Derek: 00:01

If you have listened to this podcast for a long time, then you probably know that Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been a very influential person in my life. That's why pretty much every year, I think actually every year since I started recording, I will have a recording dedicated to Bonhoeffer on like April 8 or April 9 pretty much every year. I do that on April 9 because that is the day of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's death in 1945. That might seem like kind of a weird thing to do to celebrate on the day of somebody's death, but it's actually a very Christian thing to do. See the way that saints are celebrated for the most part in the Christian world is that we recognize someone on the day of their death because really what we believe is that it's a day where they are made new, or they receive new life as they are taken to glory to be with God.

Derek: 01:00

And so it's celebration of a life well lived and a celebration unto new life. Well Dietrich Bonhoeffer was someone who is very encouraging to me and somebody who I want to celebrate his new life with because I know that when he got to be in the presence of God that it was said to him, Well done, good and faithful servant. And I want Dietrich Bonhoeffer to influence my life. Bonhoeffer was someone who threw off status and he humbled himself to work with people that others didn't want to work with. He was heavily influenced by suffering communities, first with the Black community in apartheid United States, and then the Jews in Germany.

Derek: 01:46

He helped others at cost to himself and he embraced integrity no matter what. He spoke up. He was vocal about the evils that were occurring when most other people were silent. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a very special person and I want to be discipled by him and so I try to commemorate him every year. Now, I think, you know, we could pick a lot of different people who we could commemorate every year and and the Church does, right?

Derek: 02:16

There are lots and lots of different saints that you can commemorate, and you can't really cover them all. But so, know, why did I pick Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Because there are other special people too. Well coming from a position of non violence, Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been especially interesting to me because of my perceived commonality with him on that position. Because there, since the anti Nicene church there aren't all that many people who've held to a position of non violence, it's more of a minority position.

Derek: 02:48

And so I felt kind of a kinship with Bonhoeffer that he would embrace that ideology just made him more meaningful to me. And, you know, facing somebody, a lion like Hitler, as a lamb who was slain. I mean, that's just beautiful my non violent book, right? You know, back in the day, though, I accepted the narrative that Bonhoeffer had been plotting to kill Hitler. But, you know, even after becoming a pacifist, I just I didn't think that that was that big of a deal, that narrative to keep around.

Derek: 03:24

As maybe an example of this, a few YouTube like, I think his name is Pablo Yoder. He's this missionary down in South Or Central America and he talks about how he embraces non violence, but his family's been attacked a number of times and how each time he has to make the conscious decision to be non violent, and how one time he hit a baseball bat in his house because I guess his kids played baseball or something. And it wasn't intended as a weapon, but when he went to his room to get money that, he's being threatened for, he looks at that baseball bat and he's like, I've got to get that out of the house, right? It's a temptation. It's always possible that you slip and you fail, right, at your standard.

Derek: 04:07

So in regard to Bonhoeffer, I mean, who wouldn't understand if Bonhoeffer threw off non violence in a moment of desperation and weakness? The the story of Bonhoeffer who embraced pacifism, but then in a moment of weakness, went to assassinate Hitler, like that just made sense to me. It didn't seem like that big of a deal. But I've come to learn that that's not really at all what's being argued by a lot of people when they claim that Bonhoeffer embraced violence at the end. What they're arguing is that his embrace of violence, it wasn't weakness in the moment.

Derek: 04:43

It was an ideological shift. Bonhoeffer realized how idealistic pacifism was, so he threw it off for the correct ethic, a realist ethic that demanded he engage in violence for the greater good. So how we understand Bonhoeffer's actions at the end of his life, they really matter a whole lot. And did he cling to pacifism? Did he put his pacifism aside in a moment of weakness recognizing that, yeah, you know, when I when I do this act of plotting to kill Hitler, I shouldn't do it, but I'm going to, and I'm going to be guilty of that.

Derek: 05:17

You know, was that the ethic that he had? Or did he have a whole transformation in his theology and ideology at the end and embrace realism in full? Yeah, so we've got those three options that lie before us. Most people at the moment take that last option. It was an ideological shift.

