This is Episode 21 of the Christian Research Journal Reads podcast. This podcast presents audio versions of Christian Research Journal articles. This is an audio version of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL article, The Troubling Truth About Bonhoeffer’s Theology by Richard Weikart. Read it here: www.equip.org/articles/troubling-truth-bonhoeffers-theology/
I'm not convinced he was ever even an actual Christian. His belief that the Bible was to be something spoon fed to parishioners is exactly the kind of thing all who have actually rejected the Apostle's Teaching. Like Barth, he seems to have believed that Biblical truth was subjective and personal.
American evangelicals embrace Deists and Freemasons that killed Christian British Loyalists in a bloody revolution against the Christian nation Great Britain in 1776. Why wouldn't American evangelicals have embraced Hitler?
@@nco_gets_it I'm convinced he was. The good thing about Bonhoeffer's eternal destiny is that neither of our opinions (80 years after his death) mean anything.
@bcafed Yes. Well Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian. He did spend time in NYC at Union Theological Seminary, but his ministry was primarily in Germany. Theologically speaking, Bonhoeffer would be considered Neo-Orthodox. Blessings!
I am reminded of Paul's letter to Corinth. "What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?" We should not exalt men, they inevitably fall off their pedestal.
Bonhoeffer's writings give a very good picture of German evangelicals after higher criticism, Adolf Harnack, Kant and Nietsche. It is a picture of an ailing church. I spent some years in the former DDR as an EKD lektor. Yes, baptismal regeneration is widely held as true. Karl Barth is held in high esteem. Finney's anxious bench would not happen there. Pastors told me, "We are Sardis. We have a name, but we are dead." There are many rays of hope, nonetheless. You find believers with bold witness, especially those who survived in communism. It cost them a lot to be a Christian. But they withstood absolute tyrannical power. Americans fight against the Baal of riches. It's a different fight. Sardis vs. Laodicea, oder?
Indeed, Bonhoeffer's works were not perfect before God, but he left the safety of New York to "strengthen that which was ready to die" in nazi Germany. He was obedient to that word.
I see so many Evangelicals think this guy is their personal religious hero and never ask why the "Death of God" theological movement could use his ideas so much.
At 9:00 they say that Bonhoeffer's idea that Scripture is bound up with the Preaching Office is not contrary to Luther's 'priesthood of all believers' for it was taught by him in conjunction and has been taught and practiced by Lutherans from Luther to today.
I was just looking into Nae Ionescu, renown Romanian EO christian between the two world wars, who besides being a brilliant and influential thinker developed antisemitic sentiments and was a Nazis sympathizer. I guess the TH-cam algorithm is pointing me now to Bonhoeffer, a christian who opposed Nazis till his death. For sure we need to consider the context, but that should as much be applied to the evangelical movement...
