Letters and Papers From Prison (51 page)

Now for a few more thoughts on our theme. I’m only gradually working my way to the non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts; the job is too big for me to finish just yet.

On the historical side: There is one great development that leads to the world’s autonomy. In theology one sees it first in Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who maintains that reason is sufficient for religious knowledge. In ethics it appears in Montaigne and Bodin with their substitution of rules of life for the commandments. In politics Machiavelli detaches politics from morality in general and founds the doctrine of ‘reasons of state’. Later, and very differently from Machiavelli, but tending like him towards the autonomy of human society, comes Grotius, setting up his natural law as international law, which is valid
etsi deus non daretur,
‘even if there were no God’. The philosophers provide the finishing touches: on the one hand we have the deism of Descartes, who holds that the world is a mechanism, running by itself with no interference from God; and on the other hand the pantheism of Spinoza, who says that God is nature. In the last resort, Kant is a deist, and Fichte and Hegel are pantheists. Everywhere the thinking is directed towards the autonomy of man and the world.

(It seems that in the natural sciences the process begins with Nicolas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno and the ‘heretical’ doctrine of the infinity of the universe. The classical
cosmos
was finite, like the
created world of the Middle Ages. An infinite universe, however it may be conceived, is self-subsisting,
etsi deus non daretur. It
is true that modern physics is not as sure as it was about the infinity of the universe, but it has not gone back to the earlier conceptions of its finitude.)

God as a working hypothesis in morals, politics, or science, has been surmounted and abolished; and the same thing has happened in philosophy and religion (Feuerbach!). For the sake of intellectual honesty, that working hypothesis should be dropped, or as far as possible eliminated. A scientist or physician who sets out to edify is a hybrid.

Anxious souls will ask what room there is left for God now; and as they know of no answer to the question, they condemn the whole development that has brought them to such straits. I wrote to you before about the various emergency exits that have been contrived; and we ought to add to them the
salto mortale
[death-leap] back into the Middle Ages. But the principle of the Middle Ages is heteronomy in the form of clericalism; a return to that can be a counsel of despair, and it would be at the cost of intellectual honesty. It’s a dream that reminds one of the song O
w
ü
sst’ ich doch den Weg zurück, den weiten Weg ins Kinderland
⁷⁹
There is no such way - at any rate not if it means deliberately abandoning our mental integrity; the only way is that of Matt. 18.3,
⁸⁰
i.e. through repentance, through
ultimate
honesty.

And we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world
etsi deus non daretur.
And this is just what we do recognize - before God! God himself compels us to recognize it. So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15.34).
⁸¹
The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matt. 8.17
⁸²
makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by
virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.

Here is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions. Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world: God is the
deus ex machina.
The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help. To that extent we may say that the development towards the world’s coming of age outlined above, which has done away with a false conception of God, opens up a way of seeing the God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by his weakness. This will probably be the starting-point for our ‘secular interpretation’.

18 July

I wonder whether any letters have been lost in the raids on Munich. Did you get the one with the two poems? It was just sent off that evening, and it also contained a few introductory remarks on our theological theme. The poem about Christians and pagans contains an idea that you will recognize: ‘Christians stand by God in his hour of grieving’; that is what distinguishes Christians from pagans. Jesus asked in Gethsemane, ‘Could you not watch with me one hour?’ That is a reversal of what the religious man expects from God. Man is summoned to share in God’s sufferings at the hands of a godless world.

He must therefore really live in the godless world, without attempting to gloss over or explain its ungodliness in some religious way or other. He must live a ‘secular’ life, and thereby share in God’s sufferings. He
may
live a ‘secular’ life (as one who has been freed from false religious obligations and inhibitions). To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to make something of oneself (a sinner, a penitent, or a saint) on the basis of some method or other, but to be a man - not a type of man, but the man that Christ creates in us. It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life. That is
metanoia:
not in the first place thinking about one’s own needs, problems, sins, and fears, but allowing oneself to be caught up into the way of Jesus Christ, into the messianic
event, thus fulfilling Isa. 53. Therefore ‘believe in the gospel’, or, in the words of John the Baptist, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1.29). (By the way, Jeremias has recently asserted that the Aramaic word for ‘lamb’ may also be translated ‘servant’; very appropriate in view of Isa. 53!)

This being caught up into the messianic sufferings of God in Jesus Christ takes a variety of forms in the New Testament. It appears in the call to discipleship, in Jesus’ table-fellowship with sinners, in ‘conversions’ in the narrower sense of the word (e.g. Zacchaeus), in the act of the woman who was a sinner (Luke 7) - an act that she performed without any confession of sin, in the healing of the sick (Matt. 8.17; see above), in Jesus’ acceptance of children. The shepherds, like the wise men from the East, stand at the crib, not as ‘converted sinners’, but simply because they are drawn to the crib by the star just as they are. The centurion of Capernaum (who makes no confession of sin) is held up as a model of faith (cf. Jairus). Jesus ‘loved’ the rich young man. The eunuch (Acts 8) and Cornelius (Acts 10) are not standing at the edge of an abyss. Nathaniel is ‘an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile’ (John 1.47). Finally, Joseph of Arimathea and the women at the tomb. The only thing that is common to all these is their sharing in the suffering of God in Christ. That is their ‘faith’. There is nothing of religious method here. The ‘religious act’ is always something partial; ‘faith’ is something whole, involving the whole of one’s life. Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.

