January 23, 2025 • 53 mins
The new film, Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin (Angel Studios) is drawing Christian audiences around the world, but does it get the depiction of its title character right?
Dr. Myles Werntz (professor of theology at Abilene Christian University) says it does not...and that Christians should view the movie with caution. In this interview, Werntz talks about the critical review he published about the film (perhaps the most widely read and quoted review out there).
He also talks about the real Dietrich Bonhoeffer and where Christians can look for the most accurate and insightful information about him.
Link to the Marc LiVecche film review (and critique of Werntz's review) from World Magazine (quoted in the interview)
Links to Bonhoeffer resources that Dr. Werntz recommends:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge
From Isolation to Community: A Renewed Vision for Christian Life Together by Dr. Myles Werntz
The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint by Stephen R. Haynes
Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh
Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906 - 1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: An Introduction to His Thought by Sabine Dramm and Thomas Rice
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to the Christian Chronicle Podcast.
We are bringing you the storyshaping Church of Christ
congregations and members aroundthe world.
Here is our host, BT.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Irwin, family and friends, neighbors and, most of
all, strangers, welcome to theChristian Chronicle Podcast.
May what you are about to hearbless you and honor God.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Something's coming.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Something else jumped up.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Look around you, my friend.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
How much light do you see?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Hello, darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk
with you again.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Because a vision so faintly big Left its seeds where
my bones lay, hate comes inevery color and the vision that
was planted in me Bombs in everycolor.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
We have devised a plot to assassinate the Fuhrer
you will go to.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
England as our spy.
Churchill sees Germany as ahome.
He's afraid that a bomb tracedto England would mean invasion
or worse, invasion.
Invasion my country was invadedfrom within and the people
bowed in praise To the younggods they made In the sight
(01:51):
flashed out of his warning andthe words that it was for me, in
the signs and the words on thegravitas.
We're not the subway walls andtenement halls and whisper in
(02:17):
the sun.
I'm ready To meet my destiny Ofsilence.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
That's a clip from the film Bonhoeffer, pastor, spy
, assassin, a film by ToddKomernicki and distributed by
Angel Studios to theatersnationwide and around the world
starting last November 2024 andnow streaming somewhere by the
time you hear this.
The film is a dramatictreatment of the life, work and
(02:51):
death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, aGerman Lutheran pastor and
theologian who opposed AdolfHitler and the Nazis and was
eventually hanged at theFlossenburg concentration camp
in 1945.
I reckon that last part is thereason that a lot of Church of
Christ folks know of Bonhoeffer.
That and the phrase he coined,cheap grace from his modern
(03:12):
classic, the Cost ofDiscipleship.
I reckon you'll find that bookin more than a few Church of
Christ ministers' offices.
The film, however, has stirredsome controversy.
More than 60 of Bonhoeffer'sliving relatives issued a
statement against the film,saying that it misrepresents
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's beliefsand practices.
Likewise, the InternationalBonhoeffer Society also issued a
(03:34):
statement cautioning againstmisuse of the film for political
purposes.
Some of the actors in the filmalso signed that statement.
Christian media have alsopublished many takes on the film
.
You could spend an entireafternoon reading film reviews
by several Christian critics,but only one review of the film
made it into what is one of thebiggest Christian news media
(03:55):
organizations in the world,christianity Today.
That review, which has beenlinked and quoted by many other
reviews of the film, was writtenby none other than Abilene
Christian University theologyprofessor, dr Miles Wurtz.
Abilene Christian University,of course, has deep roots and
strong ties in the Church ofChrist.
Dr Wurtz happens to be herewith us today to talk about
(04:17):
Bonhoeffer pastor spy assassin.
Dr Wurtz, you have to admitthat is a pretty catchy name for
a movie, don't you think?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
That is a super catchy.
That is such a catchy name fora, for a movie it's.
The only problem is that it'sprobably not entirely true.
So, but it makes for a greatsales pitch.
Like if I, if I'm thinkingabout why should I go see a
movie about a pastor and youthrow the word assassin in there
, I'm instantly hooked.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
see a movie about a pastor and you throw the word
assassin in there, I'm instantlyhooked.
For those in our audience thatmay not be so familiar with
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I wonder ifyou could give us a quick
primer.
Who was Dietrich Bonhoeffer,what was he all about, and why
is he a worthy subject forhundreds of books, thousands of
articles, blog posts?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
and podcasts and now a major motion picture.
That is such a good question.
So I'll just say how I gotinterested in Bonhoeffer first
and then maybe go from there.
I first encountered Bonhoefferthe way that I think a lot of
people do through his bookDiscipleship.
I was in high school.
I was in youth group.
(05:26):
I was looking for someone whowas offering a picture of what
it looks like for a life to becommitted to Jesus, and
Bonhoeffer's words just jumpedoff of the page.
From there I so many yearslater.
I studied him in graduateschool he makes an appearance in
(05:48):
my dissertation, but not as amajor figure, and began to read
him more seriously aftergraduate school.
I published a book entitledFrom Isolation to Community
(06:12):
which deals a lot withBonhoeffer's conception of
Christian community and how itrelates to this phenomenon of
isolation.
So he's been a conversationpartner of years in the US.
He did some traveling kind ofacross the continent, but for
(06:35):
the most part he spends all ofhis time in Germany.
He spends a lot of his careeras a teacher kind of, does work
with youth, engages inecumenical dialogue, but a very
kind of normie sort of existence.
He's an academic.
He has great academic training.
(06:55):
He studied, with some of theprime lights of his day, a
couple of historical theologiansat Tubigin in Berlin.
On paper it looks like there'sno reason why there should be
(07:16):
this much attention given tothis guy because he's an
academic, he has pastoralsensibilities and spends a lot
of his time kind of caring aboutthe church.
He has pastoral sensibilitiesand spends a lot of his time
kind of caring about the church.
But until I think what?
What really grabs people'sattention is this is the kinds
(07:37):
of things that get played out inthe film, right?
So Bonhoeffer's career waspredominantly that of an
educator.
He gets educated in thepreeminent institutions of his
(07:58):
day, goes and spends some timeat Union Theological Seminary in
New York, comes back in 1931and becomes a lecturer in
systematic theology, and so from1931 to 1937, he is, with a
couple of absences, there he'sjust a theologian, he's an
academic.
In 1935, a lot of that beginsto change for him.
The Nazis are ascendant inpower and there are some really
(08:22):
strong changes that are beingfoisted upon the church at that
time and maybe we can get intosome of this later.
But in 1935, he's tapped tohelp organize a new seminary,
the Seminary for the ConfessingChurch in Finkenwald.
He does that until 1940.
It's shut down and that's kindof where the film really takes
(08:47):
off is what happens toBonhoeffer around that period of
time between around after 19,about 1937 to 1940 and beyond,
how he gets involved withresisting the Nazis and what
kind of shape that takes.
So I think he's an inspiringfigure for a lot of people.
People, because I think a lotof people ask the question what
(09:08):
would I do in that kind ofsituation?
How would I respond to a worldin which there is a power, which
there are powers which areseeking not just to dominate the
world politically but are alsothreatening the existence of the
(09:29):
church theologically?
And so he becomes a veryinstructive figure.
His writings are very rich, Alot of the work that he so
there's like a collected volumeset of 16 volumes.
That kind of it draws togethersermons and lecture notes and
writings that he did off thecuff and a lot of correspondence
(09:51):
and his major books that hepublished.
And so he's just, he's aresource that I think continues
to be tapped for people who areinterested in thinking about
what does it look like for afaithful Christian community to
live out its life in a world ofless than ideal circumstances?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
I have a shallow, you know.
I've researched Bonhoeffer'slife on a not an academic level,
but I've read up on him.
And you mentioned theConfessing church just a moment
ago.
And my understanding is whenthe National Socialists, the
Nazis, came to power, youmentioned there was pressure
that was put on the church inGermany and my understanding of
(10:36):
the confessing church is that itemerged kind of as a resistance
to that or a pulling away fromnationalization of the church in
Germany.
So could you explain a littlebit?
I think most people think ofBonhoeffer as opposing Hitler,
because you know Hitler, youknow duh but he was preaching
(10:59):
and teaching against nationalsocialism and the rise of
Hitlerism, long before, I think,he was even aware of what was
happening with the Jews, forexample.
So tell us about the ConfessingChurch, tell us about his
project during those 1930s years, and what was it that he was
resisting so hard?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
So the Confessing Church arises as a response to
particular actions taken by theNational Socialists against the
National Church of Germany.
So for Americans this is a bitit's kind of apples and oranges
in some ways, because we have toremember that the German church
is supported or at that pointwas heavily supported by the
(11:44):
state or at that point washeavily supported by the state.
There was a distinction, likethere were certain things that
the state functionaries wouldnot interfere in.
They couldn't tell the churcheswhat to preach or how to
confess or what sorts ofdoctrines they should hold, but
there was a lot of kind ofpublic support given right.
So there was always kind oflike this relationship that
(12:04):
existed between church and state.
That doesn't really map onto anAmerican experience.
So beginning in I'm trying toremember the date, it's the mid,
like the early part of the1930s there start to be some
changes issued by the Reichstagwith respect to the kinds of
(12:28):
practices and confessions thatthe church should undertake.
One of the key ones was thebanning of persons of Jewish
descent from being a part of thechurch, jewish descent from
(12:48):
being a part of the church, andso that initially that kind of
begins Bonhoeffer's journey withrespect to thinking about the
relationship between Jews andChristians and what does it look
like?
