Transcript: Episode 0040

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer: False Teacher, Traitor, Damned”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
WEBVTT

00:00:00 – 00:00:13:	Music

00:00:13 – 00:00:39:	Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast.

00:00:39 – 00:00:42:	I am Corey J. Mahler, and I'm still woe.

00:00:42 – 00:00:51:	On today's episode of Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing the famous 20th century theologian

00:00:51 – 00:00:56:	Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It's interesting when you call Dietrich Bonhoeffer famous because he wasn't

00:00:56 – 00:01:02:	really famous as a theologian until the 21st century. That's something we'll get into a little bit,

00:01:02 – 00:01:09:	but it's just this is one of the episodes that we're doing because yet again, he is a sacred cow.

00:01:09 – 00:01:17:	He's really in fact a golden calf of 20th century global religion, and it is consistent with many

00:01:17 – 00:01:23:	of the themes that we've had in the past year. A couple brief notes up front before we get

00:01:23 – 00:01:29:	into this particular subject. One, this is a continuation of a number of previous episodes,

00:01:29 – 00:01:33:	so if you happen to be listening to Stone Choir for the very first time with this particular

00:01:33 – 00:01:39:	episode, we would actually recommend that you go back to a couple earlier ones. In particular,

00:01:39 – 00:01:46:	the Martin Luther King, our chair tech episode, part one of two about MLK is really part one of

00:01:46 – 00:01:52:	this episode as well. One of the points that we're going to be making in this episode is that MLK

00:01:52 – 00:01:58:	and Bonhoeffer effectively had the same spiritual fathers, they had the same teachers, the same

00:01:58 – 00:02:04:	readings, and they had the same message. The difference between them was really just about

00:02:04 – 00:02:11:	50 IQ points, so the things that MLK was too stupid not to say out loud Bonhoeffer was perfectly

00:02:11 – 00:02:16:	content to say them. The difference is that Bonhoeffer would say them a subtle way so that

00:02:16 – 00:02:21:	if you already think he's a decent Christian guy, you're going to be able to baptize what it is he

00:02:21 – 00:02:26:	says without too much trouble. Another episode that this ties into is one of the early ones on

00:02:26 – 00:02:30:	the clarity of Scripture and some of the World War II stuff. We're not really going to get into it

00:02:30 – 00:02:36:	beyond just a couple superficial details, but the context of it is in view of the three-part

00:02:36 – 00:02:45:	series that we recently concluded on the Jews. We're going to assume that you have listened

00:02:45 – 00:02:49:	to those as we're talking about this, all our episodes stand alone, but this one in particular,

00:02:50 – 00:02:54:	one of the things that's concerned Cory and myself as we've been looking to tackle this

00:02:54 – 00:03:00:	subject is that because Bonhoeffer was really smart and he was really subtle,

00:03:01 – 00:03:07:	it's tough to make the case that he was evil because you can superficially read some of the

00:03:07 – 00:03:13:	things that he says out of context and say, oh yeah, I can agree with that. I can believe that.

00:03:13 – 00:03:16:	In fact, it's interesting. There were a number of things that when I was reading, particularly in

00:03:16 – 00:03:23:	some of his letters from prison from 1943 and 44 after he was under arrest for treason, a number

00:03:23 – 00:03:28:	of the things that he said, the Bonhoeffer was saying at the end of his life, sounded very much

00:03:28 – 00:03:32:	like some of the things that Cory and I say on Stone Choir. There's some of the things that are

00:03:33 – 00:03:39:	really a big part of what we try to get across on this podcast series. The reason that's so fascinating

00:03:39 – 00:03:46:	is that the men, the pastors, who hate us the most love Bonhoeffer. As I just found it interesting,

00:03:46 – 00:03:51:	I was reading some of those quotes like, why wouldn't they hear his voice in the things that

00:03:51 – 00:03:55:	we're saying? The reason is we're coming from completely opposite directions as we talk about

00:03:55 – 00:04:00:	those things. We'll get into a few of those in a bit, but I find it very interesting that we

00:04:00 – 00:04:07:	have completely different spirits and yet in some cases have very similar specific words for things,

00:04:07 – 00:04:12:	specific concerns about things. We have very different solutions because we have very different

00:04:12 – 00:04:20:	origins for the concerns themselves. As we get into this, I want to

00:04:21 – 00:04:27:	tie back into the historical context of the man. As I said, he's considered to be a 20th century

00:04:27 – 00:04:33:	preeminent theologian that almost nobody knew about in the 20th century. I did a search on

00:04:33 – 00:04:37:	Google engrams as I often do and we've mentioned a number of times in the past. You can do a search

00:04:37 – 00:04:41:	for a word and see how frequently it pops up in literature and in magazines and other things.

00:04:43 – 00:04:49:	Bonhoeffer's name didn't appear really until the early 60s. Basically, you can plot the curve of

00:04:49 – 00:04:57:	Vatican II and the plot of Bonhoeffer. In the 60s, they take off on identical curves. I firmly

00:04:57 – 00:05:01:	believe that that was the birth of a new world religion. One of the striking things when you're

00:05:01 – 00:05:08:	reading about the history of Bonhoeffer introspection by other theologians is how widely he's viewed

00:05:08 – 00:05:14:	as a man for all denominations, a man that the liberals love and the conservatives love.

00:05:14 – 00:05:22:	That's really weird because that's not really how Christian theology usually works. When sound

00:05:22 – 00:05:27:	doctrine is paramount in the discussion in the church, usually you have people that are on a

00:05:27 – 00:05:33:	posing size because some of them just don't believe the Bible. The fact that the ultra-libs

00:05:33 – 00:05:37:	and people who think they're conservative both see this man as their saint

00:05:38 – 00:05:44:	is very interesting. Then the timing of Vatican II, it made me laugh. Of course, that would happen.

00:05:44 – 00:05:49:	Then it sort of died off the interest in Bonhoeffer until this century. It wasn't until the beginning

00:05:49 – 00:05:54:	of the 21st century that he really became very popular. Just to begin, I'm going to give a

00:05:54 – 00:06:00:	couple brief quotes. These are from Christian News, which was a publication from a Lutheran pastor

00:06:00 – 00:06:07:	who was around for decades. He was a man who long went after some of these subjects when the

00:06:07 – 00:06:12:	rest of the world was kind of ignoring them. This is a description that I'm going to read,

00:06:12 – 00:06:17:	and I'm going to read a brief description of an event that took place at one of our

00:06:17 – 00:06:25:	seminaries in 2006. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the authentic heroes of World War II,

00:06:25 – 00:06:30:	a German Protestant theologian who spoke out fiercely against Hitler and participated in an

00:06:30 – 00:06:35:	assassination plot against him. Bonhoeffer was hanged on Hitler's orders three weeks before

00:06:35 – 00:06:41:	the Nazi dictator committed suicide on the eve of Germany's surrender in April 1945. I think it's

00:06:41 – 00:06:49:	probably the bulk of what most people know about the man. He was a German pastor. He fought Hitler.

00:06:49 – 00:06:55:	He was hanged for attempting to kill him. Then he wrote some stuff. That's pretty much all people

00:06:55 – 00:07:01:	know. The reason I wanted to begin there is that it's the World War II thing. It's subtly. It's

00:07:01 – 00:07:06:	not mentioned here, but it's about the Jews. The third episode that we did in the series on the Jews

00:07:06 – 00:07:13:	is part of this. Again, I said that this episode is kind of a final quiz for a lot of what Stone

00:07:13 – 00:07:19:	Choir has done previously. I hope that we succeed today because, as I said, it's a hard case to

00:07:19 – 00:07:25:	make once you get into the really subtle things, he says. Just consider this the framing. This is

00:07:25 – 00:07:32:	the man who fought the Nazis and fought Hitler and he was murdered for it. In 2006, there was a

00:07:33 – 00:07:40:	Bonhoeffer conference at the Concordia St. Louis Seminary of the LCMS. It began July 19th through

00:07:40 – 00:07:47:	the 21st. Quote, Dietrich Bonhoeffer may well be the most widely admired and respected Christian

00:07:47 – 00:07:52:	theologian among Christian pastors and theologians in the USA. The scope of his appeal is exceptionally

00:07:52 – 00:07:58:	broad, spanning across virtually all Christian denominations and across perspectives ranging

00:07:58 – 00:08:03:	from the traditional to the liberal. His centennial offers a unique opportunity for activities that

00:08:03 – 00:08:09:	highlight the many remarkable aspects of his theology and life. This conference features

00:08:09 – 00:08:13:	nationally and internationally recognized experts on Bonhoeffer. These include Lutherans

00:08:13 – 00:08:18:	and members of other church bodies. There will be emphasis on confessional Lutheran aspects of

00:08:18 – 00:08:22:	Bonhoeffer's thought and at the same time presentations from other Christian perspectives.

00:08:23 – 00:08:27:	It's a unique opportunity for Lutherans to highlight perhaps the most important Lutheran

00:08:27 – 00:08:34:	theologian since Martin Luther and to converse about the contributions Bonhoeffer can make to the

00:08:34 – 00:08:40:	life of the 21st century church. Now that's remarkable because I said like in the 20th century

00:08:40 – 00:08:46:	he wasn't really disgusting. He was a footnote. He was one guy who didn't do anything that significant.

00:08:46 – 00:08:51:	He was notable because he was one of the few people in the church who committed treason against the

00:08:51 – 00:08:57:	German government and was executed for it. So the reason we're talking about him today, the

00:08:57 – 00:09:03:	reason that you've ever heard the name is because of that. Because he fought Hitler and because

00:09:03 – 00:09:06:	everybody loves him, whether they're libs or conservatives. In fact, the reason I mentioned

00:09:06 – 00:09:11:	Vatican II, the reason I searched for that was that even Roman Catholics really love Bonhoeffer

00:09:11 – 00:09:18:	in the 60s. That's crazy. If here's this Lutheran pastor, this Lutheran theologian from the liberal

00:09:19 – 00:09:24:	wing in German theology and Roman Catholics like, yeah, that's our guy, something's going on here.

00:09:24 – 00:09:28:	And then when you have the most conservative Lutheran saying the same thing,

00:09:28 – 00:09:33:	something really weird is happening. This is not what normally happens in the church.

00:09:33 – 00:09:36:	So we're going to begin looking at some of the things that he wrote in the past to see

00:09:36 – 00:09:42:	who was this man. If this is a great theologian, a great contributor to the Christian tradition,

00:09:42 – 00:09:44:	let's see what he had to say about the Christian faith.

00:09:45 – 00:09:50:	I guess before we move into some of the quotes properly and going over some of the things that

00:09:50 – 00:09:58:	he wrote, it really is almost amazing, really, that they would call him the most important

00:09:58 – 00:10:03:	Lutheran theologian since Martin Luther. That's really a true slight to Chemnitz.

00:10:04 – 00:10:09:	For those who don't know, Martin Chemnitz is often called the second Martin.

00:10:09 – 00:10:12:	And one of the sayings about him, I won't use the Latin because there's no reason,

00:10:13 – 00:10:20:	is essentially Luther, the first Martin would not have survived if not for Chemnitz,

00:10:20 – 00:10:26:	the second Martin. That's how important he was as a theologian to the church.

00:10:27 – 00:10:34:	And yet we're supposed to believe that Bonhoeffer is more important than Chemnitz who basically

00:10:34 – 00:10:41:	saved the Reformation and is the one who responded to the Council of Trent at length.

00:10:42 – 00:10:47:	Even in living memory, I think men like Kurt Marquardt, certainly in terms of their

00:10:47 – 00:10:52:	theological output, far outstrips Bonhoeffer's contributions, whether his theology was good

00:10:52 – 00:10:58:	or bad. It's just one of the points that I hope we can get across today is that

00:11:00 – 00:11:05:	we're being told that this man was so important, not because he was important,

00:11:06 – 00:11:14:	but because he is a martyr in the new religion. As I mentioned, the MLK arch heretic episode

00:11:15 – 00:11:22:	is part one of this as well, just as it was part one of MLK in theology and then MLK in politics.

00:11:22 – 00:11:28:	Same thing played out in Bonhoeffer's life a few decades prior. His theology was the same as MLK's.

00:11:28 – 00:11:33:	His politics were the same as MLK's and in a number of ways that are very important.

00:11:34 – 00:11:42:	Today, both of those men were killed at age 39. They're both considered today to be martyrs.

00:11:42 – 00:11:49:	They're absolutely martyrs in their religion. As I said at the beginning, that's the context

00:11:49 – 00:11:54:	through which I think it's necessary to view all takes on Bonhoeffer, whether it's favorable or

00:11:54 – 00:12:02:	unfavorable. The man is a martyr to his faith. I highlight his faith because that's the problem

00:12:02 – 00:12:08:	here. Is his faith the Christian faith? As we're told, that's what almost every pastor will say.

00:12:08 – 00:12:13:	Yes, he's a stalwart of the Christian faith. He went back to Germany to fight Hitler,

00:12:13 – 00:12:20:	to kill Hitler, to save the Jews, hero, and then he died for it. That's basically Jesus 2.0

00:12:20 – 00:12:25:	for a lot of these guys. It's a blasphemous thing to say. God forgive me for saying it,

00:12:25 – 00:12:32:	but that's really what's going on here. The reason that this narrative only emerged

00:12:32 – 00:12:38:	in the last few decades is that the narrative of the 20th century only emerged in the last few

00:12:38 – 00:12:43:	decades. One of the things that I didn't mention in the Holocaust episode, if you do the same

00:12:43 – 00:12:50:	engram search on Google for Holocaust, it also emerges in the 60s. There was no Holocaust described

00:12:50 – 00:12:57:	in the 40s or the 50s. Now, some of the things that are claimed to have happened then were reported

00:12:57 – 00:13:03:	at that time, but the narrative of the so-called Holocaust emerged in the 60s around the same

00:13:03 – 00:13:08:	time as Bonhoeffer, around the same time as Vatican II. They've all been on a trajectory

00:13:08 – 00:13:15:	upwards ever since then. It's not an artifact of the corpus that Google's searching. It's actually

00:13:15 – 00:13:20:	a function of how often those subjects are coming up. It's how often those subjects are

00:13:20 – 00:13:24:	in people's minds and in their mouths. If it's what people are talking about,

00:13:24 – 00:13:28:	it's going to show up more frequently. Those graphs sometimes are extremely telling.

