Bonhoeffer on Resistance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Phases Of Development ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
Historical Accounts

A recent flurry of references to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the context of political resistance shows that the story of his struggle against the Third Reich continues to animate imaginations across a broad political spectrum. Curious readers have long had access to a variety of Bonhoeffer biographies, all of which devote space to his resistance. And there are more specialized historical treatments that place his story in the context of the broader resistance to the Nazis. Beyond these biographical and historical accounts, however, there has been no comprehensive and accessible account of Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking. He was, after all, not only a resister but a theologian in resistance, trained by vocation to reflect on and write about what the message of the Bible and the tradition of Christian theology might have to say about political life. In this book, internationally recognized Bonhoeffer scholar Michael DeJonge provides an account of Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking as a whole, situated in the context of his thinking about political life in general and ultimately in the context of his theology. He presents Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking chronologically according to three phases of development and systematically according to a sixfold typology of resistance. Overall, what emerges is Bonhoeffer’s surprisingly systematic, differentiated, and well-developed vision of political resistance anchored by his vision of the word of God entrusted to the church.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Political Life ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Clear Sense ◽  
Phases Of Development ◽  
Three Phases

The Introduction begins by noting the frequency and ease with which Bonhoeffer is mentioned in contemporary conversations about political resistance. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to derive from these appeals to Bonhoeffer any clear sense of the legacy of his political resistance. This raises the question: What did Bonhoeffer actually say about political resistance? Noting that Bonhoeffer spoke about political life primarily as a Christian pastor and Lutheran theologian, the Introduction sets forth the task of the book, which is a presentation of Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking in the broader context of his theology. As summarized in the Introduction, this book presents Bonhoeffer’s resistance thinking chronologically according to three phases of development and systematically according to a sixfold typology of resistance.

Lebensraum – just what is this ‘habitat’ or ‘living space’ that Dietrich Bonhoeffer claimed for the church?

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-84
Author(s):  
Donald Fergus
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Church Members ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
Social Acts ◽  
Ordered Space ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Sanctorum Communio ◽  
The Church

AbstractDietrich Bonhoeffer's liberal use of spatial concepts in constructing an ecclesiology served his theological purpose in the articulation of a concrete ecclesiology. In particular, Bonhoeffer uses the themes of taking-up-space and the visibility of the church. The visibility of the church is depicted as a proclamatory space, a liturgical space and an ordered space, all encapsulated in the concept of Lebensraum. Within this space, witness is given to the foundation of all reality in Jesus Christ. The church is the place where this reality is proclaimed; a space no bigger than that required to serve the world in witness to Christ. As opposed to any idea of a ‘privatised’ or individual space, Bonhoeffer insisted on the public and territorial nature of this space as essential to the church's witness, for it was in this very visibility that the church gains space for Christ.Lebensraum, an idea popularised by Adolf Hitler and incorporated into the foreign policy of the Third Reich, was a highly charged political concept taken over by Bonhoeffer to represent a living space diametrically opposed in form to that proposed by the Reich. A useful way of thinking about the Christian form of Lebensraum as proposed by Bonhoeffer is to regard it as the space in which the ‘social acts that constitute the community of love and that disclose in more detail the structure and nature of the Christian church’1 are to be demonstrated and observed. These ‘social acts’ are built upon the foundational concepts, first found in Sanctorum Communio, of Stellvertretung or vicarious representative action, Miteinander or church members being with-each-other, and Füreinander or church members actively being for-each-other. Bonhoeffer proposes that, as its life is lived out in this way, the church will take the form of its suffering servant Lord. It is in this particular space and no other, grounded and upright in Christ, that Christians are to live their lives in witness to Christ.

Reading the Bible with Holocaust Survivors and Rescuers

2002 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-191
Author(s):  
Ann W. Astell
Keyword(s):  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Third Reich

Challenged to respond to Nazi heresy and to offer practical assistance to persecuted Jews, Christians who were caught in the crucible of the Third Reich learned to read the Bible differently. After Auschwitz, we are still learning from their example.

