When Bonhoeffer Became a Christian

I was reading once more Eberhard Bethge's biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and was delighted to encounter again one my favorite parts of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life. This was the dramatic spiritual transformation Bonhoeffer underwent in the early 1930s.

Prior to these years, Bonhoeffer had mainly pursued theological studies as an academic, intellectual endeavor. The Bonhoeffer family was Christian, but they weren't particularly devout by way of church attendance or personal devotion. But in the early 1930s, something happened to Bonhoeffer. As Eberhard Bethge describes it, these were the years Bonhoeffer became a Christian.

What caused the change? Bonhoeffer's time in America, a post-doctoral year in 1930 studying in New York at Union Theological, seems to have played an important part. During that time, two critical things happened.

First, Bonhoeffer was exposed to the black church. During his year in New York, Bonhoeffer attended and taught Sunday School at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

Second, through his relationship with the Frenchmen Jean Lasserre, who was also studying at Union, Bonhoeffer was exposed to the Sermon on the Mount as the Word of God. Prior to this time, Bonhoeffer had used his Lutheran theology to keep the Sermon on the Mount in a box. But after 1930, Bonhoeffer began to see the Sermon as a command to be obeyed.

And beyond his experiences in America, I also think Bonhoeffer's pastoral work with churches, like his confirmation class in the Wedding parish working with children from lower-class families, also had a profound impact upon his faith.

All these experiences changed Bonhoeffer profoundly. The academic and theologian became a Christian. Here's how Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer's best friend, described the change:

He now went regularly to church...Also he engaged in systematic meditation on the Bible that was obviously very different from exegetic or homiletic use of it...He spoke of oral confession no longer merely theologically, but as an act to be carried out in practice. In his Lutheran ecclesiastical and academic environment this was unheard of. He talked more and more often of a community life of obedience and prayer...More and more frequently he quoted the Sermon on the Mount as a word to be acted on, not merely used as a mirror. He began taking a stand for Christian pacifism among his students and fellow-ministers...To his students his piety sometimes appeared too fervent, and was impressive only because it was accompanied by theological rigour and a broad cultural background. This reminiscence from a student dates from 1930:

"There, before the church struggle, he said to us near to Alexanderplaz, with the simplicity that was perhaps used by Tholuck in the old days, that we should not forget that every word of Holy Scripture was a quite personal message of God's love for us, and he asked us whether we loved Jesus."