Thoughts about Dietrich Bonhoeffer … While Flying to Louisville, Kentucky

Courtesy of Wikipedia (Creative Commons License)

On the flight this morning from DFW to Louisville, KY, for the meeting of the Southern Baptist Messianic Fellowship this weekend, I continued the monumental effort to read The Bonhoeffer Legacy.  It is a struggle because the writer does not understand the theological mindset of Bonhoeffer and is frustrated because he does not fit the dual covenantal post-Holocaust theology of mainline Protestant theologians.  I become frustrated because the author just doesn’t get it … not only Bonhoeffer but also the continued call of Jewish evangelism that is even more pressing and urgent in a post-Holocaust world that is growing even more anti-Semitic by the day!

Anyway while reading the book, I stumbled across a quote by Bonhoeffer that was a part of the draft of the Bethel Confession (1933).  I want to share it with you as well.

A mission to the Jews which for cultural or political considerations refuses to baptize any more Jews at all is refusing to be obedient to its Lord….

Wow!  I always knew I liked Dietrich Bonhoeffer (even while disagreeing with some of his more liberal tenets) but now I know of another reason.  Bonhoeffer was interested in Jewish evangelism!  And if you doubt it, consider what ended up in the actual Bethel Confession:

The confession affirms that God remains faithful to his old people even after the crucifixion of Christ. He preserves a “holy remnant” of Israel according to the flesh, “which will neither disappear in another nation by means of emancipation or assimilation nor become a nation like any other by Zionist or similar efforts, nor be exterminated by pharaonic measures” (115f.).

The confession affirms that the church is charged to call the Jews to repentance and to baptize the believers in the name of Christ for the forgiveness of sins. The refusal to evangelize the Jews “for cultural or political reasons” is disobedience.

Bonhoeffer of 1933 would certainly disagree with the John Hagee’s and the Rabbi Eckstein’s of 2009!  So let’s remember not only the call to Bonhoeffer’s definition of “costly grace” but also his call to “Jewish Evangelism”.

Shalom.  God bless.