Like the early church bishops, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a significant religious experience (Around 1931), which some describe as a conversion experience, when, for the first time he discovered the Bible; he meditated daily on Scripture, but seven years later, Bonhoeffer began rejecting religion, and he developed an indifference about reading Scripture. Bonhoeffer's indifference did not become obvious until the year 1939. Dietrich Bonhoeffer sadly followed a false tradition that dates all the way back to the 2nd to 4th Century church bishops - A tradition which begins with finding intellectual fulfillment from the canon of Scripture, but later discounting this fulfillment with dis-satisfaction, leading to the adoption of the Gnostic Gospels (New Testament Apocrypha). By 250 A.D., there was nearly universal agreement that the Hebrew Old Testament was canon. In 367 A.D., Athanasius, whose beliefs were codified by the Council of Nicaea, compiled the first ancient list of all twenty-seven books of our current New Testament canon. The early church bishops, themselves, began finding fulfillment, for their intellectual abilities, from the Books of the Old and New Testaments. These early church bishops, some names such as Clement of Rome (A.D. 95), Polycarp (A.D. 108), Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 115), Irenaeus (A.D. 185), and Hippolytus (A.D. 170-235), also were dedicating themselves to the right understanding of the said Scriptures, while laboring to expound Biblical truth to the masses. The 2nd to 4th Century Church Bishops began as Intellectual Disciples of Christ who immediately followed the Apostolic Age. Though the Church fathers, or bishops, got through the Seven Ecumenical Councils, with each of the 7 Council's conclusions appealing to Scripture alone, the separate New Testament Apocrypha became the primary cause for all of the many additional councils. From here, Church history lapsed into the Dark Ages, until Martin Luther began to understand God's truth which came only from Scripture alone, God having shown His mercy to Luther, by God's grace. After God again showed that His word is truth, even Luther made mistakes, and he wrote separate sinful language which cursed the Old Testament practicing Jews. False theologies were again expected to set in, following the death of the reformers. The period when people will say "Peace," "Peace," when there was no peace, returned. After Luther, many pastors began to misuse their office, and they had a theology that was patterned after the idea that Scripture belongs to the preaching office, and in it's essence, Scripture is not a book of edification for the congregation. Long before Bonhoeffer, and up to the present day, the false tradition of believing that "No Scripture should be taken as timeless truth, but only as God's word for today," this continues to infiltrate the branches of Christendom. Billy Graham once admitted, in a 1960s interview with William Buckley, that "We've never had a period in history where the majority in any country have been true believers in Christ and live in Christ, because the very essence of a true believer is love. Certainly, when so-called Christian Germany allowed to take place what took place that the true believers in Germany many of them were ignorant of it or many of them found themselves in a position of protesting but they couldn't do anything; they were thrown in prison." Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was an intellect, became unfulfilled with Scripture alone. Apparently, Bonhoeffer had not fully come to an understanding of the meaning of Scripture, nor could he place the historicity of the Scriptures and this means that Scripture became, for him, intellectually unfulfilling. In Nazi Germany, when the Positive Christianity Movement separated itself from traditional Nicene Christianity, because Positive Christianity, in general, considered all mainstream Trinitarian Christian churches, like Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant, to be apostate, Bonhoeffer, instead of joining one of the Nicene Churches, joined Neo-orthodoxy (Synonym: Neo Lutheranism), in an effort to renounce Nazi Germany. Neo-orthodoxy, whose leading figure was Karl Barth, stresses the transcendence of God, or the aspect of existence that is completely independent of the material universe, beyond all known physical laws. Bonhoeffer theology reflected Barth's Neo-orthodox theology, which called Christians to get back to Scripture as the source for religious truth, but without believing that Scripture is historically true. St. Augustine would rightfully refute the denial of the Historicity of the Scriptures, and Augustine also recognized God as both transcendent and immanent. Gottglaubig (Means "Believing in God") was a Nazi religious term for a form of non-denominationalism and deism practiced by those German citizens who had officially left Christian churches but professed faith in some higher power or divine creator. Gottglaubig was aligned with what was called Positive Christianity, which also defined The German Faith Movement. The German Faith Movement was a religious movement in Nazi Germany (1933-1945), closely associated with University of Tubingen professor Jakob Wilhelm Hauer. The movement sought to move Germany away from Christianity towards a religion that was based on Germanic paganism and Nazi ideas. Positive Christianity was a religious movement within Nazi Germany which promoted the belief that the racial purity of the German people should be maintained by mixing racialistic Nazi ideology with either fundamental or significant elements of Nicene Christianity. Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, who played an important role in the development of "Positive Christianity," which he conceived in discord with both Rome and the Protestant churches, whose doctrines he called "Negative Christianity," did not, in a peculiar way, criticize Eastern Orthodoxy.
Interesting lecture. Please do a study on the theology of the Lutherans and Reformed churchgoers in Nazi Germany that supported Hitler and fought for him in WW2.
@1Whipperin Isn't that presupposed in the article, particularly on why Bonehoeffer remained in Germany as an opposing voice to Nazi influence upon the church?
