Strange Glory

by Charles Marsh

  At the end of the first session, Bonhoeffer told his family that the experiment in community had been the most joyful and richest time of his life. He omitted to mention, however, that it had not been easy—or, for that matter, entirely successful.

  As an experiment in Protestant monasticism—at its root, something of a contradiction in terms, Luther’s teaching having closed far more monasteries than it founded—Finkenwalde needed to square the self-abnegation of the cloister with the individual freedom implicit in the Reformation view of Christian community. But in the first months, Bonhoeffer spoke more about being “bound together by brotherly admonition and discipline and open confession” than about freedom.31 Most students, coming from conventionally Lutheran middle-class families, were uneasy at the strict ordering of spiritual life—and with Bonhoeffer’s style of leadership, for that matter. For while he expected the brethren to follow the program he’d designed, he could on occasion cancel classes and direct everyone to the meadow, if the mood struck him. Thus life at Finkenwalde ultimately seemed to depend less on age-old cenobitic custom than on the director’s whims.32

  Many had Sunday duties in their home parishes. But for those who remained over the weekend, Bonhoeffer held a Saturday-morning service in the chapel. The sermon was preached by Bonhoeffer or a student he’d designated; later, Wilhelm Rott, whose arrival doubled the size of the faculty, would preach as well. Communion, it was decided, would be celebrated once a month in the custom of nineteenth-century Lutheranism—Luther himself having advised daily celebration of the Eucharist—and the men’s preparation to receive the sacrament began Saturday afternoon with another period of house silence, according to Bonhoeffer’s preference.

  Bonhoeffer did reinstitute various or forgotten lost practices Luther the monk had approved: for example, the mutuum colloquium et consolatio fratrum, conversation and confession in fellowship. There were readings from the Psalms and the gospel during morning prayers and evensong in the form of a lectio continua. But later, when Bonhoeffer wanted to read the Bible aloud during meals after the fashion of medieval monks, his brethren at Finkenwalde voiced strong opposition. Exceptionally, Bonhoeffer capitulated, at least as to scripture, but not as to mealtime reading in general. He would carry on enforcing the practice, though with lighter, often more humanist, fare: Adalbert Stifter’s short fiction, Georges Bernanos’s Diary of a Country Priest, Mozart’s memoir of his journey to Prague, and a collection of Juden-buche. He also managed to squeeze in, without protest, Agnes von Zahn-Harnack’s biography of her father, Adolf, the church historian.

  Based on little personal experience in ascetical living, Bonhoeffer’s plan for raising up a generation of radical Christ-followers who had been fed on the pure gospel met with a fair amount of skepticism and grumbling in its early days. Besides the loyal Bethge, few seminarians found “the strict liturgical ordering of their day” to their liking, or could see much point to it.33 “There was too much ‘must’ for us,” one student grumbled. Likewise, Gerhard Ebeling, who would become a prominent postwar theologian, complained about the oppressively Jesuitical air and left after one semester. Having come in search of knowledge and answers, most were frustrated to discover only “emptiness in ourselves and in the texts.”34

  One complaint perhaps stood for them all: “A full half hour of silent meditation is torture: the mind moves around, memories flicker into consciousness, dreams awaken, angers flare up.”35 Perhaps the age could only be healed by a return to ancient manners of devotion, but perhaps, too, it was not possible to un-ring the bell of German Protestant tradition.

  Bonhoeffer listened to the criticisms and made a few adjustments. On the problem of drifting thoughts, he encouraged the acceptance of distractions as inherent to devotional life. Reverie, daydreaming—fold them into your prayer, he advised. Trying to fight them off was a losing battle anyway! “Things have to come out in the open,” Bonhoeffer said.36

  Another accommodation lifted the burden of solitary meditation. They could form contemplative pairs or clusters and cohabit the same solitude—although the discipline of silence must still prevail. “Teaching about Christ begins in silence,” Bonhoeffer had taught in his 1933 Christology lectures.37 Christian thought and action emerge from the encounter with Jesus Christ, in stillness before the Word. For we must discover a silence “that brings clarification, purification and apprehension of this essential thing,” he told the brothers—a holy silence. Holy silence reawakens and refreshes, making strange once more the mystery of the Word.

