WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.600 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Cory J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:41.840 Mahler. And 00:00:41.840 --> 00:00:45.120 I'm still Woe. 00:00:45.120 --> 00:00:48.720 On today's episode of Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing the 00:00:48.720 --> 00:00:53.120 famous twentieth century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 00:00:53.120 --> 00:00:57.040 It's interesting when you call Dietrich von Hoffer famous because he wasn't 00:00:56.960 --> 00:01:00.880 really famous as a theologian until the twenty first century. 00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:04.640 That's something we'll get into a little bit, but it's just this 00:01:04.640 --> 00:01:08.080 is one of the episodes that we're doing because yet again, he 00:01:08.080 --> 00:01:09.600 is a sacred cow. 00:01:09.600 --> 00:01:15.200 He's really, in fact, a golden calf of twentieth century global religion. 00:01:15.200 --> 00:01:18.960 And And it is consistent with many of the themes that we've 00:01:18.960 --> 00:01:20.480 hit in the past year. 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:24.720 A couple brief notes up front before we get into this particular 00:01:24.720 --> 00:01:29.040 subject. One, this is a continuation of a number of previous episodes, 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:32.160 so if you happen to be listening to Stonequire for the very 00:01:32.160 --> 00:01:35.760 first time with this particular episode, we would actually recommend that you 00:01:35.760 --> 00:01:37.840 go back to a couple of earlier ones. 00:01:37.840 --> 00:01:42.560 Um in particular, the Martin Luther King R Cheritech episode, part one 00:01:42.640 --> 00:01:47.280 of two about MLK, is really part one of this episode as 00:01:47.280 --> 00:01:49.840 well. Uh one of the points that we're going to be making 00:01:49.840 --> 00:01:55.600 in this episode is that MLK and Bonhoeffer effectively had the same 00:01:55.600 --> 00:02:00.800 spiritual fathers, they had the same teachers, the same readings, and they 00:02:00.960 --> 00:02:02.240 had the same message. 00:02:02.240 --> 00:02:05.760 The difference between them was really just about 50 IQ points. 00:02:05.760 --> 00:02:08.880 So the things that MLK was too stupid not to say out 00:02:09.280 --> 00:02:12.960 loud, Bon Offer was perfectly content to say them. 00:02:12.960 --> 00:02:15.520 The difference is that Bonhoffer would say him in a subtle way 00:02:15.600 --> 00:02:18.880 that so that if you already think he's a decent Christian guy, 00:02:18.880 --> 00:02:21.920 you're gonna be able to baptize what it is he says without 00:02:21.920 --> 00:02:23.360 too much trouble. 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:26.080 Another episode that this ties into is one of the early ones 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:29.360 on the clarity of scripture and some of the World War II 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:31.600 stuff. We're not really going to get into it beyond just a 00:02:31.600 --> 00:02:35.840 couple superficial details, but the But the context of it is in 00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:39.280 view of the three-part episode that we or three-part series that we 00:02:39.280 --> 00:02:41.680 recently concluded on the Jews. 00:02:41.680 --> 00:02:46.320 So we're going to assume that you have listened to those as 00:02:46.320 --> 00:02:47.280 we're talking about this. 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:50.720 All our episodes stand alone, but this one in particular, one of 00:02:50.720 --> 00:02:53.920 the things that's concerned Corey and myself as we've been looking to 00:02:53.920 --> 00:02:58.960 tackle this subject is that because Bonhoeffer was really smart and he 00:02:58.960 --> 00:03:01.120 was really subtle. 00:03:01.120 --> 00:03:05.280 It's tough to make the case that he was evil, because you 00:03:05.280 --> 00:03:09.360 can superficially read some of the things that he says out of 00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:12.400 context and say, oh yeah, I can I can agree with that. 00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:13.360 I can believe that. 00:03:13.520 --> 00:03:15.760 In fact it's interesting there were a number of things that when 00:03:15.760 --> 00:03:18.640 I was reading, particularly in some of his letters from prison from 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:21.760 nineteen forty three and forty four after he was under arrest for 00:03:21.760 --> 00:03:25.920 treason. A number of the things that he said, the Bonhoeffer was 00:03:25.920 --> 00:03:28.880 saying at the end of his life sounded sounded very much like 00:03:28.880 --> 00:03:31.280 some of the things that Corey and I say on Stone Choir. 00:03:31.280 --> 00:03:33.920 There's some of the things that are really a big part of 00:03:33.920 --> 00:03:37.360 what we try to get across on this podcast series. 00:03:37.360 --> 00:03:41.680 The reason that's so fascinating is that the men, the pastors, who 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:42.480 hate us the most 00:03:43.440 --> 00:03:45.440 love Bon Offer. 00:03:45.600 --> 00:03:47.680 So I just found it interesting I was reading some of those 00:03:47.680 --> 00:03:51.360 quotes, like, why wouldn't they hear his voice in the things that 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:52.080 we're saying? 00:03:52.080 --> 00:03:55.600 And the reason is we're coming from completely opposite directions as we 00:03:55.600 --> 00:03:56.640 talk about those things. 00:03:56.640 --> 00:03:58.320 So we'll get into a few of those in a bit, but 00:03:58.320 --> 00:04:01.280 it's just I found it very interesting that we have completely different 00:04:01.280 --> 00:04:06.800 spirits and yet in some cases have very similar specific words for 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:09.840 things, specific concerns about things. 00:04:09.840 --> 00:04:13.680 We have very different solutions because we have very different origins for 00:04:13.920 --> 00:04:17.840 the the concerns themselves. 00:04:17.840 --> 00:04:20.320 So as we get into this, I want to 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:24.640 tie back into the historical context of the man. 00:04:24.640 --> 00:04:29.280 As I said, he's considered to be a 20th century preeminent theologian 00:04:29.280 --> 00:04:31.840 that almost nobody knew about in the 20th century. 00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:34.560 I did a search on Google N grams as I often do 00:04:34.640 --> 00:04:36.720 and we've mentioned a number of times in the past. 00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:38.800 You can do a search for a word and see how frequently 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:42.560 it pops up in literature and in magazines and other things. 00:04:42.800 --> 00:04:48.240 Bonhoeffer's name didn't appear really until the early sixties. 00:04:48.240 --> 00:04:51.520 Basically, you can plot the curve of Vatican II and the plot 00:04:51.520 --> 00:04:56.320 of Bonhoeffer, and in the 60s they take off on identical curves. 00:04:56.320 --> 00:04:59.120 And I firmly believe that that was the birth of a new 00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:00.160 world religion. 00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:03.200 One of the striking things when you're reading about the history of 00:05:03.200 --> 00:05:09.760 Bonhoeffer introspection by other theologians is how widely he's viewed as a 00:05:09.760 --> 00:05:13.760 man for all denominations, a man that the liberals love and the 00:05:13.760 --> 00:05:14.800 conservatives love. 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:20.000 And that's really weird because that's not really how Christian theology usually 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:25.440 works. Like when f when sound doctrine is paramount in the discussion 00:05:25.440 --> 00:05:28.480 in the church, usually you have people that are on opposing sides 00:05:28.560 --> 00:05:31.040 because some of them just don't believe the Bible. 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:34.720 And so the fact that the ultra-libs and people who think they're 00:05:34.720 --> 00:05:39.600 conservative both see this man as their saint is very interesting. 00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:41.840 And then the timing of Vatican II, I was just it made 00:05:41.840 --> 00:05:44.240 me laugh, like, well yeah, of course that would happen. 00:05:44.240 --> 00:05:47.200 And then it sort of died off the interest in Bonhoeffer until 00:05:47.200 --> 00:05:48.160 this century. 00:05:48.160 --> 00:05:51.040 It was until the beginning of the twenty first century that he 00:05:51.040 --> 00:05:52.720 really became very popular. 00:05:52.800 --> 00:05:55.040 And so just to begin, I'm going to give a couple brief 00:05:55.040 --> 00:05:59.200 quotes. These are from Christian News, uh, which was a publication from 00:05:59.200 --> 00:06:00.720 a Lutheran pastor 00:06:01.600 --> 00:06:03.360 that it was around for decades. 00:06:03.360 --> 00:06:06.640 Uh, he was a man who long went after some of these 00:06:06.640 --> 00:06:10.560 subjects when the rest of the world was kind of ignoring them. 00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:13.280 This is a description that I'm gonna read, and I'm gonna read 00:06:13.280 --> 00:06:17.360 uh a brief description of an event that took place at our 00:06:17.360 --> 00:06:20.720 one of our seminaries in two thousand six. 00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:25.200 Dietrich Bonhoeffer was one of the authentic heroes of World War II, 00:06:25.200 --> 00:06:30.080 a German Protestant theologian who spoke out furiously against Hitler and participated 00:06:30.080 --> 00:06:32.320 in an assassination plot against him. 00:06:32.320 --> 00:06:36.240 Bonhoeffer was hanged on Hitler's orders three weeks before the Nazi dictator 00:06:36.240 --> 00:06:40.640 committed suicide on the eve of Germany's surrender in April 1945. 00:06:40.640 --> 00:06:44.320 I think it's probably the bulk of what most people know about 00:06:44.320 --> 00:06:45.360 the man. 00:06:45.360 --> 00:06:50.800 He was a German pastor, he fought Hitler, he was hanged for 00:06:50.960 --> 00:06:52.480 attempting to kill him. 00:06:52.480 --> 00:06:54.160 And then he wrote some stuff. 00:06:54.160 --> 00:06:56.080 Yeah, it's pretty much all people know. 00:06:56.080 --> 00:06:58.400 The reason I wanted to begin there is that it's the new 00:06:58.480 --> 00:06:59.840 World War II thing. 00:06:59.840 --> 00:07:03.200 It's subtly he doesn't it's not mentioned here, but it's about the 00:07:03.200 --> 00:07:06.000 Jews. The third episode that we did in the series on the 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:07.200 Jews is part of this. 00:07:07.200 --> 00:07:11.200 So again, that's why I said that this episode is it it's 00:07:11.200 --> 00:07:14.000 kind of a final quiz for a lot of what Stone Choir 00:07:14.160 --> 00:07:15.200 has done previously. 00:07:15.360 --> 00:07:17.840 I hope that we succeed today because as I said, this is 00:07:17.840 --> 00:07:21.200 it's a hard case to make once you get into the really 00:07:21.200 --> 00:07:22.960 subtle things he says. 00:07:22.960 --> 00:07:25.440 So just consider this the framing. 00:07:25.440 --> 00:07:28.640 This is the man who fought the Nazis and fought Hitler and 00:07:28.640 --> 00:07:30.880 he was martyred for it. 00:07:30.880 --> 00:07:35.920 In two thousand six there was a Bonhoeff conference at the Concordia 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:41.360 Saint Louis Seminary of the LCMS began july nineteenth through the twenty 00:07:41.360 --> 00:07:46.480 first. Quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer may well be the most widely admired and 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:50.960 respected Christian theologian among Christian pastors and theologians in the USA. 00:07:50.960 --> 00:07:55.280 The scope of his appeal is exceptionally broad, spanning across virtually all 00:07:55.280 --> 00:08:00.240 Christian denominations and across perspectives ranging from the traditional to the liberal. 00:08:00.240 --> 00:08:04.640 His centennial offers a unique opportunity for activities that highlight the many 00:08:04.640 --> 00:08:07.760 remarkable aspects of his theology and life. 00:08:07.760 --> 00:08:12.560 This conference features nationally and internationally recognized experts on Bonhoeffer. 00:08:12.560 --> 00:08:15.920 These include Lutherans and members of other church bodies. 00:08:15.920 --> 00:08:20.000 There will be emphasis on confessional Lutheran aspects of Bonhoeffer's thought, and 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:23.200 at the same time presentations from other Christian perspectives. 00:08:23.280 --> 00:08:27.280 It's a unique opportunity for Lutherans to highlight perhaps the most important 00:08:27.280 --> 00:08:33.440 Lutheran theologian since Martin Luther, and to converse about the contributions Bonhoeffer 00:08:33.440 --> 00:08:37.120 can make to the life of the 21st century church. 00:08:37.120 --> 00:08:40.880 Now that's remarkable 'cause I said, like, in the twentieth century he 00:08:40.880 --> 00:08:41.840 wasn't really discussed. 00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:43.360 He was he was a footnote. 00:08:43.360 --> 00:08:46.320 He was one guy, didn't do anything that significant. 00:08:46.320 --> 00:08:49.200 He was notable because he was one of the few people in 00:08:49.200 --> 00:08:54.000 the church who committed treason against the German government and was executed 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:54.960 for it. 00:08:54.960 --> 00:08:58.160 So the reason we're talking about him today, the reason that you've 00:08:58.160 --> 00:09:02.080 ever heard the name is because of that, because he fought Hitler 00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:05.840 and because everybody loves him, whether they're libs or conservatives. 00:09:05.840 --> 00:09:08.320 In fact the reason I mentioned Vatican two, the reason I searched 00:09:08.320 --> 00:09:11.680 for that, was that even Roman Catholics really loved Bonhoeffer in the 00:09:11.680 --> 00:09:13.200 sixties. That's crazy. 00:09:13.440 --> 00:09:19.440 if here's this Lutheran pastor, this Lutheran theologian from the liberal wing 00:09:19.440 --> 00:09:23.200 in German theology, and Roman Catholics like, yeah, that's our guy. 00:09:23.200 --> 00:09:24.800 Something's going on here. 00:09:24.800 --> 00:09:28.000 And then when you have the most conservative Lutherans saying the same 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:31.040 thing Something really weird is happening. 00:09:31.040 --> 00:09:33.280 This is not what normally happens in the church. 00:09:33.280 --> 00:09:35.360 So we're going to begin looking at some of the things that 00:09:35.360 --> 00:09:37.920 he wrote in the past to see who was this man. 00:09:37.920 --> 00:09:41.520 If this is a great theologian, a great contributor to the Christian 00:09:41.520 --> 00:09:45.360 tradition, let's see what he had to say about the Christian faith. 00:09:45.680 --> 00:09:45.840 I 00:09:45.840 --> 00:09:49.600 guess before we move into some of the quotes properly and going 00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:54.480 over some of the things that he wrote, it really is almost 00:09:54.480 --> 00:09:59.600 amazing, really, that they would call him the most important Lutheran theologian 00:09:59.600 --> 00:10:01.040 since Martin Luther. 00:10:01.040 --> 00:10:04.640 That's really a true slight to Chemnitz. 