How should Christians careabout the Jews?
So that was kind of the firstmove, and so that occasioned a
lot of folks getting together toorganize an alternative
arrangement for ordinands andtraining, to receive theological
(13:15):
education, to receiveministerial formation, which
would sidestep the necessity toexclude persons of Jewish
descent from the church.
In addition, during that timeyou also have some other things
that are introduced.
There is a whole body ofscholarship that is emerging
around this time that is tryingto create a lot of distance
(13:37):
between Christianity and Judaism, saying things like perhaps
Jesus wasn't really Jewish,maybe he was of Arab descent or
maybe he was of, like, someother kind of descent, and kind
of doing some textual criticismto kind of push this point,
(13:59):
sexual criticism to kind of pushthis point.
You start to see otherinfluences that begin to be
developed, such as there was amuch more like heroic and
positive interpretation of Jesus, one that fit with like a
pro-Aryan stance.
You start to get kind of therise of a more muscular vision
of Jesus right that fits with acountry that has been embattled
and is seeking to rehabilitateitself, that that kind of Jesus
(14:22):
fits the kind of Germany that isemerging.
So it's a bunch of small things.
There's something called theArian paragraph that gets
introduced, that expels, thatseeks to exclude Jews and their
descendants.
Later on you will start to getan oath of loyalty that all
(14:51):
pastors are encouraged to notencouraged, but required to take
Wow.
So it starts small.
It starts with, uh, smallinterferences by the government
in how churches live and howthey exercise their faith and it
gets more explicit over time.
It really is kind of like theuh the frog in boiling water
(15:14):
scenario.
By the time the big moves havebeen made, people are looking
back and realizing, oh wait, aminute, small interferences were
creating the pathway for muchlarger things to happen.
Down the road, bonhoeffer and afew of his friends get together
and they begin to organizewhat's called the Confession
(15:37):
Church and it drew from a lot ofdifferent theological, it drew
from Reformed, it drew from theGerman Evangelicals, it drew
from German Lutherans, all whocame together and they kind of
write their own confession.
There was one, there's a famousconfession called the Barman
Declaration.
That isn't really that.
(15:58):
But there's a much lesser knownone called the Dahlem
Declaration.
That really articulates notonly what the confessing church
was concerned with, but also theway it saw, the errors that it
saw with the German NationalChurch, the errors that it saw
with the German national church.
So that's kind of a long way ofexplaining that.
(16:18):
Yeah, the, the, the Germanconfessing church, it begins not
as a political opposition toHitler, but it begins as kind of
a retrieval of what does itmean to for the church to be the
church?
How can we keep from theencroachments of the german
authorities into telling us whatit looks like to be a christian
(16:41):
?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
so, uh, as time.
So the confessing church andthe seminary at finkenwald were
started out as a christianproject, but, uh, over time they
attracted the attention of thenazis.
Is that, is that?
Yes, so things.
Yes, the water started boilingand the water started boiling.
The people who were involvedwith the confessing church felt
(17:03):
the heat.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yes, and so over time , um, over time, it just really
became like insurmountable.
So the confessing church itstarts off with a whole lot of
energy and a whole lot ofchurches and pastors that are
involved and then slowly butsurely, like funds of the
(17:24):
confessing church start to beconfiscated, members, like
churches, of the confessingchurch, were forbidden for
taking up collections to supporttheir activities.
You start to see arrests ofdissenting pastors and finally
the straw that I well, one ofthe most important points here
(17:46):
for Bonhoeffer's story is thatthere was a decree issued that
then finally closed the seminaryat Finkenwald.
So it starts off with a lot ofenergy, lots of participation
and then through a lot of verytactical, procedural means, they
just kind of the Germangovernment just undercut all of
(18:07):
the support, all of the capacityfor the Confessing Church to
organize itself, to train newministers.
It is kind of it.
It is a real tragedy because onthe one hand it represents like
a lot of creativity and a lotof really thoughtful, uh
theological resistance to whatyou see with the nazis, but it
(18:29):
also shows the way in which, uh,the tactics which are used to
kind of undermine that don'thave to be like of the most.
Sometimes they're like overtlyoppressive by like jailing
pastors, but sometimes it's justsimple bureaucratic needs like
taxes or paperwork Right.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And so I.
I.
I suppose that the, thesanctioned German church at the
time, was drawn more and moreinto the sphere of the
government's influence.
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Okay, yeah, you do start to see a much more overt
influence and a much more overtcohesion between support for the
government on the one hand andthe churches on the other.
So they become much moresynthetic over time.
So they become much moresynthetic over time.
So you start to see pastors whoare beginning to preach
(19:20):
explicitly Nazi ideologicalsermons.
You start to see Nazi imageshoused inside churches.
There's one point in the moviewhere they kind of go over the
top and there's a scene in whichthey kind of take down a
(19:41):
crucifix and they put up a Naziflag or they and they take down
the, they take the Bible off thelectern and then put in Mein
Kampf.
It's a little bit over the topand it didn't really happen,
like that's something that overtdidn't really happen.
It was a bit more subtle thanthat Right, as it usually is.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Well's, let's talk about the film.
Uh bonhoeffer, pastor, spy,assassin.
You saw the film and youcouldn't just write a review on
rotten tomatoes like everyone,had to go all the way and write
a full film critique forchristianity today, which is one
of the most widely readchristian media in the world.
And you must have known thatyou, the critic, would become
(20:20):
the subject of criticism becauseyou wrote on your sub stack
that you were more nervous aboutyour film review going live
than anything you ever wrote inyour life.
That's a direct quote.
So why did you do it?
Why did you just have to writethis film review and send it to
the biggest possible Christianaudience you could find?
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, so I, as nervous as I was about writing
it, I felt compelled to to tofinish the assignment.
So when you take an assignmentlike that, like there's, there
are reasons why, like an authormight not be able to finish an
assignment for a, for an outlet,like they might I don't know
know family stuff comes up orwhat.
I didn't really have an excuseto not finish it, even though I
(21:00):
I finished the movie, I knewthat this was bad.
Um, my nervousness came fromlike two different directions.
On the one hand, bonhoeffer isan incredibly complex figure and
it's very easy for people and,like I was when I was, when I
was, like first introduced tohim, I had a real affection for
(21:21):
him.
He's a he's a figure thatgenerates a lot of like real
warm feelings and devotion, likepeople become devoted to the
story that they hear, and so Iwas kind of nervous about that
because I don't want to be theguy that just says you know, I
don't want to be, I don't wantto be the guy that like overly
complicates him and discouragespeople from really wanting to
(21:45):
read his own words.
I didn't want to do that, onthe one hand, and on the other
hand, I know a lot of Bonhoefferscholars my dissertation
director is being one of thoseand knew that the other audience
that was going to be readingthis were going to be folks in
the guild that know Bonhoefferinside and out, have devoted
(22:05):
their entire careers toexplicating his work and there's
just a lot of Bonhoefferscholarship can get really
contentious.
People get very invested intheir interpretations and get
very particularly around theevents that the film depicts.
There's just a lot of debateover what he knew and when he
(22:28):
knew it and what his attitudeswere toward the things that were
happening.
So it just took a while tofigure out how do I write about
this film in a way that is thatdoesn't turn people off from
bonhoeffer as such, but also isand is honest to the honest, to
the scholarship, honest to thestory, um, but also gets it like
(22:52):
gets the critique just right.
Right, I don't want to like, Ididn't't want to overstep and
say something that was just nottrue or try to misrepresent
scholarly consensus in a waythat wasn't there, but I also
wanted to make a plant a flag onthe ground and say, no, I think
(23:13):
this is wrong.
I think what it's doing withrespect to how it depicts
Bonhoeffer is wrong.
I think that the underpinningsof the film are a bit
disingenuous, so kind of allthose things.
It was a hard one to write.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Well, I haven't seen the film yet.
I know people who got togetherwith church friends to go see it
.
I have, of course, read a lotabout it.
Like all historical dramas, ittakes artistic license to flesh
out the characters and tell acompelling story.
I think most of us are okaywith a little artistic license,
Otherwise half our audiencewould be in trouble for bringing
(23:51):
the chosen churches duringBible study hour.
So that's right this film takesartistic license, and you don't
necessarily find fault withthat, do you?
But there are some specific uhquote unquote artistic
treatments in the film thatalarm you, and I think alarm is
the appropriate word here.
Why are they and why are theyso alarming?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
So there's a bunch of things that there's a bunch of
kind of embellishments that onthe one hand or not, I mean,
they're just kind of goofyembellishments.
So it depicts him in Harlem.
Like I said, he spends a coupleof years in New York City.
After he finishes his owntheological work he goes and
tries to he's like you know whatI'm going to learn from the
(24:35):
best that america has to offerwith respect to theological
education.
He's not really that impressed,but he spends a couple of years
in new york and so some of thescenes that they depict there
are just a bit.
They're pretty over the top, um, but on the one hand that's
just kind of what you get with ahistorical, with a historical
film.
Right, there's going to beconversations that are put in
(24:57):
their mouths that are done tojust kind of over-dramatize
things or to make an overt point, but they're not really the way
that the person probably wouldhave said things.
But on the other hand, I diddetect a way in which not just
the embellishments but thethings that it gets, I think
(25:18):
historically and factually wrongwere of a single piece.
So the way that I characterizeit in the film is that it takes
a figure like Bonhoeffer, whoseconcerns were almost always
theologically rooted, and itreduces his concerns to
(25:38):
political concerns.
