Trevin Wax on Bonhoeffer and cultural obsession with sexual identity

There are some revisionists who will not be satisfied until they have homosexualized every major figure in church history, from Jesus on down to Mother Teresa. The latest target is the German theologian and  martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The ammunition is a new biography which raises questions about Bonhoeffer's relationship with Eberhard Bethge, a long-time friend who later supervised the compilation of his works.

If revisionists had hoped this conjecture would shock evangelicals into banishing Bonhoeffer into the abyss, they are going to be disappointed, according to Trevin Wax of the The Gospel Coalition. The drive to insert sexual innuendo into the Bonhoeffer legacy says more about our over-sexualized culture than it does about Bonhoeffer or the culture which he bravely stood against at the cost of his life.

The facts in the case of Bonhoeffer are clear: he was engaged at the time of his execution, and he wrote about the fact he would die as a virgin. No biographer or scholar claims that Bonhoeffer engaged in a sexual relationship with anyone, male or female, whatever his attractions may have been.

I believe the conversation about Bonhoeffer’s sexuality tells us more about life in the sexualized culture of the 21st century than it does about Bonhoeffer. In fact, if we pay attention, we will see how Bonhoeffer’s life and legacy directly challenges several commonly held assumptions today.

Assumption #1: Life lived to the fullest must include sexual fulfillment.

Bonhoeffer lived faithfully – emphasis on fully – as a virgin. One should not miss the countercultural reality on display in his life.

Post Sexual Revolution, people often define themselves by their sexual identity. For this reason, many people see any restriction or moral restraint on how sexuality is expressed as oppressive, a dagger to the heart of a person’s life and dreams.

For the Christian, such an exaggerated view of sexuality is a pernicious lie. It feeds the falsehood that, without sexual fulfillment, it is impossible for someone to live a full and engaging life. In contrast, Christians believe celibacy is not a pitiable choice but a beautiful calling.

Bonhoeffer’s witness (along with evangelical heroes like John Stott, not to mention Jesus Himself) testifies against the assumption that self-actualization must include sexual relationships. His life challenges a culture that says you are your sexuality.

Sam Allberry, a pastor in the UK who experiences same-sex attraction yet believes homosexual behavior to be sinful, is familiar with the accusation often made against evangelicals, that adhering to Christianity’s sexual ethic contributes to teenage angst and suicide. His response is spot on:

“No, the problem is a culture that says your entire identity and sense of who you are is bound up with fulfilling your sexual desires. You are the ones who have raised the stakes that high. So that the moment you don’t fulfill your desires, you have nothing left to live for.”

Society’s view of a Forty-Year-Old Virgin is Steve Carrell. Christianity’s view of a forty-year-old virgin should be Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Assumption #2: Affectionate male friendships must be romantic in nature.

History is replete with examples of robust male friendships that are full of affection and expressions of love and yet are not sexual.

Unfortunately, the sexual revolution has made it more difficult to imagine passionate philos apart from eros. That’s why revisionist historians read romantic notions into Teddy Roosevelt’s affectionate letters to his closest friends. People wonder out loud about Abraham Lincoln’s sharing a bed with his friend, Joshua Speed. It’s hard for our society to understand how King David could weep so terribly over the lost love of Jonathan unless there was some sort of romance between them. And now, Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Bethge is put under the microscope of 21st century assumptions.

In fairness to the biographer, it is certainly possible that Bonhoeffer was attracted to Bethge, even though acting on such a notion was always out of the question. But it’s also possible, even likely, that Bonhoeffer’s friendship was, like many male friendships of the time, strong and affectionate, with a passion that did not include sexual desire.

The speculation about Bonhoeffer’s sexuality distracts us from the greater loss of slowly disappearing same-sex friendships, the kind of love we see in literature between Sam and Frodo, relationships that many today can hardly conceive of, apart from some sort of sexual longing.

Assumption #3: Sexual attraction must define one’s identity.

Because our society has adopted the notion that sexual expression is wrapped up in our identity, some may think that getting to the root of Bonhoeffer’s sexuality is the only way to truly understand the man he was. But I suspect Bonhoeffer himself would dispute such a notion, and so would most people throughout history.