00:10:04.640 --> 00:10:08.000 For those who don't know, Martin Chemnitz is often called the second 00:10:08.640 --> 00:10:11.680 Martin, and one of the sayings about him I won't use the 00:10:11.680 --> 00:10:17.760 Latin because there's no reason is essentially Luther the first Martin would 00:10:17.760 --> 00:10:23.120 not have survived if not for Chemnitz II Martin, that's how important 00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:27.440 he was as a theologian to the church. 00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:30.880 And yet we're supposed to believe that Bonhoeffer is 00:10:31.840 --> 00:10:36.560 more important than Chemnitz who basically saved the Reformation and is the 00:10:36.560 --> 00:10:42.000 one who responded to the Council of Trent at length. 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:46.080 Even in living memory, I think men like Kurt Marquart, certainly in 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:52.160 terms of their their theological output far outstrips Bonhoeffer's contributions, whether his 00:10:52.160 --> 00:10:53.920 theology was good or bad. 00:10:53.920 --> 00:10:57.200 Like it's just uh one of the points that that I hope 00:10:57.200 --> 00:10:59.200 we can get across today is that 00:11:00.720 --> 00:11:04.800 We're being told that this man was so important, not because he 00:11:04.800 --> 00:11:11.200 was important, but because he is a martyr in the new religion. 00:11:11.200 --> 00:11:16.160 As I mentioned, the MLK Arch heretic episode is part one of 00:11:16.160 --> 00:11:19.680 this as well, just as it was part one of MLK in 00:11:19.680 --> 00:11:22.320 theology and then MLK in politics. 00:11:22.320 --> 00:11:25.680 Same thing played out in Bonhoeffer's life a few decades prior. 00:11:25.680 --> 00:11:29.920 His theology was the same as MLK's, his politics were the same 00:11:29.920 --> 00:11:34.000 as MLK's in in a number of ways that are very important. 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:38.000 And so today, yeah, both of those men were killed at age 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:42.160 thirty-nine. They're both considered today to be martyrs. 00:11:42.160 --> 00:11:46.000 They're absolutely martyrs in their religion. 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:49.600 And as I said at the beginning, that's the context through which 00:11:49.600 --> 00:11:54.000 I think it's necessary to view all takes on Bonhoeffer, whether it's 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:59.360 favorable or unfavorable, the man is a martyr to his faith. 00:11:59.360 --> 00:12:02.800 I highlight his faith because that's the problem here. 00:12:02.800 --> 00:12:04.880 Is his faith the Christian faith? 00:12:04.880 --> 00:12:05.600 As we're told. 00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:08.080 That yeah, that you know that's what almost every pastor will say. 00:12:08.080 --> 00:12:10.960 Yes, he's a you know he's a stalwart of the Christian faith. 00:12:10.960 --> 00:12:14.320 He went back to Germany to fight Hitler, to kill Hitler, to 00:12:14.320 --> 00:12:15.680 save the Jews. 00:12:15.680 --> 00:12:17.600 Hero. And then he died for it. 00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:21.520 Like that's basically Jesus 2.0 for a lot of these guys. 00:12:21.520 --> 00:12:23.520 That's it's a blasphemous thing to say. 00:12:23.520 --> 00:12:27.200 And I God forgive me for saying it, but that's really what's 00:12:27.200 --> 00:12:28.160 going on here. 00:12:28.160 --> 00:12:32.480 And the reason that this this this narrative only emerged in the 00:12:32.640 --> 00:12:34.160 last few decades? 00:12:34.160 --> 00:12:38.320 Is it the narrative of the 20th century only emerged in the 00:12:38.320 --> 00:12:39.360 last few decades? 00:12:39.360 --> 00:12:42.800 Well things that I didn't mention in the Holocaust episode, if you 00:12:42.800 --> 00:12:47.760 do the same Ngram search on Google for Holocaust, it also emerges 00:12:47.760 --> 00:12:48.640 in the 60s. 00:12:48.640 --> 00:12:51.680 There was no Holocaust described in the 40s or the 50s. 00:12:51.680 --> 00:12:55.280 Now, some of the things that are claimed to have happened then 00:12:56.160 --> 00:13:00.080 were reported at that time, but the narrative of the so called 00:13:00.080 --> 00:13:05.120 Holocaust emerged in the sixties, around the same time as Bonhoffer, around 00:13:05.120 --> 00:13:07.520 the same time as Vatican II, and they've all been on a 00:13:07.520 --> 00:13:09.680 trajectory upwards ever since then. 00:13:09.680 --> 00:13:12.320 This is and it's not an artifact of you know the corpus 00:13:12.480 --> 00:13:14.000 that Google searching. 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:18.560 It's actually a function of how often those subjects are coming up. 00:13:18.560 --> 00:13:22.240 It's how often those subjects are in people's minds and in their 00:13:22.240 --> 00:13:25.120 mouths. If it's what people are talking about, it's going to show 00:13:25.120 --> 00:13:25.920 up more frequently. 00:13:25.920 --> 00:13:29.440 So those graphs sometimes are extremely telling. 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:37.120 And Bonhoeffer in particular, even over against MLK is a vital martyr 00:13:37.120 --> 00:13:39.760 to the Holocaust faith. 00:13:39.760 --> 00:13:41.120 Full stop. 00:13:41.120 --> 00:13:45.200 He is important in the world religion of the 21st century because 00:13:45.200 --> 00:13:46.880 he died fighting Hitler. 00:13:46.880 --> 00:13:49.680 So it's part of the reason that we did that three-part episode, 00:13:49.680 --> 00:13:53.040 and particularly the last episode on the history of the Jews in 00:13:53.040 --> 00:13:54.720 the 20th century. 00:13:54.720 --> 00:13:58.640 If everything that you've been told is true about those events, then 00:13:58.640 --> 00:14:03.120 yeah, you know, obviously regardless of some of Bonhoeffer's you know maybe 00:14:03.120 --> 00:14:07.200 theological quibbles, the man was clearly a hero because he went and 00:14:07.200 --> 00:14:10.480 fought the ontological evil of the Nazis. 00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:12.960 If on the other hand, what we have been told about 00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:18.320 twenties twentieth century German politics is not in fact true, and that 00:14:18.320 --> 00:14:22.160 those stories that began to emerge in the story arc that appeared 00:14:22.160 --> 00:14:26.320 in the nineteen sixties wasn't actually the case at the time, then 00:14:26.320 --> 00:14:30.640 then you have to view the s the execution of men like 00:14:30.640 --> 00:14:34.400 Bonhoeffer and their acts that led up to the execution in a 00:14:34.400 --> 00:14:35.520 different light. 00:14:35.520 --> 00:14:38.800 One of the tough things about tackling these subjects is that in 00:14:38.960 --> 00:14:41.360 one of the reasons that we talk about timelines, which is tough 00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:43.600 to do in a podcast because you can't see them, I will 00:14:43.680 --> 00:14:46.880 cut we'll put a couple of those screenshots in the show notes 00:14:46.880 --> 00:14:48.880 so you can visually look at them. 00:14:48.880 --> 00:14:54.160 We're talking in current year about events in the past, but it's 00:14:54.160 --> 00:14:59.120 crucial to consider them as they were occurring, to consider what they 00:14:59.120 --> 00:15:02.000 knew at the time and then what's happened since then to bring 00:15:02.000 --> 00:15:03.520 them to our attention. 00:15:03.520 --> 00:15:09.840 Because Bonafer died eighty years ago, and a whole bunch of stuff 00:15:09.840 --> 00:15:11.280 has sent happened since then. 00:15:11.280 --> 00:15:14.800 And he wasn't very important, and then he became important. 00:15:14.800 --> 00:15:17.040 We're here to tell you today that the reason he became important 00:15:17.040 --> 00:15:21.840 was that the new world religion requires new martyrs to to uphold 00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:24.000 the tenets of the new faith. 00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:26.320 And that's what he accomplished. 00:15:26.800 --> 00:15:30.880 And as we go through the material in this episode, and this 00:15:30.880 --> 00:15:36.560 was already mentioned, but it is worth repeating this to emphasize it, 00:15:36.560 --> 00:15:43.600 it is important to recognize a simple but vitally important 00:15:44.400 --> 00:15:46.800 philosophical fact. 00:15:46.800 --> 00:15:47.920 There is a difference between 00:15:48.800 --> 00:15:53.520 the term used to reference a thing and the thing itself. 00:15:53.520 --> 00:15:56.400 So, for instance, the thing that we in English call a dog 00:15:57.600 --> 00:16:01.280 Is not called a dog in French or Latin or German. 00:16:01.280 --> 00:16:04.560 They're different words in those languages. 00:16:04.560 --> 00:16:08.160 The term refers to the thing, the thing is distinct from the 00:16:08.160 --> 00:16:14.000 term. The same thing can occur in philosophy or theology, and that 00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:19.440 is what we have throughout Bonhoeffer's writings. 00:16:19.440 --> 00:16:22.880 He uses terms that sound Christian. 00:16:22.960 --> 00:16:26.400 If you're a Lutheran in particular, there are some things you're going 00:16:26.400 --> 00:16:28.800 to read it and go, I recognize all of these words. 00:16:28.800 --> 00:16:32.960 This sounds vaguely Christian. 00:16:32.960 --> 00:16:35.600 But you have to understand the way in which he is using 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:37.440 the terms, and you have to have 00:16:39.760 --> 00:16:45.360 really a better overhead, a 30,000-foot view of what he is doing, 00:16:45.360 --> 00:16:49.200 how he believes these things, what he thinks they mean. 00:16:49.200 --> 00:16:54.080 And so he'll say, resurrection, and you'll think, okay, that's a that's 00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:54.720 a Christian term. 00:16:54.720 --> 00:16:57.520 Well he denies the resurrection. 00:16:57.520 --> 00:16:59.200 He'll say crucifixion. 00:16:59.200 --> 00:17:01.360 You'll say, okay, that's a Christian term. 00:17:01.360 --> 00:17:04.080 Well he calls it a myth. 00:17:04.080 --> 00:17:06.400 And that happens with all of these terms. 00:17:06.400 --> 00:17:10.640 So you may hear a term from him that makes you think, 00:17:10.640 --> 00:17:14.400 yes, that's a term a Christian would use, but it's not a 00:17:14.400 --> 00:17:16.640 Christian term when he's using it. 00:17:16.640 --> 00:17:20.320 Satan can use these terms too, and he does all the time. 00:17:20.320 --> 00:17:25.520 Don't forget that when Satan confronted and attempted to tempt Christ, he 00:17:25.520 --> 00:17:26.960 used Scripture. 00:17:26.960 --> 00:17:29.680 He used God's own words. 00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:33.840 It is possible to twist the things of God and make them 00:17:33.840 --> 00:17:38.000 no longer reference what they are meant to reference, no longer reference 00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:40.080 the actual Christian faith. 00:17:40.080 --> 00:17:43.360 It is vitally important to bear that in mind as we go 00:17:43.360 --> 00:17:48.240 through. We will, of course, highlight how he's using these terms, misusing 00:17:48.240 --> 00:17:50.640 these terms, really. 00:17:50.640 --> 00:17:52.080 But keep that in mind. 00:17:52.080 --> 00:17:56.240 Just because you hear a word that you recognize as being related 00:17:56.240 --> 00:18:00.240 to the Christian faith does not mean that it is being used 00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:03.520 in this context in a Christian way. 00:18:04.080 --> 00:18:07.840 And if you've taken our advice and have recently listened to or 00:18:07.840 --> 00:18:11.280 re-listened to the to the MLKR character episode. 00:18:11.280 --> 00:18:15.440 All that sounds incredibly familiar, because that's precisely what King did. 00:18:15.440 --> 00:18:19.600 As I said, the difference between King's approach and Bonhoeffer's approach is 00:18:19.600 --> 00:18:21.840 that King was stupid. 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:26.960 he wasn't intelligent, but his handlers made him understand that there were 00:18:26.960 --> 00:18:29.600 things that he couldn't say in public. 00:18:29.600 --> 00:18:34.560 So although the things that Bonhoeffer wrote about publicly as a theologian 00:18:35.040 --> 00:18:39.600 are are exactly the same things that King was saying decades later 00:18:39.680 --> 00:18:42.000 because they got them from the same teachers. 00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:45.520 King was instructed don't say this in public, don't say the stuff 00:18:45.520 --> 00:18:47.600 in the pulpit because you're not going to be able to get 00:18:47.600 --> 00:18:48.720 away with it. 00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:53.680 Bonhoeffer was able to wrap it up in enough Jesus dust that 00:18:53.680 --> 00:18:55.680 he was able to get away with it because he was a 00:18:55.680 --> 00:18:58.240 much smarter, much slipperier man. 00:18:58.240 --> 00:19:01.360 But the basics of what they believed were identical. 00:19:01.360 --> 00:19:04.880 As Corey said, like write down the list of things in the 00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:09.920 in the creeds that every Christian confesses are the things that Bonhoeffer 00:19:09.920 --> 00:19:15.120 denies. And the reason that's important when you're talking about someone who's 00:19:15.120 --> 00:19:19.520 presenting Christian theology is that it's one thing for someone to have 00:19:19.520 --> 00:19:22.880 a bad take on a per particular subject. 00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:26.480 It's another thing entirely if all of their takes, whether they're good 00:19:26.480 --> 00:19:31.680 or bad, are built on a foundation of overt denial of the 00:19:31.680 --> 00:19:32.880 tenets of the faith. 00:19:32.880 --> 00:19:34.480 And that's what we have with Bonhoff. 00:19:34.480 --> 00:19:38.400 We have a man who overtly denied the foundations of the Christian 00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:42.400 faith. And then he said stuff after that that sounded sorta Christian. 00:19:42.400 --> 00:19:46.160 That is the nightmare scenario for someone who's not smart enough to 00:19:46.160 --> 00:19:47.120 see through it. 00:19:47.120 --> 00:19:50.000 So just as a first example, this um a few of the 00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.160 quotes we're gonna do earlier on are from a book called Christ 00:19:54.160 --> 00:19:55.440 the Center. 00:19:55.440 --> 00:20:00.560 This is described as Bonhoeff's kind of Christological Magnum opus. 00:20:00.560 --> 00:20:04.080 The important thing to note with this is that he didn't write 00:20:04.080 --> 00:20:05.360 this himself. 00:20:05.360 --> 00:20:10.320 Christ the Center is effectively table talks from his teaching in around 00:20:10.400 --> 00:20:16.000 1933. So the authors of that book compiled all the notes from 00:20:16.000 --> 00:20:18.080 as many of the students as they could get a hold of 00:20:18.160 --> 00:20:22.560 and resynthesized his talks and presentations on thing. 00:20:22.560 --> 00:20:25.600 Now in the beginning of the book, and obviously is something that 00:20:25.600 --> 00:20:29.360 we as Lutherans will point to clearly, Tishrain or Table Talks are 00:20:29.360 --> 00:20:35.840 notoriously unreliable sources of information because you know it's it's it's hearsay. 