The Fabricated Bonhoeffer
Uwe Siemon-Netto is the author of The Fabricated Luther, perhaps the definitive rebuttal to the oft-repeated lie that Martin Luther was somehow a spiritual forerunner of Adolph Hitler.
Lutheranism's early alliance with State in Germany and Scandinavia has combined with rather thorough and practically universal misunderstanding of Luther's theology of the Two Kingdoms in Roman Catholic and especially Reformed circles to produce a distorted understanding of Lutheran theology as politically quietistic by nature, and of its role in the Hitler era as being consistently submissive. While nobody can deny the failure of the German Church of all confessions to stand up to Hitler as it should have, Siemon-Netto demonstrates that the Lutheran church was no worse than other Christian churches in this respect- and that, in fact, Lutheran resistance very much motivated by Luther's social and political ethic (like that of Leipzig Mayor and anti-Nazi martyr Carl Goerdeler, who was frustrated in his attempts to get British and French politicians to stand up to Hitler precisely by the degree to which those politicians were motivated by those very cliches not to regard him and those like him in Germany as credible allies) abounded in the Germany of the 'Thirties. The role played by Lutheranism and even by the institutional Lutheran Church in the collapse of the Iron Curtain in Germany and the Baltic is well-documented.
Combine the myth of inherent political quietism with the admittedly vicious- though wholly uncharacteristic- anti-Semitism of Luther's last few years, and the result is a distorted and sometimes not entirely coherent view of Lutheranism's role in the Holocaust and in the Nazi regime generally that has been badly in need of responses like Siemon-Netto's.
Now, in the blog of the Concordia Seminary (St. Louis) Institute of Lay Vocation, Siemon-Netto defends another prominent Lutheran who died for his resistance to Hitler - Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer- from attempts by various bizarre theologies he himself never would have countenanced to claim him as their own.
Bonhoeffer, it should be noted, was motivated to resist Hitler specifically by his understanding of Luther's Two Kingdoms doctrine.
HT: Beckfest and Cyberbrethren
Comments
One of the problems is that his early break with Harnack and later break with Karl Barth are seldom taken into account. The susceptibility of Barth and company to leftist ideology and even Free Masonry are pointed out by Hermann Sasse. It was over the Two Kingdom doctrine that the break with Barth took place. The question was profoundly theological and yet had profound consequences for Jews. Had the Barmen Declaration not been the Calvinistic concoction upon which Barth insisted, but the document proposed by Sasse and Bonhoeffer, the Confessing Church would have stood with all Jews rather than just trying to protect those who were Christian.
There are so many insights to be gained from Bonhoeffer. In the Roman tradition, great theologians are given special titles, e.g. Thomas Aquinas is the Angelic Doctor. Perhaps Bonhoeffer could be rightly called the doctor crucis. Bonhoeffer and Paul Gerhard exemplify Lutheran piety and fidelity. My heart at once weeps and rejoices when I sing a Gerhard Hymn or Bonhoeffer's _Von guten Maechten wunderbar geborgen_ which was written in the Spandau prison. That we had such faith, such gift of expression, such courage of conviction as that shown by these two Lutherans