It's not to say for Bonhoefferthat he's not intimately
concerned with how theology andour life in the world are
interrelated.
I think this is one of thereasons that Bonhoeffer is such
a compelling person to learnfrom is that he doesn't think
that theology is only a matterof that which we intellectually
(26:00):
profess but really is.
A theology is deeplyintertwined with discipleship
and our witness in the world andthe way in which the church is
the church.
For others, like that's justpart and parcel of who he is.
But there's a way of depictingthat concern that becomes almost
reductionist.
So the way that I seeBonhoeffer depicted in the film
(26:25):
is almost reductionist in thatway.
So, for example, in all ofthese events that happen in
Harlem, they exist.
I write in the review to play upthis notion that Bonhoeffer is
a person who is always and everlike this impassioned advocate
for the right of AfricanAmericans.
(26:47):
He is a person who isintimately concerned for issues
of justice all the time.
That's not really true at thepoint that he goes, at the time
that he goes to Harlem.
It becomes more true toward theend of his life.
But it's just not, it's justpretty, it's stretching.
It's stretching the facts a bitat that juncture.
(27:09):
But as the film kind of goes on,there become more of these
kinds of instances where thepolitical rises to the
foreground and any theologicalconcern just kind of recedes to
the background.
So he says things like I can'tpretend that praying and
teaching is enough, that mydirty hands are all I have left
to offer.
(27:29):
When he goes to, when they showhim at his at the underground
seminary at finkenwald, likethey explicitly characterize it
as a place that uh, people arecoming to be able to launch a
political counter-attack on thenazis.
So it's just kind of littlethings like that that begin to
(27:51):
kind of add it to like create acumulative effect.
So like we never see Bonhoefferpraying until he's in prison,
despite the fact that he'sworking in a seminary.
And much of what you we know ofhis life in the seminary is
daily prayers, daily reading ofscripture, gathering for comp
(28:12):
for like confession andcommunion with all of the folks
that are gathered there.
Like none of that's depicted.
The only thing that reallymatters in the depiction of
Finkenwald is this is a placefor Nazi dissidents to come and
get organized.
So that's kind of that becomes.
It becomes a bit more obviousas the film continues to unfold,
(28:33):
to the point that by the end,when there's all the discussions
are happening with respect towhat sort of political
resistance they want to offer toHitler, like Bonhoeffer just
sets all of that aside Hisfriend and student and
chronicler, eberhard Betka, whowrote kind of the major.
He wrote one of the first majorbiographies of Dietrich
(28:55):
Bonhoeffer.
It's like a thousand, almost athousand pages.
They have him in conversationwith Betka at one point and
Bonhoeffer just like shoves allof his writings from
discipleship to the side.
Betka says well, doesn't Christteach us to like, love our
enemies and not to kill them?
(29:15):
And Bonhoeffer says you knowwhat I was right about that
before Hitler?
And then Bonhoeffer, hechallenges him and says well,
how can you?
Is this the first evil leaderthat there's ever been since
scripture?
Don't you think scripture canaccount for this?
And Bonhoeffer's reply is no,this isn't the first evil leader
(29:38):
in scripture, but he's thefirst one I can stop.
So it's just like all of theseinstances where this robust
theological imagination thatBonhoeffer is always working
with just gets sidelined orsubmerged into turning
Bonhoeffer into kind of apolitical functionary.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Bonhoeffer.
Everything I've read about himindicates that he was a pacifist
, a self-described pacifist.
The title of the film you havepastor and then you have spy and
assassin, so two out of thethree words are spy and assassin
, an assassin.
So I hear you saying that.
Uh, not only does the the filmdepict bonhoeffer, uh, literally
(30:19):
shoving his theology aside, yousaid in in one scene he shoves
aside everything that he'swritten on discipleship uh plays
up the spy and the assassinpart.
There is quite a bit of intriguearound bonhoeffer.
Uh, knowledge of anassassination attempt on Hitler.
Talk about where you think thefilm goes sideways.
(30:42):
On the spy and assassin part.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah, so that Bonhoeffer was engaged in
espionage.
Now, that part's true, he usedhe.
So after the collapse of theseminary at Finkenwald,
bonhoeffer becomes involved witha group called the Abwehr,
(31:09):
which is a German governmentaldepartment, uses a lot of his
ecumenical contacts that he hasin England and elsewhere to
begin distributing informationof what the nazis are actually
doing to his counterparts inengland and switzerland.
Um, he, I mean he does, he useshis, he uses his position as a
way to infiltrate, uh, thisaspect of the nazis and to
(31:31):
undermine them from within.
So that part's correct.
So where the film gets murky andit begins to, I think, go off
the rails is that it puts it.
It enters into an area ofscholarly debate with a very
(31:51):
overconfident interpretation ofwhat happens.
So Betka, in describing whatBonhoeffer's involvement was
with uh any assassinationattempts, openly says like we
have no textual evidence to sayone way, like what he knew when
(32:12):
he knew it, what his involvement, betka kind of gives his own
interpretation based on a lot ofcircumstantial writing.
He kind of distinguished it.
Betka says there's like fivedifferent if you want to think
of like involvement, likeresistance to the Nazis, as a
kind of a series of concentriccircles.
He says there's like passiveresistance in which churches
(32:38):
would like just drag their feeton Nazi mandates, and then
there's kind of a slightlycloser in ring where people
would begin to like activelyresist the Nazis in terms of
spying or doing these sorts ofthings.
And then, closer in, he saysthis is where the active
conspiracy folks are and this iswhere he places Bonhoeffer,
(33:01):
which is, I think, which isstill true In the film.
You have him in conversationwith his brother-in-law, hans de
Hany, who was like whoabsolutely did participate in
some of these activities.
But, as Becca notes, like wejust don't know like what, what
Bonhoeffer's participation wasin terms of organizing or
(33:25):
participation in any of theseattempts is just, it's just lost
to us.
We can make kind of educatedhunches, but there is so much in
the writing and howBonhoeffer's articulate, like
the articulation of his owntheological principles that he
puts out during this period thatjust it just makes Bonhoeffer
(33:49):
assassin pretty, a prettyimplausible read of what he's
actually doing during that time.
A better way to, I think,understand Bonhoeffer's
resistance is his concerns arealways and he writes about this
in his ethics what does it looklike for the church to be
involved in Germany, on theother side of the war.
(34:13):
How can the German church be awitness to the person of Jesus
Christ and also be involved inthe reconstruction of Germany
and bringing Germany back tohealth?
He never leaves that behind.
He never quits thinking in atheological register about what
it means for him to participatein opposition to the tyranny of
(34:38):
Hitler.
So In the film where they depictthis in a fairly reductionist
kind of fashion, to say yes, heturns away from kind of this
naive pacifism of discipleshiptoward a much more realist
version that requires that you,you know, help with the planting
(34:58):
of bombs and try to procure abomb that's going to assassinate
Hitler and take up arms againstHitler and take up arms against
Hitler Like.
That just seems to be anincredibly implausible
interpretation based on the lackof direct evidence that we have
and what Bonhoeffer himselfwrites during this period with
respect to how he thinks aboutdiscipleship.
(35:19):
He says at a later time I seehow this could be misinterpreted
.
I still stand by everything Iwrote right, um.
He writes in his ethics aboutpart of what is at stake, um,
and I mentioned this in thereview part of what's at stake
for him is the church refusingto use the weapons of the like,
(35:40):
the tools of beelzebub to castout beelzebub.
You can't use evil to drive outevil.
If you do that, then you'resaying as Bonhoeffer himself, as
the movie Bonhoeffer says,whatever was true of scripture
was true prior to this time.
This historical event requiresus to just throw out all these
(36:03):
things as unrealist, unnecessaryimpossibilities.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
So what you've explained a little more for our
listeners who have seen themovie or haven't seen the movie,
where you take issue with howBonhoeffer is presented, I'll
ask so what?
It's still a movie and stillcan be good fun to go.
Yeah, I want to watch a movie.
What about this movie makes younervous?
Speaker 3 (36:32):
uh, when it comes to people in the church today, uh,
watching this movie and and whatthey might take from it I get
nervous about the way in whichum american christianity tends
toward being pragmatic and theway in which the pragmatism of
the film and the pragmatism ofamerican christianity will come
(36:54):
together to say maybe it's,maybe it's fine.
Maybe there are kind of extremecircumstances which force us to
kind of set aside strongly heldtheological convictions and
just do what is necessary inthat time.
It sounds really good on paper,but when you begin to take it
(37:14):
all the way down it leads tosome pretty dark places.
So that's one thing.
That's part of what I worryabout.
The other part of what I worryabout is kind of along the same
line, is it doesn't encouragepeople to think with any kind of
theological complexity abouthard questions.
(37:38):
It wants to kind of cut theknot down the middle and to say
here's the clean and easy way tothink through this.
Bonhoeffer himself, when he'strying to reason through his own
involvement with the conspiracy, he says first and foremost, I
can't justify this theologically.
He says I have to throw myselfon the mercy of God because
(38:02):
there's no way that I can offertheological justification for
being involved in this.
He is out over his skis, he isout.
He is kind of working without anet, and he knows it, that this
is a situation.
He finds himself in a situationthat he knows no one wants to
find themselves in, and yet hehas to think through.
What does it look like to beChrist's disciple in this time?
Speaker 2 (38:23):
And your worry is that Bonhoeffer is almost like a
modern apostle to a lot ofpeople.
