Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer , 1906-45, German Protestant theologian. Bonhoeffer, influenced early by the thinking of the young Karl Barth , urged a conformation to the form of Jesus as the suffering servant in a total commitment of the self to the lives of others. His ethical thinking led him to become an outspoken leader in the breakaway Confessing Church in Germany that openly declared its theological oppositon to Nazism in the Barmen Declaration of 1934. After the state cracked down on the church, Bonhoeffer continued his ministry underground and eventually became involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler; he was imprisoned for two years and hanged for his role in the plot. His writings, which have had considerable influence on postwar ethics and theology, include The Cost of Discipleship (tr. 1948), Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison (tr. 1953), and Ethics (tr. 1965).

Bibliography: See biographies by E. Bethge (1967, rev. tr. 1999) and A. Dumas (1971), and studies by L. Rasmussen (1989) and R. Wind (1992).

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1906–45). German pastor and Christian (Lutheran) theologian. Bonhoeffer took a leading part in drafting the Barmen Declaration. He attempted to found a seminary for pastors of the Confessing Church, but this was soon closed down. He continued to oppose Hitler, and was arrested in Apr. 1943. His Letters and Papers from Prison are a moving testament. He was executed on 9 Apr. 1945, commemorated in the nearby church by a tablet which states, ‘Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a witness of Jesus Christ among his brethren.’

His theological work was, obviously, unfinished. He accepted with Barth that religion as a human enterprise was an inevitable failure; but in contrast, indeed, he envisaged a ‘religionless Christianity’, commensurate with ‘a world come of age’.