@@BibleAnswerMan I am thinking a more in depth study of the churchgoers in Nazi Germany would be important to show what went wrong. Bonhoeffer was one opposing voice out of millions? What was wrong with those millions of churchgoers that they supported Hitler? Could it happen here?
@rickster3488 Bonhoeffer never just made things up but the article explains the significance of his life and influence upon modern evangelical Christianity. Of course it also gives a fair assessment to the theology of Bonhoeffer.
Bonhoeffer is an intellectual who disagrees with Dubya Bush, Evangelicals and the Nazis. What's not to like? Sounds like a Christian. Always wondered when some Evangelical would actually read him before claiming him.
Why is it that we can't accept the fact that he was a mere man, who was NOT PERFECT, but hungered for truth? Can we at least affirm his stand against the evil regime of Nazism. Can we admit that not many of us would have to courage to GO BACK to a country on the precipice of Hell itself? Bonhoeffer went back!
@eugenejoseph7076 Your point is expressed in the concluding words to the article: "What then should we make of Bonhoeffer? While recognizing his many admirable traits-compassion, courage, commitment, and integrity-we should be wary of many elements of his theology." Right?
@lindencamelback2305 Not a Baptist. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran. Lots of admirable things to say about Bonhoeffer's life & legacy but it is also fair to outline the troubling elements to his theology.
"Biblical inerrancy and other doctrines central to genuine Christianity." "True Scotsman" fallacy detected. I don't believe the author has the right to define Christianity for everyone else, especially since "biblical inerrancy" can be interpreted many different ways. If you don't believe a man named Methuselah lived to 969 years old, are you not a "genuine Christian"?
Christianity has a definition. It was defined in Acts 11 and 26, where the word 'Christian' first appeared. To define Christianity apart from that definition is to redefine it for yourself.
@@BibleAnswerMan The short answer is that God speaks through human beings and human beings are imperfect. But there's a more important point: Even if the Bible itself were somehow "inerrant," it's impossible that our interpretations of it would be inerrant-and we wouldn't know whose interpretations are best. Just ask the Catholics and the Calvinists to comment on each other.
@@braedenh6858 Where does Scripture say that Acts 11 and 26 define Christianity? And if Acts 11 defines Christianity, then one should conclude that only someone who has the Holy Spirit fall upon them in a visible, recognizable way is a Christian (verses 15-17). And if Acts 26 defines Christianity, then clearly no one can be saved without works of repentance (verse 20), not faith alone. Those are just two examples of how you can't define Christianity just by pointing to certain verses here and there.
@@KingoftheJuice18 Scripture doesn't say that. Why would it? It's a narrative account. But it does define Christianity. If you define it some other way, you're simply redefining it for yourself.
@seasidelife9742 Definitely NOT a National Socialist! Never picked up any Marxi from Bonhoeffer per se. Weikart indicates Bonhoeffer was heavily influenced by-Continental philosophy, including Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others.
This is Episode 21 of the Christian Research Journal Reads podcast. This podcast presents audio versions of Christian Research Journal articles. This is an audio version of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL article, The Troubling Truth About Bonhoeffer’s Theology by Richard Weikart. Read it here: www.equip.org/articles/troubling-truth-bonhoeffers-theology/
Shocking conclusion: Bonhoeffer was not an American Evangelical. Who would have thought?
I'm not convinced he was ever even an actual Christian. His belief that the Bible was to be something spoon fed to parishioners is exactly the kind of thing all who have actually rejected the Apostle's Teaching. Like Barth, he seems to have believed that Biblical truth was subjective and personal.
Bonhoeffer was a brave man. His Protestant faith was a mistake.
American evangelicals embrace Deists and Freemasons that killed Christian British Loyalists in a bloody revolution against the Christian nation Great Britain in 1776. Why wouldn't American evangelicals have embraced Hitler?
@@nco_gets_it I'm convinced he was. The good thing about Bonhoeffer's eternal destiny is that neither of our opinions (80 years after his death) mean anything.
