That verse — 2 Chronicles 20:12 — was the text for a sermon preached at a memorial service for Dietrich Bonhoeffer in London in July 1945, after word had been received that Bonhoeffer had been executed in April.
The verse fittingly sums up Bonhoeffer’s life, which was at one and the same time extraordinarily complicated yet astonishingly simple. The subtitle of Eric Metaxas’ excellent new biography of Bonhoeffer sums up the complexity: “pastor, martyr, prophet, spy.” Yet at the heart of it all, as Metaxas shows us, is Bonhoeffer’s resolute understanding that life’s sole purpose is to obey God — our eyes are upon thee — even if obedience might not result in what we ordinarily would call “success.”
Probably no 20th century Christian is now better known, or more often quoted, than Dietrich Bonhoeffer — and for good reason, given the compelling arc of his life.
He was born into an intellectual Berlin family, decided at an early age to become a theologian (“I became a theologian before I became a Christian,” he would later say), served as pastor to German congregations in Barcelona and London, recognized the threat and peril of National Socialism at its very beginning, helped found the Confessing Church, was given a lifeline out of Germany in the form of a position at Union Seminary in New York City, decided to return to Germany, became part of the conspiracy that sought to assassinate Hitler, and was executed just as the Third Reich was collapsing.
He was 39 years old.
This new biography does not supplant the definitive biography, written by Bonhoeffer’s closest friend and confidant, Eberhard Bethge. Metaxas’ biography provides a new generation with a fresh, easily accessible look at Bonhoeffer’s life and theology. Its account of the final weeks of Bonhoeffer’s life is especially riveting. A motley crew of “bemedaled and aristocratic army generals, a naval commander, a diplomat and his wife, a depressed Russian air force officer, a Catholic lawyer, a theologian, a woman of questionable morals, and a concentration camp ‘doctor’” were driven from Buchenwald to Flossenburg amidst the chaos of a dying Reich.” The reader keeps hoping the group will simply break out and escape, and thereby avoid the fate that awaited Bonhoeffer at Flossenburg on April 8.
So much of what he did and wrote reaches out and grabs us by the throat. We must resist the temptation, however, to automatically transfer all that Bonhoeffer said and did from his time to our time.
Bonhoeffer grew up in a society quite different from ours. There is no easy and quick correlation between what Bonhoeffer faced, and what we are now living through in America 2010.
What Bonhoeffer says to us today is: We are called to obey God. That may be even more counter-cultural in 21st century democratic America than it was in Nazi Germany. Are we up to the challenge?
CYNTHIA BOLBACH is an elder of First Church, Arlington, Va., and was elected in July as moderator of the 219th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
