All too often in the course of studying history, great
men and the great deeds they undertook are overlooked or forgotten.
Perhaps they fall out of favor in history texts and they begin to fade
from collective memory.
Author Eric Metaxas has helped bring back to life two such
great historical figures. In Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and
the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, Metaxas told the story of one
man's pivotal role in helping to change the world and help rid it of one
of history's great evils – slavery.
Metaxas has just published another biography, chronicling the life of a
man I'd never heard of until I was well into adulthood. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and author who, like Wilberforce, became a
force for good, in his case working against the unfathomable evil of
Nazism. Many may be familiar with this famous quote from Bonhoeffer:
"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us
guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
In Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Metaxas takes us
through Bonhoeffer's life from the time he was a child until his
execution for his role in a plot to assassinate Hitler. The details and
first-hand accounts paint a vivid picture of the man who would
eventually stare down the evil which had permeated German society,
including the church.
Metaxas
chronicles how quickly many German church leaders capitulated to the
Nazis. One of the first acts undertaken by the government of the Third
Reich was called the "Restoration of the Civil Service." All government
employees had to be of "Aryan" stock. Those of Jewish descent would be
out of work. The German church was essentially a state church, thus a
decision had to be made as to whether to go along. There were, in fact,
pastors of Jewish heritage, including one of Bonhoeffer's friends.
Metaxas describes the German church as being in turmoil, divided on how
to respond to the new government. He writes: "There was at this time a
group that stood solidly behind Hitler's rise to power and blithely
tossed two millennia of Christian orthodoxy overboard." They called
themselves the "German Christians," and vigorously attacked those who
disagreed with them.
Bonhoeffer knew he had to respond. So in the spring of 1933, years
before the Jews would begin to suffer the horrors of the concentration
camps, Bonhoeffer spelled out his views in an essay called "The Church
and the Jewish Question." In it, Bonhoeffer said that the church "has
an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society,
even if they do not belong to the Christian community." To us, those
words may not sound especially radical. But in the context of the
times, they were revolutionary. It was clear that Bonhoeffer was
talking about the Jews. But Bonhoeffer didn't stop there. He went on
to say that, in Metaxas's words, "It is sometimes not enough to help
those crushed by the evil actions of a state; at some point the church
must directly take action against the state to stop it from perpetrating
evil."
Reeling from the shame and derision which followed Germany's defeat in
World War I, the "German Christians" were caught up in the fever of
nationalism which swept the country. They twisted Christian theology
into something unrecognizable as Christian. As Metaxas writes:
"For many Germans,
their national identity had become so melted together with whatever
Lutheran Christian faith they had that it was impossible to see either
clearly. After four-hundred years of taking for granted that all
Germans were Lutheran Christians, no one really knew what Christianity
was anymore."
Hitler himself sensed and
preyed on this weakness. He is quoted as having remarked about
Protestant pastors, "You can do anything you want with them. They will
submit…they are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and
they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them."
Bonhoeffer did not submit. Eventually conscience drove him to work with
members of the German resistance in a plan to assassinate Hitler. He
was arrested and imprisoned for two years, and finally executed at
Flossenburg concentration camp on Hitler's personal order. It would be
only three weeks later that Hitler committed suicide, leading to
Germany's surrender.
Many years after Dietrich Bonhoeffer's execution, the camp doctor who
witnessed it gave this account of his final moments:
"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 worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever
seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God."