Derek: 05:35

It wasn't just a misstep, of him being inconsistent with his own theology. It was a complete transformation. Now Doctor. Mark Nation's book was the first time that I came across someone who actually argued for the first option, that Bonhoeffer maintained his pacifism to the end. And honestly, when I first saw that, it seemed like an extreme claim.

Derek: 05:59

One that it's sort of like a conspiracy theory, like, well, he really was a pacifist and they're making him look bad. And I was extremely skeptical of that case. And part of that skepticism was because I didn't feel like I really needed to argue it. I didn't feel like, you know, I didn't recognize the ideological shift argument. And so for me, I'm like, you know what, he slipped up.

Derek: 06:22

What's the big deal? But once I read Doctor Nation's book and I heard the evidence, it's actually become, in my mind, more likely that Bonhoeffer did maintain his pacifism to the end. Now, I know that I'm biased of course, at this point, so definitely check me on the information that I present and the information that Doctor Nation writes about. But as I sifted through the evidence, it really seemed more and more that the idea of Bonhoeffer as a committed assassin was really based on a limited case. Not necessarily a weak one, I don't want to straw man it, right?

Derek: 07:01

Because a substantial part of the evidence for Bonhoeffer being an assassin or plotting to kill Hitler, it was based on the testimony of a very close friends to him, Betke, Eberhard Betke. And the fact that Bonhoeffer hung out with plotters who did make plans to kill Hitler, I mean those are those are two pieces of very strong evidence, right? But when you start to look at the timeline of the assassination attempts and the plurality of testimonies from all of his close friends, not just, you know, one or two, I think that the balance, at least in my opinion, it it tips towards Bonhoeffer's maintaining a pacifist stance. Now I would say what probably solidified this conclusion for me in the past few months, you know, so pretty recently, has been learning more about the story of, and I might pronounce his name wrong here, Helmut von Molkie. So Von Moltke, he ran in the same circles as Bonhoeffer, the Kreisau group.

Derek: 07:59

There were a wide variety of ideologies held within that group with some pacifists, some who embraced violence, some who were actually anti Semitic, though not murderously so. You know, they thought the Nazi regime took it too far. They just wanted some minor limitations on the Jews and like the positions that they could hold in office or whatnot. So and the list goes on with just ideological differences within this group. But they were united on the important thing like Hitler and his murderous regime were not good.

Derek: 08:29

Now of course, we don't say that Bonhoeffer was anti Semitic just because some people in that group were. So why claim that he embraced violence just because some in the group did? But Moltke, the reason his story is important is because more clearly than probably anybody else in the group, it's really clear that he did not support violence, a violent overthrow of Hitler, and that his early imprisonment he said was essentially a godsend in that it, number one, prevented him from having to choose to not do violence, and number two, to prevent his name from being mistakenly associated with violence, right? Guilty by association. Had he been not been arrested as early as he was, and there was violence done towards Hitler, then he very easily could have been associated with that and his reputation tarnished because he did not want to participate in violence, against Hitler at least.

Derek: 09:24

Now von Molkie, he had a much larger footprint than Bonhoeffer in terms of the number of people that he was able to help, and, you know, what he was able to do to help the Jews across Axis controlled territory. And yet, very few know Von Molkie's name. Now I think his story is a really important one to know because he provides a framework for understanding how Bonhoeffer could have clung to his pacifism while collaborating with those who were willing to do violence. And Doctor Nation talks a bit about that, in his book. Like Vamoki, Bonhoeffer may have been seeking to participate in reaching out to his numerous contacts abroad, preparing a way for Germany's peace when Hitler fell, right?