He's one of those people thatyou can quote and people will
almost take it authoritativelywhen they hear you quote it.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yes, it sounds like your fear is that when the
people in the pews go watch thismovie because it's, I don't
want to say, theologicallyshallow that's not what you said
.
You used the word reductionista couple of times is that, uh,
christians who watch this moviewill not have to wrestle as
deeply as bonhoeffer wrestled?
Speaker 3 (38:53):
right that it provides, almost just because
it's bonhoeffer saying thisright, it provides like
justification for us to, byanalogy, do the kinds of things
things that we see Bonhoefferdoing in the film in our own
context.
That it invites us to ask whatis our own Bonhoeffer moment and
how might we respond?
(39:14):
But again, you can take thatanalogy and it goes to some
pretty.
You can stretch that so farthat it becomes basically a
justification for whatever youwant to do with it.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
As we have witnessed with our own eyes in recent
times.
James K Smith talks about howwe are constantly living in a
liturgy in our country, and whenI think about all the movies
that American Christians haveseen, right, we are buying into
(39:48):
that Hollywood liturgy.
That violence is the easiestsolution, right?
So what I hear you saying isthat this is kind of an American
liturgy version of Bonhoeffer'slife that makes violence the
easiest solution to what?
Speaker 3 (40:05):
is really theological .
The problem with trying toadvocate for something else is
that violence frequently worksright.
So, but I think that part ofBonhoeffer's concern is that if
the end that we seek and themeans that we take to get there
are not consistent, then youhave yeah, you've solved the
(40:28):
problem, but you've createdother problems for yourself
along the way.
I think that's part of hisconcern.
I think his other part, theother part of his concern is he
just can't.
He can't reconcile, he can'tbring two things together right.
What does it look like to be afaithful Christian and yet to
(40:48):
you know, doesn't know how, tohow to fit an assassination
attempt on Hitler into that,into that?
Speaker 2 (40:55):
matrix.
I mean well done, in thatyou've been quoted by a lot of
other film writers.
Right yeah, some people havetaken issue with your criticism
and I think maybe the moststrongly stated critique of your
critique comes from MarkLavecchi at World Magazine.
(41:18):
He wrote his own review of thefilm and he argues against your
critique, which he quotessometimes.
And I'm going to read you arather lengthy quote from
Lavecchi.
So I hope you'll pardon thatfor a second and then you'll
have a chance to be in aconversation with him.
So here's the Lavecchi quote.
Here it is, quote.
The question, dietrichBonhoeffer would insist, isn't
whether to love my neighbor, itisn't even whether to love my
(41:41):
enemy as my neighbor.
The question is how to lovewhen one neighbor who I am
called to love is to deathanother neighbor who I am also
called to love without cause.
The duty of neighbor love canbe simply carried out when the
situation is without complexity,that is, when there isn't a
(42:02):
competing duty.
When duties compete.
It sometimes seems that thedegree to which one duty is
followed is the degree to whichthe other duty is necessarily
shirked.
This tension is at the heart ofthe film.
Bonhoeffer Pastor, spy,assassin.
Some critics and I think hemeans you, dr Werns yes, the
(42:23):
tension is overplayed in themanner of its resolution false.
It continues in the face ofsuch an onslaught.
It was clear to Bonhoeffer thatthe duty of love is simple.
It requires that we rescue thevictims.
Less clear is how this dutysquares with Bonhoeffer's
pacifist convictions.
Critics of the film charge that, in resolving this tension, the
(42:48):
film abandons the Bonhoeffer ofdeep theological conviction for
a caricature, willing to andhe's quoting you here quote
behind prayer for conspiracy,bible teaching for political
espionage and theology foractivism.
It's an odd charge, saysLavecchi, for the film
continually portrays a prayerfulBonhoeffer struggling through
Scripture to know how to walkobediently in the way of Jesus
(43:12):
in a world in which someneighbors are hell-bent on
annihilating other neighbors.
Bonhoeffer doesn't abandon anyof the components of Christian
devotion.
He simply acknowledges that wecan't keep pretending that
praying and teaching is enough.
Here's the conclusion it isrecognizing that while one must
love both the victim neighborand the enemy neighbor.
One cannot love both in exactlythe same way at exactly the
(43:36):
same moment.
Sometimes the answer to prayermight be an assassination plot.
It was love in the last resort.
The film Bonhoeffer is allabout how to be a follower of
Christ when, as he puts it,hallelujah won't do all the work
.
End quote.
So that's LeVet's response toyour critique of the film.
How would you like to respondto LeVetchi?
Speaker 3 (44:00):
So I think that his interpretation of Bonhoeffer at
large rests upon a and I'm goingto get into the weeds for just
a moment.
So there's a number ofdifferent interpretive schools,
as it were, with how to thinkabout Bonhoeffer.
(44:20):
If your audience is reallyinterested in this question of
how to interpret Bonhoeffer andthe plurality of interpretation
that's out there, the best placeto begin is the Bonhoeffer
phenomenon by Stephen Haynes.
So Leveschi, I think, isrelying upon a way of
interpreting Bonhoeffer that iswhat you can call a realist
(44:41):
depiction.
Depiction it proposes that wehave ideals that we want to
operate with in the world andthat our best attempts at
faithfulness will always fallshort of those ideals.
So this is where he gets intothis notion of conflicting
duties and that you really dohave quandaries because you
can't fulfill both of yourduties at the same time.
(45:02):
So in some ways, I think thatthat's not wrong, that there are
situations where you have, youhave conflicting duties and you
have to make sense of how tolike, how to get both of those,
how to how to fulfill both ofthose duties.
Where I disagree is that so therealist.
(45:22):
So the realist approach tendsto.
In my assessment, it tends tolean into the notion that our
responses will always be tragicin the world and just to like
lean into that really hard.
So when he says the answer toprayer might be an assassination
(45:43):
plot, this is a way of him, Ithink, trying to say the way
forward for Bonhoeffer in thistragic world is to simply
embrace the is to live in thesehistorical contingencies and
embrace the option in front ofhim right to assassinate Hitler
(46:04):
and embrace the option in frontof him right to assassinate
Hitler.
I just think that that is Ait's a failure of imagination of
what resistance entailed forBonhoeffer.
So there's a couple of goodbooks out there that really get
into the weeds on whatresistance meant for Bonhoeffer.
One that I cite in the reviewis a book by Michael DeJong
called Bonhoeffer on Resistance,the Word Against the Wheel.
(46:26):
There's another.
(46:53):
Just think that's a falsechoice and that's I think that's
just a failure of imagination.
Um, so two things that I wouldsay then to lavecchi.
One, I think his interpretationof Bonhoeffer as a whole is
doesn't square with what itgives kind of an incomplete
rendering of who Bonhoeffer isand the way that Bonhoeffer
(47:14):
works, and I think it says muchmore about the way that Lavecchi
thinks than it does, howBonhoeffer thinks.
And secondly, I think that it'sit.
It represents kind of an in ofan inaccurate view of what
resistance for Bonhoeffer lookedlike.
That for Bonhoeffer, resistancewas always.
It always was theological andit always had like a theological
(47:36):
element to it that he'sthinking not just in terms of
the politics of the situation,but what does it look like for
us to do this as Christians, notsetting aside those obligations
(47:59):
and not setting aside thoseconvictions, but thinking about
what does it look like to applythis particular conviction?
Speaker 2 (48:02):
in a different kind of way.
So that's what I would say toLavecchi.
So would you tell people to notsee the film, or would you
simply caution them.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
I would issue some pretty strong caveats and say
that know what you're watching.
Going in um, there are a coupleof older.
There's a.
There's an older bonhoefferfilm from, I think, the early,
like the late 90s or early 2000s.
That it's a bit slower innature and there's parts of this
(48:31):
film that kind of drag as well,but it's probably more historic
.
It's probably more accurate.
I haven't seen it in a minute.
There's a good documentary byMartin Doblemeyer.
There's a good documentary byMartin Dobelmeyer.
(48:59):
Dobelmeyer has done a lot ofreally great documentaries on
other religious figures, likeHoward Thurman and Dorothy Day,
and he did one on Bonhoeffer.
Several film Like those might bemy go-to places if push came to
shove.
At the same time, there aresome things that like like this
new version, like it depictsBonhoeffer in a more dramatic
(49:20):
mode that I think will inspirepeople more than just a straight
up documentary, and so there'ssomething to that maybe.
At the same time, I just thinkthat the overall thesis that the
film is working with about whoBonhoeffer is and how Bonhoeffer
thought, and like what his, howhe fit the pieces together I
(49:40):
just think that it's justincorrect.
I think it's inaccurate, Ithink it's.
It moves from like there's someplaces where it's just
incorrect.
I think it's inaccurate.
I think it's it moves from likethere's some places where it's
just artistic liberties, butthere's a lot of places that I
think it's just it's trying totie things together in a pretty
neat and tidy package.
That is just the wrong package.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Well, thank you for talking to us about Dietrich
Bonhoeffer today.
Dr Miles Wernz of AbileneChristian University has written
perhaps the most quoted filmcritique of Bonhoeffer.
Today Dr Miles Wernz of AbileneChristian University has
written perhaps the most quotedfilm critique of Bonhoeffer
Pastor Spy Assassin.
We'll put a link to his reviewin the show notes.
Dr Wernz, thank you for goingto the movies with us today.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
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(50:42):
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(51:02):
Until next time, may grace andpeace be yours in abundance.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
The Christian Chronicle podcast is a
production of the ChristianChronicle Inc.
