Program Particulars
*Times denoted refer to web version of audio

(01:31–02:18) Music:
"The Multiples of One" from Awakening, performed by Joseph Curiale

 

(02:16) Writings Mentioned by Krista
During his tenure at Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer published The Cost of Discipleship (Nachfolge) in 1937. It is a study of the Sermon on the Mount and the Pauline epistles. In this book, Bonhoeffer declared that the Protestant church of his time proclaimed a ?cheap grace? — allowing Christians to believe themselves forgiven and justified even if they did not fight injustice in a world around them. Grace is always "costly" he insisted, to the believer and to God. Bonhoeffer believed that grace as described in the biblical texts was a "costly grace," both faithful and ethically exacting.

Bonhoeffer's unfinished work, Ethics (Ethik), was being written while participating in the resistance against the National Socialist regime and formulating a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler. At the request of Bonhoeffer's parents, Eberhard Bethge, his best friend and confidante, compiled and published his work after the end of the Second World War.

(02:29) Bonhoeffer's Involvement and Hitler Assassination Attempt
During the late 1930s Hans von Dohnanyi, Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law, introduced him to a group seeking to overthrow Hitler. On April 5, 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Tegel, a military prison, until October 8, 1944. Despite the unsanitary conditions and severe conditions, he befriended the Nazi guards, who helped preserve his papers and correspondence and allowed him to minister to other prisoners.

Letters and Papers from Prison is a collection of writings and correspondence to family and friends, particularly Eberhard Bethge, that were collected and published after the end of World War II.

At first the Gestapo thought that Bonhoeffer and von Dohnanyi were embezzling money for personal goals. Eventually the facts surfaced, and Bonhoeffer faced a litany of charges, including conspiring to aid and rescue Jews. Several months after the failed assassination attempt of Hitler on July 20, 1944, the Gestapo realized Bonhoeffer's role and transferred him several times: to a Berlin prison, to Buchenwald concentration camp, to Schönberg, and finally to the concentration camp at Flossenbürg. He was hanged on April 9, 1945.

(02:53) Actuality of Hitler Speech
On January 30, 1933, Adolph Hitler was made chancellor of Germany. The following translation of the audio clip heard during the show was taken from a speech Hitler gave on the day of his ascension to the position:

Again and again I preach: the resurrection of the German nation is the question of winning back the inner strength and health of the German people.

(03:28) Reference to the Confessing Church
The "confessing church" movement, in which Bonhoeffer became a guiding figure, was founded in 1933 to oppose the Nazi-sponsored German Christian Church, or Reichskirche. Major church leaders of the time acquiesced as the German Protestant church was made subservient to the Nazi state. This included Nazi reinterpretation of basic teachings of the church — for example, stressing "the Jews" as the enemies of Jesus and all Christians. At the Synod of Barmen (May 1934) the Confessing Church set up an administration and proclaimed itself the true Protestant Church in Germany. After the arrest of many of its ministers the church was forced underground.

(03:42) Scene from Bonhoeffer
The audio clip, narrated by Klaus Maria Brandauer, was excerpted from the 2003 documentary film, Bonhoeffer:

The church has three possible ways it can act against the state. First, it can ask the state if its actions are legitimate. Second, it can aid the victims of the state action. The church has the unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society even if they do not belong to the Christian society. The third possibility is not just [to] bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.

(06:56) Reading from Life Together
Bonhoeffer's Life Together, originally published in Germany under the title Gemeinsames Leben in 1938, is based on Bonhoeffer's experiences heading and living in an illegally established Confessing Church seminary in Finkenwalde with 25 other clergymen. With Biblical insights, he discusses the fellowship of the Christian community. The following extended passage was excerpted from The Ministry of Listening, a section from the fourth chapter:

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother when we learn to listen to him. Christians, especially ministers, so often think they must always contribute something when they are in the company of others, that this is the one service they have to render. They forget that listening can be a greater service than speaking.

Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians, because these Christians are talking where they should be listening. But he who can no longer listen to his brother will soon be no longer listening to God either; he will be doing nothing but prattle in the presence of God too. This is the beginning of the death of the spiritual life, and in the end there is nothing left but spiritual chatter and clerical condescension arrayed in pious words. One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it. Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.

(08:53) Narration from Bonhoeffer
The audio clip, narrated by Klaus Maria Brandauer, was excerpted from the 2003 documentary film, Bonhoeffer:

We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, those who suffer. Christians are called to compassion and action.

(10:18–11:30) Music:
"Bridge of Light for Viola and Orchestra" from Bridge of Light, performed by Keith Jarrett

 

(10:29) Scene from Bonhoeffer
The audio clip, narrated by Klaus Maria Brandauer, was excerpted from the 2003 documentary film, Bonhoeffer:

The will of God is not a system of rules established from the outset. It is something new and different in each different situation in life. And for this reason a man must forever reexamine what the will of God may be. The will of God may lie deeply concealed beneath a great number of possibilities.

