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Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church
1906–1945; Barmen Declaration 1934· Person· People
Historical recordConfirmed by archaeology, outside sources or contemporary records.
German Lutheran pastor and theologian who opposed Hitler, joined the resistance, and was executed in April 1945.
See it on the Bible & Christianity map →What it is
Born in Breslau in 1906, Bonhoeffer studied in New York in 1930–31 and worshipped at Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. From 1933 he opposed the Nazi 'Aryan paragraph' barring Jewish-born pastors, backed the Confessing Church and its 1934 Barmen Declaration, and ran its illegal seminary at Finkenwalde until the Gestapo closed it in 1937. He joined resisters in German military intelligence, was arrested in April 1943, and was hanged at Flossenbürg camp on April 9, 1945, weeks before the war ended.
Why it matters
His books The Cost of Discipleship and Letters and Papers from Prison made him one of the most-read modern theologians and a model of costly faith under tyranny.
Life, legacy and sources
His writings fill 17 volumes (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works); letters, Gestapo records and his friend Eberhard Bethge's 1967 biography document his life.
Questions and debates
Scholars debate how directly he took part in plots to kill Hitler, how he squared that with his earlier pacifism, and how fairly today's partisans claim him.
Connections (2)
▸Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church resisted Nazism, the Holocaust and the churchesHistorical record
The connection
In April 1933 Bonhoeffer wrote that the church might have to 'jam a spoke in the wheel' of an unjust state. He opposed excluding Jewish-born Christians from the church, helped smuggle a group of Jews to Switzerland in 1942, and joined the military-intelligence conspiracy against Hitler, for which he was executed.
When and where
Berlin, April 1933 essay 'The Church and the Jewish Question'; the 'Operation 7' rescue, 1942; arrested April 5, 1943; hanged at Flossenbürg, April 9, 1945.
Historical evidence
His essays and letters, Gestapo interrogation records, and accounts by fellow conspirators and his biographer Eberhard Bethge.
Questions and debates
His 1933 essay still repeated traditional Christian anti-Jewish ideas, and scholars debate how central the fate of Jews was to his resistance.
▸Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church built 'The Cost of Discipleship' on Sermon on the Mount (Beatitudes, Lord's Prayer)Historical record
The connection
The Cost of Discipleship (1937) is built around a commentary on Matthew 5–7. Bonhoeffer argued that churches had cheapened grace into 'forgiveness without requiring repentance' and called for 'costly grace': 'When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.' In 1935 he wrote that renewal would come from uncompromising discipleship 'according to the Sermon on the Mount.'
When and where
Lectures at the Confessing Church seminary in Finkenwalde, 1935–37; published in Munich in 1937 as Nachfolge ('Discipleship').
Historical evidence
The book itself, whose central section expounds Matthew 5–7, and his January 1935 letter to his brother Karl-Friedrich.
Questions and debates
How he reconciled the Sermon's call to nonviolence with joining a plot to kill Hitler is the great question of his life; he planned to visit Gandhi but never went.