Assassinating the Führer

As I was doing some background reading in preparation for this Sunday’s tribe meeting, I came across something which I thought was worth sharing. For those of you who haven’t heard of a bloke called Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he was a Lutheran pastor and theologian who died at the hands of the Nazi Party in 1944 after a failed assassination attempt on Hitler.

Now, what’s this? A devout Christian who plotted to assassinate someone? Surely that must be one of the most unchristian things to do. Or is it? Aren’t Christians supposed to fight evil with good rather than fight evil with evil? Personally, I believe God would probably care less whether Bonhoeffer’s actions in conspiring to kill a leader of a nation are deemed ‘Christian’ or not by others, and probably care more about the moral reason and weight behind the decisions that he made. (Note – I am referring to external actions and/or attributes here that are traditionally deemed by society as either ‘Christian’ or ‘unchristian’ or strictly ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ within the context of a grey situation.)

But first, here’s a succinct account of Bonhoeffer’s life, taken from a book by Richard Foster.

In 1927, he was a 21-year-old student earning a doctorate in theology from Berlin. In 1930, he was a debater crossing theological swords at Union Theological Seminary in New York, In 1931, he was a teacher exegeting issues of Christian ethics at Berlin University. It seemed like Bonhoeffer was destined for the life of an academic. But the ominous storm clouds of the Third Reich changed everything.

By 1933, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was an activist attacking the idolatrous ‘Aryan Clause’, which excluded Jews from civil service. By 1934, he was a leader in the newly formed Confessing Church, denouncing the heretical defections of the German Christians. (German Christians was the term used for Protestants who supported Hitler. Bonhoeffer was a key figure in forming the Confessing Church as a chief opposition to the German Christians).

By 1935, he was a professor at a secret seminary at Finkenwalde, promoting orthodox doctrines instead of accepting the heretical teachings of the German Christians. By 1937, he was an author attacking ‘cheap grace’ – that is, the indifferent attitude and behaviour of Christians that ‘cheapened’ the free, unmerited favour and love of God towards them by taking it in vain or not taking their faith seriously enough, all this against the backdrop of a nation slipping into an increasingly dangerous and obsessive cult worship of Hitler. By 1939, he was a double agent seeking the defeat of his own nation and deeply involved in the conspiracy to assassinate the Führer. By 1943, he was a prisoner. By 1944, he was a theologian from a prison cell, searching, ever searching for a ‘religionless Christianity’, one in which “man is summoned to share in God’s sufferings” at the hands of what must seemed like a godless world to him then. Finally, on the dawn of Sunday, 8 April 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a martyr, whispering to his fellow prisoners as he left his cell to be hanged, “This is the end – for me, the beginning of life.”

Bonhoeffer was no perfect Christian, but even so, as a Christian who took his faith seriously – how did he reconcile his faith with being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate another fellow human being?

Richard Foster explains in his book Streams of Living Water (1999:78) that “Bonhoeffer rejected all legalistic systems for defining moral norms. He refused to reduce Christ and Scripture to ethical principles and rules. Instead, he stressed the ongoing, relational dialectic of encountering God’s will, often against our will, and in Christ, receiving the freedom to act responsibly in any given situation. When the centre is clear, the boundaries of responsible action can be open to meet the demands of the present moment.”

Quoting Bonhoeffer, Foster writes, “It is therefore impossible to define the boundary between resistance and submission on abstract principles: but both of them must exist, and both must be practised. Faith demands this elasticity of behaviour.” And so, according to Foster, Bonhoeffer framed an ethic that was responsive to the present but could also allow responsible resistance to the then growing Nazi regime.