When we assume sexual orientation is fixed from birth and unchangeable, the question of identity naturally comes to the forefront: “Was he gay or not?” But Christianity rejects such a reductionist view of sex and identity. Everyone is warped in sexual attraction, at least to some degree. We are all sexual sinners in need of the grace and mercy of God. We are marked by our need for grace, not our longing for sex.

Bonhoeffer’s identity was not defined by sexual attraction, but by his costly discipleship following in the footsteps of his King. Going beyond letters and writings and personal correspondence to speculate on the unspoken sexual longings of a figure from the past says more about us and our own preoccupations than about the person under scrutiny.

Conclusion

Evangelicals aren’t going to go crazy in responding the new Bonhoeffer’ biography. Why? Because the idea that Bonhoeffer may have experienced same-sex attraction doesn’t matter all that much in assessing his legacy. He was a faithful man of God who immersed himself in Scripture, read the signs of the times, stood boldly against the Nazi war machine, and died as a hero.

The best way to honor Bonhoeffer is to not to speculate about his sexuality, but to see how his example counters the errant assumptions of a sexualized culture.

God hates visionary dreaming

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of the brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.

Because God has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what He does give us daily. And is not what has been given us enough: brothers, who will go on living with us through sin and need under the blessing of His grace? Is the divine gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most difficult and distressing day? Even when sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will not his sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of us may live in the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ? Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together–the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Life Together

Our inner power of resistance

We have been silent witnesses to evil deeds. We have been washed with many waters and have learned the arts of pretence and ambiguous speech. Through experience we have become mistrusting of people and often have not been truthful and honest with them. Through unbearable conflicts we have become worn out and perhaps even cynical--are we still useful? We will need not geniuses, not cynics, not misanthropes, not refined tacticians, but plain, simple, straightforward people. Will our inner power of resistance against what is forced upon us remain strong enough and our uprightness against ourselves ruthless enough for us to find again the path to simplicity and straightforwardness?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Sermon on the Magnificat by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

During a brief stint in London (1933 - 1935), Dietrich Bonhoeffer served two German-speaking congregations. As a record of that period of his ministry only sixteen manuscripts survive. Among them is a sermon from the Third Sunday of Advent, 17 December 1933, on the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). An excerpt, edited and translated by Edwin Robertson, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Christmas Sermons, Zondervan 2005:

This song of Mary's is the oldest Advent hymn. It is the most passionate, most vehement, one might almost say, most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. It is not the gentle, sweet, dreamy Mary that we so often see portrayed in pictures, but the passionate, powerful, proud, enthusiastic Mary, who speaks here. None of the sweet, sugary, or childish tones that we find so often in our Christmas hymns, but a hard, strong, uncompromising song of bringing down rulers from their thrones and humbling the lords of this world, of God's power and of the powerlessness of men. These are the tones of the prophetic women of the Old Testament: Deborah, Judith, Miriam, coming alive in the mouth of Mary.

Mary, filled with the Spirit and prepared. Mary, the obedient handmaid, humbly accepting what is to happen to her, what the Spirit asks of her, to do with her as the Spirit will, speaks now by the Spirit of the coming of God into the world, of the Advent of Jesus Christ. She knows better than anyone what it means to wait for Christ. He is nearer to her than to anyone else. She awaits him as his mother. She knows about the mystery of his coming, of the Spirit who came to her, of the Almighty God who works his wonders. She experiences in her own body that God does wonderful things with the children of men, that his ways are not our ways, that he cannot be predicted by men, or circumscribed by their reasons and ideas, but that his way is beyond all understanding or explanations, both free and of his own will.

Where our reason is offended, where our nature rebels, where our piety creeps anxiously away, there, precisely there, God loves to be. There, he confuses the understanding of the clever. There he offends our nature, our piety. There he will dwell and no one can deny him. And now, only the humble can believe him, and rejoice that God is so free and so wonderful, that he works miracles when the children of men despair. He has made the lowly and humble to be lifted up. That is the wonder of wonders, that God loves the lowly: "God has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.

