Tiffany Huet Class of 2008 Justifying Violence: A ... - Stetson University

God’s command for us is the order of international peace.” 16 Bonhoeffer continued preaching
this message well into Hitler’s reign. Hale summarizes:
“…there is no escape from the commandment of Christ to love one another; this command
includes loving (and forgiving) those who are beyond one’s national, political, social, and racial
bounds; it includes loving those who might…be your enemies.” 17
However, a significant shift occurs between the Bonhoeffer of the 1930s and the
Bonhoeffer of the 1940s. Hale claims it is after 1939 that his ethic begins to reflect his
involvement in the resistance. She indicates two specific events that sparked the change in
Bonhoeffer: Kristallnacht in November of 1938 and his return to the United States in 1939.
Kristallnacht was a truly crucial event that caused Bonhoeffer’s anger to expand to include not
only the perpetrators, but also those who did nothing—specifically the church. As a result of this,
he begins to understand this Christian responsibility to live “with and for others” as including
“the readiness to take on guilt.” 18 This can also be seen, Hale says, in Bonhoeffer’s second visit
to the U.S. He accepted an invitation to lecture at Union Theological Seminary during the
summer of 1939, but decided after less than a month that he must return to Germany and accept
“his role, as a German, to take on both responsibility and guilt.” 19 In The Cost of Discipleship
(1937), Bonhoeffer discusses responsibility in the form of what he calls “deputyship.”
Deputyship reflects the chasm between “God’s action and [human] behavior,” it is “the
willingness to act vicariously for others.” 20 However, in Ethics (1941), Bonhoeffer adds a new
dimension to this idea: deputyship is the action of any responsible person, Christian or not; it is
16 Rasmussen, 25.
17 Hale, 83.
18 Hale, 84.
19 Hale, 85.
20 Rasmussen, 38-39.
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