Derek: 10:10

Not actively engaging in the plot to kill Hitler, but saying, hey, if these guys are gonna plot to kill him, I wanna make sure that we have a peace at the end and I wanna make sure that, you know, we're in contact with Britain and all these other people who can help to make that possible. And like von Molkie, Bonhoeffer may have clung to his convictions that violence was not the answer to the Hitler problem while also being involved in planning with those who did. Now since first recording this episode a number of years ago, there is also one other piece of evidence that has become strong in my mind that I didn't grab onto that you're not going to get in this, in this replay. Bonhoeffer was certainly not arrested for a conspiracy to kill Hitler as court documents show, but I think this has become even more clear when you recognize that he spent two years in prison before his execution. When you look at all those who are even somewhat remotely associated with assassination attempts against Hitler, they were killed really quickly after their arrest.

Derek: 11:09

I mean just go look at the purges after the Valkyrie guy, I can't think of it, Von Staffordenberg, I don't remember his name, but yeah, look at all the people who were killed, lots and lots of people, and they're killed pretty quickly. And every once in while you'll find somebody who was left alive for a couple months, but they were usually only left alive and like tortured that whole time to try to obtain information and once that information, they thought they had exhausted the person, they just kind of, they killed him. But Bonhoeffer, he didn't experience that like daily severe torture and he did not and he was in prison for like two years. He was in prison for a really long time. So that seems really odd that he would be in there for, you know, for plotting to assassinate Hitler.

Derek: 12:01

And also, you see that the timing of his execution came after the discovery of Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr, which when they discovered his diary, like they realized that man the Abwehr, they've got loads of spies in them like they're just, they're an organization that you can't trust and they just like killed most or all of the Abwehr agents that were imprisoned at that point. They're like, we just need to get rid of them all. And so Hitler cleaned house. Just because Bonhoeffer was executed doesn't mean that they discovered something about his attempted assassination on Hitler. So Bonhoeffer's death seems to me at least almost certainly not a result of a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.

Derek: 12:49

And it doesn't mean he didn't engage in that and they just didn't discover it, but you know that piece of evidence of his arrest that a lot of people like to say, well he must have done something severely wrong if he was arrested and executed for it. It just doesn't fly when you look at all of the other executions of people who weren't involved in that kind of stuff and just because they were associated with the Abwehr or other sorts of groups. Hitler was just cleaning house. So if you if you take all those points in mind, Von Molkie as a framework for understanding how Bonhoeffer just because of his association, was not guilty or should not be guilty by association. I think that's helpful.

Derek: 13:28

And understanding Bonhoeffer's long imprisonment is also helpful evidence. In the rest of this episode, which is a replay from season two on consequentialism, you are going to get the first part of Doctor. Nation's case. I'm going to go through in this episode, I'm going to explore the circumstantial and historical evidence that helps to vindicate Bonhoeffer. And in the next episode, we're going to look at the continuity of Bonhoeffer's theology to make an ideological case for his maintenance of pacifism.

Derek: 14:03

Hopefully these episodes are going to help you think more deeply about the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the way that we so often accept simple narratives rather than embracing complexity. And just one other thing to note before you get into this, this is an episode from, from my early days of podcasting, so prepare your ears for a slightly different quality of sound. Hopefully that doesn't distract you too much and you're able to get through it to get the information that I think is really important when you consider the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today's episode is part one of a special edition, which is about the man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Derek: 14:58

Since Bonhoeffer was executed on 04/09/1945, and this 04/09/2020 will mark the seventy fifth anniversary of his execution. I thought that it would be a fitting episode to dedicate to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. So many of you probably know that, the name Bonhoeffer. He is famous as, the pacifist who turned assassin in order to confront one of the greatest evils of our age, Hitler and the Nazi regime. Due to his rebellion, Bonhoeffer was executed by the regime shortly before liberation of the extermination camps in Germany and the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Derek: 15:51

In a book that I just read, Stanley Harrowass wrote the foreword. And Harrowass talks about how Bonhoeffer as one of the most famous pacifists or former pacifists as some as many would see it, is often the first issue brought up to him when he talks about pacifism. People will say, yeah, well, about Bonhoeffer? And to the majority of people, Bonhoeffer represents a hero in his wake up call to reality and his renunciation of idealistic pacifism. And they they see Bonhoeffer as being just, you know, in theory, a pacifist, but then when he's faced with a great evil like Hitler, you know, he chooses to actually do something about it.

