After years spent openly opposing Adolf Hitler and encouraging Germans to turn against his regime, Dietrich Bonhoeffer — a Christian minister, theologian, pacifist and German citizen — made a deliberate turn from civil disobedience to secret participation in a cabal whose aim was to assassinate the Fuhrer. Bonhoeffer laid aside his Christian pacifism when he woke up to the fact that Hitler was engaging in genocide. This outraged Bonhoeffer, who held the deep religious conviction that the Jews were a people precious to God and deserving of protection, whatever the personal cost.
As a pacifist, Bonhoeffer had quietly refused to join the military. With his newfound commitment to Hitler's murder he changed direction and joined the German Abwehr, the wartime intelligence agency headed by Admiral Wilheim Canaris. Canaris was secretly opposed to Hitler and was using Abwehr to launch a variety of plots against the Reich, including assassination attempts. Bonhoeffer never participated directly in such plots — they had to be carried out by the military, because officers were the only ones who could get close enough to the Fuhrer to kill him. Nevertheless, Bonhoeffer aided and encouraged these plots from his post inside the Abwehr. Pretending to be a loyal servant of Hitler's Reich, Bonhoeffer was in fact a double agent working towards Hitler's forcible overthrow.
The July 20 Plot on Hitler's life is retold in Tom Cruise's recent film Valkyrie, the plot's code name. It came very close to succeeding but nevertheless failed, enraging Hitler and setting off a ruthless hunt for the conspirators.
Bonhoeffer never claimed that God was "on his side" in this effort. On the contrary, he wrote that his decision to work for Hitler's assassination would make him guilty of breaking God's law. His conviction was that he had to follow the dictates of his conscience, even though he felt certain that he would be judged guilty by God should he cause Hitler's death. His only moral hope, he believed, was that he might find grace to cover his sin through his faith in Christ.
His position seems at first glance to be a tortured ethical contradiction. What drove Bonhoeffer to discard his pacifism in this instance was the realization that in a world broken by sin and suffused by evil, certain horrors simply could not be tolerated, and could only be stopped through violence.
Bonhoeffer saw himself obeying the call of Christ to lay down his life for others. He in effect sacrificed his own moral convictions in the hope of saving Jews from the death camps.
The question I would pose is this: Is it legitimate to suggest that there is a moral equivalency between Dietrich Bonhoeffer's violent opposition to Adolf Hitler and the recent cold-blooded assassination of doctor George Tiller, the unapologetic abortionist? I believe there is.
Put another way, was Bonhoeffer wrong to attempt to save Jewish lives through assassination? Is violence intrinsically evil, as many in these post-modern times believe, or is it possible that violence is morally neutral, neither good nor bad apart from the circumstances in which it is wielded?
Pro-life supporters are not blind to the fact that the moral authority of the US government is being used to legitimize and finance the killing of approximately 1.4 million unborn children annually. Dr. Tiller, an enthusiastic proponent of legalized abortion, was actively engaged in the most horrific of those procedures, the vivisection of late-term babies who were often old enough to survive outside of the womb, had they been given a chance.
For decades, the abortion debate has raged in the political sphere while the death toll has hardly budged. That is because, as our current president deftly demonstrates, the pro-abortion forces have learned to talk in mock-serious tones about the troubling moral dilemmas abortion poses, without actually taking any steps to change the status quo. In fact, despite his alleged desire to reduce the frequency of abortion, President Obama recently lifted the Mexico City Policy, signaling his administration's readiness to extend US financed abortion services to third-world nations.
Meanwhile, the courts have systematically stripped every meaningful attempt by states to permit compromises aimed at reducing the death toll. In an environment where abortion opponents have no legal or political recourse, and where abortion on demand has become the settled policy of the government, what are men and women of conscience to do with their moral outrage?
Many, like me, have leaned heavily on prayer and the hope that a new generation would change its thinking about abortion. The recent movie Juno captures the growing discomfort with abortion among the young, and there is evidence that public opinion is shifting towards the pro-life position.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer went much further. This man, who once considered studying pacifism under Gandhi, instead followed his conscience and joined in a violent scheme to stop the killing of the innocents of his day.
