Saturday afternoon I attended a session put on by the Bonhoeffer Theology and Social Analysis Group at AAR here in Philadelphia titled: War as Responsible Action? The Uses and Abuses of Bonhoeffer’s Ethics. Susan Ford Wiltshire, Robert O. Smith and Robert Vosloo were the three who gave papers during our session. Susan focused on Bonhoeffer and “telling the truth” as not being a constant thing, but something new and alive for every situation. Robert O. Smith took a look at the plethora of misappropriations of Bonhoeffer in popular discourse from presidential speeches (is anything not misappropriated in these) to blogs and Robert Vosloo drew some comparisons of Bonhoeffer to Beyers Naudé of South Africa (where Robert hails from).

In Susan’s presentation she asked why Bonhoeffer was being used to support the war, she answered her own question by saying that she couldn’t come up with any good reason for using Bonhoeffer in this way. She had mentioned that her friend Jean Bethke Elshtain was one of the latest to throw Bonhoeffer into the mix, in this case in support of the “war on terror” and the “war on Iraq.” This sparked something in my own mind, a memory from when I had seen Elshtain speak at William Jewell College in the city I pastor in. After speaking for over an hour about “Christian Just War Theory” (but never mentioning Christ) Elshtain fielded some questions. My question to her was, “If this JWT is Christian, please demonstrate how it is essentially centered in Jesus Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount or in the gospels.” Her reply was this, “We’ll I’m certainly not a theologian, but… Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

After listening to Susan’s question of why use Bonhoeffer, and then Robert O. Smith’s several examples (hawkish and dove) of the misuse of Bonhoeffer I made a link to that Elshtain lecture back in March. Bonhoeffer, I think, is so often used (by the hawks) because Jesus is obviously out of the question in being used as a justification for war (especially wars of aggression, like Iraq). The deficiency of Christ as a justification for war poses a problem for those who are called Christians, but the legend of Bonhoeffer serves this role. I say legend, because it is the “pop culture” or “soundbyte” Bonhoeffer that is useful in justifying war. The Bonhoeffer that most Christians know about was three things, a martyr; a protestant saint; and a failed assassin. It is the innocence that martyrdom implies and the righteousness that sainthood also implies that casts assassin (and therefore warfare) in a justified light when Bonhoeffer is misused in this way.

The problem of course is that Bonhoeffer was a pacifist, and didn’t feel “justified” in the Abwehr plot on Hitler’s life, but bore the full responsibility and what he saw as a grave sin. As Robert O. Smith also pointed out, Bonhoeffer was taking action as a participant within his own country, Smith pointed out that Bonhoeffer wasn’t used as a justification for Iraqis to rise up and kill Hussein but rather for the US to invade. The entire witness of Bonhoeffer’s life calls into question the kind of violence that his name is so oft used to justifiy. Lastly and most importantly Bonhoeffer was a dedicated follower of Jesus Christ and wouldn’t have approved of using himself as a measure for ethical action in substitute of Jesus Christ.