Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born into a prestigious family. His mother trained as a teacher and his father was one of the most notable psychologists in Germany at the time. Both sides of their family tree were full of people with notable accomplishments: On his mother’s side, imperial officials, theologians, artists, musicians, and philosophers; and on his father’s side, judges, lawyers, and leaders in local politics. It was a family marked by its intellectual prowess, in which the children were expected to read the classics and engage in musical performance and intellectual debate.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of eight children, and the leader amongst the youngest three, which included his twin sister Sabine. The siblings were all academically-inclined, and there was always a spirit of academic competition in the air. Even so, the family life of the Bonhoeffers was a generally warm and supportive one: “The Bonhoeffers were that terribly rare thing: a genuinely happy family” (25).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer took seriously the family’s idea of service, and sought to care for others in his community. He was also musically talented, but ultimately would choose theology for his career track. While this choice surprised some family members, it was a choice rooted in their family culture. Bonhoeffer’s mother had a special influence on her children’s religious development, as she encouraged an active piety in her children. The family’s life was centered around two sites: Their home in the city and a vacation home in the wilderness, where Bonhoeffer enjoyed many carefree summers as a child.

World War I swept across Europe in 1914, undermining the family’s sense of security. The Bonhoeffer family was not directly touched by the war until 1917, when the oldest two sons were sent to the front. One of those sons, Walter, died shortly after deployment. Like many of his fellow Germans, Bonhoeffer was deeply affected by the experiences of World War I and the political and economic humiliations faced by the post-war Weimar Republic. He sought to avoid the political extremes of his fellow citizens. By the age of 13, he decided to devote his life to the study of theology and the reform of the church.

1923 brought many changes, both for the Bonhoeffers and for Germany. Some of the children got married, while others undertook prestigious academic postings, such as Karl-Friedrich, who became a physicist. Bonhoeffer enrolled in the University of Tübingen, where other family members had previously studied. He joined the fraternity of the Igels, just as his father had done.

Meanwhile, the German Weimar Republic was suffering its catastrophic descent into hyperinflation, in which the currency, the mark, became nearly worthless. Bonhoeffer had to write home to his family asking for more money, since, in his words, “I had to spend six billion for bread” (44). A young and aspiring Adolf Hitler tried to seize the discontent of the moment to thrust himself into power, but he was thrown in jail. The Weimar Republic limped along under the rules of the post-World War I arrangement. Part of that arrangement limited the number of military they could have, but young men were still required to put in some training. This included Bonhoeffer, who spent three weeks in military training before returning to civilian life, at which time he began to dream of taking a trip to Rome.

In the spring of 1924, Bonhoeffer went to Rome. He was not yet 20. Since he had been classically educated in art and literature, he enjoyed the cultural heritage of Rome, finding it “extremely and astoundingly beautiful” (50). He also marveled at the Roman Catholic Church’s synthesis of the Roman cultural heritage with the Christian ethos and aesthetic.

Though Bonhoeffer was, like most German Christians, a confirmed Lutheran, he was more open to Catholicism than many of his fellow Lutherans were. He was struck by the way that the Roman Catholic Church had succeeded in creating a universal church, in which race and nationality had been transcended. This drove him to consider the question at the core of his theological pursuits: What is the church? He came to believe that it was something real and transcendent, embracing not just Catholicism or Lutheranism, but all Christians everywhere, of which each ecclesiastical community was merely an expression. This view of the church was a far cry from the narrowly-bounded, hyper-nationalistic German church that was to arise during the Nazi years, and may explain why Bonhoeffer proved so immune to the lure of the state church.

From 1924 to 1927, Bonhoeffer attended the University of Berlin. Berlin had become world-renowned as a bastion of theological liberalism due to its famous scholar, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). At the time of Bonhoeffer’s studies, prominent liberal theologians included Adolf von Harnack, the famous church historian; Reinhold Seeberg, the dogmatics professor who would oversee Bonhoeffer’s doctoral thesis; Adolf Deissman, who would introduce Bonhoeffer to the ecumenical movement; and Karl Holl, a prestigious Luther scholar.

Despite the acclaimed faculty around him, Bonhoeffer sided more with the emerging neo-orthodoxy of another contemporary scholar, Karl Barth of Göttingen, to the great frustration of Harnack and Seeberg. The Berlin school of theological liberalism felt that a belief in God could not be proven and was therefore unscientific, presenting the Bible as more of a historical artifact than divine revelation. By contrast, Barth argued that God’s existence was a necessary presupposition of theology, and that the texts were a means of God’s revelation, not merely historical artifacts. Bonhoeffer developed similar views on the matter. He eventually took up a thesis in dogmatics under Seeberg, returning to his question from his time in Rome—what is the church?—and arguing that the church was “Christ existing as church-community” (63).

Bonhoeffer now had to choose a career path involving either academics or pastoral ministry. While his family preferred the former, given Bonhoeffer’s academic abilities, he was drawn to the latter. During his studies, he had served in a Sunday School in a local parish and connected well with the young people. He even began a separate ministry, a “Thursday Circle” of hand-picked young participants who would gather and have wide-ranging conversations about religion, politics, ethics, culture, and art. His success in fostering such personal connections led him to choose pastoral ministry. He accepted an offer to become a pastor in Barcelona, Spain.

In 1928, Bonhoeffer began his pastoral ministry in Barcelona as an assistant pastor in a German church. The head pastor, Friedrich Olbricht, was keen to have someone to share the duties of administration, children’s ministries, and filling in during the summer holidays. Bonhoeffer did not find either the German or Spanish circles in Barcelona to be intellectually inspiring, but he dove into his pastoral work with zeal. His preaching abilities were considered better than Olbricht’s and his sermons attracted higher attendance, but Bonhoeffer submitted to Olbricht’s leadership and never tried to undermine the other’s ministry.

Some noteworthy milestones in Bonhoeffer’s intellectual development were three lectures that he gave to his church community in the fall of 1928. In these lectures, he emphasized themes that would later become central to his theological work: The centrality of the person of Christ in faith rather than of religion in the abstract; and the idea of God as the initiator in one’s spiritual relationship. Thus, at 22, his core ideas were already being laid as a foundation for later work: “Nearly all that Bonhoeffer would say and write later in life marked a deepening and expansion of what he had earlier said and believed” (84). Although he enjoyed and appreciated his time in Barcelona, he was also hoping to complete a postdoctoral degree, and so returned to Berlin early in 1929.