00:20:35.840 --> 00:20:38.640 Someone said something and then someone else wrote it down and then 00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:41.600 they're giving it to another person saying, yeah, he said this. 00:20:41.600 --> 00:20:45.920 It's potentially reliable or unreliable, you can't necessarily weigh it. 00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:49.840 The reason that I give full credence to the spirit of the 00:20:49.840 --> 00:20:53.840 words that are presented here, and you may disregard them, I'm disclosing 00:20:53.840 --> 00:20:56.320 this up front, that we're dealing with something that he did not 00:20:56.800 --> 00:20:59.040 expressly pen by his own hand. 00:20:59.040 --> 00:21:02.000 The reason I believe it fully is that 00:21:03.120 --> 00:21:06.640 Bonhoeffer was a disciple of Carl Barth. 00:21:06.640 --> 00:21:10.000 B-A-R-T-H. I I call him Barth. 00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.000 Like John Candy's character from Space Balls, because he d he makes 00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:15.200 me puke. 00:21:15.200 --> 00:21:18.160 So much evil is downstream from Barf that I'm just gonna call 00:21:18.160 --> 00:21:18.560 him that. 00:21:18.560 --> 00:21:20.640 If you think that's child, just deal with it. 00:21:20.800 --> 00:21:24.720 Corey's gonna call him Bart 'cause he's good at at other languages. 00:21:24.720 --> 00:21:25.440 I don't care. 00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:27.200 The dude's name is Barf. 00:21:27.200 --> 00:21:31.040 Bonhoeffer was an acolyte and a disciple of Barf. 00:21:31.360 --> 00:21:33.440 he literally learned at his feet. 00:21:33.440 --> 00:21:35.680 They studied he studied from him. 00:21:35.680 --> 00:21:37.200 He discussed with him. 00:21:37.200 --> 00:21:42.080 The things that he's aro about to say here in Christ the 00:21:42.080 --> 00:21:45.840 Center in these Table Talks are exactly the same the things that 00:21:45.840 --> 00:21:47.200 Barth was saying. 00:21:47.200 --> 00:21:50.560 And incidentally, they're the very same things that MLK picked up a 00:21:50.560 --> 00:21:51.760 couple decades later. 00:21:51.760 --> 00:21:56.880 So this is a perfect description of the beliefs of that day 00:21:56.880 --> 00:22:02.160 coming from this part of the so called Christian theological discourse. 00:22:02.560 --> 00:22:06.640 No, to us, you know, this is what MLK called this was 00:22:06.640 --> 00:22:08.240 the liberal tradition. 00:22:08.240 --> 00:22:11.840 What it is is a full-on assault on Christianity. 00:22:11.840 --> 00:22:14.800 So just to disclose, he did not write these by his own 00:22:14.800 --> 00:22:18.400 hand, these are accounts secondhand by witnesses. 00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:22.160 They're entirely consistent with his teacher, and they're consistent with these things 00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:23.360 he said later on. 00:22:23.360 --> 00:22:27.040 So I'm gonna read this just know that it's not necessarily exactly 00:22:27.200 --> 00:22:31.440 verbatim what he said, but personally I have no reason to doubt 00:22:31.440 --> 00:22:34.640 that this is not faithful, because it's entirely consistent with the man, 00:22:34.640 --> 00:22:37.440 with his teacher, with his time, and with his beliefs for the 00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:38.560 rest of his life. 00:22:39.200 --> 00:22:43.680 So Christ in the center writes, Strictly speaking, we should not talk 00:22:43.680 --> 00:22:46.640 of the Incarnation, but of the Incarnate One. 00:22:46.640 --> 00:22:49.600 The former interest arises out of the question how. 00:22:49.600 --> 00:22:54.240 The question how, for example, underlies the hypothesis of the virgin birth. 00:22:54.240 --> 00:22:57.600 Both historically and dogmatically it can be questioned. 00:22:57.600 --> 00:23:00.320 The bit of biblical witness is ambiguous. 00:23:00.320 --> 00:23:04.000 If the biblical witness gave clear evidence of the fact, then the 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:06.240 dogmatic obscurity might not have been so important. 00:23:06.960 --> 00:23:10.080 The doctrine of the virgin birth is meant to express the incarnation 00:23:10.080 --> 00:23:13.360 of God, not only the fact of the incarnate one. 00:23:13.360 --> 00:23:16.960 But does it not fail at the decisive point of the incarnation, 00:23:16.960 --> 00:23:20.880 namely that in it Jesus has not become man just like us. 00:23:20.880 --> 00:23:25.520 The question remains open as and because it is already open in 00:23:25.520 --> 00:23:26.880 the Bible. 00:23:26.880 --> 00:23:27.200 So 00:23:28.240 --> 00:23:32.400 this is consistent with m what MLK said the Virgin birth is 00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:33.440 a myth. 00:23:33.440 --> 00:23:36.160 He he'll go on in some of these later quotes to talk 00:23:36.160 --> 00:23:37.520 expressly about myths. 00:23:37.520 --> 00:23:41.040 That was something that he got from Baldman, another one of King's 00:23:41.200 --> 00:23:42.800 inspirations and teachers. 00:23:42.800 --> 00:23:46.160 Baldman was very big on mythologizing scripture. 00:23:46.720 --> 00:23:49.520 You know, in the episode we did early on that I mentioned 00:23:49.520 --> 00:23:54.160 previously about the clarity of scripture, is it true or is it 00:23:54.160 --> 00:23:55.680 factual? Is it real? 00:23:55.680 --> 00:23:59.120 Is it you know people play these word games in order to 00:23:59.120 --> 00:24:00.400 tie you in knots. 00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:04.320 So that you don't will is it the incarnate Jesus or is 00:24:04.320 --> 00:24:05.600 it the incarnation? 00:24:05.600 --> 00:24:07.360 Like what does that even mean? 00:24:07.360 --> 00:24:10.720 What he does when he he says these things is a he's 00:24:10.720 --> 00:24:12.240 flatly denying the virgin birth. 00:24:12.240 --> 00:24:15.600 He's saying it's not in the Bible, which is a lie. 00:24:15.600 --> 00:24:18.080 It is a demonstrable lie that the virgin birth is not in 00:24:18.080 --> 00:24:20.640 the Bible, but this is what they were doing already. 00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:22.720 They were just tearing down scripture. 00:24:22.720 --> 00:24:25.680 And then on top of it, they say, Oh, but it doesn't 00:24:25.600 --> 00:24:29.120 even matter if it's real, because we have the incarnate one. 00:24:29.120 --> 00:24:32.160 Well, if you deny the virgin birth and yin you have something 00:24:32.160 --> 00:24:36.960 left over that you call the incarnate one, that's not the Messiah. 00:24:37.600 --> 00:24:40.560 that's what we're dealing with through all these quotes. 00:24:40.560 --> 00:24:45.360 They will take something, they will strip away the actual truthfulness of 00:24:45.360 --> 00:24:49.040 what's in scripture, and then leave something that as Corey said, still 00:24:49.360 --> 00:24:52.400 they're using some of the same names that we Christians use for 00:24:52.400 --> 00:24:55.200 things, but they use them for other purposes. 00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:58.240 And so that's why I said this is tricky and it's dangerously 00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:02.400 deceptive how these men speak, because if you're not paying paying incredibly 00:25:02.400 --> 00:25:05.600 close critical attention, he'll just gloss right over and say, that's fine. 00:25:06.160 --> 00:25:08.720 Jesus the incarnate one, Jesus was the incarnation. 00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:10.160 Yeah, that's I I believe that. 00:25:10.160 --> 00:25:11.920 That's in the creed somewhere. 00:25:11.920 --> 00:25:15.920 It's only when you're critically looking at this stuff, just assuming that 00:25:15.920 --> 00:25:18.960 it's false and then trying to prove yourself wrong, that you realize 00:25:18.960 --> 00:25:20.080 you can't prove yourself wrong. 00:25:20.080 --> 00:25:20.640 It's false. 00:25:20.640 --> 00:25:22.800 He's denying, he's denying scripture. 00:25:22.800 --> 00:25:24.320 He's denying the virgin birth. 00:25:24.320 --> 00:25:29.760 And that itself, all by itself, isn't denial of Christianity, full stop. 00:25:29.760 --> 00:25:32.480 So if if this quote were true and it was the only 00:25:32.480 --> 00:25:34.240 thing, that'd be the end of the story. 00:25:34.240 --> 00:25:35.840 The man is not Christian. 00:25:35.840 --> 00:25:37.920 Part of the reason we're beginning here is that this is one 00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:43.120 of the more crystal clear examples of Barth's theology coming through in 00:25:43.120 --> 00:25:47.280 his mouth and then him continuing it on ultimately to treason and 00:25:47.600 --> 00:25:48.800 attempted murder. 00:25:48.800 --> 00:25:51.280 That's the trajectory of a man who incidentally at the end of 00:25:51.280 --> 00:25:54.080 his life, as we'll get to it, he stopped reading the Bible. 00:25:54.080 --> 00:25:58.320 He was he was effectively apostate and he more or less acknowledged 00:25:58.320 --> 00:26:01.680 it. But it began here with these denials of the creed. 00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:07.120 You never you never go immediately from getting one fact of the 00:26:07.120 --> 00:26:11.520 Christian faith wrong to apostasy, there's always a trajectory. 00:26:11.520 --> 00:26:14.240 So today we're gonna make the case for him having gone through 00:26:14.240 --> 00:26:17.520 that trajectory, regardless of where he began, because as we see here, 00:26:17.520 --> 00:26:20.880 he's beginning with denial of the faith. 00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:21.360 For 00:26:21.360 --> 00:26:25.200 the record, I do think that calling him barf is fair. 00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:29.920 Particularly considering there's there's a sort of contagion to vomiting for certain 00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:32.480 people where one person will vomit and another one will. 00:26:32.480 --> 00:26:35.600 That's kind of how it works with that theology. 00:26:35.600 --> 00:26:38.560 There's another linguistic point to make here, and I know it seems 00:26:38.560 --> 00:26:42.880 like we're going to make some hypertechnical points in this episode, but 00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:45.280 it's important. 00:26:45.280 --> 00:26:49.280 The word myth is not univocal. 00:26:49.280 --> 00:26:51.360 The word myth does not have one meaning. 00:26:51.360 --> 00:26:55.120 The word myth can be used in a good or a bad 00:26:55.120 --> 00:26:57.440 way with regard to theology. 00:26:57.440 --> 00:26:59.840 You can call Christianity a mythos 00:27:00.800 --> 00:27:05.040 and still be an actual Christian. 00:27:05.040 --> 00:27:10.160 Now, most theologians, most philosophers who are sound Christians will not do 00:27:10.160 --> 00:27:15.440 that. That is a specific, specialized technical sense of the term, myth 00:27:15.520 --> 00:27:20.720 or mythos, whichever one you want to use, those are interchangeable. 00:27:20.720 --> 00:27:24.320 That is not what Bonhoeffer is doing. 00:27:24.320 --> 00:27:30.480 Because he in other places in his writing explicitly contrasts myth and 00:27:30.480 --> 00:27:34.560 history. He does not identify them, he does not consider them as 00:27:34.560 --> 00:27:40.080 overlapping, he considers them distinct things, and he considers myth to be 00:27:40.080 --> 00:27:44.880 unreliable, to be untrue, to be made up. 00:27:44.880 --> 00:27:51.280 One of the examples he uses is the partly former, partly still, 00:27:51.280 --> 00:27:55.680 Japanese belief that the Tenno, otherwise known as the Emperor of Japan, 00:27:55.680 --> 00:27:59.200 was descended directly from a goddess. 00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:03.040 He uses that as an example of myth and contrasts that sort 00:28:03.040 --> 00:28:08.960 of Eastern belief in the descent of their kings, their emperors from 00:28:08.960 --> 00:28:12.960 gods, as myth from Western history. 00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:16.640 So when he says myth, he means it didn't happen. 00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:23.200 So the word myth in his mouth, coming from his pen, is 00:28:23.200 --> 00:28:27.680 calling whatever is a myth untrue, saying it is not historical fact, 00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:30.880 it is not empirical, and elsewhere in his writing he constantly make 00:28:31.040 --> 00:28:35.920 claims about Christianity not being empirical truth. 00:28:35.920 --> 00:28:39.520 And this is again from Bart, in large part, because he makes 00:28:39.520 --> 00:28:45.280 a distinction between the empirical and the religious, and says that the 00:28:45.280 --> 00:28:52.240 religious doesn't necessarily correspond to the empirical, and calls the Old Testament 00:28:52.880 --> 00:28:59.120 a series of religious truths, of religious claims, and in so claiming 00:28:59.280 --> 00:29:02.800 he says that they are not empirical. 00:29:02.800 --> 00:29:05.600 And this is one of the ways that we wind up with 00:29:05.600 --> 00:29:11.040 a rejection of apologetics from men like Bart and Bernhofer and others, 00:29:11.040 --> 00:29:11.360 because 00:29:12.480 --> 00:29:19.360 they don't believe that religious truth corresponds to empirical truth, and apologetics 00:29:19.360 --> 00:29:22.080 relies on that. 00:29:22.080 --> 00:29:26.240 But we also see here, just at the outset, the first real 00:29:26.240 --> 00:29:30.240 chunk of his writing with which we're dealing, not even a very 00:29:30.240 --> 00:29:34.160 big one, his rejection of dogma and doctrine. 00:29:34.160 --> 00:29:36.240 And this is throughout his writing. 00:29:36.240 --> 00:29:41.280 He basically says that Christianity is not a series of dogmas or 00:29:41.280 --> 00:29:44.000 doctrinal claims, which it is. 00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:45.280 Let's be clear here. 00:29:45.280 --> 00:29:48.160 Christianity makes truth claims. 00:29:48.160 --> 00:29:51.680 Christianity is a series of truth claims. 00:29:51.680 --> 00:29:57.280 If those claims are false, Christianity is false. 00:29:57.280 --> 00:29:59.280 He's saying that doesn't matter. 00:29:59.280 --> 00:30:02.640 Doctrine doesn't matter, dogma doesn't matter. 00:30:02.640 --> 00:30:04.800 I have a a quote here. 00:30:04.800 --> 00:30:11.920 Before we started recording, we're discussing potentially using a generated 00:30:11.920 --> 00:30:14.720 voice to read some of this, because to some degree, I don't 00:30:14.720 --> 00:30:16.560 even want these things in my own voice. 00:30:16.560 --> 00:30:20.160 And I'm sure Wo feels the same way because of the evil 00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:23.120 of some of the things we're going to read in this episode. 00:30:23.120 --> 00:30:25.360 But I guess in an age of AI it hardly matters. 00:30:25.440 --> 00:30:28.320 Matters there's enough of my voice out there that someone could synthesize 00:30:28.320 --> 00:30:30.640 it if he were so inclined. 00:30:30.640 --> 00:30:35.840 But on the topic of dogma or doctrine, this is a quote 00:30:35.840 --> 00:30:36.160 from 00:30:37.680 --> 00:30:42.080 this one is from an outline for a book that he sent 00:30:42.080 --> 00:30:44.800 in one of his letters. 00:30:44.800 --> 00:30:49.840 Jesus's being for others is the experience of transcendence. 00:30:49.840 --> 00:30:54.400 Only through this liberation from self, through this being for others unto 00:30:54.400 --> 00:30:59.600 death, do omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence come into being. 00:30:59.600 --> 00:31:05.680 Faith is participating in this being of Jesus, becoming human, cross resurrection. 00:31:05.680 --> 00:31:10.640 Our relationship to God is no religious relationship to some highest, most 00:31:10.640 --> 00:31:13.200 powerful, and best being imaginable. 00:31:13.200 --> 00:31:15.440 That is no genuine transcendence. 00:31:15.440 --> 00:31:19.840 Instead our relationship to God is a new life in being there 00:31:19.840 --> 00:31:23.760 for others, through participation in the being of Jesus. 