The church would be “in statu confessionis and here the state would be in the act of negating itself.” This Latin phrase, which means “in a state of confession,” was originally used as a specifically Lutheran phrase in the sixteenth century. By Bonhoeffer’s time it had come to mean a state of crisis in which the “confession” of the gospel was at stake. To “confess the gospel” simply meant to speak forth the good news of Jesus Christ.* Bonhoeffer continued, “A state which includes within itself a terrorized church has lost its most faithful servant.”
