Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Eberhard Bethge was one of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s students in the covert seminary which Bonhoeffer organized for the Confessing Church in the 1930s. Since Bonhoeffer was only slightly older than his prospective ordinands, he made friendly connections with many of them, but none more so than Bethge. Bethge became Bonhoeffer’s closest friend in the ‘30s and early ‘40s, and was his main correspondent in his letters from prison. Bethge had a keen theological mind, like Bonhoeffer, and so the latter would use Bethge as his go-to person for working through difficult theological questions in dialogue. Bethge would also be jailed by the Nazis later in the war, but he was released when Soviet forces took his prison. He thereafter served as a pastor and scholar, following Bonhoeffer’s pattern of maintaining a pastoral ministry interspersed with teaching opportunities at various universities.

Bethge was Bonhoeffer’s chief biographer as well as the editor of his posthumously published works. It is thanks to Bethge that Bonhoeffer’s Ethics (which Bonhoeffer viewed as his magnum opus) and Letters and Papers from Prison were published. While Bonhoeffer was known and appreciated in a few disparate circles during his career—the ecumenical movement, the Confessing Church, and a handful of clerics and scholars in England and the USA—it is largely due to Bethge’s work that Bonhoeffer’s legacy has reached such an elevated status in the global Christian world.

Karl Barth was a Swiss-German theologian and Bible scholar, about a generation older than Bonhoeffer. He became known as the main framer of the neo-orthodox theological position (See: Background). His neo-orthodox interpretation of Protestant theology was widely influential as a response to liberal theology, and helped influence Bonhoeffer’s theological development. Bonhoeffer met and worked with Karl Barth on several occasions during his career, and it was Barth’s influence that helped him secure passage over the Swiss border during some of Bonhoeffer’s covert activities for the German resistance.

Barth was closely tied to the rise of the Confessing Church in Germany. While himself a Swiss citizen, he had lived and worked in Germany for many years as a professor, both at the University of Göttingen and the University of Bonn. When the church struggle between the “German Christians” and the devout orthodox pastors emerged, Barth was firmly against the German Christians. Ultimately, he composed the Barmen Declaration, which proclaimed the foundation of the Confessing Church in opposition to the Reichskirche. As a result of his stand, however, and his refusal to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler, he had to leave Germany and return to Switzerland.

After the war, Barth wrote his five-volume magnum opus, Church Dogmatics, which is regarded as an important theological work of the 20th century.

Like Karl Barth, Martin Niemöller was a theological and pastoral colleague of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the German church. At the outset of Hitler’s rise to power, Niemöller served as the pastor of an affluent congregation in a Berlin suburb, and he was at first an outspoken advocate of Hitler’s leadership. Like many Germans of his day, he had high hopes that the charismatic new Führer would restore the glory of German national pride which had been stripped away since World War I. Niemöller also held, by his own admission, antisemitic views, so he did not find the Nazis’ antisemitism as alarming as some others, like Bonhoeffer, did. However, that changed when the Reichskirche moved to adopt the “Aryan paragraph,” a resolution barring any non-“Aryans.” Niemöller regarded this move as violating biblical teachings on baptism and participation in the church, which was supposed to be open to all people on equal terms.

Niemöller was an early leader of the Pastors’ Emergency League and the Confessing Church, and only gradually lost his confidence in Hitler. He continued to hold out hope that Hitler would halt the dangerous new directions being undertaken in the Reichskirche, but after an in-person meeting with the Führer, Niemöller’s views began to change. Even so, he was less inclined to have the Confessing Church take a radically outward stance against the state than was Bonhoeffer.

Niemöller invited Bonhoeffer to organize and run a new seminary for the Confessing Church. Niemöller spent the entirety of World War II under arrest and was only freed when Allied forces liberated Germany. He thereafter became a leading figure in the global peace movement and the World Council of Churches.

Bishop George Bell was an Anglican cleric who played an important role in both ecclesiastical and international affairs from the 1920s through the ‘50s, particularly in the ecumenical movement. He served as the Dean of Canterbury and the Bishop of Chichester, and it was in the latter role that his acquaintance with Dietrich Bonhoeffer began. The two first met when Bonhoeffer served in ministry to a German congregation in London, and their partnership continued in the ecumenical movement and into the war years. Bell was the primary recipient of Bonhoeffer’s intelligence reports on the resistance conspiracy against Hitler; his high ecclesiastical position and membership in the British House of Lords allowed him to pass along that information to the British government, though the war effort prevented Britain from taking any concrete action to assist the conspiracy.

Bell was active in the ecumenical movement throughout his career and was a key figure in the World Council of Churches. His status in ecumenical circles allowed him to become a much-needed outside champion for the Confessing Church in its struggle against oppression within Germany. It is largely to the credit of Bell’s influence that Martin Niemöller survived his long imprisonment during the war. Bell was also among the leading English voices that celebrated and commemorated Bonhoeffer’s legacy after the young theologian’s death at Flossenburg.