  But if lost rigors and pregnant silences were essential to regenerate the pastorate, the laity, he understood, were in need of somewhat different spiritual medicine. Bonhoeffer did not blame nineteenth-century liberalism so much as generalized lethargy for the prevalence of moribund congregations, and he knew mere exhortations to concentrate on the Word alone would not retrieve the lost churches. What was needed, rather, was a thoughtful, disciplined attention to scripture, illuminating its relevance to the present circumstances; only this would ward off rigidity and quietism. Sermon exercises at Finkenwalde often sought to develop precisely such pastoral application: How did a given gospel pericope suggest courses of action and ways of engaging the world? Bonhoeffer instructed the seminarians to write their answers in the form of theses. “Then the various drafts were read aloud, [after which] Bonhoeffer showed the students his own version.” The assigned verses might also be drawn from the Hebrew Bible—the prophets, the praises, or the poetry of exile.38 Any text, he insisted, must be preached so as to enable the hearer to receive a blessing, and a word of instruction.39

  Finkenwalde would remain, even after its rocky first months, a mostly improvised community.40 Among the disciplines that would persist as first conceived was the daily requirement of manual labor, with renovations to the house and gardening taking up most of the time. Also unrevised, though perhaps not unremarked, was Bonhoeffer’s custom of excusing himself from such work—leaving its direction to Friedrich Onnasch. Bonhoeffer thought his time was better spent getting to know the wealthy landowners in the region, introducing the provincial nobility to the seminary and winning their support. There were also weekly trips home to Berlin, for which purpose Karl had first given him a sedan before the convertible, though occasionally Karl would still send his own Mercedes and driver. Bethge often accompanied Bonhoeffer on these trips as well as on shorter excursions to Stargard, Penkun, Pölitz, and Gullnow. On warm, clear days, Bonhoeffer would take the top down and steer the Audi toward the eastern countryside, past the vast yellow seas of blossoming rapeseed that appeared in springtime or the explosion of sunflowers in summer, or along the gravel roads around Lake Dalie and into the Oder Delta—these were some of his favorite excursions.

  The conspicuous adoption of Bethge as his favorite perhaps speaks to Bonhoeffer’s uncertainty or inexperience as an evangelical abbot; constitutionally disdainful of authority, he made up rules as he went along and broke others on a whim, even once suspending the ascetic way altogether to throw a masquerade party. For all their complaints about the arbitrariness of monastic rigor, Finkenwaldeans were never required to take vows of poverty, chastity, or obedience. They were free to marry—indeed, some were married—or to leave the community whenever they wished, returning if they wanted to. They were, in short, subject only to Bonhoeffer’s own selective application of a far more demanding life. Finkenwalde ultimately existed as the canvas on which he aspired to render his personal ideal of a Christian community.

  He encouraged the ordinands to make time for recreation and on warm afternoons led the charge to the tennis courts, to the nearby forest, or to the beach, a short drive from the seminary. He was often first to strip off his clothes and plunge into the bracing waters of the Baltic Sea. But was it feasible for contemplative discipline to be such a ready complement of leisure? Could play exist as the counterpoint to discipline? And what of the sibling rivalry between eros and agape? Bonhoeffer asked many questions and sometimes made conflicting dem
ands and proffered contradictory assertions. In his lectures to the young seminarians on Christian community, he spoke of the “dark love,” “disordered desire,” and “uncontrollable tyranny” of eros, which yearns “to force the other into one’s own sphere of power,” and contrasted it to the clear, bright light of agape-love, which illuminates the other in its strangeness, releases him from the ego’s clutch, and lets him be whole in its difference. Bonhoeffer was speaking of how Christ-centered relation enables genuine community and, indirectly of Nazism’s perverse morality, although he might have also been unwittingly interrogating his own internal struggles, in particular, the quandary of finding himself smitten by a younger man, who was also a student.