God in the "humble state" -- that is the revolutionary, the passionate word of Advent. First, Mary herself, the wife of a carpenter. We may say, the poor working man's wife, unnoticed by men -- but now, insignificant and in her humble state as we might see it, she is significant to God and appointed to be the mother of the Savior of the world. Not because of some remarkable human trait in her, not because of some great piety, not because of her modesty, not because of any particular virtue in her, but apart from any of these characteristics, only because God's gracious will is to love the humble and lowly, the insignificant. He chose to make them great. Mary, living in the faith of the Old Testament and hoping for her redeemer, this humble working man's wife becomes the mother of God. Christ the son of a poor working man's wife in the East End of London! Christ in the manger . . . God is not ashamed to be with those of humble state. He goes into the midst of it all, chooses one person to be his instrument, and does his miracle there, where one least expects it. He loves the lost, the forgotten, the insignificant, the outcasts, the weak, and the broken. Where men say, "lost," he says "found;" where men say "no," he says "yes." Where men look with indifference or superiority, he looks with burning love, such as nowhere else is to be found. Where men say, "contemptible!," God cries, "blessed." When we reach a point in our lives at which we are not only ashamed of ourselves, but believe God is ashamed of us too, when we feel so far from God, more than we have ever felt in our lives, than and precisely then, God is nearer to us than he has ever been. It is then that he breaks into our lives. It is then that he lets us know that feeling of despair is taken away from us, so that we may grasp the wonder of his love, his nearness to us, and his grace. "From now on all generations will call me blessed," says Mary. What does that mean? Mary, a maid of "humble state," called "blessed?" It can be no other than the miracle of God that he has astonishingly performed on her; Go has been "mindful of the humble state" of Mary and raised her up; God, coming into the world, seeks out, not the high and mighty, but the lowly; that we might see the glory and the mighty power of God making the down and out great. To call Mary "blessed" does not mean to build her an altar; but with her to pray to God, who is mindful of the lowly and chooses them, who has done great things -- holy is his name. To call Mary blessed is to know with her that God's "mercy extends to those who fear him," those who watch and consider his astonishing ways, who let his Spirit blow where it will, those who are obedient to him and with Mary, humbly say, "May it be to me as you have said."

Is Bonhoeffer Above Obama's Pay Grade?

Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed on this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Children of the World That Has Passed Away

"The Church of Jesus Christ bears witness to the end of all things," writes Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the introduction to his lectures on Creation and Fall. Thus, the church's whole perspective, its whole identity, message, and mission are shaped by "the end." Undoubtedly, it was such a perspective which enabled Bonhoeffer to stand boldly against the Nazi regime, even thought it cost him his life. But his words still ring true today, more than seventy years later.

The church proclaims Christ, who is "the new" and "the end of the old." The old, fallen world does not want to be told that its end has come and a new order of things is coming into being. But that is precisely the message the church proclaims to the old world.

"'The old world cannot take pleasure in the Church," Bonhoeffer says, "because the Church speaks of its end as though it had already happened--as though the world had already been judged. The old world does not like being regarded as dead." The Church has always had to contend with those "who come to it who think the thoughts of the old world." That is nothing unusual, for no one can claim to be completely free of such thoughts from time to time. But what sets the Church "in tumult," Bonhoeffer says, is "when these children of the world that has passed away lay claim to the Church, to the new, for themselves. They want the new and only know the old. And thus they deny Christ the Lord."

If the church were to capitulate to the demands of "the children of the world that has passed away" it would deny Christ and thus cease to be the church. But following Christ means more than simply turning them away. The church "recognizes the old world only in light of the new," says Bonhoeffer, "because the Church is more certain of the new world than of anything else."

From the perspective of "the end," the church sees "the children of the world that has passed away" in a new light: as lost souls caught in the death throes of the "old world," desperately seeking to fill the void in their lives, but hopelessly enslaved by demonic forces which have shaded their eyes from the beauty of the "new world" that is breaking forth around them. Following Christ means giving hope to these hopeless creatures. Following Christ means leading them out of the darkness of the world that has passed away and into the light of God's glorious new world.

What Would Bonhoeffer Say to Jeremiah Wright?

We know that Jeremiah Wright is an avid reader of the works of James Cone. However, he might do well to immerse himself in the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Of course, those who are are so enraged by Wright's scathing rants that they are moved to respond with equal vitriol might also benefit from this excerpt from The Cost of Discipleship.

