German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed 75 years ago today, April 9 1945, for his part in a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler. "The church's task is not simply to bind the wounds of the victim beneath the wheel, but also to put a spoke in the wheel itself." He was 39.
Conversation
DB's impact has been felt on several levels. First, his witness has inspired Christians wrestling with the ethical dilemmas of responsible action in the face of oppression. "The ultimate question for a responsible man to ask is not how he is to extricate himself heroically ...
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...from the affair but how the coming generation is to live." Then, there is the vision forged in the confinement of his last years, which outlined a way of talking about God in secular language. "I should like to speak of God not on the boundaries but at the center,...
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...not in weaknesses but in strength, and therefore not in death and guilt, but in man's life and goodness. God is beyond in the midst of our life." Christ didn't call us to some holy life set apart from the world and its concrete demands.
Following Christ was a matter of engagement in this world, "living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures... In doing so we throw ourselves into the arms of God." He embraced a new standpoint from which to engage the world:
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"We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled--in short, from the perspective of those who suffer."
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