Posted on 04/10/2010 7:27:10 AM PDT by AngieGal
On April 9, 1945, 65 years ago today, just a few weeks before an allied offensive brought Germany to its knees and ended World War II in Europe, a young, mild-mannered Lutheran theologian was hanged by the Nazis in Flossenburg Concentration Camp.
His crime ... conspiring to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theological genius of the 20th century, is now emerging as a war hero, martyr and spy.
"What is so amazing about the story of Bonhoeffer is that he puts a completely different spin for us as Americans on World War II," says Eric Metaxas, author of "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy" (Thomas Nelson, 2010), the first biography in 40 years of this influential Christian. The book is being released on Friday, the anniversary of Bonhoeffer's execution.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I had a professor in college who quoted Bonhoeffer a lot. Sadly, I do not remember any of those quotes. A case of remembering facts only long enough in order to regurgitate them on a test.
A few years ago a friend shared a video with me about Bonhoeffer. I’d never heard of him before. A remarkable person.
A lesson we can learn today. Way too many people have made peace with socialist, Marxist government
Yep. That will be news to liberal Christians everywhere.
Owing to the corrupting influence of the Second Great Awakening, American Christianity is overwhelmingly statist and Pelagian, clinging to the anti-Gospel idea that law has the ability to transform human nature.
Lootrin Ping
Owing to the corrupting influence of the Second Great Awakening, American Christianity is overwhelmingly statist and Pelagian, clinging to the anti-Gospel idea that law has the ability to transform human nature.
______________________
Statist and Pelagian?! From the Second Great Awakening?! Please. Only a myopic Calvinist with an axe to grind would lay THOSE things at the “feet” of the Second Great Awakening.
I’m not a Calvinist, but Finney denied and railed against justification by faith, calling it “anti-nomianism.” In turn he taught Pelagianism. That is a theological fact. The four great cults of American Christianity — Mormonism, JW-ism, Seventh-day Adventism, and Christian Science — all came out of the SGA.
When you deny justification by faith, you destroy the basis for Christian liberty and you embrace the humanistic idea that we can pass laws and do the right things in order to cure our own sin.
Wow, That's news to me..........and probably news to about everyone else as well.
I would agree the Second Great Awakening transformed America by inspiring large amounts of social activism including the foundations of the abolition movement, but it wasn't a statist nature and certainly didn't think "laws" transformed people lives but by transformation by the Gospel of Jesus Christ
God has granted American Christianity no Reformation. He has given it strong revivalist preachers, churchmen and theologians, but no Reformation of the church of Jesus Christ by the Word of God....American theology and the American church as a whole have never been able to understand the meaning of 'criticism' by the Word of God and all that signifies. Right to the last they do not understand that God's 'criticism' touches even religion, the Christianity of the church and the sanctification of Christians, and that God has founded his church beyond religion and beyond ethics....In American theology, Christianity is still essentially religion and ethics....Because of this the person and work of Christ must, for theology, sink into the background and in the long run remain misunderstood, because it is not recognized as the sole ground of radical judgment and radical forgiveness. --Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Protestantism without the Reformation."
Though true, isn't that like blaming dad because his teenager son got drunk because his dad left the open bottle in plain site.
"There can be no justification in a legal or forensic sense, but upon the ground of universal, perfect, and uninterrupted obedience to law. This is of course denied by those who hold that gospel justification, or the justification of penitent sinners, is of the nature of a forensic or judicial justification. They hold to the legal maxim, that what a man does by another he does by himself, and therefore the law regards Christ's obedience as ours, on the ground that He obeyed for us [Systematic Theology, 362].
Finney denied original sin and thus was a Pelagian:
"Moral depravity cannot consist in any attribute of nature or constitution, nor in any lapsed or fallen state of nature. . . . Moral depravity, as I use the term, does not consist in, nor imply a sinful nature, in the sense that the human soul is sinful in itself. It is not a constitutional sinfulness" [Systematic Theology, 245].
Denying justification by faith (aka Protestantism) and preaching that we are only justified by keeping the Law (aka Pelagianism):
Whenever he sins, he must, for the time being, cease to be holy. This is self-evident. Whenever he sins, he must be condemned; he must incur the penalty of the law of God ... If it be said that the precept is still binding upon him, but that with respect to the Christian, the penalty is forever set aside, or abrogated, I reply, that to abrogate the penalty is to repeal the precept, for a precept without penalty is no law. It is only counsel or advice. The Christian, therefore, is justified no longer than he obeys.[Systematic Theology, p. 46].
If one believes the law has the power to solve human ills, then one must necessarily believe in the growth and power of the state. It is humanism. Consider, for instance, the following
"Paul uses the term eleutheria, freedom, or one of its cognates frequently throughout his writings, some twenty-nine times in all—only a little less often than soteria, salvation, and its allied terms."
--Robert Banks, Paul's Idea of Community.
For reference:
Please note documentary on Bonhoeffer that aired on (of all places) PBS.
IIRC, it was a documentary with multi-national origin (including Canada).
I was shocked at how respectful the documentary was of Bonhoeffer’s
Christianity...I figured anything on PBS would just portray him as
some sort of secular moralist.
Free Republic posts on Bonhoeffer:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/bonhoeffer/index
Thread on the documentary on Bonhoeffer (aired on PBS):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1572493/posts
PBS website for the documentary:
http://www.pbs.org/bonhoeffer/
I am a former SDA, and as a former SDA, I have had to study the basis of where the Seventh-day Adventists got their doctrines. Their doctrines are firmly rooted in the Pelagian teachings of the SGA. Many Christians today are deceived into joining Seventh-day Adventism because much of so-called “mainstream” Evangelicalism teaches the un-Biblical foundations of Seventh-day Adventist theology.
"It's a deep temptation within us," says Metaxas. "We need to guard against it and we need to know that it can lead to our ruin. Germany was led over the cliff, and there were many good people who were totally deluded."
There can be no doubt but that the worshipful adulation of our current president is abomination to the one true God. No man can long withstand being worshipped. That this mentally diseased rogue is treated as a god bodes horror for our nation.
Oh, and btw, even the calvinistic protestant churches, were preaching much the same “Justification by Faith” and having Holy-Spirit led revivals leading to the change of Men’s Hearts and Lives from the Inside out by the Power of God, not men’s works.
Bonhoeffer attended Union TS in the 30’s. A better choice would have been Boston TS where King was soon to attend. Union was a hotbed of Marxism in the 30’s much as it remains today.
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