Ein Feste Burg: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Use of Theology as Rhetoric

EIN FESTE BURG: DIETRICH BONHOEFFER’S USE OF THEOLOGY AS RHETORIC

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Ein Feste Burg:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Use of Theology as Rhetoric

Tyler Andersen

Graduate Paper

Idaho State University

APA


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World history is replete with examples of conquerors: Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar,

Alexander the Great, Napoleon. Much less known are those who, for various reasons, are

seemingly lost in the shadows of metaphoric giants. Upon closer examination, however,

minor figures have often played major roles in shaping history. One such figure, little known

outside theological seminars and niche academic circles, is the German Lutheran pastor and

martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945). Bonhoeffer used his radical sermons and

theological treatises to openly attack Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Indeed, Bonhoeffer’s

theological influence is observed in later faith-based, politically progressive revolutionary

movements, most notably in the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.

Plagued by the criticism that he was merely an idealist with no tangible solutions to racial

inequality, Martin Luther King Jr. is reported to have responded with the following

hypothetical enthymeme: "If your opponent has a conscience, then follow Gandhi and non-

violence. But if your enemy has no conscience like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer” (Lamb,

2009).

Recent scholarship from communication-oriented academics has stressed the

importance of contextualizing rhetoric. As Michael Tumolo (2011) argues, the relevance of

applying various historical methods in communication studies is “necessary for relevant and

timely rhetorical scholarship.” He continues:

While all historical scholarship is motivated by particular historical

perspectives, my call is for a rhetorical historical perspective in which histories

of ideas and events are appropriated to develop a deeper understanding of


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those contexts and events that resonate as timely and relevant to the

contemporary reader (p. 58).

Such an approach utilizes, as James Herrick (2013) notes, “the study of how we organize and

employ language effectively . . . [and] the study of how we organize our thinking on a wide

range of subjects” (p. 3). Bonhoeffer’s influential legacy can and should be understood by a

critical, historical examination of his symbolic and persuasive communicative theological

strategies, specifically those exemplified in the foundational artistic proofs of classical

rhetoric—ethos, pathos, and logos.

Early Life and Education

Born in 1906 as the son of prominent parents in the Prussian province of Lower

Silesia, young Dietrich was the sixth of eight children of Karl and Paula (née

von Hase) Bonhoeffer. The elder of fraternal twins, Bonhoeffer came from a well-respected

pedigree; his maternal great-grandfather, Karl von Hase, had served as the personal pastor of

German Emperor Wilhelm II (Metaxas, 2010, p. 7), and his father, a prominent and highly

regarded neurologist, took a tenured professorship at the University of Berlin in 1912.

Inclined by familial custom to study theology as a teenager, but not particularly interested in

active churchgoing, Bonhoeffer eventually followed his father to the University of Berlin,

excelling academically and ultimately completing his Doctor of Theology summa cum laude

in 1927 at the age of 21. Upon graduation, Bonhoeffer entered the ministry as a parish

assistant—or vicar, serving briefly in Lutheran congregations in Spain, England, and the

United States before returning to Germany in 1931.

There is little doubt that the study and application of classical rhetoric played a

significant role in Bonhoeffer’s educational development and in his subsequent career as an


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ordained pastor, just as it did with many of his contemporaries—including Adolf Hitler

(Loebs, 2010). The necessity of scholars in nearly all fields to obtain “a certain degree of

ability in public speech and oral communication” was firmly established in German academic

circles as early as 1800 (Lohmann & Mayer, 2008, p. 115). Upon entering the ministry, which

required frequent, detailed public addresses in Lutheran meetings and on the radio,

Bonhoeffer’s emerging talent as a promising rhetor was well known. As Ronald Arnett (2005)

notes, Bonhoeffer offered his congregants “a language capable of addressing a time of

disruption and change…within a rhetorical understanding of communication that finds truth in

application, not in abstract theory and self-centered wishes” (p. 23).