00:31:23.760 --> 00:31:28.640 The transcendent is not the infinite, unattainable task, but the neighbor within 00:31:28.640 --> 00:31:30.160 reach in any given situation 00:31:31.200 --> 00:31:32.960 What do we really believe? 00:31:32.960 --> 00:31:35.920 I mean believe in such a way that our lives depend on 00:31:35.920 --> 00:31:40.240 it. The problem of the Apostles' Creed, written as a question What 00:31:40.240 --> 00:31:41.200 must I believe? 00:31:41.200 --> 00:31:48.000 Wrong question, outdated controversies, especially the interconfessional ones, the differences between Lutheran 00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:52.480 and Reformed, and to some extent Roman Catholic, are no longer real. 00:31:52.480 --> 00:31:55.920 Of course they can be revived with passion at any time, but 00:31:55.920 --> 00:31:57.200 they are no longer convincing. 00:31:57.840 --> 00:31:59.360 There is no proof for this. 00:31:59.360 --> 00:32:02.320 One must simply be bold enough to start from this. 00:32:02.320 --> 00:32:06.000 The only thing we can prove is that the Christian biblical faith 00:32:06.000 --> 00:32:08.800 does not live or depend on such differences. 00:32:08.800 --> 00:32:13.360 Conclusions The Church is church only when it is there for others. 00:32:13.360 --> 00:32:16.480 As a first step, it must give away all its property to 00:32:16.480 --> 00:32:18.240 those in need. 00:32:18.240 --> 00:32:22.320 There is such a collection of problems with this, and I didn't 00:32:22.240 --> 00:32:26.240 even read the whole passage because it's a couple full pages. 00:32:26.240 --> 00:32:30.960 It's difficult even to go through or summarize them in a quick 00:32:30.960 --> 00:32:37.360 fashion, but note how he starts off it's almost Buddhist Liberation from 00:32:37.360 --> 00:32:40.560 self. That's not what Christianity is. 00:32:40.560 --> 00:32:46.160 God created you to be the person you are. 00:32:46.160 --> 00:32:50.480 Yes, you are currently in a fallen state, and as a Christian, 00:32:50.480 --> 00:32:54.560 you will be perfected in the resurrection, but that is becoming more 00:32:54.560 --> 00:32:58.640 yourself. It is not becoming less yourself. 00:32:58.640 --> 00:33:03.120 God did not make you wrong. 00:33:03.120 --> 00:33:05.840 You are what God wants you to be. 00:33:05.840 --> 00:33:09.760 Again, yes, fallen state, imperfect currently. 00:33:09.760 --> 00:33:14.000 Christianity is not a giving up of self. 00:33:14.000 --> 00:33:19.360 It is not in the Buddhist Eastern sense a denial of self. 00:33:19.360 --> 00:33:22.080 It is a denial of self in the sense of take up 00:33:22.080 --> 00:33:24.720 your cross and follow me. 00:33:24.720 --> 00:33:26.720 But that's not what he's speaking about here. 00:33:26.720 --> 00:33:28.800 This is liberation from self. 00:33:28.800 --> 00:33:32.640 This is Eastern philosophy being imported into Christianity, and we see this 00:33:32.640 --> 00:33:38.000 constantly in men from this era who are of the liberal school 00:33:38.160 --> 00:33:42.160 because there was an infatuation with Eastern philosophy, and he was very 00:33:42.160 --> 00:33:43.520 familiar with philosophy. 00:33:43.520 --> 00:33:48.240 We see that throughout his writing, mostly continental, but also Eastern. 00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:51.440 But the next part I actually find more interesting, when he says 00:33:51.440 --> 00:33:56.640 that it's only through this being for others that omnipotence, omniscience, and 00:33:56.640 --> 00:33:59.680 omnipresence come into being. 00:33:59.680 --> 00:34:03.520 This is a blunt denial of the nature of God, which is 00:34:03.600 --> 00:34:07.920 if as we have highlighted in previous episodes, a denial of the 00:34:07.920 --> 00:34:11.200 nature of God, a denial of the attributes of God, is a 00:34:11.200 --> 00:34:14.000 denial of God, because God is his nature, his attributes are his 00:34:14.080 --> 00:34:15.600 nature, these are interchangeable. 00:34:15.600 --> 00:34:18.800 We speak of them as if they were parts because we're human 00:34:18.800 --> 00:34:21.840 and it's one of our limitations limitations. 00:34:21.840 --> 00:34:24.800 He's denying God here. 00:34:24.800 --> 00:34:29.120 He is simply outright rejecting the reality of God. 00:34:29.120 --> 00:34:33.280 A Christian cannot write this, at least not and remain Christian. 00:34:33.280 --> 00:34:38.000 Which isn't surprising because as was mentioned, his trajectory was downward, was 00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:40.320 hellward at the end of his life. 00:34:40.320 --> 00:34:44.560 He stopped reading scripture, he stopped believing in some of the bits 00:34:44.560 --> 00:34:45.760 of Christianity in which he believed 00:34:46.640 --> 00:34:50.400 at some point in the past, he became more and more apostate 00:34:50.560 --> 00:34:51.760 as he went on. 00:34:51.760 --> 00:34:55.680 And you see that where he calls the apostles' creed a problem. 00:34:55.680 --> 00:34:58.320 Literally words it is a question mark, the problem of the apostles 00:34:59.040 --> 00:35:03.200 Creed. Christians don't view the creeds as a problem. 00:35:03.200 --> 00:35:07.680 Christians view the Creeds as a summary statement of our faith. 00:35:07.680 --> 00:35:11.680 And as someone who claimed to be Lutheran, he was bound to 00:35:11.680 --> 00:35:14.160 believe that every word of the creeds is true. 00:35:14.160 --> 00:35:18.160 It's part of our confession, not that the confession of course meant 00:35:18.160 --> 00:35:21.120 anything to this man. 00:35:21.120 --> 00:35:26.160 And then it's in that same paragraph where we see this denial, 00:35:26.160 --> 00:35:30.480 outright, blunt denial, of the importance of dogma and doctrine, of the 00:35:30.480 --> 00:35:32.720 importance of truth. 00:35:32.720 --> 00:35:36.000 Because that is what is actually at stake when you deny that 00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:36.800 doctrine is important. 00:35:37.600 --> 00:35:42.080 If you say that the differences between the Lutherans and the Reformed 00:35:42.080 --> 00:35:46.320 don't matter, or between the Reformed and 00:35:47.360 --> 00:35:51.200 the Romanists, or the East, and Lutherans. 00:35:51.200 --> 00:35:53.920 Whatever groups you happen to pick, if you say that those differences 00:35:53.920 --> 00:35:57.840 don't matter, you're saying truth doesn't matter. 00:35:57.840 --> 00:36:01.040 Because there are only three options. 00:36:01.040 --> 00:36:05.600 If Lutherine's claim A, the reformed claim B 00:36:06.720 --> 00:36:06.960 then 00:36:08.800 --> 00:36:11.680 if A is right, B is wrong. 00:36:11.680 --> 00:36:15.040 If B is right, A is wrong, and of course the third 00:36:15.040 --> 00:36:18.960 option is both are wrong and there's a third option C. 00:36:18.960 --> 00:36:23.920 But you cannot have these differences not matter because these are about 00:36:23.920 --> 00:36:24.880 eternal things. 00:36:24.880 --> 00:36:28.640 This is about truth, and the truth matters because the truth is 00:36:28.960 --> 00:36:32.400 one of the attributes of God, it is part of his nature. 00:36:32.400 --> 00:36:38.240 But of course, elsewhere, in many places, Bonhoeffer denies that truth matters. 00:36:38.400 --> 00:36:42.320 The truth is even a transcendent thing, and he full well knew 00:36:42.320 --> 00:36:45.760 what he was saying, because he was familiar with the philosophy that 00:36:45.760 --> 00:36:48.960 deals with the transcendentals. 00:36:48.960 --> 00:36:53.520 He repeatedly, in his writing, denies God. 00:36:53.520 --> 00:36:56.080 That is not something that a Christian can do. 00:36:56.080 --> 00:36:58.640 It is not something that a man who claims to be Christian 00:36:58.640 --> 00:37:01.040 can do and remain Christian. 00:37:01.200 --> 00:37:04.560 This was one of those passages that I found interesting because 00:37:05.440 --> 00:37:08.080 small pieces of it echo, as I said, things that you and 00:37:08.080 --> 00:37:10.160 I say on Stone Choir. 00:37:10.160 --> 00:37:13.840 And I think this is where the origins of those beliefs come 00:37:13.840 --> 00:37:16.640 from diametrically opposed places. 00:37:16.640 --> 00:37:22.160 When MLK and Bonhoeffer are saying forget forget this doctrinal stuff, we 00:37:22.160 --> 00:37:25.520 just need to focus on neighbor and focus on you know the 00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:29.680 the liberation theology version of best life now. 00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.240 Basically it's it's basically a manifestation of Tikanolam, which we talked about 00:37:34.560 --> 00:37:38.880 I think in the second episode of the three part on Jews. 00:37:38.880 --> 00:37:43.520 When Cory and I specifically talk about care for neighbor, love of 00:37:43.520 --> 00:37:48.720 ma neighbor, love of family, respect and love and preservation of nation, 00:37:48.720 --> 00:37:51.600 that is race, it is not 00:37:52.560 --> 00:37:56.080 self-referential. It's obedience to God. 00:37:56.080 --> 00:37:59.520 It is looking up and looking at scripture. 00:37:59.520 --> 00:38:02.800 It's looking to see what God has revealed to us, what He's 00:38:02.800 --> 00:38:06.560 telling us to do as our creator, and then following through, because 00:38:06.560 --> 00:38:09.200 we acknowledge that we are creatures. 00:38:09.200 --> 00:38:12.640 The distinction between the approach that we take, which is a Christian 00:38:12.640 --> 00:38:18.640 approach of living a Christian life in view of heaven, of God's 00:38:18.640 --> 00:38:25.760 promises and of God's commands, versus the Barf and MLK and Bonhoeffer 00:38:25.760 --> 00:38:29.840 view is that they basically say God is going to be whatever 00:38:29.840 --> 00:38:31.120 we feel He is. 00:38:31.120 --> 00:38:34.160 We know we have this feeling that God is this good stuff. 00:38:34.160 --> 00:38:36.160 Let's make the good stuff happen now. 00:38:36.160 --> 00:38:38.640 And so is we're going to get to in in some of 00:38:38.640 --> 00:38:42.320 the quotes here in a little bit, he eventually gets to the 00:38:42.320 --> 00:38:43.520 point that he's like 00:38:44.720 --> 00:38:50.880 We don't need God anymore in theology in order to have Christianity. 00:38:50.880 --> 00:38:53.520 And we don't need to call it Christianity anymore because Christ is 00:38:53.520 --> 00:38:56.080 gone, but we still have all the stuff that God wanted for 00:38:56.080 --> 00:38:58.880 us. That's the exact opposite of what Corey and I believe. 00:38:58.880 --> 00:39:01.280 That's exact opposite of what Christianity teaches. 00:39:01.280 --> 00:39:05.360 Like it's not that's not stone Choir theology versus Bonhoeffer theology. 00:39:05.360 --> 00:39:10.400 It's literally Christianity versus the satanic destruction of things that were good 00:39:10.640 --> 00:39:13.520 for the sake of creating a world where nothing good can ever 00:39:13.520 --> 00:39:14.800 again exist. 00:39:14.800 --> 00:39:17.200 So it it struck me that again, this is one of those 00:39:17.200 --> 00:39:20.080 things that it sounds a bit like us if you're not paying 00:39:20.080 --> 00:39:23.840 attention to the sources, but it's it's very clear that we're on 00:39:23.840 --> 00:39:27.600 exactly opposite sides of these questions. 00:39:27.600 --> 00:39:30.720 There's another quote here that's also from Christ in the center from 00:39:30.720 --> 00:39:36.640 nineteen thirty three, where he flat out denies that Jesus was perfect. 00:39:36.640 --> 00:39:41.840 He says here it is necessary to understand what the likeness of 00:39:41.840 --> 00:39:43.200 flesh can mean? 00:39:43.200 --> 00:39:46.000 What is meant in the real image of human flesh? 00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:47.840 His flesh is our flesh. 00:39:47.840 --> 00:39:50.320 It is of the very nature of our flesh that we are 00:39:50.320 --> 00:39:52.480 tempted to sin and self will. 00:39:52.480 --> 00:39:55.760 Christ has taken upon himself all that flesh is heir to, but 00:39:56.160 --> 00:39:58.160 to what extent does he differ from us? 00:39:58.160 --> 00:39:59.760 First not at all. 00:39:59.760 --> 00:40:02.800 He is man as we are, he is tempted in all points, 00:40:02.800 --> 00:40:06.560 like we are, yet much more dangerously than we are. 00:40:06.560 --> 00:40:10.160 Also in his flesh was the law which is contrary to God's 00:40:10.160 --> 00:40:12.720 will. He was not the perfect good. 00:40:12.720 --> 00:40:15.280 At all times he stood in conflict. 00:40:15.280 --> 00:40:19.200 He did things which at least from outside looked like sin. 00:40:19.200 --> 00:40:23.040 He became angry, he was harsh to his mother, he escaped from 00:40:23.040 --> 00:40:26.480 his enemies, he broke the law of his people, he stirred up 00:40:26.480 --> 00:40:29.440 revolt against the rulers and religious men of his country. 00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:32.400 He must have appeared a sinner in the eyes of men. 00:40:32.400 --> 00:40:36.800 Beyond recognition, he stepped into man's sinful way of existence. 00:40:36.800 --> 00:40:40.640 Simply stating the sinlessness of Jesus fails if it is based upon 00:40:40.640 --> 00:40:43.040 the observable acts of Jesus. 00:40:43.040 --> 00:40:46.480 His acts take place in the likeness of flesh. 00:40:46.480 --> 00:40:49.440 They are not sinless but ambiguous. 00:40:49.440 --> 00:40:53.280 One can and should see both good and failure in them. 00:40:53.280 --> 00:40:57.760 When a person wishes to be incognito, one wrongs him by saying 00:40:57.920 --> 00:41:01.440 I have both seen you and seen through you, Kierkegaard. 00:41:01.760 --> 00:41:05.520 We should not therefore deduce the sinlessness of Jesus out of his 00:41:05.680 --> 00:41:10.240 deeds. The assertion of the sinlessness of Jesus in his deeds is 00:41:10.240 --> 00:41:13.520 not an evident moral judgment, but an assertion of faith that it 00:41:13.520 --> 00:41:17.840 is he who performs these ambiguous actions, he it is who is 00:41:17.840 --> 00:41:19.440 eternally without sin. 00:41:19.440 --> 00:41:22.720 Faith confesses that the one who is tempted is the victor, the 00:41:22.720 --> 00:41:27.040 one who struggles is perfected, the one unrighteous one is righteous, the 00:41:27.040 --> 00:41:29.440 one who is rejected is the holy one. 00:41:29.440 --> 00:41:32.800 Even the sinlessness of Jesus is a co incognito. 00:41:32.800 --> 00:41:35.840 Blessed is he who is not offended in me, for Matthew eleven 00:41:36.080 --> 00:41:41.600 six. So this is a tremendously dangerous quote because 00:41:43.040 --> 00:41:46.960 he's accusing Jesus of personal sin, which is something that we find 00:41:46.960 --> 00:41:51.360 in modern scholars today, saying that Jesus actually sinned, but then just 00:41:51.360 --> 00:41:53.760 sort of brushing it away and saying, well, because he was God, 00:41:53.760 --> 00:41:56.480 you know, wasn't really sin and we can't understand. 00:41:56.720 --> 00:42:00.240 he gives a list of Jesus' sins in his life and says, 00:42:00.240 --> 00:42:02.800 well, yeah, I'm sure he had to do that because he became 00:42:02.800 --> 00:42:06.160 sin for us, which is a quote from scripture. 00:42:06.160 --> 00:42:09.840 The problem is that again, this goes back to one of the 00:42:10.080 --> 00:42:14.800 rank heresies we find even among Lutheran theologians today, which is that 00:42:15.120 --> 00:42:19.760 when Jesus was tempted to sin, that was an internal temptation, that 00:42:19.760 --> 00:42:22.800 he really wanted to sin, but because he didn't actually do it, 00:42:22.800 --> 00:42:23.920 he didn't sin. 00:42:23.920 --> 00:42:25.680 That's blasphemy. 00:42:25.680 --> 00:42:28.400 When Jesus was tempted, it was external. 00:42:28.400 --> 00:42:30.240 We've talked about this before. 