Truth Unites - The Bonhoeffer Film Has One BIG Problem

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

The 2024 movie Bonhoeffer has many positive qualities: but does it risk distorting the German theologian's legacy? See Joel Lawrence's comments on the film: https://www.facebook.com/joellawrence/ Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Bonhofer is one of those people we have to learn from today. Instead of making him in our image, which we have the temptation to do, he's one of those people we need to really allow to challenge us. What comes through most from Bonhofer is the theology of the cross, of suffering, of following Jesus, of humility before God. The legacy of Dietrich Bonhofer has been invoked for many different causes since his death at the end of World War II. In Germany, among those working for the fall of the Berlin Wall,

in Latin America by liberation theologians opposing economic exploitation, in South Africa, amidst the struggle against apartheid, and most recently, for many of us, very visibly, in American politics and culture wars. And we can find extreme examples in either direction. In the early 1990s, some of you may remember the anti-abortion advocate Paul Hill, who called for bombing abortion clinics. He actually ended up shooting an abortion doctor and his bodyguard with a shotgun, and he cited Bonhofer, and Bonhofer's legacy as a justification for those actions. Just last year, Bonhofer's legacy was appealed to by extinction rebellion protesters calling for mass civil disobedience and revolt in order to address climate change.

We can also find examples of this in lessen the extremes. Starting around 2015, we start hearing this phrase, a Bonhofer moment. So to live in a Bonhofer moment means essentially, we're facing some enormous threat that is so huge that it calls for a decisive action. And what's interesting is you hear that on both sides of the political divide. So in the early days of Trump's first term as president, like 2017, you can find protesters calling for various forms of resistance to Donald Trump and appealing to Bonhofer's statements about resisting the Nazis. Among conservative Christians today, you find rhetoric that Kamala Harris, winning the election is like World War II being won by Hitler. And so we have to be

like Bonhofer in resisting in that direction. Well, all of this raises is a very basic question. What is a responsible use of Bonhofer's life and theology? How do we deploy his legacy in a way that he would recognize and that's faithful to his intentions and his purposes? And this is so tricky, because on the one hand, it would be a tragedy not to learn from Bonhofer. I love Bonhofer. He's a brilliant theologian, tremendous model of courage. We have so much we need to learn from him. So we don't want to, you know, just leave him off. But in the other direction, precisely because his legacy is so powerful and so inspiring, it can be distorted for different agendas. Moral authority, which he has, is very tempting to weaponize. And so it's easy to de-contextualize him from his extreme circumstances

start applying him to all manner of current issues like this. Well, the Bonhofer movie that was released on November 18, 2024, gives us a chance to reflect on all this a bit more. I watched it last night. I was up late actually thinking about it, thinking about it all today. And I left the movie with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I really enjoyed watching it. It's inspiring. You know, it's moving. There's several very emotional moments, especially the final scene. By the way, spoilers coming. Nothing too crazy, but the kinds of things you'd expect in a film review in this video, there'll be spoilers. And so I left the movie theater in the state of happiness and full of emotion, kind of inspired, like, yes, you know, you want to give your life for what you believe in,

and it's inspiring, and it's good. At the same time, though the film is not as bad as the worst misuses of the Bonhofer legacy, there's still this similar concern on the table that I want to work through. Let me start by highlighting two things I appreciated about the film personally, and then will unfold this concern that I have that I think it's important for us to work through this, not only because Bonhofer has a lot to teach us today, but because there's a larger question here of how do we use history, which is a huge question in the world. right now, it's something I'm very invested in in my YouTube channel, is I want us to try to learn from church history, but do so in a responsible way that doesn't distort it in the process.