A proponent of liberal theology—which deemphasized previously foundational

Protestant beliefs about the inerrancy of scripture in favor of a preaching style rooted in

literary criticism and social justice—Bonhoeffer moved to New York City in 1930 as a

teaching fellow at Union Theological Seminary. It was there that he was introduced to

Reinhold Niebuhr, then one of the world’s foremost Protestant scholars and the founder of

Christian Realism (Nelson, 1999, p. 22). While in the United States, Bonhoeffer became

drawn to a Christocentric approach to ministering which emphasized the teachings of Jesus

and the special status of the economically and spiritually impoverished.

Later, while teaching Sunday school at a predominantly African-American church in

nearby Harlem, Bonhoeffer earned the respect of progressive-minded seminarians seeking to

break the chokehold of defacto—and sometimes deliberate—racial segregation in the

American Protestant mainstream. Through his work with ethnic minorities, Bonhoeffer came

to recognize the persuasive, symbolic power of the Negro spiritual—the unique, lively music

of enslaved African Americans that awakened the Biblical imagery of God breaking the literal


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and spiritual bonds of His chosen people. Later, while establishing new ministries in

Germany, Bonhoeffer treasured the recordings of these folk hymns and occasionally

referenced them in his lectures as a university professor (Metaxas, 2010, p. 109).

Thy Kingdom Come

Keenly aware of a changing political climate in his own country and in Europe as a

whole, Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1931, obtaining a lectureship in systematic

theology at his alma mater (Rumscheidt, 1999, p. 59). The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche

Arbeiterpartei (the National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party) held 12 seats in

the Reichstag when Bonhoeffer left for his fellowship at Union. Within two years of his return

to Germany the number of Nazi Party seats exploded to 288, culminating with Hitler’s

appointment as Chancellor. The Nazi message was attractive to a growing number of German

people, particularly the völkisch traditionalists who saw the Weimar Republic as only an

effigy of the former proud and powerful empire (Moses, 1999, p. 10).

Limited by a faltering world economy and international sanctions after der Große

Krieg (The Great War), many Germans yearned for the imperial dispensations of better times

advocated by new leaders and new prophets. Dein Reich komme, Dein Wille geschehe (Thy

Kingdom come, Thy will be done)—the nostalgic couplet from Martin Luther’s early

sixteenth century translation of the Lord’s Prayer, mirrored the hopes of Germans seeking

redemption, restoration and a new political kingdom. Yet their savior did not come down

from heaven, clothed with glowing crimson robes and carrying an empty cross. Instead, he

came from a beer hall, clothed with blood red armbands garnished with a Hankenkreuz

(hooked cross)—the Swastika.


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Hitler had broad support among working-class Protestants and Catholics who saw his

policies as a welcome change from the status quo. He answered their concerted heavenward

pleas for sustenance with actual work and daily bread. Ambitious projects such as the

Autobahn and the remilitarization of the Rhineland put hundreds of thousands of Germans

back to work at a time when the residents of other seemingly prosperous nations were

struggling economically (Tooze, 2008, p. 45). Hitler, the savior in human flesh, as many

Germans saw him, was the surest means of securing Germany’s former place as a diplomatic

world leader. From Nazi Germany’s genesis in 1933 to its end in 1945, Bonhoeffer

questioned the motives of leaders in the increasingly violent, anti-Semitic Reich, which he

saw as embracing a false gospel and a false Christ (Metaxas, 2010, p. 141). Just days after

Hitler’s installation as Chancellor in January 1933, Bonhoeffer utilized the national radio

service in a sermon playing on Hitler’s self-preferred, definitive nationalistic title as Der

Führer—or The Leader. Reducing the dictator’s ethos to a comparable absurdity, Bonhoeffer

referred to Hitler as the ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing, Der Verführer (The Great Seducer).

Illustrative of the emerging propagandistic core of Nazism and its dependence on ideological

orthodoxy and censorship, Bonhoeffer’s radio address was cut off before he could finish

(Bethge, 1975, p. 260).

