On the evening of February 27th, Huffington Ecumenical Institute (HEI) at Hellenic College Holy Cross was pleased to host an intimate panel discussion on the life and legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), the eminent German theologian, ecumenical pioneer, and martyr under the Nazi regime. Chaired by HEI Executive Director Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis, the panel included Jane C. Redmont, Ecumenical Officer of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, Rev. Dr. Matthew Kruger, Associate Professor of the Practice of Theology at Boston College, and His Eminence Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Their discussion was prefaced with a gracious interview offered by Emmanuel and Camille Kampouris, producers of the new feature film, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin (2024), who joined via Zoom.
The word of the evening seemed to be “uncanny.” Indeed, the resemblance is uncanny between our current social and political climate and the one that shaped and eventually proved the faith of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Perhaps the only point of common agreement today is that our personally preferred social ideal, whatever it may be, appears to us under threat from forces both within and more frighteningly so from without. In this, we find ourselves not too far removed from the turbulence of Interwar Germany or the hardship of Depression-era Harlem, formative locales in Bonhoeffer’s young life. We unquestionably live in a time of closely felt crisis, justas Bonhoeffer did—a time of trial and judgment in the original sense of the word. It is tempting as we face crises to seek ready-made answers to the hard questions placed before us. Sometimes, the hard questions are artfully contorted and rendered so broadly construed or narrowly defined as to remain conveniently unanswerable. The inevitable result is that crises always seem to be caused by others; solutions always deal with them, and never with me.
Tragically, many religious people are prone to this manner of thinking. This is not due to an inherent moral or intellectual deficiency among them. It is rather that religion itself is a kind of crisis. Religion narrativizes life into a series of crises that culminate in the Final Crisis—an ultimate weighing of souls that once and for all separates Good from Evil, Us from Them. Religion constructs edifices of ideology and ethics and rituals of coaxing and prodding people this or that way, lauding some and chastising others according to various criteria of purity and belonging. Christianity is often falsely considered to be a religion, when in fact it is a faith. Bonhoeffer knew this, and he scandalized many in his attempt to lift the “garment” of religion from the Body of Christ, the Church as a dynamic communion in o/Otherness.
Religion was never wrong to posit that life is a test that ends in a Test; Christianity has always concurred with this reality. The crisis posed by Christianity, however, is a one-sided struggle with or against the love of God, who “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16). It is a personal confrontation with the soteriological “scandal” that is the Cross, the true “cost of discipleship” as Bonhoeffer famously put it. There is no place in Christianity, then, for concern about the judgment of others. The crisis before me is always my crisis. The other person before me is always Christ (Mt 25:31-46). The circumstances that led me to this encounter are always my Cross. In the end, only I will be judged—that is, my faith in the love of God to render me His witness, His martyr, whenever I am called.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer has much to teach us about Christian life in a time of crisis. Emmanuel and Camille Kampouris, producers of the film, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin, were drawn to this early 20th Century Lutheran churchman and theologian by Eric Metaxas’ 2009 biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. As the lengthy subtitles of both the book and film suggest, Bonhoeffer was a complex and multi-faceted man. What captivated the Kampouris (and countless others over the decades) about Bonhoeffer was his unwavering commitment to a life of true discipleship in Christ; he was “all in” to the very end. For their part, the Kampouris dedicated 7-years of their lives to producing this passion project, their heartfelt answer to “a call from God.” They hope that viewers will come away from the film with a sense of having been called as well. The film is akin, in their mind, to a modern-day “Letter to the Church” from Revelation—a wake-up call for society’s sleeping conscience.
Yet exactly what “the Spirit says to the churches” (Rev 2-3) in this case appears open to interpretation. The film has garnered controversy for allegedly endorsing Christian nationalist viewpoints and distorting historical events to the extent that the Bonhoeffer family, the International Bonhoeffer Society, and even the film’s cast and crew have voiced their concern. The locus of the problem appears to be the man behind the Bonhoeffer book that inspired the movie, Eric Metaxas. Metaxas is an outspoken Conservative political commentator and author who has frequently used Bonhoeffer’s name and legacy to underwrite his particularly politicized and reactionary brand of Christianity. It is, in fact, his 2022 book, Letter to the American Church, about the apparent similarities between contemporary American Christianity and the German Church of Bonhoeffer’s time, that appears to have given the Kampouris a sense that their film also bears a “revelatory” effect upon audiences. The Kampouris did express their regret at some of the content used to promote the film, including the overemphasis on Bonhoeffer having been an “assassin” or “spy” and his depiction on the film’s official poster brandishing a gun. For what it is worth, I found the film to be refreshingly unequivocal about the taint of politicized Christianity (whether in its respectable or more virulent forms) without shying away from the hard political questions Christians necessarily face as engaged members of society (racism, antisemitism, inequality, and injustice, etc.). Nevertheless, the broader issue remains that Bonhoeffer’s legacy is hotly contested at the very moment its honest elucidation could prove both spiritually clarifying and edifying, perhaps even providentially so.
