Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist and Daniel P. Umbel, Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking.

Clements, Keith

Mark Thiessen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist and Daniel P. Umbel, Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2013. 250pp.

In February 2001, the WCC central committee launched the programme Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV) during its meeting in Potsdam, Germany. On 4 February, the meeting transferred to the centre of Berlin and a torchlight vigil was held at the Brandenburg Gate. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the WCC, pointed out that this day was the 95th anniversary of the birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the great cloud of martyrs for the cause of peace and justice. Bonhoeffer is well known for his dramatic call, made at the ecumenical conference at Fano, Denmark, in 1934, for the churches to renounce war: "Peace must be dared. It is the great venture." But Bonhoeffer was put to death, not on account of such speeches but because of his involvement in a conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi regime, a plot that involved attempts to assassinate Adolf Hider. Bonhoeffer's name was invoked several times during the days of the launch of the Decade. Which Bonhoeffer, one may ask, was in mind? During the central committee discussion, if this reviewer's memory is correct, a Norwegian participant pointed out the ambiguity of any call to renounce violence. A member of his family had been involved in the armed resistance to German occupation during the second world war and paid the price. Were there to be any distinctions made in the kinds of "violence" addressed and their motivations?

For his part, Bonhoeffer hovers ambiguously in the background of all such discussions. Over the years, a consensus has grown that during his earlier ecumenical involvement, from 1931 until the start of the second world war in 1939, Bonhoeffer was certainly a pacifist, but that faced with the enormities of evil being committed by Hitler's regime, he came to believe that responsibility before God and knowledge of the plight of the victims of Nazism required involvement in political resistance for an overthrow of the regime with all the moral ambiguities--including that of violence--which this entailed. Whether one admires Bonhoeffer for making this transition or regrets it as a fall from grace, there has been general agreement that he did so change.

The authors of this work challenge such an interpretation, and on any reckoning it is good to be asked to take a fresh look at such a revered figure and to revisit some acquired assumptions. Bonhoeffer, they argue, maintained his rigorous pacifism to the very end. Their argument is on two levels: the first requires a rereading of the history of Bonhoeffer; the second, a considered analysis of his theological development. Although it is the latter part of the book that deals with this theological aspect, I will treat it first since, while I do not wholly agree with the conclusions, the argument is serious and thorough and I have fewer questions about its methodology.

The authors take issue with such well-known interpreters of Bonhoeffer as Larry Rasmussen and Renate Wind, who allegedly assert that Bonhoeffer moved from the absolutist peace ethic set out in his Discipleship to a more utilitarian notion of responsibility during the wartime resistance and the writing of his Ethics. The chief culprit in encouraging such an interpretation is said to be Reinhold Niebuhr. The authors do make a strong case for the view that there is greater continuity between Discipleship and Ethics than is sometimes assumed, but whether it is quite the continuity that would support their overall view of Bonhoeffer the permanent pacifist is another matter. In the final chapter of Discipleship, for example, Bonhoeffer states powerfully the consequences of a theology of incarnation: "The incarnate one transforms his disciples into brothers and sisters of all human beings." Is that incompatible with a final decision for tyrannicide in order to save the most vulnerable of those brothers and sisters? Such arguments about Bonhoeffer's theology may never be settled, but it is good that the authors have given opportunity to look at them again.

But now to their historical case. Basically, it is that while Bonhoeffer accepted a role as a double agent within the Ahwehr--the German military intelligence department within which much of the resistance was camouflaged--he had nothing to do with any of the actual attempts to assassinate Hider, his role in the resistance was very marginal, and his main motivation for involvement was the exemption from the military call-up that Abwehr service would provide. Much in this is true, but the fact that Bonhoeffer was not himself involved in any of the actual attempts on Hitler's life is not disputed by any serious student of his life. It is also beside the point, which is whether by his participation in the resistance he knowingly and willingly accepted complicity in such attempts as the moral price to be paid for a successful overthrow of the regime. There is much evidence that he did, especially in his close relationship with his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi, who masterminded much of the collaboration between the military and civilian wings of the resistance. But the authors make strenuous efforts to downplay the significance of memories of conversations between Bonhoeffer and Dohnanyi, in which, according to Bonhoeffer's closest friend, Eberhard Bethge, the plan to eliminate Hitler was an agreed necessity. The authors claim, "We do not really know what Bonhoeffer and others said in these conversations. To truly know, in any meaningful sense, we would have to have the context for each given conversation--knowing the nature of the subject matter, the occasion for the conversation, Bonhoeffer's tone of voice and facial expressions, the nature of the person with whom he was speaking, and the nature of their relationship ... We simply do not have that information" (89). But we do. Here, for example, is Eberhard Bethge, interviewed in 1985:

"I remember an evening in Sakrow, where the Dohnanyi family lived, early in the war. We were just sitting together at the fireside, and Hans von Dohnanyi, who had certain elements of piety even then, asked Dietrich, "What about Jesus' saying, "Whoever takes up the sword will perish by the sword"? What about us--we are taking up the sword.' And Dietrich answered, "Yes, that's true. And Jesus' word about whoever takes up the sword will die by the sword is valid. It's still valid for us now. The time needs exactly those people who do that, and let Jesus' saying be true. We (sic) take the sword and are prepared to perish by it. So, of course, taking up guilt means accepting the consequences of it. Maybe God will save us but first of all you must be prepared to accept the consequences.' He meant of course it needs exactly those people who accept Jesus' word--the truth of it and so the consequences of it, of perishing. That Germany needs at this moment of its history these kinds of Christians, and that is what being Christian means." (K. Clements, What Freedom? The Persistent Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoejfer [Bristol, 1991], 37).

Of what about George Bell, in 1945 recalling his momentous meeting with Bonhoeffer in Sweden just three years earlier: "Deeply committed as he was to the plan for elimination (sic), he was not altogether at ease as a Christian about such a solution. 'There must be punishment by God ... We do not want to escape repentance' " (Sermon at Bonhoeffer Memorial Service, London, July 1945).

Bonhoeffer's chief worry evidently was less about the act of elimination as such than the possibility that it might be seen as an attempt by Germans to stave off the full judgment of God incurred for the crimes of Nazism. Can there really be any doubt as to what Bonhoeffer meant in these testimonies? Further, so anxious are the authors to distance Bonhoeffer from the ultimate act of treason that they attempt to minimize the significance of what Bonhoeffer actually did undertake for the resistance, namely his visits abroad to convey information to church and allied government circles. This shows a serious misunderstanding of the resistance, for which foreign contacts were not a sideline but a core part of the strategy. Only with allied support--in the end not forthcoming--could the conspiracy hope to succeed in its full aims of achieving not just the end of Hider but the installation of a new, non-Nazi government recognized by the world. No accident, perhaps, that the classic study by Klemens von Klemperer, The German Resistance against Hitler: The Search for Allies Abroad, 1938-1945 (Oxford, 1992) nowhere features.

These are but some instances where actual testimony and history do not fit the narrative that the authors wish to construct. This is not to deny that the theological and ethical issues they raise are of first-rate importance. But theology should not co-opt a selective reading of history. Bonhoeffer remains a vital figure in our continuing Christian and ecumenical journey precisely because he is too discomfiting for all of us and cannot be compressed into the idealized portrait that we, whichever theological stable we come from, would like to admire.

DOI: 10.1111/erev.12123

Keith Clements is a former general secretary of the Conference of European Churches.