Though Bonhoeffer’s initial opposition to Hitler went largely unpunished, government

control of the Landeskirche (national churches) placed overwhelming pressure on both

Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations to appoint Nazi Party members to leadership

positions and to adopt charters reiterating Aryan superiority. Those Protestant leaders who

bowed to Nazi pressure, and who utilized Aryan-centered doctrines of election, were known


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as Deutsche Christen (German Christians), while those who resisted formed the rival

Bekennende Kirche (Confessing Church).

The German Christians rooted their theology in a message of centralized ecclesiastical

control resting in the firm recognition of the state and rejecting the perceived “Jewish” parts

of the Bible, including the entire Old Testament. The Confessing Church, on the other hand,

entirely dismissed the necessity of state control for ecclesiastical legitimacy, instead stressing

the sovereign authority of God working through laypersons, who, in turn, had levels of

autonomy from the state. Advocating Nazi policies ensured the German Christians a secured

future in the new “thousand-year” empire. Preaching against the Reich ensured that preachers

in the Confessing Church would likely be blacklisted and, in numerous cases, imprisoned, or

even executed.

A Mighty Fortress

Bonhoeffer was deeply committed to advancing the creed of the Confessing Church,

regardless of its consequences. In 1937 he published The Cost of Discipleship, a treatise on

what Bonhoeffer believed was essential to call oneself a true “Christian.” “Costly

discipleship,” as Bonhoeffer defined it, could only be practiced with a broken heart and a

spirit of contrition, what he described as the polar opposites of nationalist pride and

unrepentant Führer-worship. Extensively appealing to the New Testament’s stalwart doctrines

on grace, forgiveness, and peace, Bonhoeffer used his book to argue that Christian

discipleship, not Nazism, was the way and means by which Germany could rise from the

ashes of the Great War and international calumny. Germany’s feste burg (mighty fortress)

was not to be built on a cultic devotion to the Führer and an unprecedented expansion of its

geographical boundaries, but through a return to Christianity’s most basic message. In spite of


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Bonhoeffer’s work with the Confessing Church and his calls for a new Luther-like Protestant

reformation, the divine doves of peace never came.

As Bonhoeffer continued his Christocentric pacifist message, Hitler looked to expand

Germany’s borders by whatever means necessary. Fundamental to Hitler’s plans was the push

for Lebensraum—living space for German citizens and other ethnic Aryans from German-

speaking countries (Waite, 1994, p. 78). By 1938, with a population of nearly 80 million

people inhabiting an area only slightly larger than New Mexico, Hitler looked to Eastern

Europe as a solution to perceived overcrowding. First came the peaceful annexation of

Austria, the Anschluss. Unification with Austria had been a long-term goal for Germany even

before the Nazi Party existed (Pauley, 1981). The gathering of all Volksdeutsche, a term Hitler

himself coined to describe ethnic, German-speaking peoples, had been a dream for Germany

since the Napoleonic Wars (Bergen, 1994). Hitler’s Generalplan Ost (Master Plan East)

called for a Germanization of Eastern and Central Europe, necessitating the expulsion of

hundreds of millions of Poles, Czechs, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, and

Latvians. Fully recognizing the logistics involved with such a task, the plan called for the

liquidation of over 70 percent of non-German peoples living in Eastern Europe within three

decades (Eichholtz, 2004). Hitler’s divide-and-conquer strategy rested well with the

nationalist German Christians, but fundamentally differed from Bonhoeffer’s non-violent

live-and-let-live approach to ethics.

Central to Hitler’s rhetorical strategy throughout his leadership was lying. “For

myself, I would never tell a lie,” Hitler is reported to have said, “but there is no falsehood I

would not perpetuate for Germany’s sake” (Loebs, 2010, p. 6). Bonhoeffer retorted that

honesty should have priority, no matter the cost:


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There is no truth towards Jesus without truth towards man. Untruthfulness

destroys fellowship, but truth cuts false fellowship to pieces and establishes

genuine brotherhood. We cannot follow Christ unless we live in revealed truth

toward God and man. – The Cost of Discipleship, p. 139.

Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia only months after the Austrian Anschluss led to major

international fear that the Nazis might invade Poland to reclaim former German territory. As

many suspected, Hitler had been planning an invasion for months. By August 1939, in a

meeting with his generals, Hitler said: “I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war,

never mind whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterward whether he

told the truth” (Metaxas, 2010, p. 347). On September 1, after staging a false flag “invasion”

of Germany by Dachau concentration camp workers dressed in Polish Army uniforms, Hitler

launched the invasion of Poland, effectively starting the deadliest conflict in human history—

the Second World War (Kennedy, 1999, p. 425).

Ethos: Redemption Through Resistance

The most effective rhetoricians are those whose credibility, or ethos, are evident to

those whom a given persuasive message is shared. A speaker who has a dedication to moral

principles expresses strong ethos. Ethos is exemplified through wisdom, tact, good will,

sincerity, and self-evident enthusiasm. As a pastor, Bonhoeffer always preached moderation

through non-violence, or rather, “patient endurance,” which makes his later involvement in

covert, violent resistance against Nazism perplexing. As he wrote in 1937 on the concept of

revenge and its relationship with the Sermon on the Mount:

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


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evil and adds fuel to the flames. But when evil meets no opposition and

encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at

last it meets an opponent which is more than its match. . . . By willing

endurance we cause suffering to pass. Evil becomes a spent force when we put

up no resistance. – The Cost of Discipleship, pp. 141-142.

Bonhoeffer had studied Mahatma Gandhi’s writings closely after returning from his

fellowship at Union. As he wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr in 1934:

I plan to go to India very soon to see what Gandhi knows about these things

[the Sermon on the Mount] and to see what is to be learned there. I am

awaiting a letter and invitation from him any day now. Do you perhaps know

important people there to whom you could recommend me? (Rasmussen,

2005, p. 214)

The invitation to study with Gandhi eventually came, though Bonhoeffer ultimately turned

down the offer in favor of taking a position at Finkenwalde Seminary in 1935, the

“underground” training center for would-be ministers in the Confessing Church (Metaxas,

2010, p. 261).

Bonhoeffer’s experience at Finkenwalde led him to reconsider the effectiveness of a

strictly non-violent approach. As Isaac Villegas (2003) writes:

Bonhoeffer did not persevere in his convictions. Finkenwalde failed. The

Confessing Church failed. The communities that Bonhoeffer poured his life

into could not endure in the way of Christ’s cross against the Nazis. The

members of Finkenwalde compromised under the pressure of the draft. The

Gestapo shut down the secret seminary in 1940. There was no more


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community to cultivate non-violence and Bonhoeffer could not stand-alone.

With his Christian community destroyed, Bonhoeffer returned to the only

community he had, his irreligious, pro-German, anti-Hitler family in Berlin.

Though Bonhoeffer opposed Hitler largely on political and theological grounds prior

to 1939, Bonhoeffer’s biographer, Eric Metaxas (2010), wrote that the invasion of Poland—as

Bonhoeffer saw it—marked “the end of Germany” (p. 347). With Germany now at war, the

Gestapo (Secret State Police) cracked down on dissidents, paying close attention to clergymen

within the the Confessing Church. Months after the Nazi Blitzkrieg (lightning attack) on

Poland, Bonhoeffer was forced to report his whereabouts and activities to state authorities.

The next year he was barred from publishing or distributing any of his writings. Slumping

under outside pressure to give up his anti-Nazi sentiments and unify all Protestant churches

under the authority of the state, Bonhoeffer joined the Abwehr, the German intelligence

service. Bonhoeffer convinced German authorities that his background in church service

would be of great use to the state, which was still clashing with anti-Nazi factions in both

Protestant and Roman Catholic circles (Cornwell, 1999, p. 108).