Which is the correct approach for today? In the face of a great evil, what are the limits placed on us by our profession of the Christian faith?
Pro-life organizations are wringing their hands about Dr. Tiller's murder, worrying that it will set back "progress" and stain the good name of Jesus Christ. They are committed to the sanctity of all human life, including the lives of practicing abortion doctors. Violence is never part of God's good plan, some claim, forgetting that Christ's death was itself an act of violence redeemed by God for our good.
The great Christian thinker St. Augustine believed that violence was morally neutral. He was the first to articulate the doctrine of "just war," concluding that great evil should provoke in believers a righteous anger that leads to a restraining of that evil, by force if necessary. He also suggested that a conscience too dull to become angry at evil was morally defective.
For his efforts, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged to death on April 9, 1945, at Flossenburg concentration camp along with a half-dozen other conspirators, including the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Wilheim Canaris.
Are these times, and the circumstances we find ourselves in, really so different from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's day?
While non-violent, political opposition to evil is always the default position for Christians, the lesson of Bonhoeffer seems to be that there are times when the heart and soul of a government becomes hardened against the prophetic outcry of God's people. At such a time, far more may be required of us. Is this such a time? How far should we be willing to go to stop the killing of the innocents?
Update: Prof. R R Reno at First Things discusses the ethical problem of vigilante violence here.
Julie Bogart has a well-reasoned post on why the Bonhoeffer comparison fails here. (Thanks to Ken at C. Orthodoxy for the link.)
Rick at Brutally Honest compares what I have to say with William Saletan's comments at Slate. Click here for Rick's take.
And, again at First Things, Elizabeth Scalia, aka The Anchoress, asks some hard questions framed around Paul IV's encyclical Humanae Vitae.
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I'm finding myself more and more wanting to stress self-sacrifice instead of violence. I guess that makes me a pacifist, but it's hard to deny that Bonhoeffer's actions (and Roeder's?) were self-sacrificial! So I'm conflicted on this. I have to condemn Roeder's actions, and would never think of doing something similar, but the matter is not to be dismissed lightly.
The question of whether violence is inherently evil is a difficult one and you are right to point out that one's view of the atonement must be strongly impacted by one's answer. That deserves a post all its own...
Interesting all the blogs that have sprung up in the last few days likening Stauffenberg, Bonhoeffer et al to the person who killed Tiller. I find this amazing. The vast majority of educated people in North America had never heard of the July plot or German resistance until Mr Cruise (another target of the Christian right) made his film. Now everyone is scrambling to draw parallels between a wide range of brave men who tried to redeem their country through a manifest act and the murder of an abortion Dr by a single individual. I don't believe in abortion in most cases, but to draw parallels or even try to create analogies between these two events is astonishing to me. The key difference is that the US is a free society with a system of laws that could have handled the Tiller scenario. Nazi Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship where only assassination could have changed the government. To apply resistance methods in a free society is to choose anarchy. I despair for anyone who can't see this.
Colin
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
You say that "the laws could have handled the Tiller situation" and the US is a "free society of laws". What seems to have driven Mr. Roeder over the edge was precisely that Tiller operated completely within the law, was acquitted of wrong-doing at trial, and that by law, abortion is legal everywhere up to the very moment of birth. So while it is true that we are a free society in the sense of our personal liberties, a case can (and has been) made that in this particular area, our laws fail to live up to the highest standards of justice and the protection of the weak from the strong. Voters have no say in the matter, since the laws in this one area are not subject to voter approval.
That sounds like tyranny, not freedom to me. Bonhoeffer's case doesn't apply perfectly -- no precedent ever does -- but there are lessons to be learned from his time. When a government and its laws pervert justice rather than uphold it, Christians, who serve a higher authority, have to consider where their real allegiance lies and how far they are willing to go to right the institutional wrongs of society. If Mr. Roeder went too far, and I think that's an open question, at the opposite extreme are Christians like me who live comfortable lives and are satisfied to wring our hands while the abortion toll grows and grows.