00:13:30 – 00:13:38:	Bonhoeffer in particular, even over against MLK, is a vital martyr to the Holocaust faith.

00:13:39 – 00:13:46:	Full stop, he is important in the world religion of the 21st century because he died fighting

00:13:46 – 00:13:50:	Hitler. That's part of the reason that we did that three-part episode, and particularly the last

00:13:50 – 00:13:56:	episode on the history of the Jews in the 20th century. If everything that you've been told

00:13:56 – 00:14:03:	is true about those events, then obviously, regardless of some of Bonhoeffer's theological

00:14:03 – 00:14:09:	quibbles, the man was clearly a hero because he went and fought the ontological evil of the Nazis.

00:14:10 – 00:14:17:	If, on the other hand, what we have been told about 20th century German politics is not, in fact,

00:14:17 – 00:14:24:	true in that those stories that began to emerge in the story arc that appeared in the 1960s wasn't

00:14:24 – 00:14:31:	actually the case at the time, then you have to view the execution of men like Bonhoeffer

00:14:31 – 00:14:36:	and their acts that led up to the execution in a different light. One of the tough things about

00:14:36 – 00:14:41:	tackling these subjects is that in one of the reasons that we talk about timelines, which is

00:14:41 – 00:14:46:	tough to do on a podcast because you can't see them, I will put a couple of those screenshots

00:14:46 – 00:14:51:	in the show notes so you can visually look at them. We're talking in current year about events

00:14:51 – 00:14:59:	in the past, but it's crucial to consider them as they were occurring, to consider what they knew

00:14:59 – 00:15:04:	at the time and then what's happened since then to bring them to our attention because Bonhoeffer

00:15:04 – 00:15:12:	died 80 years ago and a whole bunch of stuff has happened since then and he wasn't very important

00:15:12 – 00:15:17:	and then he became important. We're here to tell you today that the reason he became important was

00:15:17 – 00:15:24:	that the new world religion requires new martyrs to uphold the tenets of the new faith and that's

00:15:24 – 00:15:31:	what he accomplished. And as we go through the material in this episode, and this was already

00:15:31 – 00:15:38:	mentioned but it is worth repeating this to emphasize it, it is important to recognize

00:15:39 – 00:15:50:	a simple but vitally important philosophical fact. There is a difference between the term used to

00:15:50 – 00:15:56:	reference a thing and the thing itself. So for instance, the thing that we in English call a dog

00:15:57 – 00:16:03:	is not called a dog in French or Latin or German, they're different words in those languages.

00:16:04 – 00:16:10:	The term refers to the thing, the thing is distinct from the term. The same thing can occur

00:16:10 – 00:16:17:	in philosophy or theology and that is what we have throughout Bonhoeffer's writings.

00:16:18 – 00:16:24:	He uses terms that sound Christian. If you're a Lutheran in particular, there are some things,

00:16:24 – 00:16:30:	you're going to read it and go, I recognize all of these words, this sounds vaguely Christian.

00:16:31 – 00:16:36:	But you have to understand the way in which he is using the terms and you have to have

00:16:38 – 00:16:45:	really a better overhead, a 30,000 foot view of what he is doing, how he believes these things,

00:16:46 – 00:16:52:	what he thinks they mean. And so he'll say resurrection and you'll think okay that's a

00:16:52 – 00:16:58:	Christian term, well he denies the resurrection. He'll say crucifixion, he'll say okay that's

00:16:58 – 00:17:05:	a Christian term, well he calls it a myth. And that happens with all of these terms so you

00:17:05 – 00:17:13:	may hear a term from him that makes you think yes that's a term a Christian would use but it's not

00:17:13 – 00:17:19:	but it's not a Christian term when he's using it. Satan can use these terms too and he does

00:17:19 – 00:17:25:	all the time. Don't forget that when Satan confronted and attempted to tempt Christ,

00:17:25 – 00:17:32:	he used scripture, he used God's own words. It is possible to twist the things of God

00:17:32 – 00:17:38:	and make them no longer reference what they're meant to reference, no longer reference the

00:17:38 – 00:17:44:	actual Christian faith. It is vitally important to bear that in mind as we go through. We will of

00:17:44 – 00:17:51:	course highlight how he's using these terms, misusing these terms really but keep that in

00:17:51 – 00:17:57:	mind just because you hear a word that you recognize as being related to the Christian faith

00:17:57 – 00:18:02:	does not mean that it is being used in this context in a Christian way.

00:18:02 – 00:18:10:	And if you've taken our advice and have recently listened to or re-listened to the MLK Archeric

00:18:10 – 00:18:16:	Take Episode, all that sounds incredibly familiar because that's precisely what King did. As I said,

00:18:16 – 00:18:22:	the difference between King's approach and Bonhoeffer's approach is that King was stupid. He

00:18:22 – 00:18:27:	wasn't intelligent but his handlers made him understand that there were things that he couldn't

00:18:27 – 00:18:34:	say in public. So although the things that Bonhoeffer wrote about publicly as a theologian

00:18:35 – 00:18:40:	are exactly the same things that King was saying decades later because they got them

00:18:40 – 00:18:45:	from the same teachers, King was instructed, don't say this in public, don't say this stuff in the

00:18:45 – 00:18:51:	pulpit because you're not going to be able to get away with it. Bonhoeffer was able to wrap it up in

00:18:51 – 00:18:57:	enough Jesus dust that he was able to get away with it because he was a much smarter, much slipperier

00:18:57 – 00:19:03:	man. But the basics of what they believed were identical. As Corey said, like write down the

00:19:03 – 00:19:10:	list of things in the creeds that every Christian confesses are the things that Bonhoeffer denies.

00:19:11 – 00:19:15:	And the reason that's important when you're talking about someone who's presenting Christian

00:19:15 – 00:19:22:	theology is that it's one thing for someone to have a bad take on a particular subject.

00:19:22 – 00:19:27:	It's another thing entirely if all of their takes, whether they're good or bad,

00:19:27 – 00:19:33:	are built on a foundation of over-denial of the tenets of the faith. And that's what we have

00:19:33 – 00:19:39:	with Bonhoeffer. We have a man who overly denied the foundations of the Christian faith. And then

00:19:39 – 00:19:44:	he said stuff after that, the sounded sort of Christian. That is the nightmare scenario for

00:19:44 – 00:19:50:	someone who's not smart enough to see through it. So just as a first example, a few of the quotes

00:19:50 – 00:19:57:	we're going to do earlier on are from a book called Christ the Center. This is described as

00:19:57 – 00:20:03:	Bonhoeffer's kind of Christological Magnemopus. The important thing to note with this is that

00:20:03 – 00:20:09:	he didn't write this himself. Christ the Center is effectively table talks from his teaching

00:20:09 – 00:20:16:	in around 1933. So the authors of that book compiled all the notes from as many of the

00:20:16 – 00:20:21:	students as they could get ahold of and re-synthesized his talks and presentations on things.

00:20:22 – 00:20:27:	Now in the beginning of the book, and obviously something that we as Lutherans will point to

00:20:27 – 00:20:33:	clearly, Tishraiden or table talks are notoriously unreliable sources of information. Because

00:20:34 – 00:20:38:	it's hearsay. Someone said something and then someone else wrote it down and then they're

00:20:38 – 00:20:43:	giving it to another person and say, yeah, he said this. It's potentially reliable or unreliable,

00:20:43 – 00:20:50:	you can't necessarily weigh it. The reason that I give full credence to the spirit of the words

00:20:50 – 00:20:54:	that are presented here, and you may disregard them. I'm disclosing this up front. They were

00:20:54 – 00:21:01:	dealing with something that he did not expressly pen by his own hand. The reason I believe it fully

00:21:01 – 00:21:10:	is that Bonhoeffer was a disciple of Karl Barth, B-A-R-T-H. I call him Barth like

00:21:10 – 00:21:16:	John Candy's character from Spaceballs because he makes me puke. So much evil is downstream from

00:21:16 – 00:21:20:	Barth that I'm just going to call him that. Everything in this trial just deal with it.

00:21:20 – 00:21:25:	Corey's going to call him Barth because he's good at other languages. I don't care. The dude's

00:21:25 – 00:21:32:	name is Barth. Bonhoeffer was an acolyte and a disciple of Barth. He literally learned at his

00:21:33 – 00:21:41:	feet. He studied from him. He discussed with him the things that he's about to say here in

00:21:41 – 00:21:47:	Christ the center in these table talks are exactly the things that Barth was saying,

00:21:47 – 00:21:51:	and incidentally, they're the very same things that MLK picked up a couple decades later.

00:21:51 – 00:21:58:	So this is a perfect description of the beliefs of that day coming from this part of

00:21:58 – 00:22:06:	the so-called Christian theological discourse. Now, to us, what MLK called this was the

00:22:06 – 00:22:13:	liberal tradition. What it is is a full-on assault on Christianity. So just to disclose,

00:22:13 – 00:22:17:	he did not write these by his own hand. These are accounts second hand by witnesses.

00:22:18 – 00:22:23:	They're entirely consistent with his teacher and consistent with the things he said later on.

00:22:23 – 00:22:28:	So I'm going to read this just to know that it's not necessarily exactly verbatim what he said,

00:22:28 – 00:22:33:	but personally, I have no reason to doubt that this is not faithful because it's entirely

00:22:33 – 00:22:37:	consistent with the man, with his teacher, with his time, and with his beliefs for the rest of his

00:22:37 – 00:22:44:	life. So Christ in the center writes, strictly speaking, we should not talk of the incarnation

00:22:44 – 00:22:50:	but of the incarnate one. The former interest arises out of the question how the question how,

00:22:50 – 00:22:56:	for example, underlies the hypothesis of the virgin birth. Both historically and dogmatically,

00:22:56 – 00:23:01:	it can be questioned. The biblical witness is ambiguous. If the biblical witness gave

00:23:01 – 00:23:06:	clear evidence of the fact, then the dogmatic obscurity might not have been so important.

00:23:06 – 00:23:10:	The doctrine of the virgin birth is meant to express the incarnation of God,

00:23:10 – 00:23:15:	not only the fact of the incarnate one. But does it not fail at the decisive point of the

00:23:15 – 00:23:21:	incarnation, namely that in it Jesus has not become man just like us? The question remains

00:23:21 – 00:23:30:	open as and because it is already open in the Bible. So this is consistent with what MLK said,

00:23:31 – 00:23:36:	the virgin birth is a myth. He'll go on in some of these later quotes to talk expressly about

00:23:36 – 00:23:42:	myths. That was something that he got from Boltman, another one of King's inspirations and teachers.

00:23:42 – 00:23:48:	Boltman was very big on mythologizing scripture. In the episode we did early on,

00:23:48 – 00:23:55:	I mentioned previously about the clarity of scripture. Is it true or is it factual? Is it

00:23:55 – 00:24:01:	real? People play these word games in order to tie you in knots so that you don't, well,

00:24:01 – 00:24:09:	is it the incarnate Jesus or is it the incarnation? What does that even mean? What he does when he

00:24:09 – 00:24:13:	says these things is he's flatly denying the virgin birth. He's saying it's not in the Bible,

00:24:14 – 00:24:19:	which is a lie. It is a demonstrable lie that the virgin birth is not in the Bible. But

00:24:19 – 00:24:23:	this is what they were doing already. They were just tearing down scripture. And then on top of it,

00:24:24 – 00:24:29:	they say, oh, it doesn't even matter if it's real because we have the incarnate one. Well,

00:24:29 – 00:24:33:	if you deny the virgin birth and then you have something left over that you call the incarnate

00:24:33 – 00:24:41:	one, that's not the Messiah. That's what we're dealing with through all these quotes. They will

00:24:41 – 00:24:46:	take something, they will strip away the actual truthfulness of what's in scripture,

00:24:46 – 00:24:51:	and then leave something that, as Corey said, still they're using some of the same names that

00:24:51 – 00:24:56:	we Christians use for things, but they use them for other purposes. And so that's why I said this

00:24:56 – 00:25:01:	is tricky and it's dangerously deceptive how these men speak because if you're not paying

00:25:01 – 00:25:06:	incredibly close critical attention, you'll just gloss right over and say, that's fine. Jesus

00:25:06 – 00:25:11:	the incarnate one, Jesus was the incarnation. Yeah, I believe that. That's in the creed somewhere.