In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbour hostility toward us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility. The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behaviour must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.

By our enemies Jesus means those who are quite intractable and utterly unresponsive to our love, who forgive us nothing when we forgive them all, who requite our love with hatred and our service with derision, "For the love that I had unto them, lo, they now take my contrary part: but I give myself unto prayer" (Ps. 109.4). Love asks nothing in return, but seeks those who need it. And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and utterly devoid of love? Who in other words deserves our love more than our enemy? Where is love more glorified than where she dwells in the midst of her enemies?

Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. In such love there is no inner discord between private person and official capacity. In both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not Christians at all. Am I asked how this love is to behave? Jesus gives the answer: bless, do good, and pray for your enemies without reserve and without respect of persons.

Bonhoeffer: Costly Grace

Today is the sixty-third anniversary of the martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His was a promising life cut tragically short at the hands of Hitler's Nazi regime. But he, nevertheless, left behind a significant body of work which is as pertinent today as when it was first written.

On Grace

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like the cheap wares of a bargain hustler. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the church's inexhaustible treasury, from which the church showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. The church which holds the correct doctrine of grace, it is supposed, ipso facto, a part in that grace. In such a church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.

The Cost of Discipleship

On Christian Community

Christian community means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. There is no Christian community that is more than this, and none that is less than this. Whether it be a brief, single encounter or the daily community of many years, Christian community is solely this. We belong to one another only through and in Jesus Christ.

What does that mean? It means, first, that a Christian needs others for the sake of Jesus Christ. It means, second, that a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ. It means, third, that from eternity we have been chosen in Jesus Christ, accepted in time and united for eternity . . .

Life Together

On Christian Freedom and Ethics

When Jesus places people immediately under God, new and afresh at each moment, he restores to humankind the immense gift which it had lost, freedom. Christian ethical action is action from freedom, action from the freedom of a man who has nothing of himself and everything of his God, who ever and again lets his action be confirmed and endorsed by eternity. The New Testament speaks of this freedom in great words . . .

For Christianity there is no other law than the law of freedom, as the New Testament paradoxically puts it. There is no generally valid law which could be expounded to them by others, or even by themselves. Those who surrender freedom surrender their very nature as Christians. Christians stand free, without any protection, before God and before the world, and they alone are wholly responsible for what they do with the gift of freedom. Now through this freedom Christians become creative in ethical action. Acting in accordance with principles is unproductive, imitating the law, copying. Acting from freedom is creative. Christians choose the forms of their ethical action as it were from eternity, they put them sovereign in the world, as their act, their creation from the freedom of a child of God. Christians even create their standards of good and evil for themselves. Only they can justify their own actions, just as only they can bear the responsibility. The Christian creates new tables, a new Decalogue, as Nietzsche said of the Superman. Nietzsche's Superman is not really, as supposed, the opposite of the Christian; without knowing it, Nietzsche has here introduced many traits of the Christian made free, as Paul and Luther describe him. Time-honored morals--even if they are given out to be the consensus of Christian opinion--can never for Christians become the standard of their actions. They act, because the will of God seems to bid them to, without a glance at the others, at what is usually called morals, and no one but themselves and God can know whether they have acted well or badly. In ethical decision we are brought into the deepest solitude, the solitude in which they stand before the living God. No one can stand beside us there, no one can take anything from us, because God lays on us a burden which we alone must bear. Our "I" awakes only in the consciousness of being called, of being claimed by God. Only through the call of God does this "I" become isolated from all others, drawn into responsibility by God, knowing myself to confront eternity alone. And because in the solitude I come face to face with God, I can only know for myself, completely personally, what is good and what is evil. There are no actions which are bad in themselves--even murder can be justified--there is only faithfulness to God's will or deviation from it; there is similarity no law in the sense of a law containing precepts, but only the law of freedom, i.e., of our bearing our responsibility alone before God and ourselves. But because the law remains superseded once for all and because it follows from the Christian idea of God that there can be no more law, the ethical commandments, the apparent laws of the New Testament must also be understood from this standpoint.