  The formula worked for some. The young clergyman Gerhard Lehne told Bonhoeffer that he had finally found a world that embraced much of what he loved and longed for: “straightforward theological work” in a community “where no unpleasant notice was taken of one’s limitations, but where the work was made a pleasure; and with it all, open-mindedness and love for everything that still makes this fallen creation lovable.” Sitting down with the other students over their afternoon coffee, sharing fresh bread with sweet butter and jam—it was finally these “peripheral things,” Lehne said, “that increased my delight in what is central.”41

  Though the controversy surrounding the daily disciplines would never be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, Bonhoeffer felt increasingly comfortable imposing his own enthusiasm for sport and recreation on the community. Like worship, it should not be an exceptional activity but a natural part of the day. No lectures or schoolwork were scheduled on Sunday, which Bonhoeffer set aside not for mere rest but for music and games—with bridge and trivia quizzes being the most popular. And never one to hide his lamp under a bushel, he made a show of his prowess at tennis and ping-pong, which have rarely assumed such importance in monastic living. In sport as in all things, when he played, he played to win.

  But he did not stand on ceremony. He asked to be addressed as Pastor Bonhoeffer, or simply “brother.” But the informality was difficult for well-reared young Germans to accept; the students felt more comfortable calling him “Mr. Principal,” which he greatly disliked, though not as much as he would have “der Führer,” had he known. Try as he might to put the ordinands at ease, he could be intimidating, as by now he knew only too well. Once, when a seminarian accidently knocked a Byzantine-style icon from the wall and tried in vain to glue the pieces of it back together, Bonhoeffer said, “Such things do happen; do not take it tragically; one must accept facts.”42 In time, “Herr Pastor” would prevail as honorific, which seemed a good enough compromise, though some eventually warmed to “Brother Bonhoeffer”; and the number of those using “du” (the familiar form of “you”) with him would also increase in time.

  And recollections, too, would grow fonder: “Thus for two years, mostly after lunch and before making the rounds through the ‘halls’ of the seminary, ‘Brother Dietrich’, who always had time for his brethren, sat on the steps of the small stairway which led to the inspector’s room. The picture is unforgettable: the small wooden staircase, the man sitting on it with crossed legs, reaching now and then for a cigarette, or accepting a cup of coffee poured out of the only coffee machine in the house. He had been in Berlin yesterday; he told us about it. Late in the evening when he came home, he gave those who waited for him one of his exciting reports about the deviations and embroilments of church committees, about spiritual and worldly affairs, politics of the Church and of the State, about those who stood firm, those who wavered and those who fell.”

  Still, there were times when he lost sight of just how imposing his personality could be. He worked hard to direct his forceful nature toward preaching and lecturing, table conversation, prayer and confession; but in the close quarters of monastic life, he could not always mask his raw emotions or contain his eruptive temper. The latter Bonhoeffer would confess to Bethge in detail, and in the coming years Bethge was often to bear the brunt of it.

  A student called Johannes Goebel recounts one evening when Bonhoeffer was at the piano, as Goebel and a few others listened from a corner of the room. It may have been Beethoven or Chopin that Herr Pastor was playing. What Goebel would never forget, though, was the sudden “expression of natural force,” primal and feral, that possessed Bonhoeffer. The effect resembled his London improvization, but it was no joke now. He appeared transformed. He sat before the keyboard not poised and erect, as was his custom, but as if clinging to a cliff, “as a pupil” would never “have been allowed to sit.” He hammered the keys as if with a force beyond his control, improvising wildly. And then just as “abruptly as he had begun,” Bonhoeffer stopped playing, collected himself, and left the room. The scene burned itself indelibly into Goebel’s memory, leaving behind the dramatic, often startling contrast of what Goebel would ever after recall as the “essential Bonhoeffer” and the volcanic alter ego.43

  With disarming simplicity, Bonhoeffer asked his students to think together with him as he explored anew the question, What does it mean to be a Christian? Leading them in reading the gospels, he would in fact manage to provoke many of them, perhaps for the first time, to feel the singular immediacy of discipleship in Christ, the summons and its redemptive answer: “As Jesus passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me. And he arose and followed him.”