Derek: 16:40

And that's the way Bonhoeffer's viewed. I always accepted that narrative, of Bonhoeffer's life even after I became a pacifist. To me, the story was interesting, but Bonhoeffer's actions just seemed irrelevant to a logical case. The way that I saw it was that it's kind of like monogamy being proven false by Christian leaders who have affairs or getting a divorce. Even though those things might go against their ideology and convictions, they do it anyway.

Derek: 17:19

They perform those sins. And we wouldn't say that that disproves the Bible's teaching of monogamy just because they fail at it. Now that's how I how I used to see it. Now who cares if Bonhoeffer failed to live perfectly? But after this is actually my second go through of this episode because I sent it off to one of the authors of the book that I just read on Bonhoeffer entitled Bonhoeffer the Assassin.

Derek: 17:49

And he critiqued this aspect by saying that, well actually it's it's a little bit more significant than that. And so he's with the anti pacifist here where he he said, the problem with Bonhoeffer is, if somebody has an affair, if a pastor has an affair, he wouldn't say that he changed his moral ethic, his belief about whether or not having an affair was good or not. He just failed at the standard. However, what what people are arguing here with Bonhoeffer is that Bonhoeffer did not merely compromise the ethic, but his theology changed. So he actually thought that doing violence was good.

Derek: 18:37

That's the way that it's it's generally portrayed. So this is not a a moral compromise. This is an ideological shift, and that's a bit more significant. Now we could still argue and discuss, know, well, he shifted his ideology because, he felt like he needed to justify himself. You know, he he was a weak pacifist and so he said he changed his ideology, but, he just did that to in in order to be able to to do this action.

Derek: 19:09

And people do that all the time with sins. You know, people might have a conviction about pornography, and then justify it like, you know, if I this is better than, going out and actually having sex or this is to help me calm my urges so I don't do something worse or whatever the excuse is and whatever the sin is. People people justify themselves in the moment when they want to do something. Now another way that you could look at at what Bonhoeffer did instead of self justification, you could make a case that Bonhoeffer thought he was doing something wrong but did it anyway. Parents do this with kids sometimes.

Derek: 19:53

Parents will say, I know I shouldn't lie to my kids but and then fill in the excuse. Right? You find that there's maybe some greater good that you want to uphold even though you know you shouldn't do an evil to accomplish that. So one can make the case that maybe that's what Bonhoeffer did. But that's not the case that these authors are going to make.

Derek: 20:19

These authors are going to say that Bonhoeffer's life was actually once he converted to pacifism, it was lived out in a pacifist manner. Now consequentialists aren't going to like this. They are going to argue that Bonhoeffer changed his idealism. They want to co opt Bonhoeffer really badly because consequentialists view pacifism as idealistic. They think Bonhoeffer's life shows how real trials and reality change people's minds in the face of of great evil.

Derek: 21:02

And Bonhoeffer is their case in point. So they like him. But in this new book called Bonhoeffer, it's not really new. It's from 2013. But in this book, entitled Bonhoeffer the Assassin, the authors are going to argue that Bonhoeffer maintained his pacifism and they use both historical reasons for this as well as internal reasons from Bonhoeffer's own writings.

Derek: 21:31

That's one thing I've I found particularly good about this book is that it's a holistic case. They try to get inside Bonhoeffer's head by showing his explicit writings and what he said, but they also show historical detail to show why it seems unreasonable to believe that Bonhoeffer could actually have have made an assassination attempt on Hitler. So this case will be laid out in two parts. The first part will be external evidence like historical facts and such. And the second part will be, I'll label internal evidence, which will be from Bonhoeffer's writings mostly.

Derek: 22:09

So let's take a look at the external evidence. Bonhoeffer had a major ideological transformation between 1929 and 1931. In 1929, Bonhoeffer gave a lecture in Barcelona, which justified murder, particularly murder for the state, as well as some other, he discussed some other conundrums, the, moral conundrums. But at some point in the years between, 1929 and '31, Bonhoeffer made a very big transition and actually began to identify as a pacifist. And he actually explicitly identified as a pacifist.