The first thing I appreciated about this film is the inspiring portrait of courage that it provides. This is about a man who is committed to a cause, and maybe it's just the season of life that I'm in, but man, this is moving. It's just so inspiring. It makes me just want to, you know, say, I'm ready to be a martyr right now and give myself to a cause and this kind of feeling. Of course, we know that real courage often doesn't feel like that in the moment. It's often, a lot of times the courage that God calls us to is the daily slog, not some dramatic big thing, but still, it's still inspiring watching a movie like this. So Bonhofer is born into this, his story is amazing, born into this very wealthy and highly

educated family in 1906. He feels a call to ministry. He wants to give his life to serving the church. He's a brilliant theologian of the church, as we'll talk about. And he has this promising career ahead of. him, but it's upturned by the Nazis rise to power in 1933. He's an opponent of the Nazis from very early on. This changes everything. At one point in the film, he says, everything I thought God called me to pursue is burned to ashes. I found that a very moving scene, and it reminded

me that what we experience as tragedy and setback and derailment and suffering and like life is over, you know, is often where we find God's very purpose for us. That's how the gospel works. So much of life is out of control and we respond to suffering as it falls upon us that we wouldn't have chosen. And then God's purpose for us becomes manifest in that process. That's the story of Bonhoeffer and it's moving to consider that for our own lives today, you know. And you see Bonhofer's resolution to give himself to his ideals throughout the film sort of increasing. At one point, he says, every act of courage comes with a cost. And then he says something, and I couldn't remember it. I was actually in the corner of the movie theater with my phone fully dimmed so I wouldn't bother

anybody writing this down, but I couldn't write fast enough. He says something like, I made, if you watched the movie, you can remember it or put it in the comments. Help us all out. Look in the comments for it. I'll like, I'll pin that comment if you have the exact words, but he says something like, I made my decision long ago and now I'm coming to see what it means. Something like that. I think he says I made it back in 1933. I'm coming to see now what it means. It's like this sense of the uncovering of the destiny. of your life. The underlying purpose of your life coming manifest over time through courage. And to me, this is thrilling. I've been spending a lot of time in Jeremiah 1 lately where God

says, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. I think every Christian can cite those words and say, God is a purpose for my life. I'm not here in this world as an accident. God made me for a purpose. My purpose is to try to spread gospel assurance. I want to give my life to the re-Christianization of our culture and of our world right now. And I know, you know, a lot of my viewers are, young people aching for a cause and for context and for meaning. We're in such a meaning crisis right now. And I think one thing we can learn from Bonhofer is simple, pastoral, basic, but it's so good and needed, we can be inspired by his example of giving ourselves, but to give ourselves to Christ and His gospel. Come back to that at the end. The second thing that I appreciated about this movie

is its message about the transcendent calling of the church. Let me explain this. I went into this not really knowing what to expect. I didn't read a lot of reviews, any really, before I read. I just kind of wanted to go in as a blank slate. I didn't know what to expect. So I thought that the movie would be very a theological and mainly focused on politics. And I was pleasantly surprised to see that there's some real teeth in the film's portrayal of church-state relations.

This message comes through loud and clear that the church must stand against evil. It must resist the state when the state falls into evil. the church must never be in the mere pawn of politics. Rather, it's the conscience of the state. There's this kind of language. At one point, Bonhofer says, the church does not belong to Hitler. It belongs to the living God. Martin Niemöller's sermon at one point in the film, very powerful to this effect. I can't remember exactly what he says, but it's very, it's to this effect. It's like this prophetic, bold, beautiful, clear calling that we are hostage to none but God, you know. And this is the great theme of

The Barman Declaration, which is written by Carl Bart and others in the confessing church. Bonhofer and Bart were both connected to this movement in various ways. And this is central to Bonhofer's whole theology. I think, you know, Bonhofer wrote his dissertation at the University of Berlin on ecclesiology or the doctrine of the church. This comes up a lot in his life together. This is one of the themes of his theology. What does it mean to be this sanctified, holy people?

