The Leaven of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

—1 Corinthians 5:6

In times past, the Lutheran Church has purged itself of many false teachers. We have recognized that many individuals who have personally borne the “Lutheran” moniker are by no means deserving of it. As a result, we have purged their venomous theology from our doctrine, eliminated their worthless books from our shelves, and returned to the one true Gospel of Christ Jesus.

Yet it seems that there are several false teachers from whose dangerous theology we cannot be freed. One prominent example is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who rose to prominence during the reign of Adolf Hitler. He outspokenly denounced the Nazi government, which has earned him the respect and admiration of many. Bonhoeffer is known for his participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler, which ultimately failed, leading Bonhoeffer to be executed by the Nazis in 1945.

For his outspokenness and rejection of the Nazi regime, many overlook his dangerous theology and heretical teachings. One need not search long to discover that Bonhoeffer rejected the idea of Biblical inerrancy—claiming that the Bible is “true” but is not “empirically accurate.”¹ He also rejected the Virgin Birth and Resurrection, advocated for a “religionless Christianity” and early forms of “social justice,” and planted the early seeds that led to the rise of Radical Lutheranism in North America.

Though difficult for many to accept, Dietrich Bonhoeffer could not rightly be called a Christian. His rejection of Biblical inerrancy alone reveals this, though many of his writings provide further support for this claim. His teachings may have led several Christians to abandon the pure doctrine of Holy Scripture and cling to man made doctrines that deprive the soul of the hope and grace that it finds only in Christ Jesus.

Bonhoeffer was a proponent of “cheap grace,” the idea that Christians misuse God’s grace in order to escape the necessary burden of being a Christian, which he promulgated in his book The Cost of Discipleship. It is the idea that a cheap or disingenuous confession of faith is insufficient for faith; cheap grace, in Bonhoeffer’s estimation, is “the grace we bestow on ourselves.” Thus, it is “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.”

His conclusion that a cheap or insincere confession of faith is insufficient for faith is good itself, though paired with his insistence on obedience to the Word, it comes dangerously close to placing the emphasis of faith on works and not on the Gospel. The continual “seeking” of the Gospel for which Bonhoeffer argues seems to imply that a Christian must play an active role in the reception and salvific nature of faith. 

Bonhoeffer’s delineation between cheap grace and costly grace can be helpful, but it deserves particular attention and concern for the distinction between the active discipleship to which the believer is called after conversion as opposed to a continual seeking of the Gospel, which itself warrants the faith that only the Spirit can give. Ironically, Bonhoeffer’s biblical justification for this position is taken from the rich man who asked Jesus how he could enter the kingdom of heaven, claiming that God says exactly what He means in Scripture—all while undermining many of the clear scriptural foundations on which our faith rests.

Bonhoeffer was an opponent of biblical inerrancy, holding to Karl Barth’s view that the Bible is true but “empirically inaccurate.²³ He also seemed to have been influenced by Frederich Nietzsche, as both men held that the Bible does not contain any timeless or universal principles. As a neo-orthodox theologian, Bonhoeffer also preferred the Old Testament to the New Testament, arguing that the New Testament was far too influenced by “redemption myths.”

Indeed it is ironic that the theologian whose chief work is the idea that we must strive to follow God’s Word also believes that God’s Word is neither completely true nor inerrant. For the Word of God, which was made flesh in the Person of Christ in the Incarnation, is itself the story of salvation, for Christ Himself is salvation. Thus, the whole of Bonhoeffer’s theology comes to naught, undermined by his own faulty presuppositions and unbiblical falsehoods concerning the reality of Scripture and the nature of faith. This demonic theology must be given no foothold in the Church. 

It is insufficient to act as a revolutionary in uncertain times. We cannot hail as a theological genius a man whose heretical theology rejects the Bible’s most basic principles. We cannot rightfully call a man “Christian” who rejects the most basic foundation of the one true, apostolic Christian faith. Look no further than his views on biblical inerrancy, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, and the “overly-redemptive” nature of the New Testament—all of which he soundly rejected.⁴

If Bonhoeffer deserves any admiration, it would certainly not be for his “theological genius” and doctrinal methodology. His legacy is rightly debated, especially concerning his views on Scripture and teachings on faith and the agency of grace. He certainly did not uphold the theology of the Lutheran Confessions, which unabashedly confesses the inerrancy of Scripture, supreme agency of grace in the Christian life, and sanctification.

As its foundation and source of its theology, the Lutheran Confessions boldly teach that God’s Word is the true, inspired, and inerrant revelation of Himself to man. This is true especially concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, and descended into hell.

And, above all, on the third day He rose again from the dead. There can be no theological or doctrinal foundation apart from this. Without the actual, visible, ontological Resurrection, Christianity is nothing. It could not be anything apart from the reality of Christ’s Person and His humiliation and exaltation as recorded in Holy Scripture. This is the heart of faith—that very thing which Bonhoeffer rejected.

I am not a Bonhoeffer scholar. I have not interacted with all of Bonhoeffer’s works, nor have I written extensively on his scholarship. I posit, however, that it is fair to suggest that many of Bonhoeffer’s foundational theological presuppositions, to which he holds throughout his life, undermine any theological treatise or doctrinal work that he could have produced. May we instead take Bonhoeffer to be a warning against any false teacher and misleading prophet who leads the sheep away from the fold through their false and devilish teachings. May God protect His flock!

1. a. Bonhoeffer, “Jesus Christus und vom Wesen des Christentums,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 5:137–38.
b. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, vol. 4 (Munich: Christian Kaiser Verlag, 1989), 219–21.

Both of these citations are examples of Bonhoeffer’s position on inerrancy. Though others exist, these are primary examples of Bonhoeffer’s teaching that while Scripture is true, it cannot be “ontologically true.” Thus, he calls into question the very nature of SCripture’s historicity, while simultaneously holding to it as God’s revelation to man.

2. Karl Barth, Der Römerbrief (Munich, 1922); The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Douglas Horton, (n.p.: Pilgrim Press, 1928).

3. Bonhoeffer, “Christologie,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 3:204–5.

This citation is a supplement to those listed above from Bonhoeffer, as well as a demonstration of the continuity between Barth’s theology of inerrancy and “empirical inaccuracy” and Bonhoeffer’s shared ideology.

4. Bonhoeffer to Bethge, June 27, 1944, in Letters and Papers from Prison, 336–37.

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