my happiness in having you and in keeping the pressure and the impatience of this long imprisonment out of sight. But that would not be truthful, and it would appear to me as an injustice to you. You must know how I really feel and must not take me for a stone saint … I can’t very well imagine that you would want to marry one in the first place—and I would also advise against it from my knowledge of church history.

Only those who cry out for the Jews may also sing Gregorian chant.

Bonhoeffer in early 1935. He had just begun directing a seminary for the Confessing Church, a group that resisted Nazi policies. Two years later, the Gestapo closed the seminary.

There are three possible ways in which the church can act toward the state:

In the first place … it can ask the state whether its actions are legitimate and in accordance with its character as state, i.e., it can throw the state back on its responsibilities.

Second, it can aid the victims of state action … The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community, “Do good to all people.” …

The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself. Such ...