It's an important debate. I have been a student of Bonhoeffer since college and find his life instructive because he was sharpened in his thinking and moral actions by the extremism of the times he grew up in.
I hope you'll continue to drop by and comment as you have time.
This is an intriguing question. Unfortunately for me, it begs more questions than the one it initially asks.
You have drawn an analogy between Bonhoeffer and Roeder (acknowledging its imperfections). I have another analogy.
Suppose a young Muslim man in Afghanistan believes that Christians are spreading lies about God, claiming he had a Son, etc., and that, because of these lies, they are plunging millions of innocent human beings into a fiery hell. As he watches a group of Christian missionaries, Bibles in hand, pour out of a bus and into his hometown, he might ask the following questions: "At such a time, far more may be required of me. Is this such a time? How far should I be willing to go to stop the eternal damnation of the innocents?"
When do we let God be God and when we take control of the situation? If Bonhoeffer would have stepped outside of God's law by being party to the murder of Hitler, when ANY of us step outside of God's law, what is really being said? Is it not that God is not powerful or wise enough to handle this situation and therefore I must take control? Does God ever ask us to step outside his Laws? If so, what does that mean and what does that say about God? How would I know (not just in the case of murder but in any situation) whether it is acceptable to disobey God and take matters into my own hands?
And yet this contrasts with, say, the book of Joshua where God called his people to kill every man, woman and child, showing them no mercy.
Why didn't God stop the massive genocide of the Jews? Was he waiting for someone like Bonhoeffer to step up and thwart the evil? If God is really "in control" (whatever that platitude means), why doesn't he say "enough is enough" at crucial points in history (i.e. the Holocaust).
And what is the difference between "eminent danger" and "latent danger", ethically speaking? For example, if a man were standing over a 12 year old with a knife poised to kill, I would be exonerated if I killed him to save the girl. If I killed the man afterward, I would be found guilty of murder. If the man were plotting to kill the same 12 year old and fully intended to do it, my killing him would render me guilty by the law.
So many questions, so little time...
The problem I have with this is that the same logic can be used by the Muslim man who shot the soldiers outside the recruiting station in Arkansas. From his perspective, the US soldiers are killing many, many innocent Iraqis etc. His action to stop some US soldiers who are active in recruiting other US soldiers is an act of violence to stop a greater violence.
Of course, I don't agree with that thinking. But once we open this up, each will do what is right in his own eyes, as the saying goes. We sow the seeds of anarchic violence when we start down this line of thinking.
If a person believes that a fetus is a human being at the time of their removal from the womb via brain suction and vivisection rhen one might feel compelled to act.
Here is my advice for the legal team representing Mr. Roeder.
Find out who was scheduled for a procedure by the doctor in the days after Dr. Tiller was killed.
Find out if some of those folks scheduled for a late term procedure did in fact not have the procedure elsewhere for what ever reasons, (time restraints, second thoughts, inability to locate a late term aborter.
By the time the trial occurs some of those fetuses will have been born.
Request that the mothers bring their children to the court and ask that they sit in the front row.
Point out the children to the jury.
In addition, point out that those children would have had their brains sucked out by Dr. Tiller had the defendant not acted.
I believe that might be a powerful argument.
It is also useful to imagine the power of one of those children appearing on the stand in Mr. Roeders defense in some years hence on an appeal if he is in fact convicted.
I haven't yet read Julie Bogart's piece, but I have a question for the whole mindset ...
IF the reasoning that Charlie proposes here is indeed flawed and incorrect, and IF Charlie (or I, or someone else; or many someones) decides finally to follow through on this erroneous reasoning, THEN what does Julie Bogart and others of like mind propose to do about it?
It seems to me that persons of such a mindset must either acquiesce to our "immoral violence" ... or else violently oppose our "immoral violence," and thereby give the lie to the claim that violence is intrinsically wicked.
Should anyone here be interested in reading yet another blog on this event, here's mine: Safe, Legal, and Rare
OK, now I've read Julie Bogart's post ... and I don't see the well-reasoning to it.
The gist of it is that an abortion is the result of a private, freely made act/decision, rather than of a public compulsion (and, never mind China).