Informing and inspiring Churchof Christ congregations, members
and ministries around the worldsince 1943.
The Christian ChroniclesManaging Editor is Audrey
Jackson, editor-in-chief BobbyRoss Jr and President and CEO
(51:32):
Eric Trigestad.
The Christian Chronicle Podcastis written, directed, hosted
and edited by BT Irwin and isproduced by James Flanagan in
Detroit, michigan, usa.
Welcome to the Christian Chronicle Podcast.
We are bringing you the storyshaping Church of Christ
congregations and members aroundthe world.
Here is our host, BT.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Irwin, family and friends, neighbors and, most of
all, strangers, welcome to theChristian Chronicle Podcast.
May what you are about to hearbless you and honor God.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Something's coming.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Something else jumped up.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Look around you, my friend.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
How much light do you see?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Hello, darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk
with you again.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Because a vision so faintly big Left its seeds where
my bones lay, hate comes inevery color and the vision that
was planted in me Bombs in everycolor.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
We have devised a plot to assassinate the Fuhrer
you will go to.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
England as our spy.
Churchill sees Germany as ahome.
He's afraid that a bomb tracedto England would mean invasion
or worse, invasion.
Invasion my country was invadedfrom within and the people
bowed in praise To the younggods they made In the sight
(01:51):
flashed out of his warning andthe words that it was for me, in
the signs and the words on thegravitas.
We're not the subway walls andtenement halls and whisper in
(02:17):
the sun.
I'm ready To meet my destiny Ofsilence.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
That's a clip from the film Bonhoeffer, pastor, spy
, assassin, a film by ToddKomernicki and distributed by
Angel Studios to theatersnationwide and around the world
starting last November 2024 andnow streaming somewhere by the
time you hear this.
The film is a dramatictreatment of the life, work and
(02:51):
death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, aGerman Lutheran pastor and
theologian who opposed AdolfHitler and the Nazis and was
eventually hanged at theFlossenburg concentration camp
in 1945.
I reckon that last part is thereason that a lot of Church of
Christ folks know of Bonhoeffer.
That and the phrase he coined,cheap grace from his modern
(03:12):
classic, the Cost ofDiscipleship.
I reckon you'll find that bookin more than a few Church of
Christ ministers' offices.
The film, however, has stirredsome controversy.
More than 60 of Bonhoeffer'sliving relatives issued a
statement against the film,saying that it misrepresents
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's beliefsand practices.
Likewise, the InternationalBonhoeffer Society also issued a
(03:34):
statement cautioning againstmisuse of the film for political
purposes.
Some of the actors in the filmalso signed that statement.
Christian media have alsopublished many takes on the film
.
You could spend an entireafternoon reading film reviews
by several Christian critics,but only one review of the film
made it into what is one of thebiggest Christian news media
(03:55):
organizations in the world,christianity Today.
That review, which has beenlinked and quoted by many other
reviews of the film, was writtenby none other than Abilene
Christian University theologyprofessor, dr Miles Wurtz.
Abilene Christian University,of course, has deep roots and
strong ties in the Church ofChrist.
Dr Wurtz happens to be herewith us today to talk about
(04:17):
Bonhoeffer pastor spy assassin.
Dr Wurtz, you have to admitthat is a pretty catchy name for
a movie, don't you think?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
That is a super catchy.
That is such a catchy name fora, for a movie it's.
The only problem is that it'sprobably not entirely true.
So, but it makes for a greatsales pitch.
Like if I, if I'm thinkingabout why should I go see a
movie about a pastor and youthrow the word assassin in there
, I'm instantly hooked.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
see a movie about a pastor and you throw the word
assassin in there, I'm instantlyhooked.
For those in our audience thatmay not be so familiar with
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I wonder ifyou could give us a quick
primer.
Who was Dietrich Bonhoeffer,what was he all about, and why
is he a worthy subject forhundreds of books, thousands of
articles, blog posts?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
and podcasts and now a major motion picture.
That is such a good question.
So I'll just say how I gotinterested in Bonhoeffer first
and then maybe go from there.
I first encountered Bonhoefferthe way that I think a lot of
people do through his bookDiscipleship.
I was in high school.
I was in youth group.
(05:26):
I was looking for someone whowas offering a picture of what
it looks like for a life to becommitted to Jesus, and
Bonhoeffer's words just jumpedoff of the page.
From there I so many yearslater.
I studied him in graduateschool he makes an appearance in
(05:48):
my dissertation, but not as amajor figure, and began to read
him more seriously aftergraduate school.
I published a book entitledFrom Isolation to Community
(06:12):
which deals a lot withBonhoeffer's conception of
Christian community and how itrelates to this phenomenon of
isolation.
So he's been a conversationpartner of years in the US.
He did some traveling kind ofacross the continent, but for
(06:35):
the most part he spends all ofhis time in Germany.
He spends a lot of his careeras a teacher kind of, does work
with youth, engages inecumenical dialogue, but a very
kind of normie sort of existence.
He's an academic.
He has great academic training.
(06:55):
He studied, with some of theprime lights of his day, a
couple of historical theologiansat Tubigin in Berlin.
On paper it looks like there'sno reason why there should be
(07:16):
this much attention given tothis guy because he's an
academic, he has pastoralsensibilities and spends a lot
of his time kind of caring aboutthe church.
He has pastoral sensibilitiesand spends a lot of his time
kind of caring about the church.
But until I think what?
What really grabs people'sattention is this is the kinds
(07:37):
of things that get played out inthe film, right?
So Bonhoeffer's career waspredominantly that of an
educator.
He gets educated in thepreeminent institutions of his
(07:58):
day, goes and spends some timeat Union Theological Seminary in
New York, comes back in 1931and becomes a lecturer in
systematic theology, and so from1931 to 1937, he is, with a
couple of absences, there he'sjust a theologian, he's an
academic.
In 1935, a lot of that beginsto change for him.
The Nazis are ascendant inpower and there are some really
(08:22):
strong changes that are beingfoisted upon the church at that
time and maybe we can get intosome of this later.
But in 1935, he's tapped tohelp organize a new seminary,
the Seminary for the ConfessingChurch in Finkenwald.
He does that until 1940.
It's shut down and that's kindof where the film really takes
(08:47):
off is what happens toBonhoeffer around that period of
time between around after 19,about 1937 to 1940 and beyond,
how he gets involved withresisting the Nazis and what
kind of shape that takes.
So I think he's an inspiringfigure for a lot of people.
People, because I think a lotof people ask the question what
(09:08):
would I do in that kind ofsituation?
How would I respond to a worldin which there is a power, which
there are powers which areseeking not just to dominate the
world politically but are alsothreatening the existence of the
(09:29):
church theologically?
And so he becomes a veryinstructive figure.
His writings are very rich, Alot of the work that he so
there's like a collected volumeset of 16 volumes.
That kind of it draws togethersermons and lecture notes and
writings that he did off thecuff and a lot of correspondence
(09:51):
and his major books that hepublished.
And so he's just, he's aresource that I think continues
to be tapped for people who areinterested in thinking about
what does it look like for afaithful Christian community to
live out its life in a world ofless than ideal circumstances?
Speaker 2 (10:13):
I have a shallow, you know.
I've researched Bonhoeffer'slife on a not an academic level,
but I've read up on him.
And you mentioned theConfessing church just a moment
ago.
And my understanding is whenthe National Socialists, the
Nazis, came to power, youmentioned there was pressure
that was put on the church inGermany and my understanding of
(10:36):
the confessing church is that itemerged kind of as a resistance
to that or a pulling away fromnationalization of the church in
Germany.
So could you explain a littlebit?
I think most people think ofBonhoeffer as opposing Hitler,
because you know Hitler, youknow duh but he was preaching
(10:59):
and teaching against nationalsocialism and the rise of
Hitlerism, long before, I think,he was even aware of what was
happening with the Jews, forexample.
So tell us about the ConfessingChurch, tell us about his
project during those 1930s years, and what was it that he was
resisting so hard?
Speaker 3 (11:18):
So the Confessing Church arises as a response to
particular actions taken by theNational Socialists against the
National Church of Germany.
So for Americans this is a bitit's kind of apples and oranges
in some ways, because we have toremember that the German church
is supported or at that pointwas heavily supported by the
(11:44):
state or at that point washeavily supported by the state.
There was a distinction, likethere were certain things that
the state functionaries wouldnot interfere in.
They couldn't tell the churcheswhat to preach or how to
confess or what sorts ofdoctrines they should hold, but
there was a lot of kind ofpublic support given right.
So there was always kind oflike this relationship that
(12:04):
existed between church and state.
That doesn't really map onto anAmerican experience.
So beginning in I'm trying toremember the date, it's the mid,
like the early part of the1930s there start to be some
changes issued by the Reichstagwith respect to the kinds of
(12:28):
practices and confessions thatthe church should undertake.
One of the key ones was thebanning of persons of Jewish
descent from being a part of thechurch, jewish descent from
(12:48):
being a part of the church, andso that initially that kind of
begins Bonhoeffer's journey withrespect to thinking about the
relationship between Jews andChristians and what does it look
like?
How should Christians careabout the Jews?
So that was kind of the firstmove, and so that occasioned a
lot of folks getting together toorganize an alternative
arrangement for ordinands andtraining, to receive theological
(13:15):
education, to receiveministerial formation, which
would sidestep the necessity toexclude persons of Jewish
descent from the church.
In addition, during that timeyou also have some other things
that are introduced.