What is a Christian Ethic?

Bonhoeffer: Hindrances to Community

Here's another observation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer which has an eery resonance today.

Every human idealized image that is brought into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be broken up so that genuine community can survive. Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, an sacrificial. . .

Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law, and judge one another and even God accordingly. . .

Because God already has laid the only foundation of our community, because God has united us in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ long before we entered into common life with them, we enter into that life together with other Christians, not as those who make demands, but as those who thankfully receive. We thank God for what God had done for us. We thank God for giving us other Christians who live by God's call, forgiveness, and promise. We do not complain about what God does not give us; rather we are thankful for what God does give us daily.

Cheap Grace and the Pew Survey

The much heralded Pew Forum study on the U.S. religious landscape is only one of numerous such reports by numerous such research groups. However, the Pew folks seem to be more adept at public relations and media publicity than their lesser known rivals. The findings in the report may present an exaggerated picture of reality (as most such surveys usually do), but the media, not surprisingly, have honed in on the increase in the number of persons who now say they are "unaffiliated" with any religious group.

More than one-quarter of American adults (28%) have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion - or no religion at all. If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.

The survey finds that the number of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith today (16.1%) is more than double the number who say they were not affiliated with any particular religion as children. Among Americans ages 18-29, one-in-four say they are not currently affiliated with any particular religion.

Looking to capitalize on the publicity generated by the report, CNN conducted its own online insta-poll during its morning newscast yesterday. The results were more reflective of the audience appeal of CNN than of the actual religious landscape of the country. A whopping 59 per cent of the participants said they had "called it quits" with regard to religious affiliation.

It will be all too easy, and many in the media will doubtless follow CNN's dubious lead, to use the Pew survey as a launching pad for stories about the waning influence of religion in American life. The secularists among us would like to think that more and more people are "calling it quits" because religious faith in general, and Christianity in particular, places too many demands on their lives. But the truth is likely the opposite. In his classic work, The Cost of Discipleship, German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw the decline of the church in his country in the years prior to World War II as the tragic consequence of its failure to take up the cross.

Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace as bargain-basement goods, cut-rate forgiveness, cut-rate comfort, cut-rate sacraments; grace as the church's inexhaustible pantry, from which it is doled out by careless hands without hesitation or limit. It is grace without prices, without cost . . .

Cheap grace means grace as doctrine, as principle, as system. It means forgiveness of sins as a general truth; it means God's love as merely a Christian idea of God. Those who affirm it have already had their sins forgiven. The church that teaches this doctrine of grace thereby conveys such grace upon itself. The world finds this church a cheap cover-up for its sins, for which it shows no remorse and from which it has even less desire to flee. Cheap grace is, thus, denial of God's living Word, denial of the incarnation of the word of God.

Cheap grace means justification of sin but not of the sinner. Because grace alone does everything, everything can stay in its old ways. "Our action is in vain." The world remains world and we remain sinners "even in the best of lives." Thus, the Christian should live the same way the world does. In all things the Christian should go along with the world and not venture . . . to live a different life under grace from that under sin . . .

Cheap grace is that which we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord's Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.

The effect of preaching cheap grace was so devastating, Bonhoeffer observed, that it called for a radical remedy.

The word of cheap grace has ruined more Christians than any commandment about works . . .

For integrity's sake someone has to speak up for those among us who confess that cheap grace has made them give up following Christ, and that ceasing to follow Christ has made them lose the knowledge of costly grace. Because we cannot deny that we no longer stand in true discipleship to Christ, while being members of a true-believing church with a pure doctrine of grace, but are no longer members of a church which follows Christ, we therefore have to try to understand grace and discipleship again in correct relationship to each other.

Certainly, "grace" and "discipleship" are popular terms in American churches today. But, as in the days of Bonhoeffer, "grace" is little more than a doctrine, a principle, a system. Worse yet, "discipleship" is little more than a program, a course of study, a curriculum. Cheap grace produces cheap disciples who will all too easily "give up following Christ" when worldly opposition becomes the least bit intense. It is not the burden placed upon them by the church but, rather, the burden placed upon them by the world--a burden which the church has not equipped them to bear--that leads them to "call it quits."