Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis

“Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis: Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” by Mark Thiessen Nation

Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis: Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an alluring title that promises to push at scholarly boundaries. Any time a book seeks to “recover” a “true legacy,” there are a number of ways it could go on the subject. It could be a sensationalist look at the topic, or a more measured look at something that has, heretofore, been sensationalized. Mark Thiessen Nation seeks here to rethink Bonhoeffer’s alleged participation in the plot to kill Hitler, among other things.

Mark Thiessen Nation’s thesis is fairly straightforward: consensus scholarship regarding Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler is grounded upon shaky historical ground and should be rejected in light of his apparent and actual pacifism. In order to argue for this end, he makes three early points in favor of that thesis- Eberhard Bethge leaves the impression that Bonhoeffer was involved in the plot to kill Hitler; the evidence for why Bonhoeffer was arrested point in another direction; and, finally, the starting point for evaluation of Bonhoeffer’s life, legacy, and theology ought to be located in a place other than as a resisting pastor involved in the plot to kill Hitler (3).

What is interesting is that I doubt many Bonhoeffer scholars would dispute almost any of these theses. Eberhard Bethge clearly gives the impression Bonhoeffer was involved. There’s no reasonable way to dispute that. The evidence for Bonhoeffer’s being arrested does not suggest it was due to a plot to kill Hitler. No Bonhoeffer scholar I am aware of actually suggests that Bonhoeffer’s involvement in a plot to kill Hitler is the lens through which his whole life should be read. What this means is that Mark Thiessen nation, in picking these theses early on, essentially gives himself an easy hit, teeing it up so that he can knock it out of the park. By doing so, it gives the arguments that follow a veneer of support. After all, his earliest theses were proven to be at least mostly correct! One could be forgiven for thinking the rest of the argument would flow from these points, but one would be mistaken.

An important aside about these early theses is warranted. The evidence regarding Bonhoeffer’s arrest not being related to a plot to kill Hitler does not help Thiessen Nation’s narrative, because none of those arrested around the same time as Bonhoeffer were arrested for that reason either! If Hitler had known of a plot to assassinate him, does anyone actually think he would have let those would-be assassins sit in prison rather than torturing and murdering them immediately (as he did once he discovered the plot)? The reasons for the arrests of these others is a matter of historical record, but by emphasizing that Bonhoeffer, uniquely, was not arrested due to a plot to assassinate Hitler, Thiessen Nation makes it seem as though this is some major point against historical arguments for his involvement. But that’s an unwarranted leap, again, given that the plot had not yet been discovered. No one could have been arrested for a plot that those doing the arresting didn’t know about yet! Unless Thiessen Nation is aware of some historical data that says they were aware of that plot contemporaneous with Bonhoeffer’s arrest (having read much literature on this, I don’t know of any, but I can hardly claim to have universal knowledge of the topic), this point is superfluous at best, disingenuous at worst, because it sets up readers to doubt Bonhoeffer’s involvement based on this lack of reason for the arrest.

Another salient historical point that Thiessen Nation only raises occasionally is that there is no evidence directly linking Bonhoeffer to the plot to kill Hitler. While this seems possibly correct in regards to a paper trail, it seems incorrect regarding those who knew Bonhoeffer personally. Again, this would include Eberhard Bethge. Time and again, our author here notes that there is little to no evidence for Bonhoeffer’s involvement; yet testimonial evidence is evidence, and we have that. Additionally, nothing is made of the relevant point that those involved in a plot to assassinate a brutal dictator would hardly keep everything on paper for posterity. It shouldn’t be that surprising in this case to hold to the dictum that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Still more, Thiessen Nation does not acknowledge that, after World War II in Germany, those who had worked against the Third Reich were still viewed with suspicion for many years. Bonhoeffer was not exempted from this, and it would surely be a point in favor of additional secrecy regarding those involved in any plot to kill Hitler. It’s not a particularly delightful thing to acknowledge, but all of these are facts of history that are borne out in research of the time period.

Thiessen Nation goes on to argue that various points are in favor of reading Bonhoeffer as a committed pacifist. While noting some difficulties with earlier writings, he finds great support in Discipleship and argues for this as a core point of Bonhoeffer’s ethics (see chapter 4). Then, he turns to Ethics and this is where I think the argument starts to come apart. First, he sees Bonhoeffer’s rejection of Kantian absolutism and even applauds it (125-126). This is a point often missed in examination of Bonhoeffer’s–and Lutheran–ethics generally. This ethic rejects a kind of totalitarian deontology in favor of a more situational ethic. This point would actually obviate against a reading of Bonhoeffer as purely pacifistic, as this would require a kind of Kantian commitment to pacifism, but the topic is not explored further.

Thiessen Nation next hones in on the quote from Bonhoeffer that “everyone who acts responsibly becomes guilty.” He suggests that this quote should not be read contextually related to a background of a plot to assassinate Hitler, but rather as a way of understanding the broader context of the war. This certainly resonates with me, and I think that it would make sense. Indeed, I would not personally limit that quote or the general discussion of Bonhoeffer’s thought on responsibility to his involvement (or not) in the plot to kill Hitler. If he was involved, his reasoning on responsibility certainly makes sense of how it would work within his ethical system. Taking away this involvement, Thiessen Nation casts about for another motivation for the reflection on responsibility. He lands on it coming from Bonhoeffer’s reading of letter(s) from his student(s) regarding their own involvement in the Third Reich (129-130). Such is a fascinating thesis, and allows for additional areas of research regarding Bonhoeffer’s life. However, Thiessen Nation pushes it farther, tying Bonhoeffer’s reflection on responsibility to the awful acts of his students, including “cold-blooded murder of civilians and surrendered soldiers” (129, see also 129n21). This is, in my opinion, one of the worst re-readings of Bonhoeffer I’ve read. Bonhoeffer’s entire discussion of responsibility is set against the background of becoming guilty not for oneself but for the sake of the other. To read that as a justification of “cold-blooded murder” simply because Bonhoeffer was somehow struggling to justify his students’ actions makes this a horribly motivated and specious justification for, well, cold-blooded murder! And it doesn’t make any sense of Bonhoeffer’s own words, as he wrote this all in context of taking on guilt for one’s neighbor! How could one do that if one is too busy murdering them?