Though joining a government agency was—at least on initial appearances—a sign that

Bonhoeffer showed loyalty to the Reich, the Abwehr had already become a hub for dissenters

and other anti-Nazi sympathizers. Intimately acquainted with intelligence implicating Hitler

and the Nazi Party in a coordinated mass extermination of Jews in Eastern Europe,

Bonhoeffer worked as a double agent, sharing classified information with Allied intelligence

personnel in Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway (Metaxas, 2010, p. 369). The relative safety

of the Abwehr was challenged by an interagency feud with the Schutzstaffel (Defense Corps)

or SS. On April 5, 1943, Bonhoeffer was taken into custody during a series of mass arrests of


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Abwehr staff, though evidence linking him to malevolent activities wouldn’t surface for over

a year (Metaxas, 2010, p. 432).

A short time after joining the Abwehr, Bonhoeffer became involved in a plot to

assassinate Hitler. The plan was simple: a timed-delayed bomb would be smuggled onto a

plane carrying Hitler and his entourage. Disguised as a package of cognac, a junior officer

successfully placed the bomb onboard Hitler’s plane on March 13, 1943. The bomb—which

should have gone off within 30 minutes—never detonated, a malfunction attributed to sub-

zero temperatures in the plane’s cargo hold. The bomb was later recovered before Hitler’s

staff discovered it, and was used in the now infamous “July 20 plot” known as Operation

Valkyrie. Following Abwehr director Wilhelm Canaris’ arrest by the Gestapo for smuggling

foreign currency after the failed July 20 plot, incriminating documents revealed that

Bonhoeffer, among others, was involved in the March 1943 plot to kill the Führer (Gisevius,

2009, pp. 93-95).

Logos: Bonhoeffer and the “Rhetoric of Responsibility”

Bonhoeffer’s writings between his time at Finkenwalde and his death presents a

remarkably detailed account into how Bonhoeffer utilized logos for persuasive means.

Bonhoeffer’s argumentation is perhaps most evident in The Cost of Discipleship, in which he

uses Aristotelian logic to underscore the moral and ethical obligations one adopts upon

conversion to Christianity. Furthermore, Bonhoeffer’s inductive and deductive reasoning is

apparent in his philosophical treatises published posthumously in 1953 as Letters & Papers

From Prison. Rhetorical theorist Ron Arnett (2005) of Duquesne University summarized

these works as “[a] rhetoric of responsibility.” Arnett notes:


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Rhetoric for Bonhoeffer is not a “telling,” but a responsive discerning of the

faith story engaged with the Other and the historical situation. Bonhoeffer

lived a rhetoric of phronesis, a practical wisdom emergent from the meeting of

the concrete moment and the storyline of faith ever responsible for the Other

(p. 7).

Arnett defined Bonhoeffer’s “rhetoric of responsibility” as meeting “the demands of the

historical moment . . . in a ‘world come of age’” (p. 59). Later, Letters would profoundly

influence Martin Luther King Jr.’s crusade for civil rights, most especially King’s own Letter

from a Birmingham Jail.

King’s statement contrasting the approaches of Gandhi and Bonhoeffer illustrates

how Bonhoeffer used reason to balance the moral imperative to live as a pacifist and, at the

same time, take a forceful stand against evil. As Bonhoeffer’s personal friend and biographer,

Eberhard Bethge noted: “[Bonhoeffer] could see no possibility of retreat into any sinless,

righteous, pious refuge. The sin of respectable people reveals itself in flight from

responsibility” (Lamb, 2009). To Bonhoeffer, removing Hitler from power by any means,

including murder, was a necessary act of virtue. According to this reasoning, if a sane person

were in power, and honest disagreements with the leader’s ideology could be expressed

without retribution, then pacifism could work toward positive change. However, if a tyrant

were in power, and honest disagreements could not be expressed without violent retaliation,

force is necessary.

