Was Dietrich Bonhoeffer a Righteous Gentile?

by Richard L. Rubenstein (April 2011)

Presented at the International Bonhoeffer Society meeting at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Nashville, TN November 19, 2000.

Although repudiating Nazism, Bonhoeffer also expressed the anti-Jewish bias of centuries-old Christian teaching.

  While in prison, probably at the end of June 1943, Bonhoeffer expressed his opinion concerning the duty of obedience he believed was incumbent upon him:

Having quoted Luther, Bonhoeffer states the issues raised by the Aryan clause for the Church:

Bonhoeffer is harshly explicit in separating the competency of the two realms:

Without doubt the Jewish question is one of the historical problems which our state must deal with, and without doubt the state is justified in adopting new methods here.

And S. Mencken (1795):

When the time comes that this people humbles itself and penitently departs from the sins of its fathers to which it has clung with fearful stubbornness to this day, and calls down upon itself the blood of the Crucified one for reconciliation, then the world will wonder at the miracle that God works!

Bonhoeffer continues with his own comment:

By contrast in the first sermon Bonhoeffer preached in Trinity Church in Berlin after the Nazi seizure of power, he declared:

That was an extraordinarily difficult choice for Bonhoeffer to make, to will the defeat of his own nation and to participate in bringing it about. And to repeat, without his traditional Lutheran faith with its tradition of anti-Jewish hostility, he would never have made it.

Paldiel continues:

In conclusion, let us recall a comment by Hegel in the Preface to The Philosophy of Right:

[ii] The petitioners include Prof. Konrad Bieber, Prof. Livia Bitton-Jackson, Rabbi Balfour Brickner, Rev. Guy C. Carter, Father Robert F. Drinan, Prof Emil L. Fackenheirn, Rev. Richard E. Koening, Prof Franklin H. Littell, Dr. Gotthold Mueller, Rabbi Uri Regev, Mr. Seymour Rossel, Mr. Vidal Sassoon, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, Prof. Nechama Tec, Mr. Stephen A. Wise, Mrs. Maya Zehden, Prof. Ruth Zerner.

[ix] Romans 13:1-5.

[x] Cited by Eberhard Bethge, op. cit., p. 817.

[xii] J. Noakes and G. Pridham, eds., Nazism: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945 , Volume I, The Nazi Party, State and Society 1919-1945 (New York: Schocken Books, 1984), p. 224.

[xiii] See Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 88ff.

[xiv] Bonhoeffer, op. cit., p. 222.

[xv] Bonhoeffer, loc. cit.

[xvi] Bonhoeffer, loc. cit.

[xvii] Bonhoeffer, loc. cit.

[xviii] Bonhoeffer, op. cit. , p. 223.

[xix] Bonhoeffer, op. cit. , p. 225.

[xx] Bonhoeffer, op. cit., p. 227.

[xxi] Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Sword, p. 226.

[xxii] Bonhoeffer, op. cit., p. 226.

[xxiii] Bonhoeffer, op. cit., p. 227.

[xxv] Cited by Bethge, loc. cit.

[xxvi] Cited by Bethge, op. cit., p. 164

[xxvii] Eberhard Bethge, op. cit., p. 655.

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