The Way of the Cross

There is little to be said about the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, not because his work is not worthy of note but because his work and story speak best for themselves. So it is that after reading Letters and Papers from Prison (Eberhard Bethge, ed., 1967), I recommend it to you for its earthiness, sublimity, and challenge, which only diminish in description.

Nonetheless I must note three quotations, which speak to the theology arising out of Bonhoeffer's experience. He writes, "Our being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men [sic]" (p161). Bonhoeffer's thinking, in these letters, has little use for religiosity and ceremony.

"God lets himself [sic] be pushed out of this world and onto the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matthew 8.17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering" (188). Here is a clear strain of Lutheranism, to be sure, but also a radical sort of faith that on which even Paul in his letter to the Corinthians only begins to touch. Bonhoeffer has no patience for the deus ex machina, the God who extracts by miracle, brand of Christianity.

Thus: "It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith . . . . By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes, and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings but those of God in the world--watching with Christ in Gethsemane" (193). Bonhoeffer's testimony against religious escapism gains great credibility from his own choices: to plot against the Third Reich; to serve as chaplain to inmates and guards while incarcerated; and to go peacefully to his execution on 9 April 1945.

Would that we could all take up the cross, when that path calls us, in such a manner as he. And would that we who follow Jesus could live each day as if we are preparing to do so.

~ emrys