Derek: 22:51

He called himself that. Bonhoeffer began to push back against the Nazis and support the oppressed people while he was a pacifist. Interestingly, the the majority of the church in Germany who weren't pacifists sided with Hitler and the war machine. But Bonhoeffer, the pacifist who, know, supposedly pacifism is passive, he actually was one of the few voices pushing back against the Nazi regime, getting himself into trouble being called an enemy of the state and all that. A little bit later, Bonhoeffer even created a community where he discipled leaders and taught explicitly pacifism and advocated conscientious objection, being a conscientious objector.

Derek: 23:43

This is the community from which the book Life Together came out. And you have to recognize that advocating being a conscientious objector was a really big deal back then. Because if you said, I'm not going to join the army, it's not like you just had you were just looked down upon, you were executed. It's an executable offense. Bonhoeffer, recognizing that he was going to get drafted most likely, ended up joining the German intelligence agency through the close contacts that he had in order, we believe, to avoid conscription.

Derek: 24:25

Because if he joined the German intelligence agency, he did not have to go and and fight. So it seemed evidence seems to indicate that Bonhoeffer did not do this to get at Hitler, but actually he did this in order to avoid conscription. And we'll we'll come back to some of the evidence that shows that in a little bit. During his time in the German intelligence agency, Bonhoeffer helped a number of Jews to flee. He used his position to help Jews escape Germany.

Derek: 24:59

Because the intelligence agency was kind of a known hotbed of spies and such, at one point the Germans began to look really closely and sift through documents and and watch what was going on. And they discovered Bonhoeffer's helping of the Jews to flee and and some missing money and such that that he was able to use to help that happen. And so Bonhoeffer was explicitly convicted for avoiding military service and helping others to do the same. That's what he was charged with. And the irony is that, if you do believe that Bonhoeffer remained a pacifist, that he ended up being killed for his moral consistency.

Derek: 25:47

Yet today, we praise him for the opposite. We praise him for, his moral inconsistency and and changing his his position on the topic. During Bonhoeffer's time in the German intelligence or closely tied to it, there are only five assassination attempts which would be reasonable to assume Bonhoeffer could have been a part of. There was, there were two attempts done before Bonhoeffer joined the German intelligence. And we we think that he knew of or or at least had a strong possibility of knowing of most of, if not all of these attempts because of his close connection with some family who was in the intelligence agency who were parts of the plots.

Derek: 26:39

So there were two plots before Bonhoeffer joined the German intelligence. And even though maybe he knew about those, it is it doesn't seem like he would have really been able to have much of a hand in them because he didn't have a position where he could help. There were two attempts on Hitler's life connected to Bonhoeffer's agency, an agency of 12,000 workers here. So there were there were plenty of other people who were spies and such. I think they estimate around 50.

Derek: 27:14

But there were two attempts on Hitler's life while Bonhoeffer was at the agency. But both of those fell through and were not discovered. And one of them, an individual replaced some bottles of wine that were going to be transported on Hitler's plane. He replaced those with explosives but for whatever reason the fuse did not go off. So when the plane landed, the guy quickly figured out how to how to get the bombs out and replace it with wine and it was not discovered.

Derek: 27:43

There's another one where Hitler was getting a tour of some some place and the guy giving the tour had a suicide bomb vest on. Well, Hitler, something came up and Hitler left like two minutes into the ten minute tour and the the guy quickly went to the bathroom and diffused the vest. So nobody, no German army official or anybody found out about those two attempts. And so nobody was arrested for that. Nobody found that out.

Derek: 28:13

So Bonhoeffer definitely was not charged with or arrested or executed for those two attempts. And then the last attempt would have been one that transpired after Bonhoeffer's arrest. And that is the the incidents that the movie Valkyrie is is with Tom Cruise is famous for. So there were two that happened like way back in 1939 before Bonhoeffer joined the German intelligence. Two that were never discovered while Bonhoeffer was in the German intelligence.

