Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis: Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

by Mark Nation

If one is to urge Christian involvement in the world, as did Bonhoeffer, and sustain theological integrity in doing so, then theological attention must be given to how the gospel relates to public witness. This is true, “first, in order to resist the moralism which so easily afflicts the church’s social and cultural testimony. By ‘moralism’ I mean the fatal turn by which the church’s human responsibility and action become the centre of gravity in its dealings with its context. When that happens, then gospel, church and witness all are distorted. ‘Gospel’ is instrumentalized” (22). In the context of Nazi Germany—but really in any context, where there are elements of violence, injustice, and unrighteousness that need to be countered—Christians must address public issues. However, we must also strenuously avoid aligning the church with any non-Christian ideology or being overly focused on specific policies. For, if the Christian witness is “to be protected from moralism, it can only be by being faced with the gospel as something which resists us, which cannot just be harnessed to whatever social and cultural projects we consider it ought to pull in its train. And the task of theology is just that: to exemplify the church facing the resistance of the gospel” (22).