@bcafed Yes. Well Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian. He did spend time in NYC at Union Theological Seminary, but his ministry was primarily in Germany. Theologically speaking, Bonhoeffer would be considered Neo-Orthodox. Blessings!
I am reminded of Paul's letter to Corinth. "What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul?"
We should not exalt men, they inevitably fall off their pedestal.
@IlovetheTruth Thanks for sharing.
Bonhoeffer's writings give a very good picture of German evangelicals after higher criticism, Adolf Harnack, Kant and Nietsche. It is a picture of an ailing church. I spent some years in the former DDR as an EKD lektor. Yes, baptismal regeneration is widely held as true. Karl Barth is held in high esteem. Finney's anxious bench would not happen there. Pastors told me, "We are Sardis. We have a name, but we are dead." There are many rays of hope, nonetheless. You find believers with bold witness, especially those who survived in communism. It cost them a lot to be a Christian. But they withstood absolute tyrannical power. Americans fight against the Baal of riches. It's a different fight. Sardis vs. Laodicea, oder?
@chuckbosio2924 Good insights. But what of the troubling aspects to Bonhoeffer's theology raised in the article?
Indeed, Bonhoeffer's works were not perfect before God, but he left the safety of New York to "strengthen that which was ready to die" in nazi Germany. He was obedient to that word.
Baptismal regeneration is fundamental to Lutheran theology as it is taken directly out of Scripture so it is true.
I see so many Evangelicals think this guy is their personal religious hero and never ask why the "Death of God" theological movement could use his ideas so much.
@AarmOZ84 Appreciate the insight.
Today I learned a heartbreaking truth about this man. Truly knowledge puffs up and leads to pride.
At 9:00 they say that Bonhoeffer's idea that Scripture is bound up with the Preaching Office is not contrary to Luther's 'priesthood of all believers' for it was taught by him in conjunction and has been taught and practiced by Lutherans from Luther to today.
@jresker Insight appreciated. 🙏
I was just looking into Nae Ionescu, renown Romanian EO christian between the two world wars, who besides being a brilliant and influential thinker developed antisemitic sentiments and was a Nazis sympathizer. I guess the TH-cam algorithm is pointing me now to Bonhoeffer, a christian who opposed Nazis till his death. For sure we need to consider the context, but that should as much be applied to the evangelical movement...
@stefang.9763 pleased to make your acquaintance. Pray the audio article on Bonhoeffer was helpful.
A more conservative Lutheran theologian from the same time period in Germany who would be worth taking a look at is Herman Sasse.
@pete3397 Thanks 🙏
Yes and he said nothing against what was going on in Germany, he didn’t speak out against the evil. That was wrong.
Like the early church bishops, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a significant religious experience (Around 1931), which some describe as a conversion experience, when, for the first time he discovered the Bible; he meditated daily on Scripture, but seven years later, Bonhoeffer began rejecting religion, and he developed an indifference about reading Scripture. Bonhoeffer's indifference did not become obvious until the year 1939. Dietrich Bonhoeffer sadly followed a false tradition that dates all the way back to the 2nd to 4th Century church bishops - A tradition which begins with finding intellectual fulfillment from the canon of Scripture, but later discounting this fulfillment with dis-satisfaction, leading to the adoption of the Gnostic Gospels (New Testament Apocrypha).
By 250 A.D., there was nearly universal agreement that the Hebrew Old Testament was canon. In 367 A.D., Athanasius, whose beliefs were codified by the Council of Nicaea, compiled the first ancient list of all twenty-seven books of our current New Testament canon. The early church bishops, themselves, began finding fulfillment, for their intellectual abilities, from the Books of the Old and New Testaments. These early church bishops, some names such as Clement of Rome (A.D. 95), Polycarp (A.D. 108), Ignatius of Antioch (A.D. 115), Irenaeus (A.D. 185), and Hippolytus (A.D. 170-235), also were dedicating themselves to the right understanding of the said Scriptures, while laboring to expound Biblical truth to the masses. The 2nd to 4th Century Church Bishops began as Intellectual Disciples of Christ who immediately followed the Apostolic Age. Though the Church fathers, or bishops, got through the Seven Ecumenical Councils, with each of the 7 Council's conclusions appealing to Scripture alone, the separate New Testament Apocrypha became the primary cause for all of the many additional councils. From here, Church history lapsed into the Dark Ages, until Martin Luther began to understand God's truth which came only from Scripture alone, God having shown His mercy to Luther, by God's grace.