Bonhoeffer’s allegiance to the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount served

as a foundation for his initial pleas for pacifism, and later as a justification for his involvement

in the plot to kill Hitler. St. Matthew’s account of Christ’s command to “turn the other cheek”


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(5:39) had long been used as a rationale for nonviolence. As Bonhoeffer wrote of the verse in

The Cost of Discipleship:

Jesus takes up this declaration of the divine will and affirms the power of

retribution to convict and overcome evil and to ensure the fellowship of the

disciples as the true Israel. By exercising the right kind of retribution evil is to

be overcome and thus the true disciple will prove himself. – The Cost of

Discipleship (p. 141)

The Sermon itself is remarkably nuanced, leaving room for a multiplicity of competing

interpretations. As the theologian and rhetorician, Jaroslav Pelikan (2000) notes:

[The] exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount has become increasingly complex

for its Christian interpreters. That complexity is, however, the reinforcement of

the challenge that the Jewish setting of the Sermon and of the entire New

Testament has in fact represented all along for both theology and rhetoric.

(p. 44)

Bonhoeffer’s initial interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount concluded that “[the] right way

to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it.” Yet Bonhoeffer saw virtue in extending

beyond mere pacifism. One could be a disciple and stand by the wayside while his neighbor

was robbed of his possessions, and, perhaps, his life. Bonhoeffer “affirmed the divine

institution of retribution to convict and overcome evil which was executed through the state”

(Willmer, 1999, p. 185).

Knowing of Hitler’s horrific Holocaust against the Jews and his plans to eliminate

Eastern Europeans, Bonhoeffer understood that actions to prevent further loss of innocent life

came as a moral imperative. Bonhoeffer’s work in the Abwehr allowed him to become


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intimately familiar with these issues, and to adopt a utilitarian philosophy that maximized the

good by eliminating the suffering of millions of Jews and other “undesirables.” For

Bonhoeffer, the presumed direct correlation between an elimination of Hitler and an improved

Europe could not be understated. This imperative to eliminate Nazism is perhaps best

illustrated in a poem attributed to one of Bonhoeffer’s co-founders in the Confessing Church,

Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the communists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me. (Marcuse, 2000).

Thus, the conspiracy to kill Hitler and remove his cohorts from power would provide the

means by which an end to the perpetual suffering in Europe could be brought about—casting

out the embodiment of evil and replacing it with a government that allowed its citizens to

worship freely without the fear of reproach.

Pathos: “This is the end—for me the beginning of life”

Bonhoeffer’s “rhetoric of responsibility” came at a high cost, as is often true for those

who dare to question the authority of a tyrant. Pathos is particularly useful in understanding

the concept of martyrdom. To confront death for one’s convictions is, of course, not a

validation for the truthfulness or wrongness of one’s beliefs, but rather, an expression of


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courage and commitment to a given cause—presumably because one genuinely espouses a

sincere belief in that cause. Emotional accounts of unjust suffering arouse feelings of

sympathy in audiences, and when accompanied by a strong emphasis of the credibility of a

speaker and valid reasoning, present potentially powerful, persuasive messages.

Bonhoeffer’s Letters show that he lived through appalling conditions during his last

year in prison. As Allied forces invaded Germany, Bonhoeffer was relocated to the Bavarian-

based Flossenbürg concentration camp, only a few miles from the present-day Czech

Republic. In the early morning hours of April 9, 1945, shortly after dawn and only two weeks

before the camp was liberated, Bonhoeffer and several co-conspirators, including Wilhelm

Canaris, were hanged. According to one witness, Bonhoeffer was seen praying fervently in

his prison cell, not in a fruitless, last minute effort to escape his death, but as an expression of

what the witness attributed to a desire for Bonhoeffer to spiritually prepare himself for an

imminent meeting with Deity (Metaxas, 2010, p. 532). Forced to strip naked and walk toward

the gallows, as if to make a Christlike atonement for his ideological offenses against Hitler,

Bonhoeffer’s last recorded act of defiance to the Reich consisted of calling out to an English

prisoner in the camp, smiling cheerfully, and saying “This is the end—for me the beginning of

life” (Bethge, 1975 p. 927).