00:25:12 – 00:25:16:	It's only when you're critically looking at this stuff, just assuming that it's false and then

00:25:16 – 00:25:20:	trying to prove yourself wrong that you realize you can't prove yourself wrong. It's false. He's

00:25:20 – 00:25:27:	denying scripture. He's denying the virgin birth. And that itself, all by itself, isn't denial of

00:25:27 – 00:25:32:	Christianity, full stop. So if this quote were true and it was the only thing,

00:25:32 – 00:25:36:	that would be the end of the story. The man is not Christian. Part of the reason we're beginning

00:25:36 – 00:25:42:	here is that this is one of the more crystal clear examples of Barthes' theology coming through in

00:25:42 – 00:25:49:	his mouth and then him continuing it on ultimately to treason and attempted murder. That's the

00:25:49 – 00:25:53:	trajectory of a man who incidentally at the end of his life as we'll get to it. He stopped reading

00:25:53 – 00:25:59:	the Bible. He was effectively apostate and he more or less acknowledged it. But it began here

00:25:59 – 00:26:07:	with these denials of the creed. You never go immediately from getting one fact of the

00:26:07 – 00:26:12:	Christian faith wrong to apostasy. There's always a trajectory. So today we're going to make the

00:26:12 – 00:26:17:	case for him having gone through that trajectory regardless of where he began. Because as we see

00:26:17 – 00:26:23:	here, he's beginning with denial of the faith. For the record, I do think that calling him Barthes

00:26:23 – 00:26:30:	is fair, particularly considering there's a sort of contagion to vomiting for certain people where

00:26:30 – 00:26:34:	one person will vomit and another one will. That's kind of how it works with that theology.

00:26:35 – 00:26:39:	There's another linguistic point to make here and I know it seems like we're going to make some

00:26:39 – 00:26:49:	hyper technical points in this episode, but it's important. The word myth is not univocal. The word

00:26:49 – 00:26:56:	myth does not have one meaning. The word myth can be used in a good or a bad way with regard to

00:26:56 – 00:27:07:	theology. You can call Christianity a mythos and still be an actual Christian. Now, most theologians,

00:27:07 – 00:27:13:	most philosophers who are sound Christians will not do that. That is a specific, specialized,

00:27:13 – 00:27:18:	technical sense of the term myth or mythos, whichever one you want to use. Those are interchangeable.

00:27:20 – 00:27:28:	That is not what Bonhoeffer is doing. Because he in other places in his writing explicitly

00:27:28 – 00:27:35:	contrasts myth and history. He does not identify them. He does not consider them as overlapping.

00:27:35 – 00:27:42:	He considers them distinct things and he considers myth to be unreliable, to be untrue,

00:27:43 – 00:27:52:	to be made up. One of the examples he uses is the partly former, partly still Japanese belief

00:27:52 – 00:27:57:	that the Tenno, otherwise known as the Emperor of Japan, was descended directly from a goddess.

00:27:58 – 00:28:05:	He uses that as an example of myth and contrasts that sort of eastern belief in the descent

00:28:06 – 00:28:14:	of their kings, their emperors from gods, as myth from western history. So when he says myth,

00:28:14 – 00:28:21:	he means it didn't happen. So the word myth in his mouth, coming from his pen,

00:28:22 – 00:28:28:	is calling whatever is a myth untrue, saying it is not historical fact, it is not empirical,

00:28:28 – 00:28:34:	and elsewhere in his writing he constantly makes claims about Christianity not being

00:28:34 – 00:28:40:	empirical truth. And this again from Bart, in large part, because he makes a distinction

00:28:40 – 00:28:46:	between the empirical and the religious, and says that the religious doesn't necessarily

00:28:47 – 00:28:55:	correspond to the empirical, and calls the Old Testament a series of religious truths,

00:28:55 – 00:29:01:	of religious claims, and in so claiming he says that they are not empirical.

00:29:02 – 00:29:09:	And this is one of the ways that we wind up with a rejection of apologetics from men like Bart and

00:29:09 – 00:29:17:	Bonhofer and others, because they don't believe that religious truth corresponds to empirical

00:29:17 – 00:29:25:	truth, and apologetics relies on that. But we also see here, just at the outset, the first

00:29:25 – 00:29:32:	real chunk of his writing with which we're dealing, not even a very big one, his rejection of dogma

00:29:32 – 00:29:40:	and doctrine, and this is throughout his writing, he basically says that Christianity is not a series

00:29:40 – 00:29:47:	of dogmas or doctrinal claims, which it is. Let's be clear here, Christianity makes truth claims.

00:29:48 – 00:29:55:	Christianity is a series of truth claims. If those claims are false, Christianity is false.

00:29:57 – 00:30:01:	He's saying that doesn't matter, doctrine doesn't matter, dogma doesn't matter.

00:30:01 – 00:30:09:	I have a quote here. Before we started recording, we're discussing potentially using

00:30:11 – 00:30:15:	a generated voice to read some of this, because to some degree, I don't even want these things in

00:30:15 – 00:30:21:	my own voice. And I'm sure woe feels the same way because of the evil of some of the things we're

00:30:21 – 00:30:26:	going to read in this episode. But I guess in an age of AI, it hardly matters. There's enough of my

00:30:26 – 00:30:32:	voice out there that someone could synthesize it if he were so inclined. But on the topic of

00:30:32 – 00:30:42:	dogma or doctrine, this is a quote from this one is from an outline for a book that he sent in one

00:30:42 – 00:30:50:	of his letters. Jesus's being for others is the experience of transcendence. Only through this

00:30:50 – 00:30:57:	liberation from self, through this being for others unto death, do omnipotence, omniscience,

00:30:57 – 00:31:02:	and omnipresence come into being. Faith is participating in this being of Jesus,

00:31:02 – 00:31:09:	becoming human cross resurrection. Our relationship to God is no religious relationship

00:31:09 – 00:31:15:	to some highest, most powerful, and best being imaginable. That is no genuine transcendence.

00:31:15 – 00:31:22:	Instead, our relationship to God is a new life in being there for others, through participation in

00:31:22 – 00:31:28:	the being of Jesus. The transcendent is not the infinite unattainable task, but the neighbor within

00:31:28 – 00:31:34:	reach in any given situation. What do we really believe? I mean believe in such a way that our

00:31:34 – 00:31:41:	lives depend on it. The problem of the Apostles Creed written as a question, what must I believe,

00:31:41 – 00:31:46:	wrong question. Outdated controversies, especially the inter-confessional ones,

00:31:46 – 00:31:50:	the differences between Lutheran and Reformed, and to some extent Roman Catholic,

00:31:50 – 00:31:55:	are no longer real. Of course they can be revived with passion at any time,

00:31:55 – 00:32:00:	but they are no longer convincing. There is no proof for this. One must simply be bold enough

00:32:00 – 00:32:06:	to start from this. The only thing we can prove is that the Christian biblical faith does not

00:32:06 – 00:32:12:	live or depend on such differences. Conclusions, the Church is Church only when it is there for

00:32:12 – 00:32:19:	others. As a first step, it must give away all its property to those in need. There is such a

00:32:19 – 00:32:24:	collection of problems with this, and I didn't even read the whole passage because it's a couple

00:32:24 – 00:32:31:	full pages. It's difficult even to go through or summarize them in a quick fashion, but

00:32:31 – 00:32:39:	note how he starts off. It's almost Buddhist. Liberation from self. That's not what Christianity is.

00:32:40 – 00:32:49:	God created you to be the person you are. Yes, you are currently in a fallen state, and as a

00:32:49 – 00:32:55:	Christian you will be perfected in the resurrection, but that is becoming more yourself. It is not

00:32:55 – 00:33:06:	becoming less yourself. God did not make you wrong. You are what God wants you to be. Again,

00:33:06 – 00:33:16:	yes, fallen state, imperfect currently. Christianity is not a giving up of self. It is not in the

00:33:16 – 00:33:22:	Buddhist Eastern sense a denial of self. It is a denial of self in the sense of take up your cross

00:33:22 – 00:33:29:	and follow me, but that's not what he's speaking about here. This is liberation from self. This is

00:33:29 – 00:33:33:	Eastern philosophy being imported into Christianity, and we see this constantly

00:33:34 – 00:33:39:	in men from this era who are of the liberal school because there was an infatuation with

00:33:39 – 00:33:44:	Eastern philosophy, and he was very familiar with philosophy. We see that throughout his writing,

00:33:44 – 00:33:50:	mostly continental, but also Eastern. But the next part I actually find more interesting

00:33:50 – 00:33:56:	when he says that it's only through this being for others that omnipotence, omniscience, and

00:33:56 – 00:34:04:	omnipresence come into being. This is a blunt denial of the nature of God, which is, as we have

00:34:04 – 00:34:10:	highlighted in previous episodes, a denial of the nature of God, a denial of the attributes of God

00:34:10 – 00:34:15:	is a denial of God because God is his nature, his attributes are his nature. These are interchangeable.

00:34:15 – 00:34:20:	We speak of them as if they were parts because we're human and it's one of our limitations.

00:34:21 – 00:34:30:	He's denying God here. He is simply outright rejecting the reality of God. A Christian cannot

00:34:30 – 00:34:35:	write this, at least not and remain Christian, which isn't surprising because, as was mentioned,

00:34:35 – 00:34:41:	his trajectory was downward, was hellward at the end of his life. He stopped reading Scripture.

00:34:41 – 00:34:47:	He stopped believing in some of the bits of Christianity in which he believed at some point

00:34:47 – 00:34:52:	in the past. He became more and more apostate as he went on. And you see that where he calls

00:34:52 – 00:34:58:	the Apostles Creed a problem. Literally, words that is a question mark, the problem of the Apostles

00:34:58 – 00:35:05:	Creed. Christians don't view the creeds as a problem. Christians view the creeds as a summary

00:35:05 – 00:35:12:	statement of our faith. And as someone who claimed to be Lutheran, he was bound to believe that every

00:35:12 – 00:35:17:	word of the creeds is true. It's part of our confession. Not that the confession, of course,

00:35:17 – 00:35:26:	meant anything to this man. And then it's in that same paragraph where we see this denial, outright,

00:35:26 – 00:35:31:	blunt denial of the importance of dogma and doctrine, of the importance of truth.

00:35:32 – 00:35:36:	Because that is what is actually at stake. When you deny that doctrine is important,

00:35:37 – 00:35:42:	if you say that the differences between the Lutherans and the Reformed don't matter,

00:35:43 – 00:35:52:	or between the Reformed and the Romanus, or the East, and Lutherans, whatever groups you

00:35:52 – 00:35:56:	happen to pick, if you say that those differences don't matter, you're saying truth doesn't matter.

00:35:57 – 00:36:05:	Because there are only three options. If Lutherans claim A, the Reformed claim B,

00:36:05 – 00:36:15:	then if A is right, B is wrong. If B is right, A is wrong. And of course, the third option is,

00:36:15 – 00:36:22:	both are wrong, and there's a third option, C. But you cannot have these differences not matter,

00:36:22 – 00:36:28:	because these are about eternal things. This is about truth. And the truth matters, because the

00:36:28 – 00:36:34:	truth is one of the attributes of God. It is part of his nature. But of course, elsewhere,

00:36:34 – 00:36:40:	in many places, Bonhoeffer denies that truth matters. The truth is even a transcendent thing.

00:36:41 – 00:36:45:	And he full well knew what he was saying, because he was familiar with the philosophy

00:36:45 – 00:36:52:	that deals with the transcendentals. He repeatedly, in his writing, denies God.

00:36:53 – 00:36:58:	That is not something that a Christian can do. It is not something that a man who claims to be

00:36:58 – 00:37:04:	Christian can do and remain Christian. This was one of those passages that I found interesting,

00:37:04 – 00:37:10:	because small pieces of it echo, as I said, things that you and I say on Stone Choir. And I

00:37:10 – 00:37:17:	think this is where the origins of those beliefs come from diametrically opposed places. When MLK

00:37:17 – 00:37:24:	and Bonhoeffer are saying, forget this doctrinal stuff, we just need to focus on neighbor and focus

00:37:24 – 00:37:32:	on the liberation theology version of best life now. It's basically a manifestation of Tick and

00:37:32 – 00:37:37:	Alarm, which we talked about, I think, in the second episode of the Three Parts on Jews.

00:37:39 – 00:37:45:	When Corey and I specifically talk about care for neighbor, love of neighbor, love of family,

00:37:45 – 00:37:54:	respect and love and preservation of nation that is race, it is not self-referential. It's

00:37:54 – 00:38:01:	obedience to God. It is looking up and looking at Scripture. It's looking to see what God has

00:38:01 – 00:38:06:	revealed to us, what he's telling us to do as our Creator, and then following through,

00:38:06 – 00:38:11:	because we acknowledge that we are creatures. The distinction between the approach that we

00:38:11 – 00:38:19:	take, which is a Christian approach of living a Christian life in view of heaven, of God's promises,

00:38:19 – 00:38:28:	and of God's commands, versus the Barth and MLK and Bonhoeffer view, is that they basically

00:38:28 – 00:38:34:	say, God is going to be whatever we feel He is. We have this feeling that God is this good stuff.

00:38:34 – 00:38:39:	Let's make the good stuff happen now. As we're going to get to in some of the quotes here in a

00:38:39 – 00:38:47:	little bit, he eventually gets to the point that he's like, we don't need God anymore in theology

00:38:47 – 00:38:53:	in order to have Christianity. We don't need to call Christianity. Marcus Christ is gone,

00:38:53 – 00:38:58:	but we still have all the stuff that God wanted for us. That's exact opposite of what Cori and I

00:38:58 – 00:39:04:	believe. That's exact opposite of what Christianity teaches. That's not Stonequire theology versus

00:39:04 – 00:39:09:	Bonhoeffer theology. It's literally Christianity versus the satanic destruction of things that were

00:39:09 – 00:39:16:	good for the sake of creating a world where nothing good can ever again exist. It struck me

00:39:16 – 00:39:20:	that again, this is one of those things that it sounds a little bit like us if you're not paying

00:39:20 – 00:39:26:	attention to the sources, but it's very clear that we're on exactly opposite sides of these questions.