After God again showed that His word is truth, even Luther made mistakes, and he wrote separate sinful language which cursed the Old Testament practicing Jews. False theologies were again expected to set in, following the death of the reformers. The period when people will say "Peace," "Peace," when there was no peace, returned. After Luther, many pastors began to misuse their office, and they had a theology that was patterned after the idea that Scripture belongs to the preaching office, and in it's essence, Scripture is not a book of edification for the congregation. Long before Bonhoeffer, and up to the present day, the false tradition of believing that "No Scripture should be taken as timeless truth, but only as God's word for today," this continues to infiltrate the branches of Christendom. Billy Graham once admitted, in a 1960s interview with William Buckley, that "We've never had a period in history where the majority in any country have been true believers in Christ and live in Christ, because the very essence of a true believer is love. Certainly, when so-called Christian Germany allowed to take place what took place that the true believers in Germany many of them were ignorant of it or many of them found themselves in a position of protesting but they couldn't do anything; they were thrown in prison."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was an intellect, became unfulfilled with Scripture alone. Apparently, Bonhoeffer had not fully come to an understanding of the meaning of Scripture, nor could he place the historicity of the Scriptures and this means that Scripture became, for him, intellectually unfulfilling. In Nazi Germany, when the Positive Christianity Movement separated itself from traditional Nicene Christianity, because Positive Christianity, in general, considered all mainstream Trinitarian Christian churches, like Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant, to be apostate, Bonhoeffer, instead of joining one of the Nicene Churches, joined Neo-orthodoxy (Synonym: Neo Lutheranism), in an effort to renounce Nazi Germany. Neo-orthodoxy, whose leading figure was Karl Barth, stresses the transcendence of God, or the aspect of existence that is completely independent of the material universe, beyond all known physical laws. Bonhoeffer theology reflected Barth's Neo-orthodox theology, which called Christians to get back to Scripture as the source for religious truth, but without believing that Scripture is historically true. St. Augustine would rightfully refute the denial of the Historicity of the Scriptures, and Augustine also recognized God as both transcendent and immanent.
Gottglaubig (Means "Believing in God") was a Nazi religious term for a form of non-denominationalism and deism practiced by those German citizens who had officially left Christian churches but professed faith in some higher power or divine creator. Gottglaubig was aligned with what was called Positive Christianity, which also defined The German Faith Movement. The German Faith Movement was a religious movement in Nazi Germany (1933-1945), closely associated with University of Tubingen professor Jakob Wilhelm Hauer. The movement sought to move Germany away from Christianity towards a religion that was based on Germanic paganism and Nazi ideas. Positive Christianity was a religious movement within Nazi Germany which promoted the belief that the racial purity of the German people should be maintained by mixing racialistic Nazi ideology with either fundamental or significant elements of Nicene Christianity. Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, who played an important role in the development of "Positive Christianity," which he conceived in discord with both Rome and the Protestant churches, whose doctrines he called "Negative Christianity," did not, in a peculiar way, criticize Eastern Orthodoxy.
@thy-ine Commentary appreciated. Thoughts on Richard Weikhart's assessment of Bonhoeffer's theology?
Interesting lecture. Please do a study on the theology of the Lutherans and Reformed churchgoers in Nazi Germany that supported Hitler and fought for him in WW2.
@1Whipperin Isn't that presupposed in the article, particularly on why Bonehoeffer remained in Germany as an opposing voice to Nazi influence upon the church?