Well, so can an infanticide be the result of a private, freely made act/decision, rather than of a public compulsion.
Did the State compel either Susan Smith or Andrea Yates to retroactively abort their children? Did the State compel that teenager, whose name escapes me, to deliver her child at the prom and leave it in the trash?
Well, so can the murder of an adult be the result of a private, freely made act/decision, rather than of a public compulsion.
Let us suppose that the killing of George Tiller was not only murder legally, but also, and more importantly, morally.
Did the State compel George Tiller’s murderer to murder him? Or, was it the result of a private, freely made act/decision?
Charlie, you've stepped into some muddy waters on this one, I think, but I'm glad you have the courage to raise the topic.
Hitler as the head of state and demi-god of the Nazi regime created the temptation of ridding an entire society, indeed the whole world, of a perpetrator of crimes against humanity with his assassination. The killing of a single doctor in the machinery of the abortion industry does nothing good for anyone. Not for the pro-life cause, not for the future of babies, not for society. It is simply another murder.
I was not really acquainted with the full account of Bonhoeffer's history, so I really appreciate your detailing the story. I agree with the turn of thinking that there are times when action must be taken to oppose evil, but there are missteps in how Bonhoeffer went about it that are clear in the retrospect of half a century.
Perpetua is right in her opinion that the logic in your statement opens up some murky moral areas.
This whole scenario reminds me somewhat of the turn that the peace moratorium movement took in the late sixties. At first the call for peace was surrounded by pacifist methods and philosophy, which through frustration with the slowness of the process created a panicked about face into the militaristic groups and methods of SDS and other protesters of that type. The situation was the same: creating social change though opposition to state policy first through peaceful, and then through violent means.
The crackdown on that created a mainstream entrance of all those activists into the system: which we now know and love as The Left. Ok, maybe some of us don't love it, but it is with us and calling the shots ( poor choice of word, that) right now.
I feel that as Christians we have lost our way concerning which methods serve our system, that is, the Kingdom of God and are of the spirit of that Kingdom.
This is why become unsure of how to think of Tillers death, or how to argue in the face of the ...perhaps just.... condemnation coming our way.
Right now, I'm trying to think of how we must answer the barrage of propaganda streaming out of the death camps of the "pro-choice" because right now they are making pro-lifers sound like the Nazis, and themselves as the victims in those camps. And that is a real perception problem I believe. We are further into the territory of calling good evil and evil good. Let's not make the situation worse by trying to cast a "good light" on a terrible action, murder.
Thanks for your link to my blog. I'm glad you included it as a counter weight to your viewpoint. That's fair-minded and I always like that.
Perhaps something that must also be grappled with is Bonhoeffer's call to look deeply into our own epoch, to see what the specific call is in this instance. (China is irrelevant, btw, because we individual Americans have no power there to address what they coerce. Killing Tiller doesn't stop abortions in China.)
I have to ask a few other questions then of this issue:
Are we willing to put our 15, 16, and 17 year olds in jail for choosing abortions?
Why has a Republican government (pres. and congress) failed to change the laws?
What demonstrates reverence for life and leads to better choices by girls/women in unwanted pregnancies?
The idea that laws will stop abortions is erroneous, also.
We have to address the complexity of the issue in a socially compelling way, not simply be shown to be vigilantes.
Charlie, I think you'll find this recent essay of interest, also:
Pruning the narrative of murder.
It is to be remembered that Bonhoeffer didn't join the Abwehr to be a part of the plot. He joined so that he would not have to join the army and swear alligance to Hitler. Then he became a part of the plots.
Please re-read the Article. Per the thought process of the letter, you will hopefully see that He states: "While non-violent, political opposition to evil is always the default position for Christians, the lesson of Bonhoeffer seems to be that there are times when the heart and soul of a government becomes hardened against the prophetic outcry of God's people. At such a time, far more may be required of us.
And He Again Asked the Question...
"Is this such a time? How far should we be willing to go to stop the killing of the innocents?"
He does not try to Force you to agree with him.
But Abortion is being forced on approximately 1.4 million unborn children annually.