00:39:27 – 00:39:33:	There's another quote here that's also from Christ in the Center from 1933 where he flat

00:39:33 – 00:39:41:	out denies that Jesus was perfect. He says, here it is necessary to understand what the

00:39:41 – 00:39:47:	likeness of flesh can mean. What is meant in the real image of human flesh? His flesh is our

00:39:47 – 00:39:52:	flesh. It is of the very nature of our flesh that we are tempted to sin and self-will. Christ

00:39:52 – 00:39:58:	has taken upon himself all that flesh is there to, but to what extent does he differ from us?

00:39:58 – 00:40:04:	First, not at all. He is man as we are. He is tempted in all points like we are. Yet much

00:40:04 – 00:40:10:	more dangerously than we are. Also in his flesh was the law which is contrary to God's will.

00:40:10 – 00:40:16:	He was not the perfect good. At all times he stood in conflict. He did things which at least

00:40:16 – 00:40:23:	from outside looked like sin. He became angry. He was harsh to his mother. He escaped from his

00:40:23 – 00:40:28:	enemies. He broke the law of his people. He stirred up revolt against the rulers and religious men

00:40:28 – 00:40:34:	of his country. He must have appeared a sinner in the eyes of men. Beyond recognition, he stepped

00:40:34 – 00:40:40:	into man's sinful way of existence. Simply stating the sinlessness of Jesus fails if it is based upon

00:40:40 – 00:40:47:	the observable acts of Jesus. His acts take place in the likeness of flesh. They are not sinless,

00:40:47 – 00:40:54:	but ambiguous. One can and should see both good and failure in them. When a person wishes to be

00:40:54 – 00:41:02:	incognito, one wrongs him by saying, I have both seen you and seen through your Kierkegaard. We

00:41:02 – 00:41:07:	should not therefore deduce the sinlessness of Jesus out of his deeds. The assertion of the

00:41:07 – 00:41:13:	sinlessness of Jesus in his deeds is not an evident moral judgment, but an assertion of faith

00:41:13 – 00:41:18:	that it is he who performs these ambiguous actions, he it is who is eternally without sin.

00:41:19 – 00:41:24:	Faith confesses that the one who is tempted is the victor, the one who struggles is perfected,

00:41:24 – 00:41:30:	the one unrighteous, one is righteous, the one who is rejected is the holy one. Even the sinlessness

00:41:30 – 00:41:40:	of Jesus is incognito. Blessed is he who is not offended in me. This is a tremendously dangerous

00:41:40 – 00:41:47:	quote because he is accusing Jesus of personal sin, which is something that we find in modern

00:41:47 – 00:41:52:	scholars today, saying that Jesus actually sinned, but then just sort of brushing away and saying,

00:41:52 – 00:41:58:	well, because he was God, he wasn't really sinned and we can't understand. He gives a list of Jesus

00:41:58 – 00:42:03:	sins in his life and says, well, yeah, I'm sure he had to do that because he became sin for us,

00:42:03 – 00:42:09:	which is a quote from Scripture. The problem is that, again, this goes back to one of the

00:42:10 – 00:42:15:	rank heresies that we find even among Lutheran theologians today, which is that when Jesus

00:42:15 – 00:42:21:	was tempted to sin, that was an internal temptation that he really wanted to sin,

00:42:21 – 00:42:27:	but because he didn't actually do it, he didn't sin. That's blasphemy. When Jesus was tempted,

00:42:27 – 00:42:34:	it was external. We've talked about this before. When I want to do something bad that is a part of

00:42:34 – 00:42:43:	my nature, the temptation is internal because my evil self, the unregenerate self, desires to do

00:42:43 – 00:42:48:	that, which is contrary to my regenerate nature. I see something. I want to do it. I'm tempted to do

00:42:48 – 00:42:55:	it. My regenerate nature gives me the power to resist that temptation and not to follow through

00:42:55 – 00:43:02:	with the sin, but the point to be made is that the desire to sin is itself sin. That is internal

00:43:02 – 00:43:08:	temptation. There are also external temptations. There are some things where a fleeting thought

00:43:08 – 00:43:13:	pops into my head and I'm like, where did that come from? Attempting me to do something, it's

00:43:13 – 00:43:19:	the exact opposite of anything that's in my interest. We all have these fleeting thoughts

00:43:19 – 00:43:23:	where something just pops in your head and you're like, why would I think that? That's horrible.

00:43:24 – 00:43:29:	That is external temptation. That is the devil messing with us. It doesn't happen constantly.

00:43:29 – 00:43:34:	It shouldn't. If it is happening to you constantly, you need to pray for help and for protection from

00:43:34 – 00:43:40:	the Lord and for forgiveness from a life that is putting you in a position where there are constant

00:43:40 – 00:43:48:	external temptations, but the internal temptation is according to our sinful nature. The external

00:43:48 – 00:43:55:	temptation is Jesus faced with Satan in the wilderness where he's saying, eat, jump, worship.

00:43:55 – 00:44:02:	Those were external temptations. Jesus was tempted because Satan tempted him. Jesus was not tempted

00:44:03 – 00:44:08:	to do what Satan wanted. There was never any possibility that Jesus was going to bow down

00:44:08 – 00:44:14:	before Satan. It wasn't like he considered it for a fleeting moment and then decided better of it.

00:44:14 – 00:44:19:	That would be the internal temptation that you or I might face. Even with resolute faith,

00:44:19 – 00:44:23:	if Satan appeared to one of us and said, I'll give you the whole world, all you have to do is bow down

00:44:23 – 00:44:29:	before me, we would have to consider it. No matter how fleetingly, there would still be a

00:44:29 – 00:44:35:	consideration in our minds because that would be not only Satan tempting us, but us being tempted by

00:44:35 – 00:44:40:	it internally. That sounds like a pretty good deal. I would like the whole world. That's something

00:44:40 – 00:44:48:	that appeals to our vanity, appeals to our covetousness. Satan could not do that to Jesus

00:44:48 – 00:44:55:	because Jesus did not have personal sin. He did not have original sin. When he took our sins on,

00:44:55 – 00:45:01:	on the cross, it was something external that he took into himself. It's not the same as him

00:45:01 – 00:45:07:	struggling with sin, which is exactly what Bonhoeffer is accusing him of here. This is

00:45:08 – 00:45:13:	blasphemy. This is denying that God is God. This is saying that Jesus could sin, that Jesus did sin.

00:45:14 – 00:45:18:	If Bonhoeffer's Jesus sinned, then Bonhoeffer's Jesus isn't God.

00:45:19 – 00:45:25:	In Lutheran theology and probably also in some others, this is the distinction between the old

00:45:25 – 00:45:34:	Adam, which is inherited sin, original sin, you can use either term, and the new man in Christ.

00:45:34 – 00:45:41:	Now, just so we have something read in this episode that is actually sound and good, instead of what

00:45:41 – 00:45:47:	we'll be reading for most of the episode, I'd like to read just the end of Romans 7, which

00:45:47 – 00:45:50:	highlights exactly this point. This is the point we're making.

00:46:04 – 00:46:11:	Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good,

00:46:12 – 00:46:18:	so now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me, for I know that nothing good

00:46:18 – 00:46:24:	dwells in me that is in my flesh, for I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability

00:46:24 – 00:46:31:	to carry it out, for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

00:46:32 – 00:46:37:	Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me,

00:46:38 – 00:46:43:	so I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand,

00:46:43 – 00:46:49:	for I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law

00:46:49 – 00:46:54:	waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my

00:46:54 – 00:47:01:	members, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death, thanks be to God

00:47:01 – 00:47:08:	through Jesus Christ our Lord, so then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my

00:47:08 – 00:47:20:	flesh I serve the law of sin. This is summarized in Reformation Theology as the simile. We are

00:47:20 – 00:47:29:	simultaneously saint and sinner, sanctified and sinful. Because as long as we live in this world,

00:47:29 – 00:47:35:	we will continue to be beset by original sin, which leads to those internal temptations,

00:47:35 – 00:47:41:	not just external. Christ again, had only the external temptation, only Satan standing there,

00:47:41 – 00:47:46:	tempting him. No internal temptation, that is something we have because we are fallen.

00:47:46 – 00:47:54:	And so that is why Paul here speaking, yes, regenerate Paul speaking says that he continues to

00:47:54 – 00:47:59:	struggle with original sin, because he was still a fallen human being living in this world.

00:48:00 – 00:48:04:	That's not something that you eventually reach a point in this life

00:48:04 – 00:48:08:	where original sin just disappears, you no longer have it. Yes, through the process of

00:48:08 – 00:48:13:	sanctification, some of these temptations will be put to death, which is good.

00:48:13 – 00:48:19:	Daily dying, as it were, and coming alive again in your baptism as a Christian.

00:48:20 – 00:48:25:	But it will not all disappear in this life. That is, for the next life, that is something

00:48:25 – 00:48:30:	that happens in the resurrection. The last quotation I want to read from those table

00:48:30 – 00:48:40:	talks is a rejection of the resurrection. Bonhoeffer says, between humiliation and exaltation

00:48:40 – 00:48:46:	lies oppressively the stark historical fact of the empty tomb. What is the meaning of the news

00:48:46 – 00:48:52:	of the empty tomb before the news of the resurrection? Is it the deciding fact of Christology?

00:48:52 – 00:48:59:	Was it really empty? Is it the visible evidence penetrating the incognito of the sonship of Jesus

00:48:59 – 00:49:06:	opened everyone and therefore making faith superfluous? If it was not empty, it is then Christ

00:49:06 – 00:49:13:	not risen in our faith futile. If it was not empty, it is then Christ not risen in our faith futile.

00:49:13 – 00:49:18:	It looks as though our faith in the resurrection were bound up with the news of the empty tomb.

00:49:18 – 00:49:24:	Is our faith then ultimately only faith in the empty tomb? This is and remains a final

00:49:24 – 00:49:29:	stumbling block which the believer in Christ must learn to live with in one way or another.

00:49:29 – 00:49:35:	Empty or not empty, it remains a stumbling block. We cannot be sure of its historicity.

00:49:35 – 00:49:40:	The Bible itself shows this stumbling block when it makes clear how hard it was to prove

00:49:40 – 00:49:46:	that the disciples had not stolen the body. Even here we cannot escape the realm of ambiguity.

00:49:46 – 00:49:52:	We cannot find a way around it. Even in the testimony of Scripture, Jesus enters in a form

00:49:52 – 00:49:58:	which is a stumbling block. Even as the risen one, he does not lift his incognito. He will lift it

00:49:58 – 00:50:04:	only when he returns in glory. Then the incarnate one will no longer be the humiliated one. Then

00:50:04 – 00:50:10:	the decision over faith or unbelief is already taken. Then the humanity of God is really and now

00:50:10 – 00:50:19:	only the glorifying of God. Again, he's playing these word games that we've warned against.

00:50:19 – 00:50:26:	This big brained garbage where these guys will come along and they'll just vomit word salad at you.

00:50:27 – 00:50:33:	You're not sure what happened, but your faith is undermined as a result of it. The uncertainty

00:50:33 – 00:50:38:	in the ambiguity, which is a word he directly uses, he says, it's ambiguous. Did Jesus rise from

00:50:38 – 00:50:45:	the grave? There's no, we can't be sure of its historicity. Another direct denial of the creeds.

00:50:45 – 00:50:50:	Another direct denial of Scripture. I don't know if Jesus rose from the dead. Who knows where his

00:50:50 – 00:50:56:	body went? That's not the important part. And this is why Bonhoeffer is able to talk about

00:50:56 – 00:51:00:	these things when King had to avoid them. Because King wasn't smart enough to say,

00:51:00 – 00:51:04:	well, it doesn't really matter. The virgin birth doesn't really matter. The resurrection of the

00:51:04 – 00:51:09:	dead doesn't really matter. He denied them in his papers because that's what he had gotten from Barf

00:51:09 – 00:51:16:	and Boltman and these other demons. But he didn't know how to provide the end then. So when he went

00:51:16 – 00:51:21:	to his audience in preaching, so-called, he just left this stuff out because he didn't have the

00:51:21 – 00:51:27:	chops. Bonhoeffer is dangerous because he basically says, did Jesus rise from the grave? I don't know.

00:51:27 – 00:51:33:	It doesn't matter. He's coming back on the last day anyway. So why worry about the historicity

00:51:33 – 00:51:42:	of this Bible stuff? That's the whole shooting match. If you can get someone to deny the creed

00:51:42 – 00:51:47:	and say, oh, but it doesn't matter, Jesus is coming back anyway. That last part is true. Jesus

00:51:47 – 00:51:53:	is coming back anyway. And when he returns to judge the quick and the dead, he will find you guilty

00:51:53 – 00:51:59:	of all of your sins because you've rejected the God who sacrificed on the cross to forgive them in

00:51:59 – 00:52:05:	the first place. The reconciliation provided on the cross to all men is not given to those then

00:52:05 – 00:52:10:	who deny it. The price was paid, but if you say, I don't want that credit, I'm going to do it myself,

00:52:11 – 00:52:16:	when Jesus comes back, he's like, okay, here's the bill and you're going to spend a turn and he

00:52:16 – 00:52:26:	paying it in hell. So this tricky stuff where it sounds kind of confusing, like we said, he's a smart

00:52:26 – 00:52:32:	guy. He's writing this stuff in a manner and speaking in a manner that will confuse most people.