(14:30) Speech in Fanö, Denmark
In August 1934, a major ecumenical conference was held in Fanö, Denmark. Leading up to the conference, Bonhoeffer had been living in London and had fought against members of the national church (Reichskirche) being allowed to attend the event because it was controlled by the National Socialists. Reaching a compromise, members of the national church, Bonhoeffer, and some of his former students participated in the event.

Krista and Doblmeier discuss the following portion of an address delivered by Bonhoeffer in Fanö:

There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture, and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God's commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.

(15:56) Reference to Bonhoeffer Opposing Socialism
On February 1, 1933 — at the age of 26 — Bonhoeffer gave a national radio address protesting the recently inaugurated chancellor, Adolph Hitler. In his speech entitled "The Younger Generation's Changed View of the Concept of Fuhrer," Bonhoeffer was cut off as he stated that a leader who makes himself an idol is a "misleader."

Three months later during his lecture "The Church and the Jewish Question," he declared the obligation of the church "to question the state repeatedly whether its actions could be justified, i.e. as actions in which law and order are created, not lawlessness and disorder." Many audience members left the hall in irritation.

(16:46–17:31) Music:
"Bridge of Light for Viola and Orchestra" from Bridge of Light, performed by Keith Jarrett

(18:02–19:08) Music and Scene from Bonhoeffer
Gospel spirituals from Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City form the backdrop for the audio clip of Klaus Maria Brandauer in Bonhoeffer:

I have had the chance to hear the gospels preached in Black churches. Here one can truly speak and hear about sin and grace and the love of God if in forms we are not used to. In contrast to the often didactic style of white preaching, the Black Christ is preached with rapturous passion and vision.

(19:35) Actuality of Hitler Speech
Krista points to a verse from the book of Romans, chapter 13, that appears in Doblmeier's film and reads:

For there exists no authority
except from God.
And those who exist
have been appointed by God.
Therefore, he who resists authority
resists the ordinance of God.

It's this text that Adolph Hitler begins to use as a basis for his "preaching." The following passage is an extended transcript of the audio clip of Hitler that was excerpted from the 2003 documentary Bonhoeffer:

The German people are no longer the people without honor, the people of disgrace, self destructive, narrow minded, with little faith. No, God, the German people have become strong again in their spirit, strong in their will. Lord, we do not let you go. Now bless our struggle, our liberty, and with that our German people and our fatherland.

(24:58–26:51) Music:
"Pieces (6) for piano, Op. 118: No 02, Intermezzo in A major" from Brahms: Piano Pieces Op. 116-119, composed by Johannes Brahms and performed by Hélène Grimaud

 

(27:27) Reading from Letters and Papers from Prison
Writing from a Tegel military prison, Bonhoeffer explored the idea that the society coming of age was becoming ?religionless? ? but not, as Doblmeier says, faithless. The following edited passage heard during the show was excerpted from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's April 30, 1944 letter to Eberhard Bethge, which was published in Letters and Papers from Prison:

The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience — and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more. Even those who honestly describe themselves as "religious" do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by "religious."

If our final judgment must be that the western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? Are there religionless Christians?

(30:45) Quotation from Letters and Papers from Prison
Krista quotes from Bonhoeffer's notes, written in May 1944, on the baptismal day of Eberhard Bethge's

son, Dietrich Wilhelm Rüdiger Bethge, which was published in Letters and Papers from Prison:

Today you will be baptized a Christian. All those great ancient words of the Christian proclamation will be spoken over you, and the command of Jesus Christ to baptize will be carried out on you, without your knowing anything about it. But we are once again being driven right back to the beginnings of our understanding. Reconciliation and redemption, regeneration and Holy Spirit, love of our enemies, cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship — all these things are so difficult and so remote that we hardly venture any more to speak of them. In the traditional words and acts we suspect that there may be something quite new and revolutionary, though we cannot as yet grasp or express it. That is our own fault. Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christians today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men. All Christian thinking, speaking, and organizing must be born anew out of this prayer and action.

(37:29–38:27) Music:
"Missa Papae Marcelli, for 6 voices: Kyrie" from Agnus Dei: Music of Inner Harmony, performed by New College Choir, Oxford

 

(40:31) Reference to Early Bonhoeffer Writings
Sanctorum Communio was Bonhoeffer's doctoral thesis on the communion of saints.

(44:31) Reference to First Letter from Prison
Shortly before he was arrested and imprisoned at Tegel, Bonhoeffer became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer, whom he first knew from his time spent at a Benedictine monastery in Ettal. Read the first letter Bonhoeffer sent to his parents while in prison that discusses Maria and the garden in spring as mentioned by Doblmeier.

(49:59) Actuality from Bonhoeffer
The audio clip of Eberhard Bethge reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's July 21, 1944 letter to him was excerpted from the 2003 documentary film, Bonhoeffer:

This is perhaps the most important letter to me, which he wrote on the twenty-first of July, the day after the plot had failed, forty-four.

"I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith."

(49:18–52:26) Music:
"Bridge of Light for Viola and Orchestra" from Bridge of Light, performed by Keith Jarrett