There is a whole body ofscholarship that is emerging
around this time that is tryingto create a lot of distance
(13:37):
between Christianity and Judaism, saying things like perhaps
Jesus wasn't really Jewish,maybe he was of Arab descent or
maybe he was of, like, someother kind of descent, and kind
of doing some textual criticismto kind of push this point,
(13:59):
sexual criticism to kind of pushthis point.
You start to see otherinfluences that begin to be
developed, such as there was amuch more like heroic and
positive interpretation of Jesus, one that fit with like a
pro-Aryan stance.
You start to get kind of therise of a more muscular vision
of Jesus right that fits with acountry that has been embattled
and is seeking to rehabilitateitself, that that kind of Jesus
(14:22):
fits the kind of Germany that isemerging.
So it's a bunch of small things.
There's something called theArian paragraph that gets
introduced, that expels, thatseeks to exclude Jews and their
descendants.
Later on you will start to getan oath of loyalty that all
(14:51):
pastors are encouraged to notencouraged, but required to take
Wow.
So it starts small.
It starts with, uh, smallinterferences by the government
in how churches live and howthey exercise their faith and it
gets more explicit over time.
It really is kind of like theuh the frog in boiling water
(15:14):
scenario.
By the time the big moves havebeen made, people are looking
back and realizing, oh wait, aminute, small interferences were
creating the pathway for muchlarger things to happen.
Down the road, bonhoeffer and afew of his friends get together
and they begin to organizewhat's called the Confession
(15:37):
Church and it drew from a lot ofdifferent theological, it drew
from Reformed, it drew from theGerman Evangelicals, it drew
from German Lutherans, all whocame together and they kind of
write their own confession.
There was one, there's a famousconfession called the Barman
Declaration.
That isn't really that.
(15:58):
But there's a much lesser knownone called the Dahlem
Declaration.
That really articulates notonly what the confessing church
was concerned with, but also theway it saw, the errors that it
saw with the German NationalChurch, the errors that it saw
with the German national church.
So that's kind of a long way ofexplaining that.
(16:18):
Yeah, the, the, the Germanconfessing church, it begins not
as a political opposition toHitler, but it begins as kind of
a retrieval of what does itmean to for the church to be the
church?
How can we keep from theencroachments of the german
authorities into telling us whatit looks like to be a christian
(16:41):
?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
so, uh, as time.
So the confessing church andthe seminary at finkenwald were
started out as a christianproject, but, uh, over time they
attracted the attention of thenazis.
Is that, is that?
Yes, so things.
Yes, the water started boilingand the water started boiling.
The people who were involvedwith the confessing church felt
(17:03):
the heat.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yes, and so over time , um, over time, it just really
became like insurmountable.
So the confessing church itstarts off with a whole lot of
energy and a whole lot ofchurches and pastors that are
involved and then slowly butsurely, like funds of the
(17:24):
confessing church start to beconfiscated, members, like
churches, of the confessingchurch, were forbidden for
taking up collections to supporttheir activities.
You start to see arrests ofdissenting pastors and finally
the straw that I well, one ofthe most important points here
(17:46):
for Bonhoeffer's story is thatthere was a decree issued that
then finally closed the seminaryat Finkenwald.
So it starts off with a lot ofenergy, lots of participation
and then through a lot of verytactical, procedural means, they
just kind of the Germangovernment just undercut all of
(18:07):
the support, all of the capacityfor the Confessing Church to
organize itself, to train newministers.
It is kind of it.
It is a real tragedy because onthe one hand it represents like
a lot of creativity and a lotof really thoughtful, uh
theological resistance to whatyou see with the nazis, but it
(18:29):
also shows the way in which, uh,the tactics which are used to
kind of undermine that don'thave to be like of the most.
Sometimes they're like overtlyoppressive by like jailing
pastors, but sometimes it's justsimple bureaucratic needs like
taxes or paperwork Right.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And so I.
I.
I suppose that the, thesanctioned German church at the
time, was drawn more and moreinto the sphere of the
government's influence.
Right.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Okay, yeah, you do start to see a much more overt
influence and a much more overtcohesion between support for the
government on the one hand andthe churches on the other.
So they become much moresynthetic over time.
So they become much moresynthetic over time.
So you start to see pastors whoare beginning to preach
(19:20):
explicitly Nazi ideologicalsermons.
You start to see Nazi imageshoused inside churches.
There's one point in the moviewhere they kind of go over the
top and there's a scene in whichthey kind of take down a
(19:41):
crucifix and they put up a Naziflag or they and they take down
the, they take the Bible off thelectern and then put in Mein
Kampf.
It's a little bit over the topand it didn't really happen,
like that's something that overtdidn't really happen.
It was a bit more subtle thanthat Right, as it usually is.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Well's, let's talk about the film.
Uh bonhoeffer, pastor, spy,assassin.
You saw the film and youcouldn't just write a review on
rotten tomatoes like everyone,had to go all the way and write
a full film critique forchristianity today, which is one
of the most widely readchristian media in the world.
And you must have known thatyou, the critic, would become
(20:20):
the subject of criticism becauseyou wrote on your sub stack
that you were more nervous aboutyour film review going live
than anything you ever wrote inyour life.
That's a direct quote.
So why did you do it?
Why did you just have to writethis film review and send it to
the biggest possible Christianaudience you could find?
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, so I, as nervous as I was about writing
it, I felt compelled to to tofinish the assignment.
So when you take an assignmentlike that, like there's, there
are reasons why, like an authormight not be able to finish an
assignment for a, for an outlet,like they might I don't know
know family stuff comes up orwhat.
I didn't really have an excuseto not finish it, even though I
(21:00):
I finished the movie, I knewthat this was bad.
Um, my nervousness came fromlike two different directions.
On the one hand, bonhoeffer isan incredibly complex figure and
it's very easy for people and,like I was when I was, when I
was, like first introduced tohim, I had a real affection for
(21:21):
him.
He's a he's a figure thatgenerates a lot of like real
warm feelings and devotion, likepeople become devoted to the
story that they hear, and so Iwas kind of nervous about that
because I don't want to be theguy that just says you know, I
don't want to be, I don't wantto be the guy that like overly
complicates him and discouragespeople from really wanting to
(21:45):
read his own words.
I didn't want to do that, onthe one hand, and on the other
hand, I know a lot of Bonhoefferscholars my dissertation
director is being one of thoseand knew that the other audience
that was going to be readingthis were going to be folks in
the guild that know Bonhoefferinside and out, have devoted
(22:05):
their entire careers toexplicating his work and there's
just a lot of Bonhoefferscholarship can get really
contentious.
People get very invested intheir interpretations and get
very particularly around theevents that the film depicts.
There's just a lot of debateover what he knew and when he
(22:28):
knew it and what his attitudeswere toward the things that were
happening.
So it just took a while tofigure out how do I write about
this film in a way that is thatdoesn't turn people off from
bonhoeffer as such, but also isand is honest to the honest, to
the scholarship, honest to thestory, um, but also gets it like
(22:52):
gets the critique just right.
Right, I don't want to like, Ididn't't want to overstep and
say something that was just nottrue or try to misrepresent
scholarly consensus in a waythat wasn't there, but I also
wanted to make a plant a flag onthe ground and say, no, I think
(23:13):
this is wrong.
I think what it's doing withrespect to how it depicts
Bonhoeffer is wrong.
I think that the underpinningsof the film are a bit
disingenuous, so kind of allthose things.
It was a hard one to write.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Well, I haven't seen the film yet.
I know people who got togetherwith church friends to go see it
.
I have, of course, read a lotabout it.
Like all historical dramas, ittakes artistic license to flesh
out the characters and tell acompelling story.
I think most of us are okaywith a little artistic license,
Otherwise half our audiencewould be in trouble for bringing
(23:51):
the chosen churches duringBible study hour.
So that's right this film takesartistic license, and you don't
necessarily find fault withthat, do you?
But there are some specific uhquote unquote artistic
treatments in the film thatalarm you, and I think alarm is
the appropriate word here.
Why are they and why are theyso alarming?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
So there's a bunch of things that there's a bunch of
kind of embellishments that onthe one hand or not, I mean,
they're just kind of goofyembellishments.
So it depicts him in Harlem.
Like I said, he spends a coupleof years in New York City.
After he finishes his owntheological work he goes and
tries to he's like you know whatI'm going to learn from the
(24:35):
best that america has to offerwith respect to theological
education.
He's not really that impressed,but he spends a couple of years
in new york and so some of thescenes that they depict there
are just a bit.
They're pretty over the top, um, but on the one hand that's
just kind of what you get with ahistorical, with a historical
film.
Right, there's going to beconversations that are put in
(24:57):
their mouths that are done tojust kind of over-dramatize
things or to make an overt point, but they're not really the way
that the person probably wouldhave said things.
But on the other hand, I diddetect a way in which not just
the embellishments but thethings that it gets, I think
(25:18):
historically and factually wrongwere of a single piece.
So the way that I characterizeit in the film is that it takes
a figure like Bonhoeffer, whoseconcerns were almost always
theologically rooted, and itreduces his concerns to
(25:38):
political concerns.
It's not to say for Bonhoefferthat he's not intimately
concerned with how theology andour life in the world are
interrelated.
I think this is one of thereasons that Bonhoeffer is such
a compelling person to learnfrom is that he doesn't think
that theology is only a matterof that which we intellectually
(26:00):
profess but really is.
A theology is deeplyintertwined with discipleship
and our witness in the world andthe way in which the church is
the church.