What is our mission in the world as the people of God as the church? And there's a thrilling message here that I appreciate it. that came through in the film, and that is that we as the people of God serve a higher calling. We must be about God's business, and no human agenda should intercept that. Those are two things I appreciated. Nonetheless, I have a concern about the film. It relates to broader concerns about how Bonhofer's often used. Let me explain as a non-expert, okay? I'm not a Bonhofer scholar. I've reached out to a few friends who have done PhDs on Bonhofer and done some reading to try to make this responsible, but if there's any actual experts on Bonhofer watching this, feel free to correct me

at any point. I'm trying to do my best here. I'm trying to won't make any real controversial statements, trying to be fairly basic here. But let me just explain the concern here and why this is so important. I wrote a book a while back on theological retrieval, which is basically about learning from the past and applying it to the present. And I talked about the dangers of retrieval in this book. One of them, the first one I talk about is distortion. And basically I described this as when our retrieval of the past is motivated to confirm a present opinion. Or when we're basically using the past for polemics, it's really easy to distort it. By the way, if you ever want to know if we're avoiding this danger, one of the ways you can tell is, is your engagement with history

inconvenient sometimes for you? Does it sometimes make you lose the argument? Does it sometimes surprise you or annoy you? This is the great thing. The fun thing about learning church history, or any history, actually, it'll challenge you in various ways. So in the case of Bonhofer, there's a real danger for both conservatives and progressives today. For example, progressives can seize upon Bonhofer's defense of the Jews and his concern for social justice and make him nothing other than a social justice warrior and basically ignore the parts of his personality and theology that are inconvenient for that portrait. So in this film, Bonhofer's time at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem is,

used to emphasize his awareness of racism in America and his concern for justice. And for example, there's this one very dramatic scene where he's actually assaulted by a racist hotel owner. Now, Bonhofer was concerned about social justice, so all to the good in the basic point. But the problem is this leaves out so much else from that time. For example, the film depicts Bonhofer is kind of bored in his classes, but it doesn't explain the specific nature of his concerns with union. and the liberalism of that seminary, and you find him there, so you get Bonhofer, you know, the man who's concerned with social justice, but you don't really see the gospel that's animating that concern for social justice. And Bonhofer in that time of his life is somewhat,

he's kind of basically saying these people are making fun of the fundamentalists, but the fundamentalists are doing better than that. At one point he says, in New York, they preach about virtually everything, only one thing is not addressed, namely the God. gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life. In the other direction, though, modern conservatives can also overlook differences between themselves and Bonhofer. And I think American evangelicals face a huge temptation here to basically make Bonhofer in our own image and ignore, for example, the neo-Orthodox tendencies of his thought. Bonhofer has some similarities to Bart, more so than sometimes American evangelicals realize. He didn't hold the biblical

inerrancy. His news on creation. I remember when I was doing my postdoc on Augustine's Doctrine of Creation, one of the people I read is Bonhoeffer as well. And Bonhofer has sort of a mythical view of the Adam and Eve story in Genesis 2 to 3. I think a lot of contemporary evangelicals are simply sort of unaware of these parts of his theology. But the issues with this film are not so much about Bonhofer's theology, but about his political activism. And here is where we get into it, with concerns of historical accuracy, specifically to get in, say the main thing, in case you click off soon. The main thing is, I think the film exaggerates Bonhoeffer's role in assassination efforts of Hitler. And it just distorts who he was.

You know, the images of Bonhofer with a pistol in his hand, and we get a distorted vision here. Let me explain this. Now, in historical films, I try to make a distinction between points that are inaccurate, but they're done for the sake of narrative compression and they don't really violate the spirit of the subject matter versus points of historical inaccuracy that do violate the spirit of the subject matter. So some of the concerns about historical inaccuracy in this film are in the former category. They're not really sinister. They're just a matter of cinematic license, if you will. And I'm going to link to my friend Joel Lawrence's Facebook post about this. He did his PhD on Bonhoffer. He points out some of these in the film.