00:42:30.240 --> 00:42:34.560 When I want to do something bad that is a part of 00:42:34.560 --> 00:42:40.560 my nature, the temptation is internal, because my evil self, the the 00:42:40.560 --> 00:42:44.880 unregenerate self, desires to do that which con' is contrary to my 00:42:44.880 --> 00:42:46.240 regenerate nature. 00:42:46.240 --> 00:42:49.040 I see something, I want to do it, I'm tempted to do 00:42:49.040 --> 00:42:54.160 it. My regenerate nature gives me the power to resist that temptation 00:42:54.320 --> 00:42:56.800 and not to follow through with the sin. 00:42:56.880 --> 00:43:00.160 But the point to be made is that the desire to sin 00:43:00.160 --> 00:43:01.520 is itself sin. 00:43:01.520 --> 00:43:03.600 That is internal temptation. 00:43:03.600 --> 00:43:06.320 There are also external temptations. 00:43:06.320 --> 00:43:09.200 There are some things where you know a fleeting thought pops into 00:43:09.200 --> 00:43:11.840 my head and I'm like, where did that come from? 00:43:11.840 --> 00:43:13.360 Yeah, tempting me to do something. 00:43:13.360 --> 00:43:17.760 And it's the exact opposite of anything that's it in my interest. 00:43:17.760 --> 00:43:20.320 Yeah, we we all have these fleeting thoughts where something just pops 00:43:20.320 --> 00:43:22.240 in your head and you're like, why would I think that? 00:43:22.560 --> 00:43:24.080 that's horrible. 00:43:24.080 --> 00:43:26.000 That is external temptation. 00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:28.160 That is the devil messing with us. 00:43:28.160 --> 00:43:29.840 It doesn't happen constantly. 00:43:29.840 --> 00:43:30.480 It shouldn't. 00:43:30.720 --> 00:43:33.120 If it is happening to you constantly, you need to pray for 00:43:33.440 --> 00:43:37.600 help and for protection from the Lord and for forgiveness from a 00:43:37.600 --> 00:43:40.960 life that is putting you in a position where there are constant 00:43:40.960 --> 00:43:47.440 external temptations, but the internal temptation is according to our sinful nature. 00:43:47.440 --> 00:43:52.320 The external temptation, as Jesus faced with Satan in the wilderness, where 00:43:52.320 --> 00:43:55.120 he's saying, Eat, jump, worship. 00:43:55.120 --> 00:43:57.600 Those were external temptations. 00:43:57.600 --> 00:44:01.440 Jesus was tempted because Satan tempted him. 00:44:01.440 --> 00:44:05.600 Jesus was not tempted to do what Satan wanted, there wasn't there 00:44:05.600 --> 00:44:09.120 was never any possibility that Jesus was going to bow down before 00:44:09.120 --> 00:44:12.560 Satan. It wasn't like he considered it for a fleeting moment and 00:44:12.560 --> 00:44:14.080 then decided better of it. 00:44:14.080 --> 00:44:16.720 That would be the sort of internal temptation that you or I 00:44:16.720 --> 00:44:17.440 might face. 00:44:17.440 --> 00:44:21.040 Even with resolute faith, if Satan appeared to one of us and 00:44:21.040 --> 00:44:23.040 said, I'll give you the whole world, all you have to do 00:44:23.040 --> 00:44:26.800 is bow down before me, we would have to consider it. 00:44:27.040 --> 00:44:30.240 No matter how fleetingly, there would still be a consideration in our 00:44:30.240 --> 00:44:34.080 minds because that would be not only Satan tempting us, but us 00:44:34.080 --> 00:44:36.800 being tempted by it internally. 00:44:36.800 --> 00:44:38.480 Like that sounds like a pretty good deal. 00:44:38.480 --> 00:44:39.840 I would like the whole world. 00:44:39.840 --> 00:44:41.520 That's something that a pa appeals to 00:44:42.480 --> 00:44:46.080 to our vanity, appeals to our covetousness. 00:44:46.080 --> 00:44:50.320 Satan could not do that to Jesus because Jesus did not have 00:44:50.640 --> 00:44:51.600 personal sin. 00:44:51.600 --> 00:44:53.200 He did not have original sin. 00:44:53.200 --> 00:44:57.760 When he took our sins on on the cross, it was something 00:44:57.760 --> 00:44:59.920 external that he took into himself. 00:44:59.920 --> 00:45:04.880 It's not the same as him struggling with sin, which is exactly 00:45:04.880 --> 00:45:07.360 what Bonhoeffer is accusing him of here. 00:45:07.360 --> 00:45:09.280 This is blasphemy. 00:45:09.280 --> 00:45:10.720 This is denying that God is God. 00:45:10.720 --> 00:45:13.920 This is saying that Jesus could sin, that Jesus did sin. 00:45:13.920 --> 00:45:19.360 If Bonhoeffer's Jesus sinned, then Bonhoeffer's Jesus isn't God. 00:45:19.360 --> 00:45:19.600 In 00:45:19.600 --> 00:45:24.880 Lutheran theology and probably also in some others, this is the distinction 00:45:24.880 --> 00:45:30.960 between the old Adam, which is inherited sin, original sin, you can 00:45:30.960 --> 00:45:33.920 use either term, and the new man in Christ 00:45:36.720 --> 00:45:38.160 Now just so we have 00:45:39.200 --> 00:45:43.520 something read in this episode that is actually sound and good instead 00:45:43.520 --> 00:45:46.320 of what we'll be reading for most of the episode, I'd like 00:45:46.320 --> 00:45:46.640 to read 00:45:47.680 --> 00:45:51.680 just the end of Romans seven, which highlights exactly this point. 00:45:51.680 --> 00:45:54.640 This is the point we're making. 00:45:54.640 --> 00:45:57.680 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of 00:45:57.680 --> 00:46:02.160 the flesh, sold under sin, for I do not understand my own 00:46:02.160 --> 00:46:05.520 actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do 00:46:05.520 --> 00:46:07.440 the very thing I hate. 00:46:07.440 --> 00:46:10.480 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with 00:46:10.480 --> 00:46:13.680 the law that it is good, so now it is no longer 00:46:13.680 --> 00:46:17.520 I who do it, but sin that dwells within me, for I 00:46:17.520 --> 00:46:20.800 know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh, 00:46:21.040 --> 00:46:23.920 for I have the desire to do what is right, but not 00:46:23.920 --> 00:46:27.440 the ability to carry it out, for I do not do the 00:46:27.440 --> 00:46:30.560 good I want, but the evil I do not want is what 00:46:30.560 --> 00:46:32.080 I keep on doing. 00:46:32.080 --> 00:46:34.720 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no 00:46:34.720 --> 00:46:38.000 longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 00:46:38.000 --> 00:46:40.800 So I find it to be a law that when I want 00:46:40.800 --> 00:46:43.840 to do right, evil lies close at hand. 00:46:43.840 --> 00:46:47.040 For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, 00:46:47.040 --> 00:46:50.640 but I see in my members another law waging war against the 00:46:50.640 --> 00:46:53.680 law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of 00:46:53.680 --> 00:46:55.920 sin that dwells in my members. 00:46:55.920 --> 00:46:59.600 Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body 00:46:59.600 --> 00:47:00.640 of death? 00:47:00.640 --> 00:47:04.080 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 00:47:04.080 --> 00:47:08.240 So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, 00:47:08.240 --> 00:47:14.160 but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. 00:47:14.160 --> 00:47:20.000 This is summarized in Reformation theology as the symbol. 00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:26.800 We are simultaneously saint and sinner, sanctified and sinful. 00:47:26.800 --> 00:47:30.400 Because as long as we live in this world, we will continue 00:47:30.400 --> 00:47:35.280 to be beset by original sin, which leads to those internal temptations, 00:47:35.280 --> 00:47:36.800 not just external. 00:47:36.800 --> 00:47:42.320 Christ again, had only the external temptation, only Satan standing there tempting 00:47:42.320 --> 00:47:46.400 him. No internal temptation, that is something we have because we are 00:47:46.400 --> 00:47:51.600 fallen. And so that is why Paul here speaking, yes, regenerate Paul 00:47:51.760 --> 00:47:56.480 speaking, says that he continues to struggle with original sin because he 00:47:56.480 --> 00:48:00.560 was still a fallen human being living in this world. 00:48:00.560 --> 00:48:04.480 That's not something that you eventually reach a point in this life 00:48:04.480 --> 00:48:07.040 where original sin just disappears, you no longer have it. 00:48:07.040 --> 00:48:11.840 Yes, through the process of sanctification, some of these temptations will be 00:48:11.840 --> 00:48:16.960 put to death, which is good, daily dying, as it were, and 00:48:16.960 --> 00:48:20.640 coming alive again in your baptism as a Christian. 00:48:20.640 --> 00:48:22.800 But it will not all disappear in this life. 00:48:22.800 --> 00:48:25.760 That is, for the next life, that is something that happens in 00:48:25.760 --> 00:48:27.280 the resurrection. 00:48:27.760 --> 00:48:31.840 The last quotation I want to read from those table talks is 00:48:31.840 --> 00:48:34.960 a rejection of the resurrection. 00:48:35.120 --> 00:48:42.400 Bonhoffer says Between humiliation and exaltation lies oppressively the 00:48:42.400 --> 00:48:45.520 stark historical fact of the empty tomb. 00:48:45.520 --> 00:48:48.160 What is the meaning of the news of the empty tomb before 00:48:48.160 --> 00:48:49.920 the news of the resurrection? 00:48:49.920 --> 00:48:52.560 Is it the deciding fact of Christology? 00:48:52.560 --> 00:48:54.240 Was it really empty? 00:48:54.240 --> 00:48:58.640 Is it the visible evidence penetrating the incognito of the sonship of 00:48:58.640 --> 00:49:03.200 Jesus open to everyone, and therefore making faith superfluous. 00:49:03.200 --> 00:49:06.960 If it was not empty, it is then Christ not risen and 00:49:06.960 --> 00:49:08.800 our faith futile. 00:49:08.800 --> 00:49:12.640 If it was not empty, is then Christ not risen and our 00:49:12.640 --> 00:49:13.600 faith futile. 00:49:13.600 --> 00:49:17.040 It looks as though our faith in the resurrection were bound up 00:49:17.040 --> 00:49:18.880 with the news of the empty tomb. 00:49:18.880 --> 00:49:22.400 Is our faith then ultimately only faith in the empty tomb? 00:49:22.400 --> 00:49:26.320 This is and remains a final stumbling block, which the believer in 00:49:26.320 --> 00:49:29.840 Christ must learn to live with in one way or another. 00:49:29.840 --> 00:49:33.200 Empty or not empty, it remains a stumbling block. 00:49:33.200 --> 00:49:35.520 We cannot be sure of its historicity. 00:49:35.520 --> 00:49:39.440 The Bible itself shows this stumbling block when it makes clear how 00:49:39.440 --> 00:49:42.400 hard it was to prove that the disciples had not stolen the 00:49:42.400 --> 00:49:46.640 body. Even here we cannot ex escape the realm of ambiguity. 00:49:46.640 --> 00:49:48.880 We cannot find a way around it. 00:49:48.880 --> 00:49:52.880 Even in the testimony of Scripture, Jesus enters in a form which 00:49:52.880 --> 00:49:54.560 is a stumbling block. 00:49:54.560 --> 00:49:58.240 Even as the risen one he does not lift his incognito, he 00:49:58.240 --> 00:50:00.800 will lift it only when he returns in glory. 00:50:00.800 --> 00:50:04.400 Then the incarnate one will no longer be the humiliated one. 00:50:04.400 --> 00:50:08.080 Then the decision over faith or unbelief is already taken. 00:50:08.080 --> 00:50:12.160 Then the humanity of God is really, and now only the glorifying 00:50:12.160 --> 00:50:15.200 of God. 00:50:15.200 --> 00:50:18.480 So again, you know, he's playing these word games that we've warned 00:50:18.480 --> 00:50:23.520 against, this big brained garbage where these guys will come along and 00:50:23.520 --> 00:50:28.640 they'll just vomit word salad at you and you're not sure what 00:50:28.640 --> 00:50:31.840 happened, but your faith is undermined as a result result of it. 00:50:31.840 --> 00:50:35.920 That's the the uncertainty and the ambiguity, which is a word he 00:50:35.920 --> 00:50:36.640 directly used. 00:50:36.640 --> 00:50:38.000 He says it's ambiguous. 00:50:38.000 --> 00:50:39.680 Did Jesus rise from the grave? 00:50:39.840 --> 00:50:42.640 There's no we can't be sure if it's historicity. 00:50:42.640 --> 00:50:47.520 Another direct denial of the creeds, another direct denial of scripture. 00:50:47.520 --> 00:50:49.520 I don't know if Jesus rose from the dead. 00:50:49.520 --> 00:50:51.120 Who knows where his body wound? 00:50:51.120 --> 00:50:52.720 That's not the important part. 00:50:52.720 --> 00:50:56.480 And this is why Bonhoeffer is able to talk about these things 00:50:56.480 --> 00:50:58.480 when King had to avoid them. 00:50:58.480 --> 00:51:02.160 Because King wasn't smart enough to say, well, it doesn't really matter. 00:51:02.160 --> 00:51:03.920 The virgin birth doesn't really matter. 00:51:03.920 --> 00:51:06.080 The resurrection of the dead doesn't really matter. 00:51:06.080 --> 00:51:08.720 He denied them in his papers because that's what he had gotten 00:51:08.720 --> 00:51:12.320 from Barf and Baltman and these other demons. 00:51:12.320 --> 00:51:15.600 But he didn't know how to provide the end then. 00:51:15.600 --> 00:51:19.760 So when he went to his audience and in preaching, so called, 00:51:19.760 --> 00:51:23.040 he just left this stuff out because he didn't have the chops. 00:51:23.040 --> 00:51:26.560 Bonhoeffer is dangerous because he basically says, Did Jesus rise from the 00:51:26.560 --> 00:51:27.920 grid? I don't know. 00:51:27.920 --> 00:51:28.880 It doesn't matter. 00:51:28.880 --> 00:51:32.240 He's coming back on the last day anyway, so you why worry 00:51:32.240 --> 00:51:35.760 about the historicity of this Bible stuff? 00:51:36.880 --> 00:51:39.200 that's the whole shooting match. 00:51:39.520 --> 00:51:43.040 if you can get someone to deny the creed and say, oh, 00:51:43.040 --> 00:51:44.240 but it doesn't matter. 00:51:44.240 --> 00:51:46.240 Jesus is coming back anyway. 00:51:46.240 --> 00:51:47.440 That last part is true. 00:51:47.440 --> 00:51:49.120 Jesus is coming back anyway. 00:51:49.120 --> 00:51:52.400 And when he returns to judge the quick and the dead, he 00:51:52.400 --> 00:51:56.000 will find you guilty of all of your sins because you've rejected 00:51:56.000 --> 00:51:59.440 the God who sacrificed on the cross to forgive them in the 00:51:59.440 --> 00:52:00.160 first place. 00:52:00.160 --> 00:52:04.720 The reconciliation provided on the cross to all men is not given 00:52:04.720 --> 00:52:06.880 to those then who deny it. 00:52:06.880 --> 00:52:09.440 The price was paid, but if you say, I don't want that 00:52:09.440 --> 00:52:11.280 credit, I'm gonna do it myself. 00:52:11.280 --> 00:52:14.800 When Jesus come back, he's like, Okay, here's the bill. 00:52:14.800 --> 00:52:19.200 And you're gonna spend eternity paying it in hell. 00:52:19.200 --> 00:52:24.800 So this this tricky stuff where it it sounds kind of confusing, 00:52:24.800 --> 00:52:26.720 like we said, he's a smart guy. 00:52:26.720 --> 00:52:30.000 He's writing this stuff in a manner and the speaking in a 00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:32.640 manner that will confuse most people. 00:52:32.640 --> 00:52:36.720 As Corey was saying earlier, as we've warned, when it's it's a 00:52:36.720 --> 00:52:39.440 reason that I've that we've been using the phrase all along, Jesus 00:52:39.440 --> 00:52:40.800 dust and Jesus butter. 00:52:40.800 --> 00:52:44.800 These guys will slather on the things that sound Christian to you 00:52:44.960 --> 00:52:47.360 and then say, Oh, but we can't be sure of the historicity 00:52:47.360 --> 00:52:49.440 of the resurrection. 00:52:49.440 --> 00:52:53.680 Because you swallowed their bait and went down the path with them 00:52:53.760 --> 00:52:56.560 that they're actually talking about the one true God. 00:52:56.560 --> 00:52:58.880 By the time they get to the point to say, I don't 00:52:58.800 --> 00:53:00.720 know if the tomb was empty or not, I don't know where 00:53:00.720 --> 00:53:03.600 the body went, but don't worry, it doesn't matter. 