  To teach others how to answer that invitation, Bonhoeffer borrowed yet another form of Catholic devotion, imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ. In his 1933 Berlin lectures on creation and sin, he had taught that listening to the Word of God was no passive thing, but one requiring exercitium—exercise and practice—not unlike learning a piece of music. Exercitium had, in fact, been a term of art in monasticism at least since the fifteenth century, when Thomas à Kempis’s devotional handbook The Imitation of Christ described “the pious practices [exercitia] suitable to a good monk,” aspiring to be Christ-like. When he visited Rome years before, Bonhoeffer’s exchanges with Jesuits had also led him to study The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, an even more regimented devotional prescription. And so in developing his Finkenwalde lectures on discipleship (which would ultimately be gathered in his famous book by that name) Bonhoeffer imagined his own guidance as “exercises actualizing the Sermon on the Mount.” Their composition was one of his most joyous efforts, perhaps because it spoke to the most elemental needs of those seeking Christ. “Everything depends on the urgent invitation to take that first step into what is still an unknown, a new situation.”44

  Discipleship would evolve into a polemic against the Lutheran tendency to portray faith as a refuge from obedience. Indeed, modern Protestant thought, in its most influential forms, had abandoned the realm of fact and “public truth” for a private sphere in which faith was the sole requirement for salvation. Bonhoeffer sought to redefine the meaning of Luther’s sola fide and sola gratia, too, moderating what had become their absolutism. From the disciple’s first hearing of the call to his picking up his cross and following, his existence was properly one of concrete acts, of lived devotion to Jesus. Such a life necessarily integrated private and public, the inner and the outer reality—hearing and following: there was no other way of being a Christian. Neither the church nor its sacrament could relieve the individual of the weight of his decision (Luther had understood that well). But that decision necessarily implied a leap into a new world, a degree of personal responsibility for the here and now that Protestant thinking had effectively abjured. And so in reconsidering the obligations of discipleship the book was revolutionary.

  Revolutionary in context, at least; in the larger scheme of the Christian tradition, it was rather quite orthodox. As in the gospel narratives, there is no grace without obedience; no remission of sin without the turning away from sin toward truth; no freedom without the burden of the cross. “Neither do I condemn thee,” Jesus told the woman taken in adultery. “Go and sin no
more.” The terms of grace are quite explicit.

  Jesus’ call is not answered in the form of a doctrinal formulation, not even in “a spoken confession of faith. Rather, it is the immediate deed.… Nothing precedes, and nothing follows except the obedience of the called.”45

  In German, Bonhoeffer’s book was called Nachfolge, or “Follow me”—a title that perfectly captures the intended immediacy of its message. The first English translation appeared in an abridged version in 1948 as The Cost of Discipleship, and this would remain the title of all subsequent English editions until the editors of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works opted for the more precise Discipleship in their 1996 scholarly edition. Although more faithful to the German, Discipleship mutes the book’s singular intensities. The word Nachfolge is an imperative. Jesus said to Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, “Whoever wishes to follow me must take up his cross daily and ‘folge mir nach.’ ” As Bonhoeffer wrote, “The bridges are torn down, and the followers simply move ahead. A call to discipleship thus immediately creates a new situation.46 Imagine Søren Kierkegaard’s vertiginous Fear and Trembling—a book Bonhoeffer carried with him during these months—translated as Faith, or Martin Luther’s tortured treatise The Bondage of the Will reduced to blunt abstraction.

  The lectures constituted the core of Finkenwalde’s curriculum, although Nachfolge would not be published until 1937, after the seminary had been shut down. Karl Barth famously wrote in the final section of his thirteen-volume Church Dogmatics that as he turned his attention to a theology of discipleship, he was inclined to do no more than reproduce long passages from Bonhoeffer’s account and let the matter stand at that. Still, the book is a reflection of the church in extremis. Bonhoeffer would come to acknowledge certain dangers of such a fraught exegesis, which laid upon the individual soul not just his cross but the weight of the world, the entire crisis of the Christian community. The will to make oneself an exemplar of faith could become too easily a recipe for a tortured soul or, worse, for an unforgiving perfectionism and sanctimonious bravado. It lacked balance. But it was addressed to the crisis at hand.