00:52:32 – 00:52:38:	As Corey was saying earlier, as we've warned, when it's a reason that we've been using the

00:52:38 – 00:52:43:	phrase all along, Jesus dust and Jesus butter, these guys will slather on the things that sound

00:52:43 – 00:52:48:	Christian to you and then say, oh, but we can't be sure the historicity of the resurrection.

00:52:49 – 00:52:54:	Because you swallowed their bait and went down the path with them, that they're actually talking

00:52:54 – 00:52:59:	about the one true God, by the time they get to the point to say, I don't know if the tomb was empty

00:52:59 – 00:53:04:	or not, I don't know where the body went, but don't worry, it doesn't matter. Your brain is just going

00:53:04 – 00:53:11:	to skip over the tomb was an empty or they stole the body and hit it and just say, well, he's talking

00:53:11 – 00:53:16:	about Jesus and he says Jesus coming back on the last day. So the rest must be Christian and I'm just

00:53:16 – 00:53:20:	not going to worry too much about it because I'm not really sure what the guy said. That is a trap

00:53:20 – 00:53:26:	for your soul. And that's why these guys are so deadly. And that's why some of the worst men in

00:53:26 – 00:53:35:	religion today love Bonhoeffer because he provides an excuse for them to deny anything they want.

00:53:36 – 00:53:43:	It's not that Bonhoeffer's theology is providing a script for a separate religion. He's acting as

00:53:43 – 00:53:50:	a solvent against the very foundations of the Christian faith and then leaving this goo behind

00:53:50 – 00:53:56:	that can be reshaped by whoever comes along to form whatever new religion they want. And the thing

00:53:56 – 00:54:00:	that they're going to have in common is it's going to be loving and it's going to be neighborly and

00:54:00 – 00:54:05:	there will only be nice noises and there will only be clean words and no one will ever be unhappy.

00:54:06 – 00:54:10:	Because they've achieved perfection in this life because that's what God would have wanted.

00:54:12 – 00:54:17:	That's what always happens with all these guys. And whenever they talk about Jesus incidentally,

00:54:18 – 00:54:24:	no longer can be the Jesus of the creeds and confessions because that Jesus has very particular

00:54:25 – 00:54:32:	facts in history. God was born a man. God died a man. God was resurrected a man. God ascended

00:54:32 – 00:54:38:	into heaven a man. All of those are true. And if you doubt or deny any of them, you no longer

00:54:38 – 00:54:45:	have the true God and anything else you do from that point on is meaningless noise. So these

00:54:45 – 00:54:51:	quotes are tricky and they're subtle. It's worth going back and listening to them or not. I mean,

00:54:51 – 00:54:57:	you know, I've spent a couple weeks now reading through this crap and it's vile and it's partly

00:54:57 – 00:55:04:	vile because you have to have your guard up to such an extensive degree to see the trick that's

00:55:04 – 00:55:10:	being played. And it's not that we're being unfair. It's that when we look at the rest of the things

00:55:10 – 00:55:15:	that men like this guy say, in the context of these confessions, denying the virgin birth,

00:55:15 – 00:55:20:	denying that Jesus was sinless and therefore God, denying that he was bodily resurrected.

00:55:20 – 00:55:24:	When you strip away all those things, you're left with a false religion. But it still looks and

00:55:24 – 00:55:29:	sounds in some places like the one that we claim to hold. And that's where the destruction of our

00:55:29 – 00:55:34:	faith is coming into play. I have to say, Jesus' butter really sounds like something I should be

00:55:34 – 00:55:41:	able to go into a restaurant here in the South in order. And I'm a little disappointed that I have

00:55:41 – 00:55:46:	never seen another menu. But at the same time, I feel I could be a little sacrilegious. Maybe we

00:55:46 – 00:55:53:	shouldn't do that. But Bonhoeffer, in that quote that you read, really admits perhaps a little

00:55:53 – 00:55:59:	more than he intends, or perhaps he was intentionally letting the mask slip for the attentive reader.

00:56:00 – 00:56:05:	Because when you hear what he said there, you should think of several verses in Scripture,

00:56:06 – 00:56:12:	one of which is a verse from 1 Corinthians. For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom.

00:56:12 – 00:56:19:	But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and folly to Greeks. But to those who

00:56:19 – 00:56:25:	are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

00:56:27 – 00:56:36:	If he is saying that Christ, as he appears in Scripture, is a stumbling block for him,

00:56:37 – 00:56:42:	which is what he's saying. He's saying that Christ is a stumbling block for the kind of

00:56:42 – 00:56:48:	Christian that he is. Well, he's saying he's not a Christian.

00:56:49 – 00:56:54:	Because Scripture speaks of Christ being a stumbling block for the unbeliever.

00:56:55 – 00:56:57:	Christ is not a stumbling block for the believer.

00:57:00 – 00:57:06:	Christ is your Lord and Savior. He's not a stumbling block. He doesn't cause you to trip and fall.

00:57:06 – 00:57:15:	That is how he is described for those who refuse to believe, and that's why he is a stumbling block

00:57:15 – 00:57:22:	to the Jews. So he's admitting here, again, as he does frequently, he is not a Christian.

00:57:23 – 00:57:30:	He is something else entirely. We'll close this particular section of this episode with

00:57:30 – 00:57:35:	a short quote from him, which almost doesn't need explanation because it's so egregious.

00:57:36 – 00:57:42:	But here it is at its entirety. The New Testament contains no ethical precept,

00:57:42 – 00:57:46:	which we may or even can adopt literally.

00:57:48 – 00:57:53:	This appears many times in his writing, in his writings, in various forms,

00:57:54 – 00:58:01:	where he outright denies that there are actual principles or ethical rules in Scripture. And

00:58:01 – 00:58:07:	in other places he says that God is arbitrary, because he says that the ethical principles

00:58:07 – 00:58:13:	that we see in Scripture aren't universal, aren't eternal, they are simply tools in God's hands,

00:58:13 – 00:58:20:	His words, that He will use and then abandon when He is done with them. Which, again, is a denial of

00:58:20 – 00:58:26:	the nature of God. It's saying that God is changing, that God is mutable, it's saying that God isn't

00:58:26 – 00:58:30:	truth. You cannot be a Christian and say these sorts of things.

00:58:32 – 00:58:37:	And Scripture is, for the record, full of ethical precepts that you can, in fact,

00:58:37 – 00:58:44:	adopt literally. Scripture is very clear about what they are, and that they are eternal.

00:58:44 – 00:58:49:	We've gone over this before, the different kinds of law in Scripture. There's the moral law,

00:58:49 – 00:58:57:	which is binding for all men at all places, all times. There is the civil law, which was

00:58:58 – 00:59:04:	binding on Old Testament Israel and is at least persuasive for us today, because it is God saying,

00:59:04 – 00:59:10:	this is permissible to do in reaction to this other thing. And so that is the

00:59:11 – 00:59:16:	scope of what is permissible given by God in the civil law. And then there's the ceremonial law,

00:59:16 – 00:59:21:	which does not apply to modern Christians. That was for Old Testament Israel to set them apart

00:59:21 – 00:59:27:	from their neighbors. And so, yes, you're allowed to eat shellfish or wear clothing with multiple

00:59:27 – 00:59:35:	kinds of cloth, etc. Those things, those gotchas that Internet atheists so love are complete nonsense

00:59:35 – 00:59:42:	if you actually understand the nature of what is uppercase law, uppercase L law, or lowercase

00:59:42 – 00:59:49:	L law in the Old Testament. So go ahead and wrap your shrimp in bacon. Go wild, have fun.

00:59:51 – 00:59:54:	Just don't wear polyester underwear because that kills your T levels.

00:59:55 – 00:59:59:	That's actually the one we should keep. We should just have a sort of a modern version

59:59 – 01:00:04
for Christians of the multiple types of cloth one. It's don't wear synthetics because they're

01:00:04 – 01:00:08:	horrible for you. At least don't wear them around sensitive parts of the body that absorb them.

01:00:09 – 01:00:13:	Yeah, no seed oils. We need a new set of Levitical laws.

01:00:15 – 01:00:20:	So the next set of quotes that we want to get into, most of them are going to come from

01:00:21 – 01:00:27:	Bonn Offer's letters from prison. He had been in prison at this point as part of a plot to murder

01:00:27 – 01:00:35:	the Chancellor of Germany. We should note, though, before we mention that he, at this point, well,

01:00:35 – 01:00:42:	it depends on which point in the letters because initially he was in prison because

01:00:43 – 01:00:48:	he was well, he wasn't really suspected it was known that he was engaging in corruption with

01:00:48 – 01:00:54:	regard to his military office, which that is worth noting. He was working in the military

01:00:54 – 01:01:00:	intelligence of National Socialist Germany. He got into that by another gentleman. I don't

01:01:00 – 01:01:04:	think I'll bother with his name because he's not really relevant to this episode.

01:01:05 – 01:01:11:	Also not a good man, but he was part of the resistance movement, and he got Bonn Offer to

01:01:11 – 01:01:18:	be involved in that. And so he wound up basically running messages, helping with communication,

01:01:18 – 01:01:28:	including across enemy lines to the Allies later on. And so he was using his government office

01:01:29 – 01:01:36:	to directly oppose the government, perhaps not quite rising to the level of treason until

01:01:36 – 01:01:42:	he started communicating with belligerence, of course, then it was treason. And then he compounded

01:01:42 – 01:01:50:	it by becoming involved in an assassination plot. So initially he was only held in basically a

01:01:50 – 01:01:57:	standard prison in Tegel in Berlin. I believe, yes, in Berlin. I've actually seen one of the

01:01:57 – 01:02:03:	locations, but he was then later on moved to one of the concentration camps when it became

01:02:03 – 01:02:08:	clear that he was involved in the assassination plot. And so many of the letters we see initially,

01:02:08 – 01:02:13:	because he was just allowed to write freely while he was in the normal prison, he could receive

01:02:13 – 01:02:20:	visitors, his fiance came and met with him, his parents came and met with him, he received packages,

01:02:20 – 01:02:26:	he was given obviously plenty of ink and paper. And so you have to bear in mind just a little

01:02:26 – 01:02:33:	bit of the timeline and that background information that he was actually involved in the military

01:02:33 – 01:02:41:	intelligence at the time. And so he was effectively acting as a spy and became a traitor.

01:02:44 – 01:02:51:	And that's why the intro that we did relating this episode to the prior episodes in the history

01:02:51 – 01:02:58:	of World War II, if you believe the current historic narrative, then sure, I mean, every

01:02:58 – 01:03:05:	Christian obviously would betray Germany because betraying Germany was service to God. That's

01:03:05 – 01:03:11:	literally what we're told today. The only good Germans were the ones who betrayed the government

01:03:11 – 01:03:19:	because the government was evil. So that's the dividing line. That's the moral line that exists.

01:03:19 – 01:03:22:	And it's a lens through which everything that we read about in these periods

01:03:23 – 01:03:28:	must be read, must be viewed. You cannot understand anything without looking

01:03:29 – 01:03:36:	in one direction or the other through that lens. Either the German government in 1943 was evil,

01:03:36 – 01:03:41:	or it was rightful. And if it was evil, then there's one set of rules. And if it was the

01:03:41 – 01:03:46:	rightful government, then there's another set of rules. So we're not going to revisit what we

01:03:46 – 01:03:53:	said a few weeks ago about the Holocaust, but the reason that he is held up as a hero today

01:03:53 – 01:04:00:	is because we are told to believe that the Germans were evil. So you got to pick one of those

01:04:00 – 01:04:05:	before you can have an opinion about a man being locked up in prison for spying on his government.

01:04:07 – 01:04:10:	Here's one of the things that he had to say while he was sitting there in prison.

01:04:10 – 01:04:12:	Bonhoeffer writes,

01:04:40 – 01:04:45:	Honestly, described themselves as religious aren't really practicing at all. They're presumably

01:04:45 – 01:04:50:	means something quite different by quote unquote religious. But our entire 1900 years of Christian

01:04:50 – 01:04:58:	preaching and theology are built on the religious priority in human beings. Quote unquote, Christianity

01:04:58 – 01:05:05:	has always been a form perhaps, sorry to laugh in the middle of this, but I'm just staggered by

01:05:05 – 01:05:11:	how evil this is. Quote unquote, Christianity has always been a form parentheses, perhaps the true

01:05:11 – 01:05:17:	form of quote unquote, religion. Yet if it becomes the obvious one day that this is a priority does

01:05:17 – 01:05:24:	not exist, then it has been historically conditioned in transitory form of human expression. Then

01:05:24 – 01:05:28:	people really will become radically religionless. And I believe that is already more or less the

01:05:28 – 01:05:34:	case. Why, for example, doesn't this war provoke a religious reaction like all the previous ones?

01:05:34 – 01:05:39:	What does that then mean for quote unquote Christianity? The foundations are being pulled

01:05:39 – 01:05:44:	out from under all that quote unquote Christianity has previously been for us. And the only people

01:05:44 – 01:05:48:	among whom we might end up in terms of quote unquote religion are the last of the nights,

01:05:48 – 01:05:53:	or a few intellectually dishonest people. Are these supposed to be the chosen few?

01:05:53 – 01:05:59:	Are we supposed to fall all over preciously this dubious lot of people in our zeal or our

01:05:59 – 01:06:06:	disappointment? Or woe and try to peddle our wares to them? Or should we jump on a few

01:06:06 – 01:06:11:	unfortunates in their hour of weakness and commit, so to speak, religious rape? If we are unwilling

01:06:11 – 01:06:17:	to do any of that, then we eventually must judge that even the Western form of Christianity

01:06:17 – 01:06:22:	to be only a preliminary stage of a complete absence of religion. What kind of situation

01:06:22 – 01:06:28:	emerges for us for the church? How can Christ become Lord of the religionless as well? Is there

01:06:28 – 01:06:33:	such a thing as a religionless Christian? If religion is only the garb in which Christianity

01:06:33 – 01:06:38:	is clothed, and this garb has looked very different in different ages, what then is

01:06:38 – 01:06:43:	religionless Christianity? Barth, who is the one to have begun thinking along these lines,

01:06:43 – 01:06:47:	nevertheless did not pursue these thoughts all the way, did not think them through but ended

01:06:47 – 01:06:53:	up with a positive vision of revelation, which in the end essentially remained a restoration.

