The Bonhoeffer Reader

21. The Church and the Jewish Question

370 1. [Hockenos, Church Divided, 15.] 2. [United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Antisemitic Legislation, 1933–1939.”] 3. [See, for example, DBWE 12:293–296 (Reader 347–350).] 21. The Church and the Jewish Question DBWE 12:361–370 The historical context of the remaining selections in this section of the Reader was the Church Struggle, which involved three interwoven dimensions.1 The first dimension was the struggle between the German Christian movement, a pro-Nazi faction of the church, and the opposing Confessing Church, in which Bonhoeffer was active. The second dimension was the struggle between the Confessing Church and the Nazi state over spheres of influence. And the third was within the Confessing Church itself between those who more willing to compromise with the German Christians and those, including Bonhoeffer, who were not. Bonhoeffer wrote the next three selections in the aftermath of “the Aryan paragraph ,” a law used to exclude Jews from various organizations and professions. Its first formulation was the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of April 7, 1933.2 As Bonhoeffer argues in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” such legislation raises two questions for the church, “How does the church judge this action by the state, and what is the church called upon to do about it?” and “What are the consequences for the church’s position toward the baptized Jews in its congregations?” In response to the question about the church’s relation to the state, Bonhoeffer reiterates his view3 that the state is divinely mandated to maintain order. It does not fall to the church to challenge how the state maintains order. Rather, the church challenges the state only if the state ceases to function as a state, that is, if it fails to maintain order. In such a case, the church should take direct political action against the state. Given this framework, the interpretive question is whether the German state’s treatment of the Jews falls within a state’s right to maintain order as it sees fit, 371 The Church and the Jewish Question 361 362 4. [For a summary of the scholarship on Bonhoeffer and the Jews, see Haynes, Bonhoeffer Legacy, 19–41.] 5. [The quotations from Luther at the beginning and end of the essay may have been inserted by the editor of Der Vormarsch, where this essay was published. They are not in the three drafts written by Bonhoeffer. See DBWE 12:361, n. 1.] or constitutes a failure to maintain order and therefore undermines the state as state. Bonhoeffer leaves the interpretation to a church council. In response to the second question about the church’s position toward Christians of Jewish descent, Bonhoeffer argues that the church maintains the right to set the condition of membership, and that condition is not race but baptism. Thus the church should welcome baptized Jews as full members. This controversial essay has been variously interpreted.4 Detractors often see in Bonhoeffer’s position elements of traditional theological anti-Judaism. Defenders often argue that such elements are superseded in his later thinking, and they point to his legitimation of church action against the state as radical in its historical context. Interpretation of the essay is complicated by the fact (indicated in editorial footnotes below) that important passages are of uncertain origin. For the complex manuscript and publishing history of this text, see DBWE 12:261, n. 1. Luther, 1546: “We would still show them the Christian doctrine and ask them to convert and accept the Lord whom they should by rights have honored before we did. . . . When they repent, leave their usury, and accept Christ, we would gladly regard them as our brothers.” Luther, 1523: “If the apostles, who also were Jews, had dealt with us Gentiles as we Gentiles deal with the Jews, there would never have been a Christian among the Gentiles. Since they dealt with us Gentiles in such brotherly fashion, we in our turn ought to treat the Jews in a brotherly manner in order that we might convert some of them. For even we ourselves are not yet all very far along, not to speak of having arrived. . . . But when we are trying only to drive them by force . . . how can we expect to work any good among them? Again, when we forbid them to labor and do business and have any human fellowship with us, thereby driving them into usury, how is that supposed to make them better?”5 The fact, unique...