But what does this life look like, this participation in the power-lessness of God in the world? I will write about that next time, I hope. Just one more point for today. When we speak of God in a ‘non-religious’ way, we must speak of him in such a way that the godlessness of the world is not in some way concealed, but rather revealed, and thus exposed to an unexpected light. The world that has come of age is more godless, and perhaps for that very reason nearer to God, than the world before its coming of age. Forgive me for still putting it all so terribly clumsily and badly, as I really feel I am. But perhaps you will help me again to make things clearer and simpler, even if only by my being able to talk about them with you and to hear you, so to speak, keep asking and answering.

The address
⁸³
is now H. Linke, Berlin-Friedrichshagen, Wilhelmstrasse 58. I’m very glad that you’ve now got over the mountain passes. We’re getting up at 1.30 almost every night here; it’s a bad time, and it handicaps work rather.

I hope I shall hear from you soon. All best wishes and faithful and grateful thoughts.

Ever your Dietrich

NOTES

1.
After a successful overthrow or the end of the war.

2.
To return home from the USA, see DB, pp.557ff.

3.
The German text is printed in
Gesammelte Schriften
II, pp. 422-25.

4.
Geronimo Cardano, philosopher, doctor and mathematician (1501-1576), who gave his name to ‘cardan joints’ (universal joints).

5.
According to an entry in his book of readings one of the soldiers of the guard who was acting as a go-between was killed on 31 March. Bonhoeffer gave a new address. Letters from Eberhard Bethge to the earlier address have been lost.

6.
’I thank God whom I serve with a clear conscience, as did my fathers.’ ö formerly blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him; but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.’

7.
‘Things into which angels long to look.’

8.
‘Surely there is a God who judges on the earth.’ ‘Arise, O Lord! Let not man prevail; let the nations be judged before thee.’

9.
‘And do you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not; for, behold, I am bringing evil upon all flesh, says the Lord; but I will give you your life as a prize of war in all places to which you may go.’

10.
He probably means Prov.24.IIf.: ‘Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this.” does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not requite man according to his work?’

11.
Friedrich Justus Perels, justitiary of the Confessing Church.

12.
Corporal Knobloch, a member of the Tegel guard; see DB, p.751.

13.
‘New Testament and Mythology’, Whitsun 1941, first printed in the supplements to
Evangelische Theologie
the same year; there is an
English translation in
Kerygma and Myth
(ed. H. W. Bartsch), SPCK 1953, pp.1-41.

14.
‘The Word became flesh.’

15.
A slip of the pen; should probably be 21 April.

16.
See pp. 275.

17.
For interrogation at the Reich War Court.

18.
The attempt to obtain a post for Bethge as army chaplain from the military bishop, Dohrmann.

19.
Through the mother of a fellow-prisoner.

20.
‘You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.’ ‘My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.’ ‘But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.’

21.
The allied offensive in Central Italy was beginning; the bases at Velletri and Rignano, near Rome, were threatened.

22.
‘Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.’

23.
Martin Niemöller, in Dachau concentration camp.

24.
Corporal Linke.

25.
About the travelling on leave which was delayed and endangered by heavy bomb attacks by the Allies on the transport routes and passes of northern Italy in preparation for their offensive.

26.
‘How fair and pleasant you are, O loved one, delectable maiden.’

27.
The continuation of the letter has been lost.

28.
In 1939, Bonhoeffer had still uncompromisingly rejected ‘legalization’ and submission to the official church authorities, as it represented the surrender of the function of the Councils of Brethren in governing the church; see DB, pp.513ff., 596ff.

29.
George Bell, Bishop of Chichester.

30.
A letter of introduction to Reinhold Niebuhr, whom Bonhoeffer had met in England, in Sussex, in March 1939, to be used if Bethge were taken prisoner.

31.
In case the letter, which did not, of course, bear Niebuhr’s name, was discovered by the Gestapo.

32.
The German text is in
Gesammelte Schrifien
IV, pp. 588-92.

33.
‘Why are your senses sick? Why do you grieve day and night? Take your sorrow and cast it on him who made you … He has provided for everything in his rule; what he does and allows to happen has a good ending. So let him continue and do not chide him; in that
way you will rest in peace here and be eternally happy’ (Paul Gerhardt).

34.
The front in Central Italy was moving rapidly northwards.

35.
In the
Wehrmacht
report.

36.
Commandant of the officers’ section of the military prison in Lehrter Strasse, 64 (where Hans von Dohnanyi was held prisoner).

37.
German text printed in
Gesammelte Schriften
IV, pp. 592-96.