01:06:53 – 01:06:56:	For the working person, or any person who is without religion,

01:06:56 – 01:07:00:	nothing decisive has been gained here. The questions to be answered would be,

01:07:00 – 01:07:04:	what does a church or congregation, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life

01:07:04 – 01:07:09:	mean in a religionless world? How do we talk about God without religion, that is,

01:07:09 – 01:07:14:	without the temporarily conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, the inner life, and so on?

01:07:14 – 01:07:18:	How do we speak, or perhaps how can we no longer speak the way we used to,

01:07:18 – 01:07:25:	in a worldly way, about quote-unquote God? This again is consistent with something that

01:07:25 – 01:07:30:	King had talked about as well, and frankly it's also consistent with something that

01:07:30 – 01:07:36:	Cory and I talk about today, but again in completely opposite directions. When we on

01:07:36 – 01:07:42:	Stone Choir talk about the world today being a religionless one, one in which God is not

01:07:42 – 01:07:49:	visible in life in a godly fashion. We certainly see God's actions and everything every day.

01:07:50 – 01:07:56:	We do not see the will of God typically being acted out by people in the world.

01:07:56 – 01:08:00:	That's one of our chief complaints on this podcast. The difference in our response to

01:08:00 – 01:08:06:	Barth's response and to Bonhoeffer's response is that they say, okay, well I guess God's dead,

01:08:06 – 01:08:11:	so what do we do now? If there's no religion, if there's no thought of any religion at all,

01:08:11 – 01:08:14:	and again when he's putting religion in quotes and Christianity in quotes,

01:08:14 – 01:08:19:	that goes back to something we've talked about in another previous episode where we have this

01:08:19 – 01:08:25:	notion that religion itself is a manifestation of human will, that all religions are man-made.

01:08:25 – 01:08:30:	Remember that was in some of King's papers. That was one of King's very clear predicates,

01:08:30 – 01:08:36:	that all religions are man-made, and that the various forms of quote-unquote religion are

01:08:36 – 01:08:43:	downstream from some inherent wellspring of the human nature. Sometimes you have a religion

01:08:43 – 01:08:47:	that's better, sometimes you have a religion that's worse, but they're all fundamentally humanist at

01:08:47 – 01:08:52:	their heart. That's antithetical to Christianity. Christianity comes from God. Christianity is

01:08:52 – 01:08:57:	found in Scripture. It's delivered to us through the Church by faithful teachers in Scripture.

01:08:57 – 01:09:00:	When he tears all those things away and says, well, we have this godless world now,

01:09:00 – 01:09:04:	so how do we talk about doing good things without talking about God?

01:09:05 – 01:09:08:	I guess back to what we were saying earlier. He doesn't want

01:09:09 – 01:09:14:	to talk about Christ anymore. He wants to still do the good things, to solve whatever wisdom,

01:09:14 – 01:09:21:	whatever love, without actually having it rooted in obedience to God, an immediate

01:09:21 – 01:09:26:	obedience, which is what we talk about all the time. When I talk about obeying God,

01:09:26 – 01:09:32:	there's an immediacy to my knowledge that what I am trying to do is from Scripture. It's what

01:09:32 – 01:09:37:	God's telling me. I'm doing it because God told me to do it, or I'm failing to do it in spite

01:09:37 – 01:09:43:	of what God told me to do. That's the law. The gospel is that I'm forgiven even for having failed

01:09:43 – 01:09:49:	because God has revealed that in spite of our failings, he loves us and give us a physical

01:09:49 – 01:09:56:	Christ in history 2000 years ago who died and was raised from the dead and walked out of the tomb

01:09:56 – 01:10:00:	so that our sins would be forgiven and we would know that it was true.

01:10:00 – 01:10:06:	These men, one religion where none of that is necessary, they want to just strip out the

01:10:06 – 01:10:11:	religion and strip out the metaphysics and strip out all the spiritual stuff and say,

01:10:11 – 01:10:17:	you know what, let's just have the humanist thing because after 1900 years of the church,

01:10:17 – 01:10:22:	we're now to the point where we've sort of perfected it. We can strip away those mythologies and

01:10:22 – 01:10:28:	that embarrassing, antiquated stuff and just have the raw humanist form of this thing.

01:10:28 – 01:10:33:	That's what plays out in all these things and it's the undercurrent of all of his comments.

01:10:33 – 01:10:37:	And so near the end of his life, just two years before he's going to be executed,

01:10:37 – 01:10:44:	he's basically saying that, same thing Nietzsche said, he's saying, God is dead, what now? And

01:10:46 – 01:10:50:	there's a positive way you could read some of this. As I said, these are some of our concerns

01:10:50 – 01:10:57:	and bits and pieces too, but his ultimate concern is without God, we still need to cope going with

01:10:57 – 01:11:01:	some sort of religious project. So what's the new religious project and look like?

01:11:02 – 01:11:03:	That's the exact opposite of Christianity.

01:11:06 – 01:11:10:	The next quote we have is also from his letters while he was in prison,

01:11:11 – 01:11:18:	written to Aberhard Betka. He wrote many of the particularly wicked things he wrote to this

01:11:19 – 01:11:26:	younger gentleman. A few more words about religionlessness. You probably remember

01:11:26 – 01:11:32:	Boltman's essay on demythologizing the New Testament. My opinion of it today would be that

01:11:32 – 01:11:39:	he went not too far, as most people thought, but rather not far enough. It's not only mythological

01:11:39 – 01:11:45:	concepts like miracles, ascension, and so on, which in principle can't be separated from concepts

01:11:45 – 01:11:52:	of God, faith, etc., exclamation point, that are problematic, but religious concepts as such.

01:11:52 – 01:11:58:	You can't separate God from the miracles as Boltman thinks. Instead, you must be able to

01:11:58 – 01:12:05:	interpret and proclaim them both non-religiously. Boltman's approach is still basically liberal,

01:12:05 – 01:12:10:	that is, it cuts the Gospel short. Whereas I'm trying to think theologically,

01:12:11 – 01:12:18:	what then does it mean to interpret religiously? It means, in my opinion, to speak metaphysically,

01:12:18 – 01:12:24:	on the one hand, and on the other hand, individualistically. Neither way is appropriate,

01:12:24 – 01:12:29:	either for the biblical message or for people today. Hasn't the individualistic question

01:12:29 – 01:12:35:	of saving our personal souls almost faded away for most of us? Isn't it our impression

01:12:35 – 01:12:40:	that there are really more important things than this question? Perhaps not more important than this

01:12:40 – 01:12:45:	matter, but certainly more important than the question, exclamation point, question mark,

01:12:45 – 01:12:50:	question mark. I know it sounds outrageous to say that, but after all, isn't it fundamentally

01:12:50 – 01:12:54:	biblical? Does the question of saving one's soul even come up in the Old Testament?

01:12:55 – 01:13:00:	Isn't God's righteousness in kingdom on earth the center of everything? And isn't Romans 3,

01:13:00 – 01:13:06:	verse 24 and following, the culmination of the view that God alone is righteous, rather than

01:13:06 – 01:13:12:	an individualistic doctrine of salvation? What matters is not the beyond, but this world,

01:13:12 – 01:13:18:	how it is created and preserved, is given laws, reconciled and renewed. What is beyond this world

01:13:18 – 01:13:25:	is meant in the Gospel to be there for this world, not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal,

01:13:25 – 01:13:31:	mystical, pietistic, ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of the creation and the incarnation

01:13:31 – 01:13:37:	crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Bart was the first theologian, to his great and

01:13:37 – 01:13:43:	lasting credit, to begin the critique of religion. But he then put in its place a positivist doctrine

01:13:43 – 01:13:49:	of revelation that says, in effect, like it or lump it. Whether it's the virgin birth, the

01:13:49 – 01:13:54:	trinity or anything else, all are equally significant in necessary parts of the whole,

01:13:54 – 01:14:00:	which must be swallowed whole or not at all. That's not biblical. There are degrees of cognition

01:14:00 – 01:14:06:	and degrees of significance. That means an arcane discipline must be re-established

01:14:06 – 01:14:11:	through which the mysteries of the Christian faith are sheltered against profanation.

01:14:11 – 01:14:17:	The positivism of revelation is too easygoing. Since in the end, it sets up a law of faith

01:14:17 – 01:14:23:	and tears up what is, through Christ becoming flesh, exclamation point, a gift for us.

01:14:23 – 01:14:29:	Now the church stands in the place of religion, that, in itself is biblical, but the world is

01:14:29 – 01:14:35:	left to its own devices, as it were to rely on itself. That is the error. At the moment I am

01:14:35 – 01:14:40:	thinking about how the concepts of repentance, faith, justification, rebirth, and sanctification

01:14:40 – 01:14:45:	should be reinterpreted in a worldly way, in the Old Testament sense, and in the sense of

01:14:45 – 01:14:56:	John 1.14. I'll write you more about it. This is really just a doubling down on things that we

01:14:56 – 01:15:06:	have seen in some of the previous quotes from Bonhoeffer. He rejects the Christian religion

01:15:06 – 01:15:18:	piece by piece in this quote. He is constructing an alternate religion. He is not dealing with

01:15:18 – 01:15:23:	Christianity. He is not dealing with theology in the proper sense of dealing with God,

01:15:23 – 01:15:29:	because theology properly references the one true God. Because he doesn't believe it.

01:15:30 – 01:15:34:	He thinks that these things are pure myth. They are mythology. It doesn't matter if they're true

01:15:34 – 01:15:40:	or false. He doesn't care at all. He's not dealing with the empirical. Christianity makes

01:15:40 – 01:15:47:	empirical claims. Christianity says that God became incarnate. Christianity says that God

01:15:47 – 01:15:53:	died on the cross. Christianity says that God rose again on the third day. Those are empirical

01:15:53 – 01:16:02:	claims. If those are false, Christianity is false. He is saying here that those don't matter.

01:16:03 – 01:16:07:	These things don't matter. That's not what Christianity is. That's not what his Christianity

01:16:07 – 01:16:15:	is. His Christianity is something totally alien to Scripture, something totally alien

01:16:15 – 01:16:21:	to the Christian faith. And he attributes it to the very man we've mentioned previously.

01:16:23 – 01:16:28:	These men are all of one mind, because they all have one animating intelligence,

01:16:28 – 01:16:34:	as we have pointed out many times before. This stuff comes from the pit of hell.

01:16:36 – 01:16:42:	And as mentioned at the beginning, the problem here is that I rattled off many words that

01:16:42 – 01:16:48:	undoubtedly sounded Christian to you, because they are words that are used in Christianity.

01:16:48 – 01:16:53:	They are words that relate to the Christian faith, but they are not Christian when they are coming

01:16:53 – 01:17:00:	from this man's pen, because they are not Christian in this man's mind, because he's not a Christian.

01:17:01 – 01:17:09:	And so just because someone tells you crucified, crucifixion, resurrection, salvation, justification,

01:17:09 – 01:17:14:	just because someone uses these words does not mean that he is a Christian, because again,

01:17:15 – 01:17:16:	Satan can quote Scripture.

01:17:19 – 01:17:25:	Satan quoting Scripture doesn't mean that he believes it. Now, of course, he believes it in,

01:17:26 – 01:17:32:	quite frankly, a more real sense than Bonhoeffer did. Does, well, perhaps he believes it now.

01:17:33 – 01:17:41:	Now, but Satan knows it's true. Satan doesn't trust it. It's the difference between

01:17:42 – 01:17:47:	noticia, a census, and fiducia, as we've gone over at least once before in the previous episode.

01:17:49 – 01:17:54:	These are the levels of knowledge, because again, Christian doctrine, Christianity,

01:17:54 – 01:18:00:	is a matter of truth claims. I want to reread just a small bit of this,

01:18:00 – 01:18:04:	because I think it's really the heart of how evil this letter is.

01:18:06 – 01:18:12:	Bonhoeffer writes, hasn't the individualistic question of saving our personal souls almost

01:18:12 – 01:18:17:	faded away for most of us? Isn't our impression that there are really more important things than

01:18:17 – 01:18:20:	this question, perhaps not more important than this matter, but certainly more important than

01:18:20 – 01:18:27:	this question? I know it sounds a bit outrageous to say that, but after all, isn't it fundamentally

01:18:27 – 01:18:32:	biblical? Does the question of saving one's soul even come up in the Old Testament?

01:18:35 – 01:18:39:	One of the books that Cory and I point to quite often, I think, has the perfect response to this

01:18:39 – 01:18:48:	whole paragraph. Job 19, 25 through 27, Job says, For I know that my Redeemer lives,

01:18:48 – 01:18:53:	and that at last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has thus been destroyed,

01:18:53 – 01:19:00:	yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold,

01:19:00 – 01:19:06:	and not another, my heart faints within me. So this is Job in what is almost certainly the

01:19:06 – 01:19:13:	oldest book in the Old Testament, saying quite clearly, he knows that his Redeemer lives,

01:19:13 – 01:19:19:	he knows that his flesh, which will die, will be resurrected, and that is his joy.