Of Bonhoeffer’s execution, Eric Metaxas (2010) writes:

Bonhoeffer thought it the plain duty of the Christian—and the privilege and

honor—to suffer with those who suffered. He knew that it was a privilege to be

allowed by God to partake of the sufferings of the Jews who had died in this

place before him . . . [The] crematorium at Flossenbürg was not working [the

day of the execution], so the bodies of the men hanged that morning were


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burned in piles, and in this, [Bonhoeffer] had the honor to be joined to the

millions of other victims of the Third Reich (p. 532).

Had Bonhoeffer not died this way, it is improbable that his legacy would have been as

prominent as it is today. Bonhoeffer’s martyrdom, which mirrored the deaths of millions

during the Holocaust, exemplifies Bonhoeffer’s literal conviction to a Christocentric theology

he undoubtedly believed. The New Testament, upon which those convictions are based,

frequently refers to a celestial reward for longsuffering, and even death at the hands of

persecutors. True to his love for the Sermon on the Mount, Bonhoeffer “rejoice[d] and [was]

glad” in the face of injustice (Matthew 5:12, New International Version).

Conclusion: One Little Word Shall Fell Him

Well-formed rhetoric, no matter its setting or author, has the potential to impact

society in remarkable ways. Bonhoeffer didn’t live to see the end of the war, the toppling of

the Reich, or the redemption of Germany, for which he’d so fervently prayed for more than a

decade before his death. Officially recognized as a martyr in the Lutheran, Anglican, and

Methodist traditions, Bonhoeffer’s transition from pacifist pastor to a conspirator to kill Hitler

presents a fascinating perspective into the ways in which rhetoric has shaped the modern

world. A liturgical prayer in the Anglican tradition underscores the way many Christian

faith’s have come to embrace Bonhoeffer’s legacy:

Gracious God, the Beyond in the midst of our life, who gavest Grace to thy

servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer to know and teach the truth as it is in Jesus Christ,

and to bear the cost of following him: Grant that we, strengthened by his

teaching and example, may receive thy word and embrace its call with an


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undivided heart; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who liveth and reigneth with

thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

O God our Father, who art the source of strength to all thy Saints, and who

didst bring thy servant Dietrich Bonhoeffer through imprisonment and death to

the joys of life eternal: Grant that we, being encouraged by their examples,

may hold fast the faith that we profess, and that we may seek to know, and

according to our knowledge to do, thy will, even unto death; through Jesus

Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one

God, now and for ever. (Kiefer, 2012).

Bonhoeffer stood defiant in the face of adversity. Firm in his faith that divine justice

would prevail and dedicated to defying tyranny Bonhoeffer’s rhetoric of responsibility and

endurance appeals to those dedicated to advancing faith-oriented messages of civility and

equality. We need not adhere to any particular faith tradition to admire Bonhoeffer’s attempts

to use rhetoric to restore stability and sanity in an environment of mass genocide.

Bonhoeffer’s actions were only a small part of a global effort to bring down Hitler.

But acts of resistance like Bonhoeffer’s, both small and great, weakened and challenged the

Nazi Party’s legitimacy from its inception. Bonhoeffer’s contribution to the effort to destroy

Hitler is a reflection of the defiant, intellectual and Protestant tradition from which

Lutheranism emerged and flourished.

A memorable verse from Martin Luther’s iconic sixteenth century hymn Ein feste

Burg ist unser Gott, translated into English as “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” well-

summarizes Bonhoeffer’s quest for freedom against Nazism:


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And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us;

The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,

One little word shall fell him.


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Documents

Ein Feste Burg: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Use of Theology as Rhetoric