00:53:03.600 --> 00:53:07.600 Your brain is just gonna skip over the the tomb wasn't empty, 00:53:07.600 --> 00:53:09.440 or they stole the body and hid it. 00:53:09.440 --> 00:53:12.560 And just say, Well, he's talking about Jesus, and he says Jesus 00:53:12.560 --> 00:53:13.840 is coming back on the last day. 00:53:13.840 --> 00:53:16.400 So the rest must be Christian, and I'm just not going to 00:53:16.400 --> 00:53:18.640 worry too much about it because I'm not really sure what the 00:53:18.640 --> 00:53:19.360 guy said. 00:53:19.680 --> 00:53:21.600 That is a trap for your soul. 00:53:21.600 --> 00:53:23.760 And that's why these guys are so deadly. 00:53:23.760 --> 00:53:28.160 And that's why some of the worst men in religion today love 00:53:28.160 --> 00:53:35.120 Bonhoffer. Because he provides an excuse for them to deny anything they 00:53:35.120 --> 00:53:38.960 want. It's not that he's it's not that Bonhoeffer's theology is providing 00:53:38.960 --> 00:53:42.320 a script for a separate religion. 00:53:42.320 --> 00:53:46.640 He's acting as a solvent against the very foundations of the Christian 00:53:46.640 --> 00:53:52.320 faith, and then leaving this goo behind that can be reshaped by 00:53:52.320 --> 00:53:55.440 whoever comes along to form whatever new religion they want. 00:53:55.440 --> 00:53:57.920 And the thing that they're going to have in common is it's 00:53:57.920 --> 00:54:00.960 going to be loving and it's going to be neighborly, and there 00:54:00.960 --> 00:54:04.240 will only be nice noises, and there will only be clean words, 00:54:04.240 --> 00:54:08.400 and no one will ever be unhappy because they've achieved perfection in 00:54:08.400 --> 00:54:11.280 this life, because that's what God would have wanted. 00:54:11.840 --> 00:54:14.880 that's what always happens with all these guys. 00:54:14.880 --> 00:54:19.200 And whenever they talk about Jesus, incidentally, it no longer can be 00:54:19.200 --> 00:54:23.520 the Jesus of the creeds and confessions, because that Jesus has very 00:54:23.520 --> 00:54:29.520 particular facts in history God was born a man, God died a 00:54:29.520 --> 00:54:34.240 man, God was resurrected a man, God ascended into heaven a man. 00:54:34.240 --> 00:54:35.840 All of those are true. 00:54:35.840 --> 00:54:38.880 And if you doubt or deny any of them, you no longer 00:54:38.880 --> 00:54:40.160 have the true God. 00:54:40.160 --> 00:54:44.720 And anything else you do from that point on is meaningless noise. 00:54:44.720 --> 00:54:47.680 So these quotes are tricky and they're subtle. 00:54:47.680 --> 00:54:50.560 It's worth going back and listening to 'em or not. 00:54:50.720 --> 00:54:53.280 I mean, you know, I Corey and I've spent a couple weeks 00:54:53.280 --> 00:54:56.320 now reading through this crap and it's vile. 00:54:56.480 --> 00:54:58.560 And it's partly vile because 00:54:59.680 --> 00:55:03.440 you have to have your guard up to such an extensive degree 00:55:03.440 --> 00:55:06.080 to see the trick that's being played. 00:55:06.080 --> 00:55:08.160 And it's not that we're being unfair. 00:55:08.160 --> 00:55:10.400 It's then when we look at the rest of the things that 00:55:10.400 --> 00:55:14.160 men like this guy say in the context of these confessions, denying 00:55:14.160 --> 00:55:18.800 the virgin birth, denying that Jesus was sinless, and therefore God, denying 00:55:18.800 --> 00:55:20.480 that he was bodily resurrected. 00:55:20.480 --> 00:55:23.040 When you strip away all those things, you're left with a false 00:55:23.040 --> 00:55:26.560 religion, but it still looks and sounds in some places like the 00:55:26.560 --> 00:55:28.080 one that we claim to hold. 00:55:28.080 --> 00:55:31.040 And that's where the destruction of our faith is is coming into 00:55:31.040 --> 00:55:31.760 play. 00:55:31.760 --> 00:55:31.840 I 00:55:31.840 --> 00:55:34.960 have to say Jesus butter really sounds like something I should be 00:55:34.960 --> 00:55:38.400 able to go into a restaurant here in the south and order. 00:55:38.400 --> 00:55:40.160 And I'm a little disappointed. 00:55:40.160 --> 00:55:42.400 I'm a little disappointed that I have never seen it on a 00:55:42.400 --> 00:55:44.880 menu, but at the same time I feel I could be a 00:55:44.880 --> 00:55:49.040 little sacrilegious, so maybe we shouldn't do that. 00:55:49.040 --> 00:55:53.280 But Bonhoeffer in that quote that you read really admits perhaps a 00:55:53.280 --> 00:55:58.080 little more than he intends, or perhaps he was intentionally letting the 00:55:58.080 --> 00:56:00.880 mask slip for the attentive reader. 00:56:00.880 --> 00:56:03.760 Because when you hear what he said there you should think of 00:56:03.760 --> 00:56:07.760 several verses in Scripture, one of which is a verse from first 00:56:08.000 --> 00:56:13.600 Corinthians, for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach 00:56:13.600 --> 00:56:19.120 Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and folly to Greeks, but 00:56:19.120 --> 00:56:23.280 to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power 00:56:23.280 --> 00:56:27.680 of God and the wisdom of God. 00:56:27.680 --> 00:56:34.800 If he is saying that Christ, as he appears in Scripture, 00:56:34.800 --> 00:56:38.960 is a stumbling block for him, which is what he's saying. 00:56:38.960 --> 00:56:42.320 He's saying that Christ is a stumbling block for the kind of 00:56:42.400 --> 00:56:47.840 quote Christian unquote that he is Well he's saying he's not a 00:56:47.840 --> 00:56:53.760 Christian. Because Scripture speaks of Christ being a stumbling block for the 00:56:53.760 --> 00:57:00.400 unbeliever. Christ is not a stumbling block for the believer. 00:57:00.400 --> 00:57:02.320 Christ is your Lord and Savior. 00:57:02.320 --> 00:57:03.760 He's not a stumbling block. 00:57:03.760 --> 00:57:08.480 He doesn't cause you to trip and fall. 00:57:08.480 --> 00:57:12.800 That is how He is described for those who refuse to believe, 00:57:12.800 --> 00:57:17.440 and that's why he is a stumbling block to the Jews. 00:57:17.440 --> 00:57:21.680 So he's admitting here again, as he does frequently, he is not 00:57:21.680 --> 00:57:23.360 a Christian. 00:57:23.360 --> 00:57:26.960 He is something else entirely. 00:57:26.960 --> 00:57:31.600 We'll close this particular section of this episode with a short quote 00:57:31.600 --> 00:57:36.640 from him which almost doesn't need explanation because it's so egregious, but 00:57:36.640 --> 00:57:38.080 here it is in its entirety. 00:57:38.960 --> 00:57:44.240 The New Testament contains no ethical precept which we may or even 00:57:44.240 --> 00:57:48.400 can adopt literally. 00:57:48.400 --> 00:57:53.520 This appears many times in his writing in his writings in various 00:57:53.520 --> 00:58:00.160 forms, where he outright denies that there are actual principles or ethical 00:58:00.160 --> 00:58:03.680 rules in Scripture, and in other places he says that God is 00:58:03.680 --> 00:58:08.320 arbitrary Because he says that the ethical principles that we see in 00:58:08.320 --> 00:58:13.760 Scripture aren't universal, aren't eternal, they are simply tools in God's hands, 00:58:13.760 --> 00:58:17.840 his words, that he will use and then abandon when he is 00:58:17.840 --> 00:58:18.880 done with them. 00:58:19.280 --> 00:58:21.440 Which again is a denial of the nature of God. 00:58:21.440 --> 00:58:25.840 It's saying that God is changing, that God is mutable, it's saying 00:58:25.840 --> 00:58:27.840 that God isn't truth. 00:58:27.840 --> 00:58:30.800 You cannot be a Christian and say these sorts of things Of 00:58:30.800 --> 00:58:36.640 things. And Scripture is, for the record, full of ethical precepts that 00:58:36.640 --> 00:58:39.360 you can in fact adopt literally. 00:58:39.360 --> 00:58:43.440 Scripture is very clear about what they are, and that they are 00:58:43.440 --> 00:58:47.200 eternal. We've gone over this before the different kinds of law in 00:58:47.200 --> 00:58:52.560 Scripture. There's the moral law, which is binding for all men at 00:58:52.560 --> 00:58:55.040 all places, all times. 00:58:55.040 --> 00:58:59.840 There is the civil law, which was binding on Old Testament Israel 00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:04.080 and is at least persuasive for us today, because it is God 00:59:04.080 --> 00:59:09.280 saying, This is permissible to do in reaction to this other thing. 00:59:09.520 --> 00:59:13.520 And so that is the scope of what is permissible given by 00:59:13.520 --> 00:59:14.640 God in the civil law. 00:59:14.640 --> 00:59:18.240 And then there's the ceremonial law, which does not apply to modern 00:59:18.240 --> 00:59:21.600 Christians. That was for Old Testament Israel to set them apart from 00:59:21.600 --> 00:59:24.080 their apart from their neighbors, and so yes you're allowed to eat 00:59:24.080 --> 00:59:29.760 shellfish or wear clothing with multiple kinds of cloth, etcetera. 00:59:29.760 --> 00:59:35.200 Those things those gotchas that internet atheists so love are complete nonsense 00:59:35.280 --> 00:59:41.440 if you actually understand the nature of what is uppercase law, uppercase 00:59:41.440 --> 00:59:45.360 L law, or lowercase L law in the Old Testament. 00:59:45.360 --> 00:59:49.360 So go ahead and wrap your shrimp in bacon, go wild, have 00:59:49.360 --> 00:59:50.160 fun. 00:59:51.280 --> 00:59:54.720 Just don't wear polyester underwear because that kills your T levels. 00:59:55.040 --> 00:59:56.560 That's actually the one we should keep. 00:59:56.560 --> 00:59:59.680 We should uh just have a a sort of a modern version 00:59:59.680 --> 01:00:02.480 for Christians of the multiple types of cloth one. 01:00:02.480 --> 01:00:05.600 It's don't wear synthetics because they're horrible for you. 01:00:05.600 --> 01:00:08.320 At least don't wear them around sensitive parts of the body that 01:00:08.320 --> 01:00:09.200 absorb them. 01:00:09.600 --> 01:00:11.440 Yeah, no no seed oils. 01:00:11.680 --> 01:00:14.480 we need a new set of Levitical laws. 01:00:15.760 --> 01:00:18.160 So the next set of quotes that we want to get into 01:00:18.480 --> 01:00:23.440 most of them are going to come from Bonofer's letters from prison. 01:00:23.440 --> 01:00:26.880 He had been imprisoned at this point as part of a plot 01:00:26.880 --> 01:00:29.360 to murder the Chancellor of Germany. 01:00:29.680 --> 01:00:30.000 We should 01:00:30.400 --> 01:00:35.360 note though before we mention that he at this point well it 01:00:35.360 --> 01:00:40.800 depends on which point in the letters because initially he was in 01:00:40.800 --> 01:00:42.080 prison because 01:00:43.040 --> 01:00:47.040 he was well he wasn't really suspected it was known that he 01:00:47.040 --> 01:00:51.200 was engaging in corruption with regard to his military office, which that 01:00:51.200 --> 01:00:52.480 is worth noting. 01:00:52.480 --> 01:00:56.960 He was working in the military intelligence of National Socialist Germany. 01:00:56.960 --> 01:01:00.960 He got into that by another gentleman, I don't think I'll bother 01:01:00.960 --> 01:01:05.440 with his name because he's not really relevant to this episode. 01:01:05.600 --> 01:01:09.040 N also not a good man, but he was part of the 01:01:09.040 --> 01:01:12.720 resistance movement, and he got Bonhoeff to be involved in that, and 01:01:12.720 --> 01:01:19.600 so he wound up basically running messages, helping with communication, including across 01:01:20.000 --> 01:01:24.720 enemy lines to the Allies, later on, and 01:01:25.840 --> 01:01:31.920 so he was using his government office to directly oppose the government. 01:01:32.880 --> 01:01:36.800 Perhaps not quite rising to the level of treason until he started 01:01:36.800 --> 01:01:41.600 communicating with belligerents, of course, then it was treason, and then he 01:01:41.600 --> 01:01:47.040 compounded it by becoming involved in an assassination plot. 01:01:47.040 --> 01:01:51.440 So initially he was only held in basically a standard prison in 01:01:51.440 --> 01:01:54.080 Tegel in Berlin. 01:01:54.080 --> 01:01:55.840 I believe yes, in Berlin. 01:01:55.840 --> 01:01:59.200 I've actually seen the one of the locations, but he was then 01:01:59.200 --> 01:02:03.440 later on moved to one of the concentration camps when it became 01:02:03.440 --> 01:02:06.720 clear that he was involved in the assassination plot. 01:02:06.720 --> 01:02:09.600 And so many of the letters we see initially, because he was 01:02:09.600 --> 01:02:12.400 just allowed to write freely Write freely while he was in the 01:02:12.400 --> 01:02:13.200 normal prison. 01:02:13.200 --> 01:02:16.880 He could receive visitors, his fiance came and met with him, his 01:02:16.880 --> 01:02:20.880 parents came and met with him, he received packages, he was given, 01:02:20.880 --> 01:02:25.760 obviously, plenty of ink and paper, and so you have to bear 01:02:25.760 --> 01:02:29.040 in mind just a little bit of the timeline and that background 01:02:29.040 --> 01:02:34.880 information that he was actually involved in the military intelligence at the 01:02:34.880 --> 01:02:40.560 time. And so he was effectively acting as a spy and became 01:02:40.560 --> 01:02:44.720 a traitor. 01:02:44.800 --> 01:02:45.040 And 01:02:45.040 --> 01:02:49.840 that's why the intro that we did relating this episode to the 01:02:49.840 --> 01:02:53.600 prior episodes in the history of World War Two. 01:02:53.600 --> 01:02:57.600 If you believe the current historic narrative, then sure. 01:02:57.600 --> 01:03:03.520 I mean, every Christian obviously would betray Germany because betraying Germany was 01:03:03.840 --> 01:03:05.040 service to God. 01:03:05.040 --> 01:03:07.520 That that's literally what we're told today. 01:03:07.520 --> 01:03:11.680 The only good Germans were the ones who betrayed the government because 01:03:11.680 --> 01:03:13.120 the government was evil. 01:03:13.120 --> 01:03:14.880 So that's the dividing line. 01:03:14.880 --> 01:03:20.000 That's the that's the moral line that exists and it's a lens 01:03:20.000 --> 01:03:23.920 through which everything that we read about in these periods must be 01:03:23.920 --> 01:03:25.440 read, must be viewed. 01:03:25.440 --> 01:03:28.400 You cannot understand anything without looking 01:03:29.360 --> 01:03:32.000 in one direction or the other through that lens. 01:03:32.000 --> 01:03:37.840 Either the German government in 1943 was evil or it was rightful. 01:03:37.840 --> 01:03:41.040 And if it was evil, then there's one set of rules. 01:03:41.040 --> 01:03:43.520 And if it was the rightful government, then there's another set of 01:03:43.520 --> 01:03:46.640 rules. So we're not going to revisit what we said a few 01:03:46.640 --> 01:03:51.280 weeks ago about the Holocaust, but the reason that he is held 01:03:51.280 --> 01:03:55.440 up as a hero today is because we are told to believe 01:03:55.440 --> 01:03:57.360 that the Germans were evil. 01:03:57.360 --> 01:04:01.040 So you you gotta you gotta pick one of those before you 01:04:01.040 --> 01:04:04.400 can have an opinion about a man being locked up in prison 01:04:04.400 --> 01:04:07.040 for spying on his government. 01:04:07.040 --> 01:04:09.200 Here's one of the things that he had to say while he 01:04:09.200 --> 01:04:10.960 was sitting there in prison. 01:04:10.960 --> 01:04:15.920 Bonhoffer writes, What keeps gnawing at me is the question what is 01:04:15.920 --> 01:04:19.920 Christianity or who is Christ actually for us today? 01:04:19.920 --> 01:04:23.520 The age when we could tell people with the words, whether the 01:04:23.520 --> 01:04:27.680 theological or with pious words, is past, as is the age of 01:04:27.680 --> 01:04:32.400 inwardness and of conscience, and that means the age of religion altogether. 01:04:32.400 --> 01:04:35.680 We are approaching a completely religionless age. 01:04:35.680 --> 01:04:39.360 People as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. 01:04:39.360 --> 01:04:43.760 Even those who honestly describe themselves as religious aren't really practicing at 01:04:43.760 --> 01:04:48.640 all. They're presumably means something quite different by quote unquote religious, but 01:04:48.640 --> 01:04:52.560 our entire nineteen hundred years of Christian preaching and theology are built 01:04:52.560 --> 01:04:55.920 on the religious a priority in human beings. 