01:19:19 – 01:19:25:	Bonhoeffer knew this. Christians know this. One of the most beautiful hymns that we have,

01:19:25 – 01:19:31:	I know that my Redeemer lives. It is the confession of the Christian faith,

01:19:31 – 01:19:35:	and it's a direct repudiation of a man who says, Is that even in the Old Testament?

01:19:35 – 01:19:40:	That was the sincere question of all of this. And so at the end, when he gets again to denying

01:19:40 – 01:19:45:	the Trinity and the virgin birth and all these other things, I think the question of

01:19:46 – 01:19:53:	particular knowledge of specific doctrinal facts, as Cory just highlighted, is important.

01:19:54 – 01:19:59:	When I was on the myth of the 20th century, I was discussing forgiveness with Adam,

01:19:59 – 01:20:04:	the thief on the cross came up, and I pointed out, and Adam was asking about forgiveness.

01:20:04 – 01:20:08:	Can someone on death row really receive forgiveness? I said, Well, good news,

01:20:08 – 01:20:15:	Bible actually has a passage about Jesus in that precise situation to highlight

01:20:15 – 01:20:19:	that there are certain principles at play that come into salvation, as Cory said,

01:20:19 – 01:20:26:	and as frankly to be clear, as Bonhoeffer also says, it is not intellectual ascent that saves us.

01:20:27 – 01:20:33:	However, the thief on the cross, although he could not have explained the Trinity,

01:20:33 – 01:20:37:	had Jesus explained the Trinity to him in whatever manner he saw fit,

01:20:38 – 01:20:42:	the thief on the cross would have said, Yes, that is my God. You are my God.

01:20:42 – 01:20:46:	The thief on the cross would not have heard the Apostle's Creed and say, This is crap.

01:20:46 – 01:20:52:	I don't believe any of this. This isn't my God. That is the difference between us as Christians

01:20:52 – 01:20:58:	and Bonhoeffer. When Bonhoeffer sees the virgin birth and the resurrection of the dead in hope

01:20:58 – 01:21:03:	and salvation, he's like, That's not my God. That's not my religion. That is his true confession.

01:21:04 – 01:21:10:	In all these passages, the truth of what he believes will creep through, and these questions

01:21:10 – 01:21:15:	that are merely decides, does it really say in the Old Testament that individual salvation

01:21:15 – 01:21:23:	matters? Is it even in there? Yes, it's throughout all of it. This is why this stuff is subversive.

01:21:24 – 01:21:29:	That was a long passage, and he says some things that you can potentially agree with.

01:21:29 – 01:21:34:	A Christian can come along and baptize some of his words, reincorporating them in a way that

01:21:34 – 01:21:40:	is actually Christian, just as you could do a Bible study where you did nothing but quote Satan

01:21:40 – 01:21:44:	from Scripture and teach a good Bible study. You would have to disagree with what Satan was trying

01:21:44 – 01:21:52:	to achieve, but Satan was quoting God in Scripture. As Corey said, when Satan comes at us, when he

01:21:52 – 01:21:58:	comes at Christians and believers, he's going to use God's word to do it. Sometimes he'll come

01:21:58 – 01:22:03:	with other temptations completely outside. There's something that'll get anyone, because we're weak

01:22:03 – 01:22:09:	in the flesh and we each have our own personal vulnerabilities. There's a tailor-made path to

01:22:09 – 01:22:14:	damnation for every one of us, and Satan puts all his cards down every day to try to get us there.

01:22:14 – 01:22:23:	God gives us faith. He gives us forgiveness of sins. He promises us salvation. All we have to do

01:22:24 – 01:22:30:	is not reject it. The gift of not rejecting it is itself a gift. God gives us everything that we

01:22:30 – 01:22:36:	need for salvation, is never us doing it. That is our ultimate comfort. It's the reason for the

01:22:36 – 01:22:42:	Lutheran focus on sacramental theology. It's the stuff that we can point to God doing in our lives

01:22:42 – 01:22:49:	and say, God did this. I trust his promises. Even the trust in those promises is God giving me something.

01:22:51 – 01:22:56:	The doubt that's sown by men like Bonhoeffer undermining the tenets of the faith and then

01:22:56 – 01:23:01:	saying, oh, but really, there's some sort of Jesus and there's some sort of incarnation

01:23:01 – 01:23:09:	and there's some sort of last day. It's going to be great if you're not scrupulously dissecting

01:23:09 – 01:23:12:	where this stuff is coming from. If you're not looking at the genealogy of the ideas,

01:23:13 – 01:23:18:	you're going to potentially give it a pass. That's why Barf is so deadly. Barf and Baltman,

01:23:18 – 01:23:24:	and Tillich, and there's this string of men throughout the 20th century that were destroying

01:23:24 – 01:23:30:	the Christian faith piece by piece. Guys love them because it lets midwits sound intelligent as

01:23:30 – 01:23:35:	they're talking to you and giving you things that are a corruption of the faith. They're like, oh,

01:23:35 – 01:23:40:	well, that's interesting. I've never heard that before. We want to make sure that when we're

01:23:40 – 01:23:44:	talking about this stuff on So Enquirer, if you've never heard it before, we can just point you to

01:23:44 – 01:23:49:	Scripture. Like, here it is. You know, Bonhoeffer's, I don't know, is there anything in there about

01:23:49 – 01:23:56:	the individual having his soul saved? Job says yes. Many places say yes. We don't need to doubt

01:23:56 – 01:24:02:	these things because if we trust in Scripture, we have the answers. Again, I point you at the

01:24:02 – 01:24:07:	beginning to the perspicuity of Scripture, the clarity of Scripture episode we did. Specifically,

01:24:07 – 01:24:10:	we front-loaded that. It's one of the first, I think, like, five or eight episodes we did,

01:24:11 – 01:24:17:	in large part because the attacks that come on the faith from all these other directions,

01:24:17 – 01:24:24:	whether it's making up new sins or it's casting doubt on old creeds, they're all predicated on you,

01:24:24 – 01:24:29:	ceasing to believe what God has told us all. God hasn't told me anything different than

01:24:29 – 01:24:34:	He's telling you. It's in Scripture, and if someone comes along and preaches you a word

01:24:34 – 01:24:39:	different than that which is given from Scripture, God promises that all the curses will be poured

01:24:39 – 01:24:44:	out on that man, and they're being poured out on Bonhoeffer today, and they're going to be poured

01:24:44 – 01:24:50:	out on his acolytes because the men who hate some of the most important things in the world today

01:24:50 – 01:24:56:	are men who love Bonhoeffer. They love MLK. These guys are saints in the New World religion.

01:24:57 – 01:25:03:	We're doing this episode as a warning that when you see this man being held up in whatever good

01:25:03 – 01:25:07:	things you read, you know, like I said, there's stuff in here that some of it sounds a little bit

01:25:07 – 01:25:14:	like us, and the reason for it is that we're going on opposite directions on the same street,

01:25:14 – 01:25:18:	so we're covering some of the same ground, but he's trying to undo the very things that we're

01:25:18 – 01:25:25:	trying to do, and so when we cross paths and we sound similar, it's not shared givens,

01:25:25 – 01:25:30:	is that we're operating in the sphere of Christianity. The difference is that we're trying

01:25:30 – 01:25:36:	to uphold it and be faithful to it, and men like Bonhoeffer and his acolytes today are trying to tear

01:25:36 – 01:25:41:	it down. Now, there are men who like Bonhoeffer who are Christian. They're fools. I use that in

01:25:41 – 01:25:47:	the scriptural sense. It is foolishness to like this man. If you're lapping up the things that

01:25:47 – 01:25:53:	this guy is teaching, you're endangering your soul and the souls of others because as we've laid out

01:25:53 – 01:25:58:	just briefly here today, in 33, when he was saying stuff about denying the virgin birth

01:25:58 – 01:26:03:	and her resurrection of the dead, he had not yet despaired. He just had some sort of conversion

01:26:03 – 01:26:09:	experience. He would never describe anyone in 31, and so in this period, he was really into reading

01:26:09 – 01:26:14:	the Bible, and then by the end in 43, 44, 45, he says in some of these other letters, he doesn't

01:26:14 – 01:26:22:	read the Bible anymore. Whatever faith he had, if he ever did, by the time he started denying

01:26:22 – 01:26:28:	the tenets of the faith, the foundations, the creeds, later on he had nothing left but despair,

01:26:28 – 01:26:33:	and so as he's talking about this religionless world and he's lamenting what else do we do,

01:26:33 – 01:26:40:	he doesn't realize that it's his very teachings that created the world that he is now despairing in,

01:26:40 – 01:26:44:	and his despair was in part of his own creation. We don't want that for anyone.

01:26:45 – 01:26:50:	There's a real thread that runs throughout all of his writings,

01:26:52 – 01:26:56:	that really comes to a head in some of the later letters while he was in prison,

01:26:58 – 01:27:05:	and that is there is an immense hypocrisy underlying so much of what Bonhoeffer wrote.

01:27:06 – 01:27:10:	Now for some hypocrisy is not going to matter, and for others it should matter a great deal.

01:27:10 – 01:27:19:	In politics, hypocrisy is one thing. In religion, in Christianity particularly,

01:27:19 – 01:27:24:	hypocrisy is something else entirely. You as a Christian must not be a hypocrite

01:27:25 – 01:27:34:	with regard to your faith. Now that doesn't mean that you can't be a Christian and a hypocrite

01:27:34 – 01:27:40:	in the fullest sense of cannot, because of course you are going to say you should not do

01:27:40 – 01:27:45:	X when speaking to someone else, and then later on you may very well do that very thing.

01:27:46 – 01:27:50:	Does that make you a hypocrite to some degree, of course? Does it make you wrong for saying

01:27:50 – 01:27:55:	you should not do X? No, so long as you are repeating a truth about the Christian faith.

01:27:55 – 01:28:02:	If any man says you should not lust after a woman who is not your wife,

01:28:04 – 01:28:07:	odds are pretty good that at some point in his life he is going to have done that,

01:28:07 – 01:28:12:	and will probably do it again. That is just one of the realities of the fallen flesh.

01:28:14 – 01:28:21:	But we see in the writings of Bonhoeffer something different with regard to hypocrisy,

01:28:22 – 01:28:29:	because he writes about this deep sense of caring for others that you are supposed to have as a

01:28:29 – 01:28:37:	Christian, and then in so many of his interactions he does not show it, and then he becomes a

01:28:37 – 01:28:45:	traitor to his own people. He abandons in the process his fiancee, notably. He was set to be

01:28:46 – 01:28:54:	married shortly after he was arrested. I think it was either three months after he got engaged,

01:28:54 – 01:28:59:	or three months until the wedding. I don't remember which one it was. But this is his

01:28:59 – 01:29:06:	fiancee who had just lost her military commander father and her brother on the eastern front.

01:29:06 – 01:29:14:	He mentions that in one of his letters. He is just an immense and unsettling hypocrite in so

01:29:14 – 01:29:20:	many ways, but there's also another thread that runs throughout his writings where he is very

01:29:20 – 01:29:26:	clearly seeking to justify himself. And there are places where he speaks explicitly

01:29:26 – 01:29:31:	of self-justification. We didn't get to those, and we won't deal with those in this episode,

01:29:31 – 01:29:36:	because we don't want to run for four hours dealing with this man and his bad theology.

01:29:37 – 01:29:41:	But there is one more quote that I want to read that's related to this issue.

01:29:41 – 01:29:49:	There is clearly no historically significant action that does not trespass ever again against

01:29:49 – 01:29:56:	the limits set by those laws, he's speaking here of the moral law. But it makes a decisive difference

01:29:56 – 01:30:02:	whether such trespasses against the established limit are viewed as their abolishment in principle

01:30:02 – 01:30:09:	and hence presented as a law of its own kind, or whether one is conscious that such trespassing is

01:30:09 – 01:30:16:	perhaps an unavoidable guilty that has its justification only in that law and limit being

01:30:16 – 01:30:21:	reinstated and honored as quickly as possible. Obviously there's one word there that was

01:30:21 – 01:30:25:	translated a little awkwardly, but the point nevertheless comes through.

01:30:27 – 01:30:31:	And for those of us with the advantage of hindsight, we can look at this and see

01:30:32 – 01:30:41:	what he did, what he was doing, his involvement in a plot to assassinate

01:30:42 – 01:30:44:	the rightfully elected leader of his people.

01:30:47 – 01:30:51:	Now that is not something that a Christian can do certainly, but it is

01:30:52 – 01:30:57:	very certainly and much more so something in which clergy should not be involved.

01:30:58 – 01:31:05:	There are limits to what clergy can and cannot do, and there are some other quotes of his that are

01:31:06 – 01:31:12:	just rank clericalism, we didn't get to those either, but at one point he says that scriptures

01:31:12 – 01:31:18:	belong to the clergy and not to the congregation, which is directly opposed to everything written

01:31:19 – 01:31:25:	in Reformation theology, particularly by Lutherans who focus on the priesthood of all the

01:31:25 – 01:31:31:	levers and very strongly encourage the reading of scripture. This is one of the major points of

01:31:31 – 01:31:39:	contention between Protestants and the pre-Reformation sects, which is to say both Rome and the East.

01:31:41 – 01:31:48:	But in this quote and elsewhere, he's justifying his wicked transgression of the law by saying,

01:31:48 – 01:31:55:	well it's fine, as long as it's transitory. That's not Christian, that's sub-Christian in thought.

