{"id":467,"date":"2012-12-12T17:08:48","date_gmt":"2012-12-12T17:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.com\/?p=467"},"modified":"2017-01-18T17:12:41","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T17:12:41","slug":"guest-post-bonhoeffer-and-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/guest-post-bonhoeffer-and-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Post: Bonhoeffer and Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"
Truth-telling, Hitler, and the triple-agent pastor<\/span><\/em><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Recently, I\u2019ve been reading Eric Metaxas\u2019s excellent biography of the great German wartime pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I\u2019ve just reached the rather confusing if gripping place where, in 1941, Bonhoeffer heads off to Eastern Germany to work as a theologian and pastor, teaching at a theological college and continuing his own writing – but using this as a cover to apparently work as an agent for the German Secret Service – but using this as a cover to be an important part of a conspiracy to overthrow – probably assassinate – Hitler and end the war. Unsurprisingly, Metaxas is aware that this may slightly trouble his readers! So he prefaces it with an extended reference to Bonhoeffer\u2019s own essay \u2018What is meant by \u2018telling the truth\u2019?\u2019.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
I dug up a copy, myself, and it makes fascinating and challenging reading. Bonhoeffer\u2019s understanding of truth-telling is far more nuanced, challenging, and mature than a simple \u2018tell the truth\u2019 maxim. He challenges such a simple maxim of \u2018always tell the truth\u2019 as both going too far and not far enough. In fact, as he puts it,<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cIt is only the cynic who claims \u2018to speak the truth\u2019 at all times and in all places to all men in the same way, but who, in fact, displays nothing but a lifeless image of the truth. He dons the halo of the fanatical devotee of truth who can make no allowances for human weaknesses…He wounds shame, desecrates mystery, breaks confidence, betrays the community in which he lives, and laughs arrogantly at the devastation he has wrought and at the human weakness which \u2018cannot bear the truth\u2019. He says truth is destructive and demands its victims, and he feels like a god above these feeble creatures and does not know that he is serving Satan.<\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Wow. OK then. But how does Bonhoeffer unpack this rather fire-and-brimstone rhetoric? There are two main criticisms Bonhoeffer has. First, saying simply \u2018always tell the truth\u2019 betrays the times when it is inappropriate to reveal the truth; second, he says that simply \u2018not lying\u2019 still allows for the insincerity that is utterly misleading and destructive, without technically \u2018lying\u2019.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
First, then – Bonhoeffer says that it isn\u2019t always appropriate to reveal all the truth. For example, he says, \u201ca teacher asks a child in front of the class whether it is true that his father often comes home drunk…What goes on in the family is not for the ears of the class in school. The family has its own secret and must preserve it.\u201d [Think of Bonhoeffer\u2019s context, and the Hitler Youth!] Bonhoeffer concludes: the child should not lie, but the teacher has no right to ask for the truth, and the child no responsibility to give it. So, we shouldn\u2019t lie, but that doesn\u2019t mean we always need to reveal the truth.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
However, second, we need to go further than \u2018not saying stuff we know to be wrong.\u2019 \u201cThere is a way of speaking which is in this respect entirely correct and unexceptionable, but which is, nevertheless, a lie. This is exemplified when a notorious liar for once tells \u2018the truth\u2019 in order to mislead.<\/i>\u201d I remember a mate of mine at school turning up to a class really late one day, and explaining \u201cSorry I\u2019m late. The doctor\u2019s was really busy this morning<\/i>\u201d, and then sitting down. A little while later, he admitted he\u2019d never been to the doctor\u2019s, and he pointed out that he\u2019d never said he had. As it was an RS class, we ended up debating if he\u2019d lied or not. The general feeling was that he had, but no-one could really put their finger on how. Bonhoeffer, I think, does. Rather grandly, he defines the lie as the \u201cdeliberate destruction of…reality\u201d – which is to say that the aim of our words should be to help people see what is true and accurate; to see the world more \u2018truthfully\u2019.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
So, with all that (rather dizzying) info in mind – I think you can begin to see how Bonhoeffer could defend being a pastor-double-agent (whether you agree with him or not) – like the family that hid Anne Frank\u2019s family, or those who smuggled Jews out of Germany, he didn\u2019t owe the Nazis the truth of his situation, so (without lying) he didn\u2019t tell them. BUT, at the same time, Bonhoeffer recalls the great Biblical imperatives to be sincere people of integrity – not just not lying, but not misleading, and seeing truth-telling and more than avoiding a fib. It\u2019s a little trickier to grasp, but it is perhaps a better, maturer, more Biblical way of thinking about how to tell the truth.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Truth-telling, Hitler, and the triple-agent pastor Recently, I\u2019ve been reading Eric Metaxas\u2019s excellent biography of the great German wartime pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I\u2019ve just reached the rather confusing if gripping place where, in 1941, Bonhoeffer heads off to Eastern Germany … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[87,88,140,141,44,73,326],"tags":[185,355,353,352,356,354],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thomascreedy.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}