Derek: 28:46

And one which happened after Bonhoeffer was arrested and put in jail. So it it really seems like they're just you cannot link Bonhoeffer's execution to to any of those assassination attempts on Hitler because there was no opportunity there. But also because Bonhoeffer's explicit charges were that he was subverting the government. Subverting the government by avoiding conscription and by helping others to avoid Germany as well. Now, he did have relationships with very close relationships with some of the conspirators and we also know that he was using his influence to seek guaranteed peace.

Derek: 29:37

So we know that because Bonhoeffer was out of the country and he had close connections with United States and Britain and some other countries and Karl Barth and where is he, Sweden maybe. We know that Bonhoeffer had connections elsewhere and that he was trying to use those to guarantee peace. So he was saying, hey look, people are trying to take Hitler down. If Hitler goes down, can you can we have an understood guarantee for peace? Because we don't want people to come in here and take advantage of us, etcetera.

Derek: 30:09

So what we do know of Bonhoeffer's involvement was that he was working on the peace aspect. We have no evidence of Bonhoeffer condoning, planning, or participating in violence whatsoever. No charges from the government. We have no, just nothing that that would nail Bonhoeffer down to having participated in or proved of violence. Now we don't really know Bonhoeffer's conversations with all of the conspirators, but we do have a framework for what that that might have looked like.

Derek: 30:50

One of Bonhoeffer's former students talks about how he felt so ashamed when he came back from the front and he talked with Bonhoeffer. Because Bonhoeffer knew the terrible things that they they had to do or that were done because his students wrote him letters about what was going on, executing civilians and such. And this guy just he could barely look Bonhoeffer in the eyes, but he said that Bonhoeffer was gracious to him in his context. He talked to him, asked him how he was doing, didn't condemn, and just loved him and met him where he was at. Even though the student knew Bonhoeffer's convictions.

Derek: 31:30

So we can we can imagine that it may have been somewhat the same while Bonhoeffer is working with these other people who are good, who have different convictions about and are in a different situation and are seeking to undermine Hitler and this evil regime. Bonhoeffer in his conversation may have held his convictions and met them where they were at. He may have not approved of what they were doing or may have said, I'm not going to do that myself, but I do want to work peace. And he went and worked within his context of conviction. Now some people might say that is a compromised position and his refusal to out those individuals who are seeking the death of Hitler, maybe that makes him culpable and maybe it does.

Derek: 32:24

But if Bonhoeffer was trying to do the best that he knew how in a very difficult situation and the most you can pin on him is that he didn't tell on people he knew were plotting Hitler's death. I mean, it's it's hard to argue that he then threw off his ideal of pacifism. Maybe you would say that he was an imperfect pacifist, but to argue that his whole ideal shifted is just not something that you're going to be able to do from the evidence. Let's go ahead and take a look at the internal evidence then. The majority of the book is actually dedicated to this aspect and goes very deep and I'm just gonna scratch the surface.

Derek: 33:15

Bonhoeffer considered that he had a true conversion when he fully saw and embraced Christ in the Sermon on the Mount sometime post 1929. So Bonhoeffer said he really only became a Christian. He converted after he was already a pastor after 1929 when he truly saw Christ. After his conversion, he began to label himself as a pacifist explicitly and taught against joining the army, advocated loving enemies. He subverted German injustices.

Derek: 33:51

He railed against the church's nationalism, and he himself avoided military service. In 1944, by his own admission, just a year or less before his death, he held a he made the statement that I have held a consistent trajectory since my conversion. And that's what he said. He said that he his trajectory has been consistent since his conversion. Now we can say, well, what exactly does that mean?

Derek: 34:21

Does that mean he's remained a Christian? Or does that mean like his core beliefs? And that's what it seems to indicate that his core beliefs have remained the same since his conversion. The place where people like to try to convict Bonhoeffer of his his changing ideals is in what they argue is a shift from Bonhoeffer's idealism to more of a Niebarian realism. So in in one of Bonhoeffer's last works that wasn't completed, he he emphasizes his disdain for absolutism.

