The words of a hero
Sixty nine years ago two guards came to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s hut in the Flossenburg prison camp to fetch him for his final journey to the gallows. Turning to a fellow prisoner he said ‘this is the end, but for me the beginning, of life’. After that he proceeded with quiet dignity to the gallows. A fellow prisoner, Dr Fischer-Hullstrung, gave this description:
Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I have worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.
I have often wondered why Bonhoeffer has had such an enormous influence on my theological thought. Today, on the anniversary of his death, I have been trying to identify some of the reasons:
- I studied him as part of my first degree when my I was first learning to think theologically.
- His conscious decision to leave Union Theological Seminary and return to Nazi Germany to share the fate of his own people showed such moral and intellectual college.
- He was a truly liberal thinker, making room in the spaces of his thought for many insights.
- He was a truly dialectical theologian – demonstrating an ability to hold then and now, Bible and world, here and hereafter in tension.
- Standing in a tradition of formal and drily intellectual ministerial formation he was prepared to emphasize the need for the communal and devotional life of trainee pastors.
- Raised in a setting of old German privilege, his outspoken opposition to the Aryan clause showed a triumph of mercy and grace over self-interest.
- Raised in a Lutheran theological climate, the decision to resist the authority of State was enormous, but having taken it he was prepared to support it by action as well as words if necessary.
- His essay ‘After 10 years’ abides as a clarion call for reasoned theological judgment. See more of it here.
When I get to heaven, I should very much like to meet him – but I’ve a feeling the queue might be quite long!
Image: groundspeak.com