Bonhoeffer

It is a point of no small amusement for me that modern Christians (men-worshipers) consider Dietrich Bonhoeffer to be a martyr. Martyr is one of the titular ascriptions given to this pious man by his popular biographer Eric Metaxas. I recently heard the word used gushingly in respect to the B-man by the former president of Trinity Western University. I hear it everywhere. It's utter bollocks. To be a martyr, you have to willingly go to your death for the sake of keeping to the testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You have to be willing to die rather than renounce the gospel. This is the formal and material criterion set by the earliest records of the concept of martyrdom, such as the account of Polycarp, which insists on το κατά το ευαγγέλιον μαρτύριον (martyrdoms which are in strict accordance with the gospel) or according to the will of God (1.1; 2.1). Christians who voluntarily provoked the authorities or gave themselves up for vainglorious ends were summarily dismissed as fiends (4).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not go to the gallows for Jesus Christ but for Germany. Nor did the Nazis punish him on account of his faith but on account of his sedition. Dietrich even admitted that he and his fellow conspirators, by their sedition, incurred the wrath and the judgment of God (for the relevant saying, see Elizabeth Raum's work, p.111). In other words, it was out of disobedience to Jesus Christ that Bonhoeffer went to his death. Oh jeez. Yet another ethicist and pelagian showing us his true weakling colours.

If we can term someone who willfully disobeys God for the sake of an lateral political grudge a martyr, the word is henceforth stripped of any value or truth whatsoever. Bonhoeffer witnessed to one thing, and one thing only: bad faith laced with copious amounts of self-delusion. To him I say: Go on up you baldhead!!