For others, like that's justpart and parcel of who he is.
But there's a way of depictingthat concern that becomes almost
reductionist.
So the way that I seeBonhoeffer depicted in the film
(26:25):
is almost reductionist in thatway.
So, for example, in all ofthese events that happen in
Harlem, they exist.
I write in the review to play upthis notion that Bonhoeffer is
a person who is always and everlike this impassioned advocate
for the right of AfricanAmericans.
(26:47):
He is a person who isintimately concerned for issues
of justice all the time.
That's not really true at thepoint that he goes, at the time
that he goes to Harlem.
It becomes more true toward theend of his life.
But it's just not, it's justpretty, it's stretching.
It's stretching the facts a bitat that juncture.
(27:09):
But as the film kind of goes on,there become more of these
kinds of instances where thepolitical rises to the
foreground and any theologicalconcern just kind of recedes to
the background.
So he says things like I can'tpretend that praying and
teaching is enough, that mydirty hands are all I have left
to offer.
(27:29):
When he goes to, when they showhim at his at the underground
seminary at finkenwald, likethey explicitly characterize it
as a place that uh, people arecoming to be able to launch a
political counter-attack on thenazis.
So it's just kind of littlethings like that that begin to
(27:51):
kind of add it to like create acumulative effect.
So like we never see Bonhoefferpraying until he's in prison,
despite the fact that he'sworking in a seminary.
And much of what you we know ofhis life in the seminary is
daily prayers, daily reading ofscripture, gathering for comp
(28:12):
for like confession andcommunion with all of the folks
that are gathered there.
Like none of that's depicted.
The only thing that reallymatters in the depiction of
Finkenwald is this is a placefor Nazi dissidents to come and
get organized.
So that's kind of that becomes.
It becomes a bit more obviousas the film continues to unfold,
(28:33):
to the point that by the end,when there's all the discussions
are happening with respect towhat sort of political
resistance they want to offer toHitler, like Bonhoeffer just
sets all of that aside Hisfriend and student and
chronicler, eberhard Betka, whowrote kind of the major.
He wrote one of the first majorbiographies of Dietrich
(28:55):
Bonhoeffer.
It's like a thousand, almost athousand pages.
They have him in conversationwith Betka at one point and
Bonhoeffer just like shoves allof his writings from
discipleship to the side.
Betka says well, doesn't Christteach us to like, love our
enemies and not to kill them?
(29:15):
And Bonhoeffer says you knowwhat I was right about that
before Hitler?
And then Bonhoeffer, hechallenges him and says well,
how can you?
Is this the first evil leaderthat there's ever been since
scripture?
Don't you think scripture canaccount for this?
And Bonhoeffer's reply is no,this isn't the first evil leader
(29:38):
in scripture, but he's thefirst one I can stop.
So it's just like all of theseinstances where this robust
theological imagination thatBonhoeffer is always working
with just gets sidelined orsubmerged into turning
Bonhoeffer into kind of apolitical functionary.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Bonhoeffer.
Everything I've read about himindicates that he was a pacifist
, a self-described pacifist.
The title of the film you havepastor and then you have spy and
assassin, so two out of thethree words are spy and assassin
, an assassin.
So I hear you saying that.
Uh, not only does the the filmdepict bonhoeffer, uh, literally
(30:19):
shoving his theology aside, yousaid in in one scene he shoves
aside everything that he'swritten on discipleship uh plays
up the spy and the assassinpart.
There is quite a bit of intriguearound bonhoeffer.
Uh, knowledge of anassassination attempt on Hitler.
Talk about where you think thefilm goes sideways.
(30:42):
On the spy and assassin part.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Yeah, so that Bonhoeffer was engaged in
espionage.
Now, that part's true, he usedhe.
So after the collapse of theseminary at Finkenwald,
bonhoeffer becomes involved witha group called the Abwehr,
(31:09):
which is a German governmentaldepartment, uses a lot of his
ecumenical contacts that he hasin England and elsewhere to
begin distributing informationof what the nazis are actually
doing to his counterparts inengland and switzerland.
Um, he, I mean he does, he useshis, he uses his position as a
way to infiltrate, uh, thisaspect of the nazis and to
(31:31):
undermine them from within.
So that part's correct.
So where the film gets murky andit begins to, I think, go off
the rails is that it puts it.
It enters into an area ofscholarly debate with a very
(31:51):
overconfident interpretation ofwhat happens.
So Betka, in describing whatBonhoeffer's involvement was
with uh any assassinationattempts, openly says like we
have no textual evidence to sayone way, like what he knew when
(32:12):
he knew it, what his involvement, betka kind of gives his own
interpretation based on a lot ofcircumstantial writing.
He kind of distinguished it.
Betka says there's like fivedifferent if you want to think
of like involvement, likeresistance to the Nazis, as a
kind of a series of concentriccircles.
He says there's like passiveresistance in which churches
(32:38):
would like just drag their feeton Nazi mandates, and then
there's kind of a slightlycloser in ring where people
would begin to like activelyresist the Nazis in terms of
spying or doing these sorts ofthings.
And then, closer in, he saysthis is where the active
conspiracy folks are and this iswhere he places Bonhoeffer,
(33:01):
which is, I think, which isstill true In the film.
You have him in conversationwith his brother-in-law, hans de
Hany, who was like whoabsolutely did participate in
some of these activities.
But, as Becca notes, like wejust don't know like what, what
Bonhoeffer's participation wasin terms of organizing or
(33:25):
participation in any of theseattempts is just, it's just lost
to us.
We can make kind of educatedhunches, but there is so much in
the writing and howBonhoeffer's articulate, like
the articulation of his owntheological principles that he
puts out during this period thatjust it just makes Bonhoeffer
(33:49):
assassin pretty, a prettyimplausible read of what he's
actually doing during that time.
A better way to, I think,understand Bonhoeffer's
resistance is his concerns arealways and he writes about this
in his ethics what does it looklike for the church to be
involved in Germany, on theother side of the war.
(34:13):
How can the German church be awitness to the person of Jesus
Christ and also be involved inthe reconstruction of Germany
and bringing Germany back tohealth?
He never leaves that behind.
He never quits thinking in atheological register about what
it means for him to participatein opposition to the tyranny of
(34:38):
Hitler.
So In the film where they depictthis in a fairly reductionist
kind of fashion, to say yes, heturns away from kind of this
naive pacifism of discipleshiptoward a much more realist
version that requires that you,you know, help with the planting
(34:58):
of bombs and try to procure abomb that's going to assassinate
Hitler and take up arms againstHitler and take up arms against
Hitler Like.
That just seems to be anincredibly implausible
interpretation based on the lackof direct evidence that we have
and what Bonhoeffer himselfwrites during this period with
respect to how he thinks aboutdiscipleship.
(35:19):
He says at a later time I seehow this could be misinterpreted
.
I still stand by everything Iwrote right, um.
He writes in his ethics aboutpart of what is at stake, um,
and I mentioned this in thereview part of what's at stake
for him is the church refusingto use the weapons of the like,
(35:40):
the tools of beelzebub to castout beelzebub.
You can't use evil to drive outevil.
If you do that, then you'resaying as Bonhoeffer himself, as
the movie Bonhoeffer says,whatever was true of scripture
was true prior to this time.
This historical event requiresus to just throw out all these
(36:03):
things as unrealist, unnecessaryimpossibilities.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
So what you've explained a little more for our
listeners who have seen themovie or haven't seen the movie,
where you take issue with howBonhoeffer is presented, I'll
ask so what?
It's still a movie and stillcan be good fun to go.
Yeah, I want to watch a movie.
What about this movie makes younervous?
Speaker 3 (36:32):
uh, when it comes to people in the church today, uh,
watching this movie and and whatthey might take from it I get
nervous about the way in whichum american christianity tends
toward being pragmatic and theway in which the pragmatism of
the film and the pragmatism ofamerican christianity will come
(36:54):
together to say maybe it's,maybe it's fine.
Maybe there are kind of extremecircumstances which force us to
kind of set aside strongly heldtheological convictions and
just do what is necessary inthat time.
It sounds really good on paper,but when you begin to take it
(37:14):
all the way down it leads tosome pretty dark places.
So that's one thing.
That's part of what I worryabout.
The other part of what I worryabout is kind of along the same
line, is it doesn't encouragepeople to think with any kind of
theological complexity abouthard questions.
(37:38):
It wants to kind of cut theknot down the middle and to say
here's the clean and easy way tothink through this.
Bonhoeffer himself, when he'strying to reason through his own
involvement with the conspiracy, he says first and foremost, I
can't justify this theologically.
He says I have to throw myselfon the mercy of God because
(38:02):
there's no way that I can offertheological justification for
being involved in this.
He is out over his skis, he isout.
He is kind of working without anet, and he knows it, that this
is a situation.
He finds himself in a situationthat he knows no one wants to
find themselves in, and yet hehas to think through.
What does it look like to beChrist's disciple in this time?
Speaker 2 (38:23):
And your worry is that Bonhoeffer is almost like a
modern apostle to a lot ofpeople.
He's one of those people thatyou can quote and people will
almost take it authoritativelywhen they hear you quote it.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yes, it sounds like your fear is that when the
people in the pews go watch thismovie because it's, I don't
want to say, theologicallyshallow that's not what you said
.
You used the word reductionista couple of times is that, uh,
christians who watch this moviewill not have to wrestle as
deeply as bonhoeffer wrestled?