01:31:56 – 01:32:01:	You do not get to justify yourself, particularly when it comes to violating the Fifth Commandment,

01:32:01 – 01:32:08:	because that is what he did. He was engaged in attempted murder, and people did die as a result,

01:32:08 – 01:32:14:	so actually murder, he's guilty of murder. Of course you're guilty of murder if you attempt

01:32:14 – 01:32:19:	to murder, but that's an issue for philosophy and theology for another time.

01:32:22 – 01:32:29:	The real takeaway from this episode, what we want you to get out of this, is not just that this

01:32:29 – 01:32:35:	particular man was a wicked man and he has been held up as a martyr in a new religion,

01:32:35 – 01:32:41:	that's true, that's an important takeaway. But more than that, we want you to understand that

01:32:41 – 01:32:50:	you need to be careful when engaging with materials, particularly materials from men like this,

01:32:51 – 01:32:58:	or an unknown quantity, because it may be that the materials will use terms that sound Christian

01:32:58 – 01:33:03:	to you, that sound good, that sound like something that a Christian can affirm.

01:33:04 – 01:33:09:	But that may not be the case, because as we have said repeatedly,

01:33:09 – 01:33:17:	Satan too can quote Scripture. There is a difference between the Christian knowledge

01:33:18 – 01:33:24:	that is saving knowledge that we call faith, which is fiducia in the three levels of knowledge,

01:33:25 – 01:33:29:	because the first is you take notice of the thing, you recognize the thing as a thing,

01:33:29 – 01:33:34:	the second is you assent to the truth of the thing, and the third is that you trust in it,

01:33:35 – 01:33:43:	and it is that trust that we call faith. That is what saves. Satan has noticia and ascensus.

01:33:44 – 01:33:50:	Satan knows that Scripture is true. Satan assents to the fact that Scripture is true.

01:33:50 – 01:33:58:	Satan cannot trust in it. Satan has no faith. Neither do his acolytes. Men like this

01:33:59 – 01:34:04:	will sometimes at least pay lip service to Scripture. Sometimes they'll even

01:34:05 – 01:34:11:	assent to the truth of Scripture. But then they go off the rails. In the case of Bonhoeffer and

01:34:11 – 01:34:16:	some of the others, some of the more egregious examples, they simply outright deny Scripture.

01:34:17 – 01:34:20:	They reject the fundamentals of the Christian faith, because he rejected

01:34:21 – 01:34:29:	time and again the inspiration of Scripture. He didn't even go as far as some of the others and

01:34:29 – 01:34:34:	say, well, Scripture contains the Word of God, which you have to be careful for that. If someone

01:34:34 – 01:34:40:	says, contains the Word of God, that is meant to deny that it is the Word of God. Very different

01:34:40 – 01:34:44:	things. The Christian position is that the Scriptures are the Word of God.

01:34:44 – 01:34:53:	Bonhoeffer just denied that the Scriptures really contain anything. Religion is some other human

01:34:53 – 01:34:58:	constructed thing, which he compares at one point to Buddhism as another potential path to God,

01:34:58 – 01:35:05:	another human constructed path to God. Different, but not so fundamentally different that it's not

01:35:05 – 01:35:13:	a path to God. When you engage with materials, particularly those that the world is telling

01:35:13 – 01:35:22:	you are great or important or this person is a giant of the Church, engage your critical faculties,

01:35:24 – 01:35:32:	compare them to Scripture, do these men say the things of God in the same words as God used,

01:35:32 – 01:35:38:	because that's another important matter. One thing you will see in these men, just to throw

01:35:38 – 01:35:42:	in a point here right at the end, one thing you will see in these men is that they will speak

01:35:42 – 01:35:48:	of Christ as an example, the example of Christ. We have to follow the example of Christ.

01:35:50 – 01:35:55:	What does Scripture actually say? It's a subtle difference, but it matters. It's not always

01:35:56 – 01:36:03:	a definitive conclusion that if the person says example of Christ, he's a false teacher,

01:36:03 – 01:36:09:	but the false teachers tend to use example of Christ or Christ as example or some wording like that,

01:36:09 – 01:36:19:	instead of what Paul says, become imitators of Christ. So someone feels a need to change the

01:36:19 – 01:36:26:	words of Scripture. There's probably a reason. So compare what these men say to what God says in

01:36:26 – 01:36:35:	his word. If they do not match up, get rid of the former. We spent a fair amount of time slogging

01:36:36 – 01:36:43:	through this material, reading these books, essays, letters, etc. Because we had a very

01:36:43 – 01:36:49:	specific purpose in mind, we had a reason to do it. We are not recommending that anyone read these

01:36:49 – 01:36:59:	materials. Life is short. If you are going to read theology, read good theology. Don't read these

01:37:00 – 01:37:05:	wicked men. That's not because we're saying, oh, well, you can't read and understand this and

01:37:05 – 01:37:11:	no, it's not that. It's don't waste your time. Read Scripture, read good theology.

01:37:12 – 01:37:15:	Don't spend your time reading men who are now in hell.

01:37:18 – 01:37:20:	Because if you read the materials by those who are now in hell,

01:37:22 – 01:37:28:	you're not decreasing the odds, certainly, of joining them, most likely. Now, again,

01:37:28 – 01:37:30:	if you're doing it for a critical reason, perhaps that's fine.

01:37:30 – 01:37:34:	But these materials are dangerous.

01:37:37 – 01:37:44:	Wicked writings, evil materials are themselves, in themselves, dangerous. Look at what happened

01:37:44 – 01:37:51:	in Scripture. When those who had previously practiced the dark arts had practiced magic,

01:37:52 – 01:38:00:	converted to Christianity, they burned their evil materials, worth enormous sums of money,

01:38:00 – 01:38:07:	today, and certainly, of course, then. Because that is the Christian response. Sometimes,

01:38:08 – 01:38:14:	the Christian response is a book burning. And I know that doesn't sound very winsome,

01:38:14 – 01:38:18:	as it were, to modern ears, because we're supposed to believe in

01:38:18 – 01:38:22:	some sort of absolute freedom of speech in the press, but that is not the Christian position.

01:38:23 – 01:38:28:	Some things are evil in and of themselves, and it is best for the Christian to avoid them.

01:38:31 – 01:38:37:	So the best advice we can give you is, for men like Bonhoeffer, or Bart, or any of a number of

01:38:37 – 01:38:45:	others, just avoid their writings. There is no reason to read this material. It's good to have

01:38:46 – 01:38:52:	the sort of cursory information provided in this episode, because now you have a response

01:38:52 – 01:38:55:	when someone comes up to you, and unfortunately, may very well be your pastor.

01:38:56 – 01:39:03:	But when someone comes up to you and says, this man was a great Christian, a great theologian,

01:39:03 – 01:39:08:	he stood up for the church, he opposed those evil Nazis, whatever it is he says,

01:39:08 – 01:39:13:	it'll most likely be something along those lines. Now you have some sort of response.

01:39:13 – 01:39:20:	You can ask some questions. You can say, is it good for a Christian to deny the virgin birth?

01:39:21 – 01:39:25:	Like a pastor or whomever will say no. Well, Bonhoeffer did it.

01:39:26 – 01:39:32:	Is it good to deny the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture? Well, no. Bonhoeffer did.

01:39:33 – 01:39:41:	A dozen other things. The Christian response, when other Christians, brothers in error, bring up

01:39:41 – 01:39:47:	evil men like this and say they were greats, is to rebuke them. Because if you believe that this

01:39:47 – 01:39:53:	man was a great of the church, you are endangering your own soul, and you are endangering every

01:39:53 – 01:40:00:	soul entrusted to your care. And unfortunately today, many of those who believe this wicked man

01:40:00 – 01:40:06:	was a great man of the church, are in charge of many souls, because they are pastors, they are

01:40:06 – 01:40:13:	shepherds of flocks. And that's why we did this episode. Because Bonhoeffer was an evil man,

01:40:13 – 01:40:19:	and he is burning in hell. I want to conclude just briefly by reiterating the quote that I used

01:40:19 – 01:40:27:	from the very beginning from the LCMS Concordia Seminary in St. Louis in 2006. Because it's

01:40:27 – 01:40:34:	probably the most true quote that we have read to you today. Dietrich Bonhoeffer may well be

01:40:34 – 01:40:40:	the most widely admired and respected Christian theologian among Christian pastors and theologians

01:40:40 – 01:40:46:	in the USA. The scope of his appeal is exceptionally broad, spanning across virtually all Christian

01:40:46 – 01:40:51:	denominations and across perspectives ranging from the traditional to the liberal.

01:40:53 – 01:40:59:	That's absolutely true. And as Corey just said, that is deadly. That is the state of our church

01:40:59 – 01:41:07:	today, a state of freefall apostasy, where a man who literally denies the creeds as a predicate for

01:41:07 – 01:41:14:	all of his other teachings is upheld as a great theologian of the 20th century. Why?

01:41:14 – 01:41:22:	Because he didn't like Nazis. That's the religion. The religion of this age, the new world religion,

01:41:22 – 01:41:29:	is one where Nazis bad. I'm sorry to have to keep bringing that crap up because it's boring

01:41:29 – 01:41:36:	and it's tedious, but it is the religion. Men are damned for being Nazis, not for being sinners.

01:41:37 – 01:41:44:	That is the sin. And so when Concordia St. Louis says he is most widely admired and respected

01:41:44 – 01:41:50:	Christian theologian among so-called Christian pastors, yeah, that's probably true. And that's

01:41:50 – 01:41:55:	exactly the problem that we're hoping we can make some small contribution to solving. Because

01:41:55 – 01:42:01:	Christianity will not survive an environment where men like King and Bonhoeffer are seen as Christian

01:42:01 – 01:42:07:	martyrs. These men were destroyers of souls and they're paying the eternal price for it.

01:42:07 – 01:42:13:	We don't want anyone to join them. And the surest path to joining them is to agree with them,

01:42:13 – 01:42:18:	to uphold them, to believe what they say, and then to evangelize those beliefs to others.

01:42:19 – 01:42:24:	That is the world religion. It's the popular religion. You will fit in if you love Bonhoeffer.

01:42:24 – 01:42:27:	And the more you talk about them, the more friends you're going to have.

01:42:28 – 01:42:36:	Scripture has a lot to say about the popularity of Scripture. True doctrine is usually not popular,

01:42:36 – 01:42:42:	at least not for very long. Unpopularity doesn't mean it's right, but popularity certainly doesn't

01:42:42 – 01:42:51:	mean it's wrong. This man, like King, like Barth, these men were destroyers of the Christian faith.

01:42:51 – 01:42:57:	And today we have so many men and pulpits and in positions of authority and power

01:42:57 – 01:43:02:	that literally can't tell the difference. This is a crisis for the entire church.

01:43:02 – 01:43:07:	This is a crisis for every Christian. Because even if you don't have the aptitude

01:43:07 – 01:43:12:	to delve into these matters, most of you probably don't. And it's not men as an insult.

01:43:12 – 01:43:18:	God dispenses his gifts unequally. There are men who are capable of seeing through these lies.

01:43:18 – 01:43:24:	Those men should have your support and your protection because they're outnumbered. And the

01:43:24 – 01:43:31:	men who are seeking to leave the world where there's no gospel left, where there's no promise

01:43:31 – 01:43:38:	of Job 19, where he knows that his Redeemer lives, and he knows that he will see him with his own

01:43:38 – 01:43:44:	eyes on the last day. We know that too. That is the Christian promise. It is not the promise of

01:43:44 – 01:43:50:	the faith of these men. Those who deny the resurrection, who deny the true Christ,

01:43:50 – 01:43:56:	will meet him in the worst possible way. We want for every listener and for all of your

01:43:56 – 01:44:02:	families and all of your communities to meet Christ on the last day, covered in the white robes,

01:44:03 – 01:44:10:	white in the blood of the Lamb. The forgiveness of sins is the purpose of Scripture. It's why

01:44:10 – 01:44:15:	it's given to us. Everything that we ever do wrong in our lives, everything that Bonhoff

01:44:15 – 01:44:18:	ever did wrong in his life, everything your pastor's ever done wrong in his life,

01:44:18 – 01:44:25:	getting some of this stuff wrong, Jesus paid the price for that. When we deny that that price was

01:44:25 – 01:44:31:	paid, when we deny that these things are sins, that these things are lies, we take it back on

01:44:31 – 01:44:35:	ourself. And on the last day, God will say, okay, if you say that's your sin, I believe you.

01:44:36 – 01:44:43:	That is not what we wish for anyone, because the eternal punishment is infinite. Just as the eternal

01:44:43 – 01:44:51:	reward is infinite for all the wonderful things that God has prepared for us, it's literally either

01:44:51 – 01:44:58:	war. And it's not our doing. But when we tolerate evil teaching, when we all tolerate evil teachers,

01:44:58 – 01:45:03:	we ensure that there's no room left in the world for Christian teaching. The last thing that we

01:45:03 – 01:45:11:	want is to see Christian teaching die out. I long for a day when stone choir is no longer necessary.

01:45:11 – 01:45:17:	Doing these episodes is unpleasant. We put this off for a while because it stinks so much to read

01:45:17 – 01:45:23:	this crap. It's painful. But the fact that it's harming people is one of the reasons we did. We

01:45:23 – 01:45:29:	had a lot of requests for this episode. If in some small way anything that we do or you do

01:45:29 – 01:45:35:	can help to turn the tide against these evil teachings, we would like to see the entire church

01:45:35 – 01:45:41:	get back to the point that our pulpits and our seminaries and wherever men are faithfully raised

01:45:41 – 01:45:47:	up to spread the word of God, they all see these things that are contrary to Scripture and say,

01:45:47 – 01:45:56:	yeah, I'm of a different spirit.