Bonhofer, for example, comes back after his time in the United States, and in 1933 he's kind of naive about the Nazi threat, and his family members are heavy to, like, tell him about it. He's not taking it very seriously. This is not historically accurate. Bonhofer was well aware of the threat by that point, and Hitler was really already in power. But, you know, that's the kind of thing. It's like you're not thinking this is the end of the world. You're not walking out of the movie theater for this kind of thing. Bon, another example is Bonhofer wasn't actually at Finkenwalda, where the illegal. Seminary was in 1938 when Kristallnacht occurred. Crystal Knocht was a wave of anti-Semitic violence in early November 1938. The seminary had already closed a year earlier. So you have things like this, just chronology issues. But some of the concerns go beyond that. In the Bonhoeffer movie, he sent as a spy to England to try to convince them, to try to get a bomb to kill Hitler. And then in several scenes, he's in the room with people plotting Hitler's death. You know, he's right there in the thick of it, and then he's arrested for his role in that. Sometime in there, during his arrest, again, I'm trying to remember it from watching it last night.

There's this language about his arrest being referenced as a pastor who becomes an assassin. And the subtitle is, Pastor, Spy, Assassin. In the movie posters, he's holding a pistol in his hand. But Bonhofer was not arrested for his role in an assassination attempt. That wasn't known until later. he was arrested for attempts to rescue the Jews. His role in England was mainly just passing information about the Nazis to church contacts there, not to request a bomb. Bonhofer was involved in espionage and treason, but he's not really an assassin. And this isn't just a matter of trying to make,

you know, trying to make him like James Bond or something like that, trying to increase the heroism of it. It ends up distorting Bonhofer's theology of resistance, which is a big deal because Bonhofer is one of those people we have to learn from today. He's one of the people, instead of making him in our image, which we have the temptation to do, he's one of those people we need to really allow to challenge us, whatever our leanings are today. So just to give some examples, in one scene of the film, Bonhofer is giving a sermon where you hear his famous statement, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die, right? Very moving scene, very well-delivered sermon. But this is interspersed with an assassination attempt from one of his friends going on.

So you kind of get the impression that, oh yeah, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die, that is, go kill Hitler, even if you die in the process. And the theology kind of is serving the larger end of the political activism, and it not only ends up amplifying Bonhofer's role in the efforts to assassinate Hitler, but it ultimately divorces this from his theology, because as the movie's going forward, As his life is progressing, Bonhofer's social and political concerns end up sort of outpacing and even overturning his theology. At one point, a friend is interrogating him about his former teachings that were more pacifist leaning, and Bonhofer effectively says, yeah, well, that was before Hitler.

As though, you know, everything has changed now, I'm moving away from that now that Hitler, I see the seriousness of this threat. So now my, you know, the theology of pacifism I was teaching, goes away now, now, you know, there's this theme of like earlier on he's focusing more on prayer, but then later he has to kind of get his hands dirty fighting Hitler and this kind of thing. And you can see how this is going to be very relevant to us today, because there's a lot of thinking today like, you know, politics has become so extreme that we need to change our theology to adjust to the political environment. This is exactly where we should learn from Bonhofer rather than make him in our image and act like he was doing that. Michael DeYoung,

has written a helpful book about Bonhofer's Theology of Resistance, and he argues that Bonhofer's overall resistance theology was consistent throughout his life. He shows three different stages of Bonhofer's political thought, but he says it's a consistent unfolding of the principles that are already in place in 1933, very early on. And he points out that Bonhofer's thought was very careful, very nuanced. For example, he talks about how Bonhofer distinguished between the actions, that are appropriate to an individual versus those that are appropriate to humanitarian groups, versus those that are appropriate to the church in its preaching office, versus those that are appropriate to the church in its diaconal or servant office.

It's very careful, very nuanced and systematic. And it's precisely in some of those areas where he can sort of challenge us. He's not going to fit neatly into our categories today. But just to give one example of this, Bonhofer has a very keen sense. of the danger that resistance to evil can itself become another form of evil. This is what I talk about is the sin of Boromir. If you know in the Lord of the Rings, Boromir is the one who wants to, he has a real enemy with Sauron, but he wants to use the ring to destroy the ring, and in so doing, he would

actually become a pawn of evil if he were to do that. Bonhofer is very sensitive to this kind of danger. In the cost of discipleship, Bonhofer discusses how when a Christian is confronted with injustice, we should not cling to our rights and defend ourselves. cling radically to Christ alone. It says the only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a standstill because it does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames.

