To put it simply, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor, professor, and theologian. However, he wasn't a simple man. Bonhoeffer was a powerful, central figure in the Protestant church struggle against the Nazis. He didn't become a man of great importance by himself though. His parents supported him his whole life. His father, Karl Bonhoeffer, a professor of psychiatry and Neurology at Berlin University, was Germany's leading empirical psychologist.1He was home schooled by his mother.
Bonhoeffer was ordained a Lutheran pastor in 1934 and joined 2000 others in helping to organize the Pastors' Emergency League. This was started in opposition to the state church which was controlled by the Nazis. Eventually the Pastors' Emergency League became known as the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer was the leader of the Confessing Church's seminary. The Confessing Church was constituted by not only Lutherans, but also of Reformed and Union church pastors and lay people. The "Barmen Declaration" of 1934 stated that the church's proclamation consists only in Jesus Christ, not in Nazism.2People involved with the Confessing Church would engage in things such as hiding Jews, training pastors, or making secret plots to assassinate Hitler. In 1939, Bonhoeffer secretly joined together with very high ranking officials within Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) who were opponents to Hitler. They wanted to overthrow the government by killing Hitler but obviously the plan never came through. Bonhoeffer was arrested in 1943 when money used to help Jews escape to Switzerland was traced back to him. Eventually he was executed, but while in prison he wrote an important book called Ethics.
In his book Ethics, Bonhoeffer encounters one of the most difficult and puzzling problems in the history of the Church: the problem of evil.3 Bonhoeffer's explanation for the problem of evil is the fall of mankind. People have a hard time in knowing what is right and wrong and Bonhoeffer says that this is due to the desire for philosophical certainty. He says that Christians should be concerned with living the will of God rather than following a strict set of rules. "The strength of Bonhoeffer's Ethics lies not in its systematic resolution of problems facing the church, but rather the acknowledgment that life is complex...[His book] is a refreshing call to the contemporary church to repent and return to a life characterized by prayer, the traditional mark of the early church."3
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an inspiration to many because of his bravery to stand up against one of the most powerful governments of his time and because of his tremendous courage and faith to give his life for what he believed was a good cause.