“A Rorschach test” –Jane C. Redmont
For nearly 15 years now, Metaxas has spoken of our present “Bonhoeffer moment.” What I gather he means by this is less a matter of attempting to discern how Bonhoeffer himself would grapple with the peculiar social, political, and spiritual conditions of 21st Century America, and more a nebulous call to arms in the outward form and manner of Bonhoeffer’s (still largely shrouded) acts of resistance against the Nazis. In her remarks, Jane C. Redmont aptly characterized Bonhoeffer’s legacy as a Rorschach test. It is not only that we tend to project our contemporary biases onto historical figures and subsequently come away with radically divergent interpretations. It is simply a fool’s errand to whittle Bonhoeffer’s multi-dimensionality down to any definitive encapsulation of just who exactly he was, other than the authentic but politically inconvenient label, “Christian.” Redmont dedicated most of her time to discussing Bonhoeffer’s life-changing experience at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem under the leadership of Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. Bonhoeffer fell in love with Harlem Renaissance culture. More than that, however, he developed a deep appreciation for the Black Church as a model of community and communion in Christ. It is somewhat astounding to imagine: Bonhoeffer, a 25-year-old academically trained theologian from Germany, teaching Sunday School and leading women’s bible study in Depression-era Harlem. Yet we would be remiss to see his time spent there as a mere charity stint or passing curiosity. Bonhoeffer was truly inspired by the soul of the Black Church, especially the spirituals that so beautifully captured the suffering of Christ and humanized His struggle with and for His beloved children.
Another remarkable aspect of Bonhoeffer that Redmont highlighted was his love for the Psalms. Seemingly banal to us today, in Bonhoeffer’s time too open or ardent defense of the Psalms, was considered transgressive for the potentially philosemitic implications. Yet Bonhoeffer not only recommended their daily reading as a spiritual discipline; he published an entire book on them in 1940—the last he would ever legally publish in Germany! Again, it was the spiritually penetrating nature of the Psalms that Bonhoeffer found so appealing, their dynamism and rich sensitivity to the plight of the human condition in relation to an all-loving and merciful God. This love for the Psalms—the very prayerbook of Jesus Christ, a 1st Century Jew who is the Son of God—in addition to his heartfelt appreciation for the African American experience, seems to present an obvious inconvenience to Christian nationalists or populists of any bent who angle to co-opt Bonhoeffer’s legacy in pursuit of an exclusivist political agenda. At the end of the day, Bonhoeffer sided with the oppressed, never the oppressor. His life was not about heroic resistance against evil but a continuous struggle with and alongside others towards our common Good, something realized only in and through Christ, the “Suffering Servant.”
“He did what he thought God would forgive him for” –Rev. Dr. Matthew Kruger
Another point of controversy regarding the film cuts to the broader question of how to authentically honor Bonhoeffer’s legacy at a time of social and political unrest. The film was promoted with the tagline: “How far will you go to stand up for what’s right?” Apart from being a vacuous provocation, it is simply nonsense when applied to Bonhoeffer’s life. Rev. Dr. Kruger was keen to note that Bonhoeffer never once felt that what he did (again, we will likely never know the extent of his involvement in the Valkyrie plot to assassinate Hitler) was right. An undue emphasis on right and wrong is profoundly un-Christian, and it certainly misses the existentially compromised approach that Bonhoeffer took to Christian life as a struggle of faith in God’s merciful and unmerited love. Rev. Dr. Kruger referenced Kierkegaard’s notion of the “teleological suspension of the ethical” to characterize how Bonhoeffer might have envisioned his participation as an ardent pacifist in a plot of armed resistance. Kierkegaard used the story of Abraham and Isaac to show that true faith in God may require us to transcend the neat distinctions of ethics. The film has Bonhoeffer similarly compare the circumstances before him to the story of David and Goliath, i.e. the oppressor must be slain by the humble servant. The precious nuance that is lost in a superficial, “religious” reading of these stories, is that their “heroes” do not act based on right or wrong; their actions are compelled and judged only according to the will of God, which can be sensed but never completely ascertained through faith. Like Bonhoeffer, they did only what they believed God would forgive them for, to borrow the expression of Rev. Dr. Kruger. The paradox here is that the extent to which we believe God can forgive us forms only the floor, and never the ceiling, of the extent to which we know God will forgive others. How, then, can violence against others ever be sanctioned? (The answer is that it cannot, and that is the unpalatable point). There is no way out of this compromised position other than to constantly repent on our way to the Cross.
“His time has come” –Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh
It seems we are living in a Bonhoeffer moment. We are being called so that we may be tested. We are fooled, however, if we imagine this means we are called to become Bonhoeffer; that we are to become the “hero” of our individualized crusade. Bonhoeffer would have bristled at the idea of a heroic Christianity. Yes, his existential faith has an undeniable air of nobility to it. Yes, the depth of his courage is certainly both commendable and even refreshing. But at his core, Bonhoeffer was a man of God, baptized in Christ’s death and raised in His glorious Resurrection. He was someone who could boast, like St. Paul, “I die daily” (1 Cor 15:31) for the glory of God. There is no triumphalism here. Nor is there in Bonhoeffer’s most shocking (and subsequently chilling) remark, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” Metropolitan Savas seized on this line and turned it back on us: Is it so strange that Christ would call us to die? To ourselves? For others? In Him?
There is perhaps no “cheaper grace” than discovering that Christ’s Gospel happens to align perfectly with our personal opinions and preferred political agendas; that all it takes is to cast a vote or post on social media to be a “good” Christian and therefore counted among the “saved.” Bonhoeffer’s time has come upon us not because he was a hero, but because he was a martyr—a true witness to both the Cross and Resurrection of Christ. The difference between a hero and a martyr is that the former seeks after the glory of man (“they have their reward,” Christ assures us), whereas the latter will “seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness” (Mt 6:2; 6:33). That kingdom is not of this world, but it is certainly meant to be in this world if only we can bear it. As I ponder the contested legacy of Bonhoeffer and seek to grapple with the apparent folly of imitating a man but entirely missing the Gospel he gave his life for, I am reminded of one of the more subtly challenging verses in Scripture: “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” (Jn 14:27). The key to our common salvation lies somewhere hidden in that promise of Christ. In faith, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sought it to the very end.
Author: Benjamin Malian, First Year Master of Theological Studies (MTS), Hellenic College Holy Cross School of Theology