Derek: 35:08

And this disdain for absolutes seems to some, to many, to be indicative of his acceptance of Niebuhr's realism. And this idea that we live in a fallen world, we just kinda have to do what we have to do and so therefore don't throw these absolutes in my face. But what people fail to understand is that Bonhoeffer was not throwing off objective morality and pacifism, but rather he was just he was talking about the grounding of those things. And the grounding of those things rather than being in some list that is absolute is found in an individual who is absolutely real. So Bonhoeffer grounded morality not in some objective standard of laws outside of God, but he grounded them in God himself in the person of Jesus Christ.

Derek: 36:07

Absolute ideals produce legalism and don't require grace to complete. But being in a relationship with Christ and being like Him requires grace and produces community and life. You know, you can be a moralistic pacifist who hates enemies and condemns former students who join the army, all while not harming other people. Right? That would, if Bonhoeffer was a moralistic pacifist who based absolutes on, just this list of things, then Bonhoeffer could have been a pacifist that didn't harm people while, hating enemies and judging his students and not meeting them where they were at.

Derek: 36:49

Or, like Bonhoeffer did, you can be a, a declared pacifist because you follow Jesus Christ whose pacifism isn't just some ideal outside of himself, but is a fruit of walking with Jesus Christ. And that's what Bonhoeffer was doing. He wasn't saying there aren't things that are absolutely true and absolutely moral. He's saying that Jesus Christ is the absolute and whatever is like him, whatever is relationally with him is what's good. And Bonhoeffer would say that harming other people, doing violence to other people is something that does not look like Christ.

Derek: 37:30

Unfortunately, this this talk, of absolutes and a disdain for it makes people say, well, Bonhoeffer was just just a realist who recognizes like his 1929 self that there are all these moral conundrums and we we can't know morality. It's not this this absolute thing. But that's not what Bonhoeffer himself seems to indicate. The authors of the book spend much much more time on this case than I have spent here. You should definitely check it out.

Derek: 38:06

I learned a lot about Bonhoeffer, Bart, Niebuhr, history, ethics, Germany, and a lot more. The point is that you you really can't get Bonhoeffer the assassin from the evidence. It's not something that that sticks out so clearly yet everybody seems to be so sure of it. It might be true, maybe. But but the evidence seems to indicate that it's very unlikely.

Derek: 38:30

Seems to me that the surety we have of Bonhoeffer the assassin of that narrative shows us more our preconceived ideas than truth. Now we want to self justify our violence and our, refusal to recognize nonviolent action as being Christ like. And so Bonhoeffer's a nice notch in our belts to to help us feel better about continuing in that in that ideology. Bonhoeffer is a hero for failing to assassinate Hitler violently because he held to his convictions, and he was one of the only people who spoke out because he recognized that truth, and the sword from our mouths and and our testimony is what Christ calls us to. Unfortunately, Bonhoeffer is rarely recognized for helping Jews, for creating community, for discipling young people, and for being a voice in the darkness.

Derek: 39:32

It's just really sad to me that that we feel the need for Bonhoeffer to be violent, for us to elevate him. I hope you take a deeper look at Bonhoeffer's life and coming directly from a friend who studied at at Bonhoeffer's place over in in Germany and and talked with a lot of the Germans who were there and who are experts on him. They said, whatever you do, don't read Metaxas' version of Bonhoeffer because it's just so bad. But that's the only one anyone knows. So make sure you you do some research and figure out some good sources to get.

Derek: 40:15

In part two, I am going to explore some of the authors and Anne Bonhoeffer's specific ideas that stood out to me in relation to our topic of consequentialism. And I wanna pull those out and expound on them and show you a little bit more about Bonhoeffer and his ideology and and how that impacts our lives. That's all for now, so peace, and since I'm a pacifist, and I say it, I mean it.