And he's going on talking about how resistance can become a form of revenge, and we can't rely upon revenge. We have to renounce revenge. By willing endurance, we cause suffering to pass. Evil becomes a spent force when we put up no resistance. Bonhofer is first and fourth. foremost, a theologian of discipleship. The focus of the statement, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die, is not mainly about political activism or something like that.

And we need to wrestle with the tension of these different aspects of Bonhofer's teaching, but never setting one over and against the other, and also appreciating how Bonhofer himself wrestled with it. Even where Bonhofer does get drawn into resistance, he feels anguish and ambivalence along the way. This is not a grand and triumphant path for him. Sometimes he feels, he appears to have felt trapped like he has no good option. And sometimes he's not even sure what to do. In an important letter written in 1942 in December, he said, have there ever been people in history who in their time, like us, have had so little ground under their feet? People to whom every possible alternative open to them at the time appeared equally unbearable, senseless, and contrary to life.

We would do well to slow down and really hear the process and anguish of Bonhofer's situation and appreciate its extremity. I would suggest a good place to start would be Bonhofer's ethics, possibly his magnum opus, where you get a very complicated and rich and even paradoxical account of ethics. And the caution here is about a kind of impulsive wielding of Bonhofer's legacy. What comes through most from Bonhofer is the theology of the cross, of suffering, of following Jesus, of humility before God, of repentance. And yeah, sometimes that means activism, but with fear and trembling and always located within a much larger framework. And this matters, of course, because we live in a time of such extremism. We have had multiple assassination attempts. We find terrible rhetoric on both sides.

you know, here's one practical suggestion, if we're wondering what do we do with all of this, is let's reduce the amount of calling people Nazis. This rhetoric is not helpful. It happens all the time. And, you know, there's times to use that label because there are literal Nazis, people who espouse Nazi ideology. But using that term for just someone you disagree with politically is not helpful. The Nazis were unique.

They committed race-based genocide. that is a unique horror in world history, uniquely evil. So we need to be careful with our rhetoric. Bonhofer is actually a model to us of careful, principled political engagement, and it's a tragedy if his legacy becomes, well, you know, throw out theology when politics gets extreme. That's the way a lot of people think today. That is not what Bonhofer did.

He can push us in exactly the opposite direction back to the gospel itself. Now, we can leave room for good faith debate about some of the details of this, But at this point, let me just end it with this simple appeal. Bonhofer should drive us back to Christ and His Gospel itself. Okay, what's the gospel? The gospel's good news. There is a God who made us. We've sinned against Him.

That's the problem. That's the problem. Our sin against God. Jesus has come to fix that problem. Through repentance and faith in His name, we can be restored to God. Simple overview there. Of course, Bonhofer would be one to kind of tease that out. But the point is, to the extent that we're trying to learn from Bonhofer, he's going to remind us that evil can spring up anywhere, even in our very efforts to oppose evil.

And so our ultimate commitment should be following Jesus, no matter what. And that's what we learn from him. And I'll just end by saying this. For anybody who watches this, if you feel lost in the world right now, if you feel like everything's falling apart, Bonhofer's a model for us. not because he's perfect, but he's a good, we can follow in the footsteps of others. If you just follow Christ, it is enough. And you will end your life of victor and triumphant. No matter what circumstances you're facing, it's the one thing that is most important

is actually within our control to follow Jesus. And that's a wonderful lesson we can take from Bonn-Offer. Let's keep the conversation going. But these are a few of my thoughts. What are yours? Let me know in the comments. And I'll read through the comments on this one. Thanks for watching this video, everybody.