Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Life

Bonhoeffer was born on February 4, 1906, in Breslau, Germany, the son of the psychiatrist Karl Bonhoeffer. Beginning in 1923, he studied theology at the University of Tübingen and the University of Berlin. His doctoral dissertation on the church community, Sanctorum Communio (The Communion of Saints), won praise from Karl Barth. After qualifying as a university lecturer at the age of 24, he taught at the University of Berlin. He also served as a youth secretary for an ecumenical church organization that was a forerunner of the World Council of Churches.

The Nazis came to power in 1933. Bonhoeffer joined the Confessing Church movement, which resisted state interference in the church, and directed the Finkenwalde seminary, the Confessing Church's institution for training pastors. After the authorities closed the seminary, he became involved in a plot to remove Hitler organized by figures in the Wehrmacht's military intelligence service (the Abwehr). He was arrested and imprisoned in 1943. After the failed assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, his involvement came to light, and on April 9, 1945, he was hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp. He was 39 years old.

Ministry and Contributions

• Ecclesiology: He understood the church as a community in which Christ is present.
• Discipleship: In The Cost of Discipleship (Nachfolge), drawing on the Sermon on the Mount, he emphasized a "simple obedience" that responds immediately to Christ's call.
• The church's social responsibility: In his April 1933 essay "The Church and the Jewish Question," he addressed the church's responsibility toward the state. He argued that the church must not only care for the victims crushed under the wheel but must also be prepared to stop the wheel itself.
• Writings: His works include Act and Being, Creation and Fall, and Ethics. The letters he wrote in prison were published after his death as Resistance and Submission (Widerstand und Ergebung), known in English as Letters and Papers from Prison; in Korea the collection is also known as Prison Letters.
• Commemoration: Churches of the Anglican Communion commemorate him on April 9.

Influence on the Korean Church

During the military dictatorship of the 1970s, his prison letters are said to have held great significance for imprisoned students, workers, and intellectuals. The minjung theologian Ahn Byung-mu interpreted Bonhoeffer as having discovered the "minjung" (the common people) while in prison. Borrowing Bonhoeffer's language, Ahn also defined the minjung as "those who stand before God without God." Bonhoeffer's thought on discipleship and the church community is studied across denominational lines, and he is frequently cited in discussions of the church's social engagement and of renewal in the Korean church.

Assessment

Bonhoeffer is honored across denominations as a martyr who remained true to his Christian conscience in opposing the Nazis. Some also credit him with playing a major role in establishing the concept of an ethics of responsibility in the German church. On the other hand, his involvement, as a pastor, in an assassination plot has been the subject of ethical debate over whether Christians may resort to violent resistance.

In Korea, some have observed that his words are quoted selectively to suit particular political positions. During the Moon Jae-in administration, supporters of Pastor Jeon Kwang-hoon cited the so-called "mad driver" analogy to criticize the government. Bonhoeffer scholars responded that this distorted his meaning, and some argued that Bonhoeffer never directly called for dragging the driver from the wheel.