We have live too much in a world of ideas, and we thought it would be possible to secure every action so that it would happen by itself, simply by weighing the alternatives beforehand.  We have learned a little too late that it’s not the idea but the willingness to accept responsibility that is the origin of action.

. . .

We believed that we could prevail in life through reason and right, and when these both collapsed we saw ourselves at the end of our options.  We always overestimated the importance of what is reasonable and right in the course of history too.

You–who are growing up in a world war which ninety percent of all people did not want and for which they are giving up property and life-are experiencing from childhood on that powers control the world, against which reason can accomplish nothing.  You will therefore more soberly and more successfully deal with these powers.

In a letter to his friend Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer mentions his prison reading and his thoughts on where God fits into the modern scientific world view.  This excerpt is from a letter dated 29 May 1944.

I am now completely absorbed in Weizsäcker’s book on The World View of Physics.  It has once again become completely clear to me that we can no longer let God play the role of standing in the gaps of our incomplete knowledge. If we do that, when the limits of our knowledge are pushed ever further back (as is inevitable), then along with them God will be pushed ever further away into a continual retreat.

It is in what we know that we should find God, not in what we do not know.  God desires to be understood by us in the problems we have solved, not in our unsolved problems.  This is true for the relationship between God and scientific knowledge.  It is just as true for the general human problems of death, suffering, and guilt.

Today for these questions as well there are human answers which leave God completely out of consideration.  Humans will deal with these questions without God-they always have; and it is simply not true that only Christianity has an answer.  Christians solutions may be convincing or unconvincing, just like other possible solutions.  Even here God is not a gap-filler.

God must be known first not at the limits of our possibilities but in the center of our life-first in life and not in death, first in health and strength and not in suffering, first in activity and not in suffering-that’s where God desires to be known.

The basis of all this lies in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. He is the center of life and in no way “came for this cause”-to answer our unsolved questions.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes an Easter letter to his parents during his first month in prison. He is allowed to send one letter every ten days. He refers to his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer, who was about 19 at the time. He was about 37 when he wrote the letter.

Easter Sunday, April 25, 1943

Today the tenth day is finally here again, so that I may write to you. How glad I am to let you know that I am celebrating a happy Easter here. The liberating thing about Good Friday and Easter is that one’s thoughts turn far away from one’s personal fate toward the ultimate meaning of life, suffering, and everything that happens, and one clings to a great hope.

Since yesterday it has been amazingly quiet in this prison house. The only sound heard is “Happy Easter” as everyone calls to each other with no envy; and no one begrudges the fulfillment of their Easter wishes to those who labor here in these difficult conditions.

Good Friday was Maria’s birthday. In the past year she bore the death of her father, her brother, and two especially beloved cousins with such a firm heart. If I didn’t know that, I would worry about her. Now Easter will console her, her large family will stand by her, and her work in the Red Cross will keep her completely occupied.

Greet her warmly, tell her that I long for her very much. Tell her not to be sad but brave as she has been til now. She is so very young! That is the hard part.

Christian and Heathen

People go to God in their need,
plead for help, ask for happiness and bread,
for deliverance from sickness, guilt, and death.
So do we all, all of us, Christian and heathen.

People go to God in his need,
find him poor, abused, homeless, without bread,
see him entangled in sin, weakness, and death.
Christians stand by God in his suffering.

God goes to all people in their need,
satisfies them body and soul with his bread,
dies for Christian and heathen the death of the cross,
and forgives them both.

I posted two today; more will be coming soon.

This is part of the research I am doing for the Bonhoeffer Congress this summer.  I will be presenting a paper based in part on his reflections on nature.  By the way, this project is part of my sabbatical research.  If you are interested in what else I will be doing in the coming weeks, I have posted a description on my own blog Faith Matters.

Mark