01:04:56.960 --> 01:05:00.400 Christianity has always been a form, perhaps the per 01:05:02.320 --> 01:05:04.560 sorry to laugh in the middle of this, but I'm just I'm 01:05:04.560 --> 01:05:06.480 staggered by how evil this is. 01:05:06.480 --> 01:05:11.600 Quote unquote Christianity has always been a form, parentheses, perhaps the true 01:05:11.600 --> 01:05:14.000 form of quote unquote religion. 01:05:14.000 --> 01:05:17.120 Yet if it becomes the obvious one day that this is a 01:05:17.120 --> 01:05:21.600 priority does not exist, then it has been a historically conditioned and 01:05:21.600 --> 01:05:23.840 transitory form of human expression. 01:05:23.840 --> 01:05:27.840 Then people really will become radically religionless, and I believe that is 01:05:27.840 --> 01:05:29.440 already more or less the case. 01:05:29.440 --> 01:05:33.200 Why, for example, doesn't this war provoke a religious reaction, like all 01:05:33.200 --> 01:05:34.320 the previous ones? 01:05:34.320 --> 01:05:37.520 What does that then mean for quote unquote Christianity? 01:05:37.520 --> 01:05:40.880 The foundations are being pulled out from under all that quote unquote 01:05:40.880 --> 01:05:45.040 Christianity has previously been for us, and the only people among whom 01:05:45.040 --> 01:05:47.840 we might end up in terms of quote unquote religion are the 01:05:47.840 --> 01:05:51.440 last of the knights, or a few intellectually dishonest people. 01:05:51.440 --> 01:05:53.760 Are these supposed to be the chosen few? 01:05:53.760 --> 01:05:57.520 Are we supposed to fall all over preciously this dubious lot of 01:05:57.520 --> 01:06:01.280 people in our zeal or our disappointment? 01:06:01.280 --> 01:06:04.560 Or woe and try to peddle our wares to them? 01:06:04.560 --> 01:06:07.200 Or should we do we jump on a few unfortunates in their 01:06:07.200 --> 01:06:10.800 hour of weakness and commit, so to speak, religious rape? 01:06:10.800 --> 01:06:13.920 If we are unwilling to do any of that, then we eventually 01:06:13.920 --> 01:06:17.360 must judge that even the Western form of Christianity to be only 01:06:17.360 --> 01:06:21.360 a preliminary stage of a complete absence of religion? 01:06:21.360 --> 01:06:24.240 What kind of situation emerges for us for the church? 01:06:24.240 --> 01:06:27.680 How can Christ become Lord of the religionless as well? 01:06:27.680 --> 01:06:30.560 Is there such a thing as a religionless Christian? 01:06:30.560 --> 01:06:34.400 If religion is only the garb in which Christianity is clothed, and 01:06:34.400 --> 01:06:38.080 this garb has looked very different in different ages, what then is 01:06:38.080 --> 01:06:39.840 religionless Christianity? 01:06:39.840 --> 01:06:43.440 Barf, who is the one to have begun thinking along these lines, 01:06:43.440 --> 01:06:47.040 nevertheless did not pursue these thoughts all the way, did not think 01:06:47.040 --> 01:06:51.120 them through, but ended up with a positivism of revelation, which in 01:06:51.120 --> 01:06:53.440 the end essentially remained a restoration. 01:06:53.440 --> 01:06:56.960 For the working person or any person who is without religion, nothing 01:06:56.960 --> 01:06:58.720 decisive has been gained here. 01:06:58.720 --> 01:07:01.840 The questions to be answered would be what does a church or 01:07:01.840 --> 01:07:06.240 congregation, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religionless 01:07:06.240 --> 01:07:09.840 world? How do we talk about God without religion, that is, without 01:07:09.840 --> 01:07:14.480 the temporally conditioned presuppositions of metaphysics, the inner life and so on? 01:07:14.480 --> 01:07:17.360 How do we speak or perhaps how can we no longer speak 01:07:17.360 --> 01:07:20.720 the way we used to in a worldly way about quote unquote 01:07:20.720 --> 01:07:26.320 God? So So this again is consistent with something that King had 01:07:26.320 --> 01:07:27.600 talked about as well. 01:07:27.600 --> 01:07:31.040 And frankly, it's also consistent with something that Corey and I talk 01:07:31.040 --> 01:07:32.000 about today. 01:07:32.000 --> 01:07:35.760 But again, in completely opposite directions. 01:07:36.080 --> 01:07:39.280 When we on Stone Choir talk about the world today being a 01:07:39.280 --> 01:07:44.400 religionless one, one in which God is not visible in life in 01:07:44.400 --> 01:07:48.160 a in a godly fashion, we certainly see God's actions in everything's 01:07:48.320 --> 01:07:49.520 everything every day. 01:07:49.920 --> 01:07:54.160 We do not see the will of God typically being acted out 01:07:54.160 --> 01:07:56.000 by people in the world. 01:07:56.000 --> 01:07:58.640 That's one of our chief complaints on this podcast. 01:07:58.640 --> 01:08:04.320 The difference in our response to Barf's response and to Bonhoeffer's response 01:08:04.400 --> 01:08:07.040 is that they say, okay, well, I guess God's dead, so what 01:08:07.040 --> 01:08:07.920 do we do now? 01:08:07.920 --> 01:08:10.800 If there's no religion, if there's no thought of any religion at 01:08:10.800 --> 01:08:13.840 all, and again, when he's putting religion and quotes in Christianity in 01:08:13.840 --> 01:08:17.360 quotes, that goes back to something we've talked about in another previous 01:08:17.360 --> 01:08:21.680 episode where we have we have this notion that religion itself is 01:08:21.680 --> 01:08:25.760 a manifestation of human will, that all religions are man-made. 01:08:25.760 --> 01:08:28.240 Remember that was in that was in some of King's papers. 01:08:28.240 --> 01:08:32.080 That was one of King's very clear predicates, that all religions are 01:08:32.080 --> 01:08:37.200 man-made, and that the various forms of quote unquote religion are downstream 01:08:37.200 --> 01:08:41.200 from some inherent wellspring of the human nature. 01:08:41.200 --> 01:08:44.160 And so sometimes you have a religion that's better, sometimes you have 01:08:44.160 --> 01:08:48.800 a religion that's worse, but they're all fundamentally humanist at their heart. 01:08:48.800 --> 01:08:50.640 That's antithetical to Christianity. 01:08:50.640 --> 01:08:52.000 Christianity comes from God. 01:08:52.240 --> 01:08:55.600 Christianity is found in Scripture, it's delivered us through the church by 01:08:55.600 --> 01:08:57.680 faithful teachers in Scripture. 01:08:57.680 --> 01:09:00.080 When he tears all those things away and say, Well, we have 01:09:00.080 --> 01:09:02.880 this godless world now, so how do we talk about doing good 01:09:02.880 --> 01:09:05.200 things without talking about God? 01:09:05.200 --> 01:09:07.360 That gets back to what we were saying earlier. 01:09:07.360 --> 01:09:11.040 He doesn't want to talk about Christ anymore. 01:09:11.280 --> 01:09:15.120 he wants to still do the good things, to solve whatever wisdom, 01:09:15.120 --> 01:09:20.800 whatever love, without actually having it rooted in obedience to God, in 01:09:20.800 --> 01:09:24.480 immediate obedience, which is what we talk about all the time. 01:09:24.480 --> 01:09:29.040 When I talk about obeying God, there's an immediacy to my knowledge 01:09:29.040 --> 01:09:32.320 that what I am trying to do is from Scripture. 01:09:32.320 --> 01:09:33.120 It's what God's telling me. 01:09:33.760 --> 01:09:36.400 And I'm doing it because God told me to do it. 01:09:36.400 --> 01:09:38.720 Or I'm failing to do it in spite of what God told 01:09:38.720 --> 01:09:39.280 me to do. 01:09:39.280 --> 01:09:40.400 That's the law. 01:09:40.400 --> 01:09:43.600 And the gospel is that I'm forgiven even for having failed. 01:09:43.600 --> 01:09:48.000 Because God has revealed that in spite of our failings he loves 01:09:48.000 --> 01:09:52.080 us and gave us a physical Christ in history two thousand years 01:09:52.080 --> 01:09:55.440 ago who died and was raised from the dead and walked out 01:09:55.440 --> 01:09:59.120 of the tomb, so that our sins would be forgiven and we 01:09:59.120 --> 01:10:01.680 would know that it was true. 01:10:01.680 --> 01:10:05.360 These men want a religion where none of that is necessary. 01:10:05.360 --> 01:10:08.160 They want to just strip out the religion and strip out the 01:10:08.160 --> 01:10:12.080 metaphysics and strip out all the spiritual stuff and say, you know 01:10:12.080 --> 01:10:15.920 what, let's just have the humanist thing because in you know after 01:10:16.000 --> 01:10:19.040 1900 years of the church, we're now to the point where we've 01:10:19.040 --> 01:10:20.160 sort of perfected it. 01:10:20.160 --> 01:10:24.720 We can, we can strip away those mythologies and that embarrassing antiquated 01:10:24.720 --> 01:10:28.560 stuff and just have the raw humanist form of this thing. 01:10:29.040 --> 01:10:31.840 that's what plays out in all these things, and it's the undercurrent 01:10:31.840 --> 01:10:33.200 of all of his comments. 01:10:33.200 --> 01:10:36.000 And so near the end of his life, just two years before 01:10:36.000 --> 01:10:41.200 he's gonna be executed, he's basically he's saying that same thing Nietzsche 01:10:41.280 --> 01:10:43.040 says he's saying God is dead. 01:10:43.040 --> 01:10:44.160 What now? 01:10:44.160 --> 01:10:47.920 And there's a there's a positive way you could read some of 01:10:47.920 --> 01:10:50.560 this as I said, like these are some of our concerns and 01:10:50.560 --> 01:10:52.400 in bits and pieces too. 01:10:52.400 --> 01:10:53.440 But his ultimate concern is 01:10:54.400 --> 01:10:57.680 without God we still need to cope going with some sort of 01:10:57.680 --> 01:10:58.720 religious project. 01:10:58.720 --> 01:11:01.520 So what's the new religious project gonna look like? 01:11:01.920 --> 01:11:06.080 That's the exact opposite of Christianity. 01:11:06.080 --> 01:11:10.240 The next quote we have is also from his letters while he 01:11:10.240 --> 01:11:14.400 was in prison written to Aberhard Bethka. 01:11:14.400 --> 01:11:18.880 He wrote many of the particularly wicked things he wrote to this 01:11:19.040 --> 01:11:21.920 younger gentleman. 01:11:21.920 --> 01:11:24.880 A few more words about religionlessness. 01:11:24.880 --> 01:11:28.640 You probably remember Boltman's essay on demythologizing the New Testament 01:11:29.680 --> 01:11:33.200 My opinion of it today would be that he went not too 01:11:33.200 --> 01:11:36.560 far, as most people thought, but rather not far enough. 01:11:36.800 --> 01:11:41.840 It's not only mythol it's not only mythological concepts like miracles, ascension, 01:11:41.840 --> 01:11:45.520 and so on, which in principle can't be separated from concepts of 01:11:45.520 --> 01:11:52.000 God, faith, etcetera exclamation point, that are problematic, but religious concepts as 01:11:52.000 --> 01:11:56.640 such. You can't separate God from the miracles, as Boltman thinks. 01:11:56.640 --> 01:12:01.600 Instead, you must be able to interpret and proclaim them both non 01:12:01.600 --> 01:12:06.640 religiously. Boltmann's approach is still basically liberal, that is, it cuts the 01:12:06.640 --> 01:12:08.240 gospel short. 01:12:08.240 --> 01:12:11.280 Whereas I'm trying to think theologically. 01:12:11.280 --> 01:12:14.960 What then does it mean to interpret religiously? 01:12:14.960 --> 01:12:19.360 It means, in my opinion, to speak metaphysically, on the one hand, 01:12:19.360 --> 01:12:24.720 and on the other hand, individualistically, neither way is appropriate, either for 01:12:24.720 --> 01:12:27.360 the biblical message or for people to day. 01:12:27.360 --> 01:12:32.160 Hasn't the individualistic question of saving our personal souls almost faded away 01:12:32.160 --> 01:12:36.240 for most of us Isn't it our impression that there are really 01:12:36.240 --> 01:12:38.480 more important things than this question? 01:12:38.480 --> 01:12:42.240 Perhaps not more important than this matter, but certainly more important than 01:12:42.240 --> 01:12:46.160 the question exclamation point question mark question mark. 01:12:46.160 --> 01:12:49.680 I know it sounds outrageous to say that, but after all, isn't 01:12:49.600 --> 01:12:51.440 it fundamentally biblical? 01:12:51.440 --> 01:12:54.160 Does the question of saving one's soul even come up in the 01:12:54.160 --> 01:12:55.360 Old Testament? 01:12:55.360 --> 01:12:59.280 Isn't God's righteousness and kingdom on earth the center of everything? 01:12:59.280 --> 01:13:03.680 And isn't Romans three, verse twenty four and following, the culmination of 01:13:03.680 --> 01:13:07.680 the view that God alone is righteous, rather than an individualistic doctrine 01:13:07.680 --> 01:13:09.120 of salvation? 01:13:09.120 --> 01:13:12.480 What matters is not the beyond but this world, how it is 01:13:12.480 --> 01:13:16.960 created and preserved, is given laws, reconciled and renewed. 01:13:16.960 --> 01:13:20.720 What is beyond this world is meant in the gospel to be 01:13:20.720 --> 01:13:25.600 there for this world, not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, mystical, 01:13:25.600 --> 01:13:30.480 pietistic ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of the creation and 01:13:30.480 --> 01:13:34.800 the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 01:13:34.800 --> 01:13:39.040 Bart was the first theologian, to his great and lasting credit, to 01:13:39.040 --> 01:13:41.200 begin the critique of religion. 01:13:41.200 --> 01:13:44.640 But he then put in its place a positivist doctrine of revelation 01:13:44.640 --> 01:13:48.400 that says, in effect, like it or lump it, whether it's the 01:13:48.400 --> 01:13:52.960 virgin birth, the Trinity, or anything else, all are equally significant and 01:13:52.960 --> 01:13:56.240 necessary parts of the whole, which must be swallowed whole or not 01:13:56.240 --> 01:13:56.880 at all. 01:13:56.880 --> 01:13:58.560 That's not biblical. 01:13:58.560 --> 01:14:03.040 There are degrees of cognition and degrees of significance. 01:14:03.040 --> 01:14:07.920 That means an arcane discipline must be re-established through which the mysteries 01:14:07.920 --> 01:14:11.600 of the Christian faith are sheltered against profanation. 01:14:11.600 --> 01:14:16.400 The positivism of revelation is too easygoing, since in the end, it 01:14:16.400 --> 01:14:19.600 sets up a law of faith and tears up what is, through 01:14:19.600 --> 01:14:23.760 Christ's becoming flesh, exclamation point, a gift for us. 01:14:23.760 --> 01:14:27.760 Now the church stands in the place of religion, that in itself 01:14:27.760 --> 01:14:28.640 is biblical. 01:14:28.640 --> 01:14:31.200 But the world is left to its own devices, as it were 01:14:31.280 --> 01:14:32.800 to rely on itself. 01:14:32.800 --> 01:14:34.240 That is the error. 01:14:34.240 --> 01:14:37.440 At the moment I am thinking about how the concepts of repentance, 01:14:37.440 --> 01:14:43.360 faith, justification, rebirth, and sanctification should be reinterpreted in a worldly way, 01:14:43.360 --> 01:14:47.200 in the old testament sense, and in the sense of John 14, 01:14:47.200 --> 01:14:53.360 I'll write you more about it. 01:14:53.520 --> 01:14:56.960 This is really just a doubling down on things that we have 01:14:56.960 --> 01:15:03.600 seen in some of the previous quotes from Bonhoeffer. 01:15:03.600 --> 01:15:10.720 He rejects the Christian religion piece by piece in this quote. 01:15:10.720 --> 01:15:16.480 He is constructing an alternate religion. 01:15:16.480 --> 01:15:20.560 He is not dealing with Christianity, he is not dealing with theology 01:15:20.640 --> 01:15:25.680 in the proper sense of dealing with God, because theology properly references 01:15:25.680 --> 01:15:28.240 the one true God. 01:15:28.240 --> 01:15:30.240 Because he doesn't believe it. 01:15:30.240 --> 01:15:34.080 He thinks that these things are pure myth, they are mythology, it 01:15:34.080 --> 01:15:37.040 doesn't matter if they're true or false, he doesn't care at all. 01:15:37.040 --> 01:15:39.520 He's not dealing with the empirical. 