I would almost second-guess my reading of Thiessen Nation here, because it seems such an off-base reading of Bonhoeffer, but he makes it quite clear that it is his intent to suggest Bonhoeffer was somehow justifying this cold-blooded murder: “Might [Bonhoeffer] have been thinking of [his students’] letters when he wrote that it worse to be evil than to do an act of evil? …in the midst of extremely difficult circumstances, Bonhoeffer is quite sensitive toward his former students who either were not convinced by his teaching on nonviolence or who couldn’t face the consequences of formally claiming to be a conscientious objector, which was a capital offense” (130). He goes on to say that “my hypothesis is more likely than any notion that he is writing reflections to justify his ‘involvement’ in any attempts on Hitler’s life” (ibid). This removes any doubt of this reading: Thiessen Nation is genuinely suggesting that Bonhoeffer wrote this section on responsibility to justify his students’ and friends’ actions of choosing to murder civilians instead of die as a conscientious objector. If he’s right in this reading, he has turned one of my favorite sections of Bonhoeffer’s work into a heinous justification of evil.

Bonhoeffer’s words themselves appear to obviate against this reading, however, because in the section on responsibility in Ethics, he explicitly states that human beings must become guilty not for the sake of themselves or their own attempts to be guiltless, but “entering into community with the guilty of other human beings for their sake. Because of Jesus Christ, the essence of responsible action intrinsically involves the sinless, those who act out of selfless love, becoming guilty” (Ethics, DBWE: 276). Where can one truly justify murder of innocent others for the sake of preserving one’s own life in this text? Where could one read it at as Thiessen Nation does? It is an utterly nonsensical reading of Bonhoeffer to read him as justifying murder to avoid capital offense.

Mark Thiessen Nation himself, according to this profile, was a conscientious objector to Vietnam. I hesitate to speculate, but is it possible that he is looking at his own situation, likely knowing others who committed awful acts in Vietnam, and trying to provide some kind of a posteriori justification for those acts, roping Bonhoeffer into such a defense?* The reading seems radically American and individualistic, putting one’s own well-being as such a high good that becoming guilty of “cold blooded murder” to avoid one’s own capital punishment is seen as good for the sake of the other. Again, none of this makes sense in light of Bonhoeffer’s own work. Thiessen Nation concludes this section acknowledging we can’t know the exact reason for Bonhoeffer’s deliberations on guilt, which would have been a better overall point (though still hotly disputed) (130). Yet this last minute broadening of scope does little to overcome the fact that he asserted earlier that his reading of Bonhoeffer justifying mass murder for the sake of one’s own life is somehow more likely than Bonhoeffer justifying tyrannicide for the sake of the other. Again, it is ludicrous to the point of the absurd to read Bonhoeffer this way in the context in which these words were set.

Belaboring the point even a little more, Chistine Schliesser, in the aptly titled Everyone Who Acts Responsibly Becomes Guilty, argues that one can see this thread of guilt for the sake of the other throughout Bonhoeffer’s entire works. It’s more complicated than that, of course, but that book offers an excellent overview of the concept of guilt in Bonhoeffer.

Another problem with Thiessen Nation’s overall theses related to Bonhoeffer’s pacifism is that he is only capable of reading Bonhoeffer as wholly pacifistic through revisionism (see the discussion above); through arguing against some early biographers and friends of Bonhoeffer (eg. Bethge- who would almost have to be accused of lying if Bonhoeffer were not involved in the plot against Hitler in any way); or through arguing that Bonhoeffer changed his mind not infrequently, only settling on pacifism after a number of other ethical stances were attempted. The former two points have been spoken for already, but I think the latter point is worth a very slight reflection. Thiessen Nation, while critiquing other authors who seek to place Bonhoeffer in his Lutheran perspective (eg. Michael DeJonge), fails to take Bonhoeffer’s Lutheranism seriously. Bonhoeffer quoted Luther more than any other theologian, and it is not difficult to trace many aspects of Bonhoeffer’s theology directly to Luther. This includes his ethics. Thiessen Nation was right earlier to note the rejection of Kantian ethics in Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer (and Luther) rejected deontology. This rejection allowed for a more dynamic or situational ethic that could be adjusted to current contexts rather than delivering principles that would last for eternity. It seems to me that a better reading of Bonhoeffer that doesn’t require re-interpreting or rejecting parts of his ethic would simply be to take it as a development of Lutheran ethics, in which sometimes pacifism is the right response and even perhaps a broad ideal, but at others, taking on guilt for the sake of the other is required.

Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis is a provocative look at Bonhoeffer’s alleged pacifism. I believe it largely misses the mark, and misses it badly in some cases. The author’s [with others] earlier Bonhoeffer the Assassin? (my review here) made a more limited argument. It is clear to me, having read this work, that trying to double down on reading Bonhoeffer as a pacifist will only work if one shoehorns his ethics into corners that don’t make sense contextually. Overall, I think this book does not succeed in its argument.

*Rev. Beth Wartick made this point to me in conversation.

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