@@BibleAnswerMan I am thinking a more in depth study of the churchgoers in Nazi Germany would be important to show what went wrong. Bonhoeffer was one opposing voice out of millions? What was wrong with those millions of churchgoers that they supported Hitler? Could it happen here?
- why is it so important what this guy thought? Sounds like he just made things up as he went.
Anyone with eyes can see he was a stumbling block.
@rickster3488 Bonhoeffer never just made things up but the article explains the significance of his life and influence upon modern evangelical Christianity. Of course it also gives a fair assessment to the theology of Bonhoeffer.
@@BibleAnswerMan ok, Thanks
It's not good to be dogmatic with any great men
@PedroViaud-e3v Wise point.
Thank you! You have convinced me to love and appreciate Bonhoeffer even more than I did before. I might now even take a closer look at Barth.
Thanks for sharing! 🙏
Bonhoeffer is an intellectual who disagrees with Dubya Bush, Evangelicals and the Nazis. What's not to like?
Sounds like a Christian.
Always wondered when some Evangelical would actually read him before claiming him.
Good point, although I suspect thoughtful Evangelicals will have little problems with Bonhoeffer, as our Baptist theologian minister agreed.
A Christian for Evangelicals must have a theology that fits their Evangelical theology. Outside that, one is not a Christian.
@taswuf1 Did not find any problems with the concerns raised about Bonhoeffer's theology in the article? Why not?
Why is it that we can't accept the fact that he was a mere man, who was NOT PERFECT, but hungered for truth? Can we at least affirm his stand against the evil regime of Nazism. Can we admit that not many of us would have to courage to GO BACK to a country on the precipice of Hell itself? Bonhoeffer went back!
@eugenejoseph7076 Your point is expressed in the concluding words to the article: "What then should we make of Bonhoeffer? While recognizing his many admirable traits-compassion, courage, commitment, and integrity-we should be wary of many elements of his theology." Right?
Bonhoeffer was one of our Baptist minister's (also a published theologian) heroes.
@lindencamelback2305 Not a Baptist. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran. Lots of admirable things to say about Bonhoeffer's life & legacy but it is also fair to outline the troubling elements to his theology.
@@BibleAnswerMan Trouble understanding written English?.
"Biblical inerrancy and other doctrines central to genuine Christianity."
"True Scotsman" fallacy detected. I don't believe the author has the right to define Christianity for everyone else, especially since "biblical inerrancy" can be interpreted many different ways. If you don't believe a man named Methuselah lived to 969 years old, are you not a "genuine Christian"?
@KingoftheJuice18 But inerrancy does play into the question: Has God spoken? If there are errors in the text, how can they be God's Word?
Christianity has a definition. It was defined in Acts 11 and 26, where the word 'Christian' first appeared.
To define Christianity apart from that definition is to redefine it for yourself.
@@BibleAnswerMan The short answer is that God speaks through human beings and human beings are imperfect. But there's a more important point: Even if the Bible itself were somehow "inerrant," it's impossible that our interpretations of it would be inerrant-and we wouldn't know whose interpretations are best. Just ask the Catholics and the Calvinists to comment on each other.
@@braedenh6858 Where does Scripture say that Acts 11 and 26 define Christianity? And if Acts 11 defines Christianity, then one should conclude that only someone who has the Holy Spirit fall upon them in a visible, recognizable way is a Christian (verses 15-17). And if Acts 26 defines Christianity, then clearly no one can be saved without works of repentance (verse 20), not faith alone. Those are just two examples of how you can't define Christianity just by pointing to certain verses here and there.
@@KingoftheJuice18 Scripture doesn't say that. Why would it? It's a narrative account.
But it does define Christianity. If you define it some other way, you're simply redefining it for yourself.
Wasn't Bonhoeffer a socialist?
@seasidelife9742 Definitely NOT a National Socialist! Never picked up any Marxi from Bonhoeffer per se. Weikart indicates Bonhoeffer was heavily influenced by-Continental philosophy, including Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and others.