Ideology and Organisation in Puritanism

1980 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Zaret
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Contextual Analysis ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Sociological Inquiry ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Sociological Studies

Puritanism has been a fertile field for sociological inquiry. Studies of puritan thought have established its secular implications for economic and political life, for science, medicine and modernity. Indeed, puritanism occupies a place in the development of sociological analysis similar to that of the French Revolution in historiography. As much can be learned from studies of puritanism about sociology as about society. One lesson concerns the problem of historical scholarship in sociological analysis: too often sociologists rely not only on secondary historical accounts, but on outdated accounts and assumptions long abandoned by professional historians. Another lesson is that sociologists do not always follow their own advice. Sociological studies of puritanism devote far less attention to contextual factors than might otherwise be expected from practitioners of a discipline stressing the existential conditioning of ideas. Interpretations of a secular ethos in puritanism are used to explain why puritanism appealed to certain groups or promoted certain patterns of worldly behavior. Unfortunately, puritanism like the Bible can be ‘read’ plausibly in a number of ways to support different interpretations. Interpretations of the content of puritan thought thus must include an analysis of the organizational and social context in which Calvinist beliefs were developed and disseminated by clerics. Interpretation can be checked by contextual analysis; but such analysis requires precisely that critical style of historical scholarship so often absent in sociological analysis.

On Anson Rabinbach’s Staging the Third Reich

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-220
Author(s):  
Steven E. Aschheim
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich

Abstract This article presents an exposition, analysis, and critique of Anson Rabinbach’s historical research and theses as reflected in Staging the Third Reich: Essays in Cultural and Intellectual History (2020), a volume of his essays on Nazism, fascism, antifascism, and the aftermath of these movements in political life, public remembrance, and historiography. The article probes Rabinbach’s particular method and significant contributions to intellectual and cultural history.

Bonhoeffer and Political Life

2019 ◽  
pp. 330-343
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Plant
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Spiritual Authority ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Church

This chapter begins by describing some of the influences that shaped Bonhoeffer’s political views, narrowly construed, and the central role of Martin Luther’s thought in guiding the direction of those parts of his theology that connect with political life. The chapter continues by exploring how Bonhoeffer attempted to think with and through these sources about the duties and responsibilities of governments and citizens, of the Church, and of the individual Christian in response to the Church struggle and the policies of the Third Reich. What evolved was a reworking of the orders of creation and preservation, a subtle ecology of temporal and spiritual authority under God, and an understanding of reality understood through the incarnation of Christ. This theology funded a steadfast conviction that the Church can and must speak God’s Word to the world, even to the point of standing in the place of the victims of political oppression.

The Death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

1994 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 448-459
Author(s):  
Andrew Chandler
Keyword(s):  
Air Force ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Prisoners ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
The Third ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Secret Agent

Early in April 1945 a little collection of political prisoners, including a British secret agent, a Russian air force officer and a German general, were driven by their guards across the diminishing face of the Third Reich. Among them was the thirty-nine year old theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It was curious company for a German pastor. Bonhoeffer had joined the group at Buchenwald concentration camp on 7 February. In April he and his new friends were moved to Regensburg, and from there to Schönberg. On 8 April 1945 Bonhoeffer was abruptly separated from the other prisoners. As he was about to leave, he turned to the British agent, Captain Payne Best, and said a few words. The next day he was hanged at Flossenburg with the former head of German Military Intelligence, Admiral Canaris, and Colonel Hans Oster. An SS doctor saw the execution, and was struck by the religious devotion, and the spiritual trust, of the victim.

scholarly journals Obozy koncentracyjne jako nowoczesna forma zwalczania przestępczości w Republice Federalnej Niemiec?

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 59-69
Author(s):  
Sebastian Fikus
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Federal Republic ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
German Federal Republic ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Third Reich

CONCENTRATION CAMPS AS A MODERN FORM OF FIGHTING CRIME IN THE GERMAN FEDERAL REPUBLICThe problem of participation of the Nazi elites in the structures of the German Federal Republic is increasingly engaging for German historians. Popular, non-academic works also address the issue of joining the police force by former officials of the Third Reich. However, in the German texts it is consistently stressed that Nazi elites did not influence the social and political life of the German Federal Republic. Nevertheless, the debate on reintroducing concentration camps shows the high standing of national socialism ideology long after World War II.

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