Speaker 3 (38:53):
right that it provides, almost just because
it's bonhoeffer saying thisright, it provides like
justification for us to, byanalogy, do the kinds of things
things that we see Bonhoefferdoing in the film in our own
context.
That it invites us to ask whatis our own Bonhoeffer moment and
how might we respond?
(39:14):
But again, you can take thatanalogy and it goes to some
pretty.
You can stretch that so farthat it becomes basically a
justification for whatever youwant to do with it.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
As we have witnessed with our own eyes in recent
times.
James K Smith talks about howwe are constantly living in a
liturgy in our country, and whenI think about all the movies
that American Christians haveseen, right, we are buying into
(39:48):
that Hollywood liturgy.
That violence is the easiestsolution, right?
So what I hear you saying isthat this is kind of an American
liturgy version of Bonhoeffer'slife that makes violence the
easiest solution to what?
Speaker 3 (40:05):
is really theological .
The problem with trying toadvocate for something else is
that violence frequently worksright.
So, but I think that part ofBonhoeffer's concern is that if
the end that we seek and themeans that we take to get there
are not consistent, then youhave yeah, you've solved the
(40:28):
problem, but you've createdother problems for yourself
along the way.
I think that's part of hisconcern.
I think his other part, theother part of his concern is he
just can't.
He can't reconcile, he can'tbring two things together right.
What does it look like to be afaithful Christian and yet to
(40:48):
you know, doesn't know how, tohow to fit an assassination
attempt on Hitler into that,into that?
Speaker 2 (40:55):
matrix.
I mean well done, in thatyou've been quoted by a lot of
other film writers.
Right yeah, some people havetaken issue with your criticism
and I think maybe the moststrongly stated critique of your
critique comes from MarkLavecchi at World Magazine.
(41:18):
He wrote his own review of thefilm and he argues against your
critique, which he quotessometimes.
And I'm going to read you arather lengthy quote from
Lavecchi.
So I hope you'll pardon thatfor a second and then you'll
have a chance to be in aconversation with him.
So here's the Lavecchi quote.
Here it is, quote.
The question, dietrichBonhoeffer would insist, isn't
whether to love my neighbor, itisn't even whether to love my
(41:41):
enemy as my neighbor.
The question is how to lovewhen one neighbor who I am
called to love is to deathanother neighbor who I am also
called to love without cause.
The duty of neighbor love canbe simply carried out when the
situation is without complexity,that is, when there isn't a
(42:02):
competing duty.
When duties compete.
It sometimes seems that thedegree to which one duty is
followed is the degree to whichthe other duty is necessarily
shirked.
This tension is at the heart ofthe film.
Bonhoeffer Pastor, spy,assassin.
Some critics and I think hemeans you, dr Werns yes, the
(42:23):
tension is overplayed in themanner of its resolution false.
It continues in the face ofsuch an onslaught.
It was clear to Bonhoeffer thatthe duty of love is simple.
It requires that we rescue thevictims.
Less clear is how this dutysquares with Bonhoeffer's
pacifist convictions.
Critics of the film charge that, in resolving this tension, the
(42:48):
film abandons the Bonhoeffer ofdeep theological conviction for
a caricature, willing to andhe's quoting you here quote
behind prayer for conspiracy,bible teaching for political
espionage and theology foractivism.
It's an odd charge, saysLavecchi, for the film
continually portrays a prayerfulBonhoeffer struggling through
Scripture to know how to walkobediently in the way of Jesus
(43:12):
in a world in which someneighbors are hell-bent on
annihilating other neighbors.
Bonhoeffer doesn't abandon anyof the components of Christian
devotion.
He simply acknowledges that wecan't keep pretending that
praying and teaching is enough.
Here's the conclusion it isrecognizing that while one must
love both the victim neighborand the enemy neighbor.
One cannot love both in exactlythe same way at exactly the
(43:36):
same moment.
Sometimes the answer to prayermight be an assassination plot.
It was love in the last resort.
The film Bonhoeffer is allabout how to be a follower of
Christ when, as he puts it,hallelujah won't do all the work
.
End quote.
So that's LeVet's response toyour critique of the film.
How would you like to respondto LeVetchi?
Speaker 3 (44:00):
So I think that his interpretation of Bonhoeffer at
large rests upon a and I'm goingto get into the weeds for just
a moment.
So there's a number ofdifferent interpretive schools,
as it were, with how to thinkabout Bonhoeffer.
(44:20):
If your audience is reallyinterested in this question of
how to interpret Bonhoeffer andthe plurality of interpretation
that's out there, the best placeto begin is the Bonhoeffer
phenomenon by Stephen Haynes.
So Leveschi, I think, isrelying upon a way of
interpreting Bonhoeffer that iswhat you can call a realist
(44:41):
depiction.
Depiction it proposes that wehave ideals that we want to
operate with in the world andthat our best attempts at
faithfulness will always fallshort of those ideals.
So this is where he gets intothis notion of conflicting
duties and that you really dohave quandaries because you
can't fulfill both of yourduties at the same time.
(45:02):
So in some ways, I think thatthat's not wrong, that there are
situations where you have, youhave conflicting duties and you
have to make sense of how tolike, how to get both of those,
how to how to fulfill both ofthose duties.
Where I disagree is that so therealist.
(45:22):
So the realist approach tendsto.
In my assessment, it tends tolean into the notion that our
responses will always be tragicin the world and just to like
lean into that really hard.
So when he says the answer toprayer might be an assassination
(45:43):
plot, this is a way of him, Ithink, trying to say the way
forward for Bonhoeffer in thistragic world is to simply
embrace the is to live in thesehistorical contingencies and
embrace the option in front ofhim right to assassinate Hitler
(46:04):
and embrace the option in frontof him right to assassinate
Hitler.
I just think that that is Ait's a failure of imagination of
what resistance entailed forBonhoeffer.
So there's a couple of goodbooks out there that really get
into the weeds on whatresistance meant for Bonhoeffer.
One that I cite in the reviewis a book by Michael DeJong
called Bonhoeffer on Resistance,the Word Against the Wheel.
(46:26):
There's another.
(46:53):
Just think that's a falsechoice and that's I think that's
just a failure of imagination.
Um, so two things that I wouldsay then to lavecchi.
One, I think his interpretationof Bonhoeffer as a whole is
doesn't square with what itgives kind of an incomplete
rendering of who Bonhoeffer isand the way that Bonhoeffer
(47:14):
works, and I think it says muchmore about the way that Lavecchi
thinks than it does, howBonhoeffer thinks.
And secondly, I think that it'sit.
It represents kind of an in ofan inaccurate view of what
resistance for Bonhoeffer lookedlike.
That for Bonhoeffer, resistancewas always.
It always was theological andit always had like a theological
(47:36):
element to it that he'sthinking not just in terms of
the politics of the situation,but what does it look like for
us to do this as Christians, notsetting aside those obligations
(47:59):
and not setting aside thoseconvictions, but thinking about
what does it look like to applythis particular conviction?
Speaker 2 (48:02):
in a different kind of way.
So that's what I would say toLavecchi.
So would you tell people to notsee the film, or would you
simply caution them.
Speaker 3 (48:10):
I would issue some pretty strong caveats and say
that know what you're watching.
Going in um, there are a coupleof older.
There's a.
There's an older bonhoefferfilm from, I think, the early,
like the late 90s or early 2000s.
That it's a bit slower innature and there's parts of this
(48:31):
film that kind of drag as well,but it's probably more historic
.
It's probably more accurate.
I haven't seen it in a minute.
There's a good documentary byMartin Doblemeyer.
There's a good documentary byMartin Dobelmeyer.
(48:59):
Dobelmeyer has done a lot ofreally great documentaries on
other religious figures, likeHoward Thurman and Dorothy Day,
and he did one on Bonhoeffer.
Several film Like those might bemy go-to places if push came to
shove.
At the same time, there aresome things that like like this
new version, like it depictsBonhoeffer in a more dramatic
(49:20):
mode that I think will inspirepeople more than just a straight
up documentary, and so there'ssomething to that maybe.
At the same time, I just thinkthat the overall thesis that the
film is working with about whoBonhoeffer is and how Bonhoeffer
thought, and like what his, howhe fit the pieces together I
(49:40):
just think that it's justincorrect.
I think it's inaccurate, Ithink it's.
It moves from like there's someplaces where it's just
incorrect.
I think it's inaccurate.
I think it's it moves from likethere's some places where it's
just artistic liberties, butthere's a lot of places that I
think it's just it's trying totie things together in a pretty
neat and tidy package.
That is just the wrong package.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Well, thank you for talking to us about Dietrich
Bonhoeffer today.
Dr Miles Wernz of AbileneChristian University has written
perhaps the most quoted filmcritique of Bonhoeffer.
Today Dr Miles Wernz of AbileneChristian University has
written perhaps the most quotedfilm critique of Bonhoeffer
Pastor Spy Assassin.
We'll put a link to his reviewin the show notes.
Dr Wernz, thank you for goingto the movies with us today.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
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(50:42):
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(51:02):
Until next time, may grace andpeace be yours in abundance.
Speaker 1 (51:11):
The Christian Chronicle podcast is a
production of the ChristianChronicle Inc.
Informing and inspiring Churchof Christ congregations, members
and ministries around the worldsince 1943.
The Christian ChroniclesManaging Editor is Audrey
Jackson, editor-in-chief BobbyRoss Jr and President and CEO
(51:32):
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The Christian Chronicle Podcastis written, directed, hosted
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