01:15:39.520 --> 01:15:42.000 Christianity makes empirical claims. 01:15:42.000 --> 01:15:45.360 Christianity says that God became incarnate. 01:15:45.360 --> 01:15:48.400 Christianity says that God died in the cross. 01:15:48.400 --> 01:15:52.320 Christianity says that God rose again on the third day. 01:15:52.320 --> 01:15:54.960 Those are empirical claims. 01:15:54.960 --> 01:15:59.440 If those are false, Christianity is false. 01:15:59.440 --> 01:16:03.360 He is He is saying here that those don't matter. 01:16:03.360 --> 01:16:04.720 These things don't matter. 01:16:04.720 --> 01:16:06.080 That's not what Christianity is. 01:16:06.080 --> 01:16:08.720 That's not what his Christianity is. 01:16:08.720 --> 01:16:14.400 His Christianity is something totally alien to Scripture, something totally alien 01:16:15.280 --> 01:16:17.680 to the Christian faith. 01:16:17.680 --> 01:16:23.520 And he attributes it to the very men we've mentioned previously. 01:16:23.520 --> 01:16:27.520 These men are all of one mind Because they all have one 01:16:27.520 --> 01:16:31.760 animating intelligence, as we have pointed out many times before. 01:16:31.760 --> 01:16:35.840 This stuff comes from the pit of hell. 01:16:36.000 --> 01:16:40.480 And as mentioned at the beginning, The problem here is that I 01:16:40.480 --> 01:16:45.520 rattled off many words that undoubtedly sounded Christian to you. 01:16:45.520 --> 01:16:48.880 Because they are words that are used in Christianity, they are words 01:16:48.880 --> 01:16:52.960 that relate to the Christian faith, but they are not Christian when 01:16:52.960 --> 01:16:56.880 they are coming from this man's pen, because they are not Christian 01:16:56.880 --> 01:17:01.360 in this man's mind, because he's not a Christian. 01:17:01.360 --> 01:17:09.040 And so just because someone tells you crucified, crucifixion, resurrection, salvation, justification, 01:17:09.040 --> 01:17:12.720 just because someone uses these words does not mean that he is 01:17:12.720 --> 01:17:18.720 a Christian, because again, Satan can quote Scripture. 01:17:18.720 --> 01:17:22.480 Satan quoting scripture doesn't mean that he believes it. 01:17:22.480 --> 01:17:28.400 Now, of course, he believes it in quite frankly, a more real 01:17:28.400 --> 01:17:30.800 sense than Bonhoeffer did. 01:17:30.800 --> 01:17:34.240 Does, well, perhaps he believes it now. 01:17:34.240 --> 01:17:37.040 But Satan knows it's true. 01:17:37.040 --> 01:17:39.040 Satan doesn't trust it. 01:17:39.040 --> 01:17:45.440 It's that the difference between Notitia, Ascensus, and Fiducia, as we've gone 01:17:45.440 --> 01:17:49.120 over at least once before in a previous episode. 01:17:49.120 --> 01:17:54.720 These are the levels of knowledge, because again, Christian doctrine, Christianity, is 01:17:54.720 --> 01:17:56.400 a matter of truth claims. 01:17:57.600 --> 01:17:57.840 I 01:17:57.840 --> 01:18:01.040 want to reread just a small bit of this because it's I 01:18:01.040 --> 01:18:06.400 think it's really the heart of how evil this letter is. 01:18:06.400 --> 01:18:12.320 Bonhoeffer writes, hasn't the individualistic question of saving our personal souls almost 01:18:12.320 --> 01:18:14.240 faded away for most of us? 01:18:14.240 --> 01:18:17.360 Isn't our impression that there are really more important things than this 01:18:17.360 --> 01:18:20.960 question, perhaps not more important than this matter, but certainly more important 01:18:20.960 --> 01:18:22.400 than this question? 01:18:22.400 --> 01:18:25.680 I know it sounds a bit outrageous to say that, but after 01:18:25.680 --> 01:18:28.560 all, isn't it fundamentally biblical? 01:18:28.560 --> 01:18:32.240 Does the question of saving one's soul even come up in the 01:18:32.240 --> 01:18:33.840 Old Testament? 01:18:33.840 --> 01:18:36.800 Well, one of the books that Corey and I point to quite 01:18:36.800 --> 01:18:40.800 often, I think has the perfect response to this whole paragraph. 01:18:40.800 --> 01:18:46.560 Job nineteen twenty-seven twenty-five through twenty-seven, Job says, For I know that 01:18:46.560 --> 01:18:50.320 my redeemer lives, and that at last he will stand upon the 01:18:50.320 --> 01:18:54.560 earth, and after my skin has thus been destroyed, yet in my 01:18:54.560 --> 01:18:58.720 flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and 01:18:58.720 --> 01:19:04.000 my eyes shall behold and not another, my heart faints within me. 01:19:04.000 --> 01:19:07.360 So this is Job, in what is almost certainly the oldest book 01:19:07.360 --> 01:19:12.720 in the Old Testament, saying quite clearly he knows that his Redeemer 01:19:12.720 --> 01:19:17.920 lives, he knows that his flesh which will die will be resurrected, 01:19:17.920 --> 01:19:20.640 and that is his joy. 01:19:20.640 --> 01:19:22.320 Bonoffer knew this. 01:19:22.320 --> 01:19:23.760 Christians know this. 01:19:23.760 --> 01:19:25.920 One of the most beautiful hymns that we have is I know 01:19:25.920 --> 01:19:27.520 that my redeemer lives. 01:19:27.520 --> 01:19:27.920 It is 01:19:29.360 --> 01:19:31.440 the confession of the Christian faith. 01:19:31.440 --> 01:19:34.480 And it's a direct repudiation of a man who says, Is that 01:19:34.480 --> 01:19:35.840 even in the Old Testament? 01:19:35.840 --> 01:19:38.400 That was the sincere question of all of this. 01:19:38.400 --> 01:19:41.040 And so at the end, when he gets again to denying the 01:19:41.040 --> 01:19:44.720 Trinity and the virgin birth and all these other things, I think 01:19:44.720 --> 01:19:50.960 the question of particular knowledge of specific doctrinal facts, as Corey just 01:19:51.040 --> 01:19:53.120 highlighted, is important. 01:19:54.000 --> 01:19:57.280 When I was on Myth of the Twentieth Century, I was discussing 01:19:57.760 --> 01:20:01.440 forgiveness with Adam, the thief on the cross came up, and I 01:20:01.440 --> 01:20:04.000 pointed out Adam was asking about forgiveness. 01:20:04.320 --> 01:20:06.640 can someone on death row really receive forgiveness? 01:20:06.640 --> 01:20:11.040 I said, Well Well, good news, the Bible actually has a passage 01:20:11.280 --> 01:20:16.480 about Jesus in that precise situation to highlight that there are certain 01:20:16.480 --> 01:20:20.480 principles at play that come into salvation as Corey said, and is 01:20:20.480 --> 01:20:24.400 frankly to be to be clear, as Bonhoeffer also says, it is 01:20:24.400 --> 01:20:27.360 not intellectual ascent that saves us. 01:20:27.360 --> 01:20:32.240 However, the thief on the cross, although he could not have explained 01:20:32.240 --> 01:20:36.720 the Trinity, had Jesus explained the Trinity to him in whatever manner 01:20:36.720 --> 01:20:40.400 he saw fit, the thief on the cross would have said, Yes, 01:20:40.400 --> 01:20:42.720 that is my God, you are my God. 01:20:42.720 --> 01:20:45.280 The thief on the cross would not have heard the apostles' creed 01:20:45.520 --> 01:20:46.320 and say this is crap. 01:20:46.320 --> 01:20:47.760 I don't I don't believe any of this. 01:20:47.760 --> 01:20:49.760 This isn't my God. 01:20:49.760 --> 01:20:54.000 That is the difference between us as Christians and Bonhoeffer. 01:20:54.000 --> 01:20:57.600 When Bonhoeffer sees the virgin birth and the resurrection of the dead 01:20:57.760 --> 01:21:01.520 in hope and salvation, he's like, that's not my God, that's not 01:21:01.520 --> 01:21:02.320 my religion. 01:21:02.320 --> 01:21:04.160 That is his true confession. 01:21:04.160 --> 01:21:08.640 So in all these passages, the truth of what he believes will 01:21:08.640 --> 01:21:12.160 creep through in these questions that are merely decides, does it really 01:21:12.160 --> 01:21:16.480 say in the Old Testament the individual salvation it matters? 01:21:16.480 --> 01:21:17.760 Is that even in there? 01:21:17.760 --> 01:21:20.560 Yes, it's throughout all of it. 01:21:20.560 --> 01:21:23.760 And so this is why this stuff is subversive. 01:21:24.080 --> 01:21:26.320 That was all that was a long passage. 01:21:26.320 --> 01:21:29.680 And he says some things that you can potentially agree with. 01:21:29.680 --> 01:21:33.520 A Christian can come along and baptize some of his words, reincorporating 01:21:33.520 --> 01:21:37.120 them in a way that is actually Christian, just as you could 01:21:37.280 --> 01:21:39.840 you could do a Bible study where you did nothing but quote 01:21:39.840 --> 01:21:42.880 Satan from scripture and teach a good Bible study. 01:21:42.880 --> 01:21:46.320 You would have to disagree with what Satan was trying to achieve, 01:21:46.320 --> 01:21:49.600 but Satan was quoting God in Scripture. 01:21:49.600 --> 01:21:52.800 Is as Corey said, like when Satan comes at us, when he 01:21:52.800 --> 01:21:56.720 comes at Christians at believers, he's gonna use God's word to do 01:21:56.720 --> 01:22:00.480 it. Now, sometimes he'll come with other temptations completely outside. 01:22:00.880 --> 01:22:04.240 there's something that'll get anyone because we're weak in the flesh and 01:22:04.240 --> 01:22:07.200 we each have our own personal vulnerabilities. 01:22:07.200 --> 01:22:10.880 There's a tailor-made path to damnation for every one of us. 01:22:10.880 --> 01:22:13.760 And Satan puts all his cards down every day to try to 01:22:13.760 --> 01:22:15.760 get us there. 01:22:15.760 --> 01:22:20.560 God gives us faith, He gives us forgiveness of sins, He promises 01:22:20.560 --> 01:22:26.000 us salvation, and all we have to do is not reject it. 01:22:26.000 --> 01:22:29.200 And the gift of not rejecting it is itself a gift. 01:22:29.200 --> 01:22:32.880 God gives us everything that we need for salvation is never us 01:22:32.880 --> 01:22:33.600 doing it. 01:22:33.600 --> 01:22:35.440 And that is our ultimate comfort. 01:22:35.440 --> 01:22:39.280 It's the reason for the Lutheran focus on sacramental theology. 01:22:39.280 --> 01:22:42.080 It's the stuff that we can point to God doing in our 01:22:42.080 --> 01:22:46.080 lives and say, God did this, I trust his promises. 01:22:46.080 --> 01:22:51.440 And even the trust in those promises is God giving me something. 01:22:51.440 --> 01:22:55.840 The doubt that's sown by men like Bonhoeffer undermining the tenets of 01:22:55.840 --> 01:22:59.120 the faith, and then saying, oh, but really, there's still there's some 01:22:59.120 --> 01:23:02.240 sort of Jesus and there's some sort of incarnation and there's some 01:23:02.240 --> 01:23:05.520 sort of last day, and it's going to be great. 01:23:05.520 --> 01:23:10.480 If you're not scrupulously dissecting where this stuff is coming from, if 01:23:10.480 --> 01:23:14.480 you're not looking at the genealogy of the ideas, you're gonna potentially 01:23:14.480 --> 01:23:15.600 give it a pass. 01:23:15.680 --> 01:23:17.760 That's why Barf is so deadly. 01:23:17.760 --> 01:23:21.600 Barf and Baltman and Tilich and there's this this string of men 01:23:21.600 --> 01:23:26.080 throughout the 20th century that were destroying the Christian faith piece by 01:23:26.080 --> 01:23:30.800 piece and guys love them because it lets midwits sound intelligent as 01:23:30.800 --> 01:23:34.000 they're talking to you and giving you things that are a corruption 01:23:34.000 --> 01:23:36.000 of the faith and you're like, oh well that's interesting. 01:23:36.000 --> 01:23:38.640 I've never heard that before. 01:23:38.640 --> 01:23:40.720 We want to make sure that when we're talking about this stuff 01:23:40.720 --> 01:23:43.520 on So Inquire, if you've never heard it before, we can just 01:23:43.520 --> 01:23:45.760 point you to scripture like, here it is. 01:23:46.320 --> 01:23:49.280 You know Bon offers, I don't know, is there anything in there 01:23:49.280 --> 01:23:52.080 about the individual be having his soul saved? 01:23:52.080 --> 01:23:53.440 Job says yes. 01:23:53.440 --> 01:23:55.680 Many places say yes. 01:23:55.680 --> 01:23:58.720 We don't need to doubt these things because if we trust in 01:23:58.720 --> 01:24:01.760 scripture, we have the answers. 01:24:01.760 --> 01:24:04.640 Again, I pointed at the beginning to the perspicuity of scripture, the 01:24:04.640 --> 01:24:06.640 clarity of scripture episode we did. 01:24:06.640 --> 01:24:08.720 Specifically, we front loaded that. 01:24:08.720 --> 01:24:10.720 It's one of the first, I think, like five or eight episodes 01:24:10.800 --> 01:24:15.440 we did, in large part, because the attacks that come on the 01:24:15.440 --> 01:24:19.360 faith from all these other directions, whether it's making up new sins 01:24:19.520 --> 01:24:24.320 or it's casting doubt on old creeds, they're all predicated on you 01:24:24.320 --> 01:24:27.440 ceasing to believe what God has told us all. 01:24:27.440 --> 01:24:30.800 God hasn't told me anything different than he's telling you. 01:24:30.800 --> 01:24:32.000 It's in Scripture. 01:24:32.000 --> 01:24:34.960 And if someone comes along and preaches you a word different than 01:24:34.960 --> 01:24:38.720 that which is given from Scripture, God promises that all the curses 01:24:38.720 --> 01:24:40.880 will be poured out on that man. 01:24:40.880 --> 01:24:43.680 And they're being poured out on Bonhoeffer today. 01:24:43.680 --> 01:24:46.640 And they're going to be poured out on his acolytes, because the 01:24:46.640 --> 01:24:50.240 men who hate some of the most important things in the world 01:24:50.240 --> 01:24:52.480 today are men who love Bonhoeffer. 01:24:52.480 --> 01:24:53.680 They love MLK. 01:24:53.680 --> 01:24:57.920 These guys are saints in the New World Religion. 01:24:57.920 --> 01:25:00.960 We're doing this episode as a warning that when you see this 01:25:00.960 --> 01:25:04.400 man being held up, and whatever good things you read, you know, 01:25:04.480 --> 01:25:06.800 like I said, there's stuff in here that some of it sounds 01:25:06.800 --> 01:25:08.560 a little bit like us. 01:25:08.560 --> 01:25:13.360 And the reason for is that we're going on opposites directions on 01:25:13.360 --> 01:25:16.560 the same street, so we're covering some of the same ground, but 01:25:16.560 --> 01:25:20.080 he's trying to undo the very things that we're trying to do. 01:25:20.080 --> 01:25:24.080 And so when we cross paths and we sound similar, it's not 01:25:24.080 --> 01:25:28.720 shared givens, is that we're operating in the sphere of Christianity. 01:25:28.720 --> 01:25:32.400 The difference is that we're trying to uphold it and be faithful 01:25:32.400 --> 01:25:36.000 to it, and men like Bonhoeffer and his acolytes today are trying 01:25:36.000 --> 01:25:37.040 to tear it down. 01:25:37.040 --> 01:25:39.600 Now there are men who like Bonhoeffer who are Christian. 01:25:39.840 --> 01:25:40.960 they're fools. 01:25:40.960 --> 01:25:42.800 I I use that in the scriptural sense. 01:25:42.800 --> 01:25:45.360 It is foolishness to like this man. 01:25:45.360 --> 01:25:48.160 If you're if you're lapping up the things that this guy is 01:25:48.160 --> 01:25:52.000 teaching, you're endangering your soul and the souls of others. 01:25:52.000 --> 01:25:54.960 Cause as we've laid out just briefly here today, you know, in 01:25:54.960 --> 01:25:58.160 thirty-three, when he was saying stuff about denying the virgin birth and 01:25:58.160 --> 01:26:01.280 the resurrection of the dead, he had not yet despaired. 01:26:01.280 --> 01:26:04.000 He was actually he just had his some sort of conversion experience. 01:26:04.000 --> 01:26:06.640 He would never describe anyone in thirty-one. 01:26:06.640 --> 01:26:09.520 And so in this period, he was really into reading the Bible. 01:26:10.080 --> 01:26:13.600 And then by the end in 43, 44, 45, he says in 01:26:13.600 --> 01:26:16.400 some of these other letters, he doesn't read the Bible anymore. 01:26:16.400 --> 01:26:20.800 He, whatever faith he had, if if he ever did, by the 01:26:20.800 --> 01:26:24.880 time he started denying the tenets of the faith, the foundations, the 01:26:24.880 --> 01:26:28.800 creeds. Later on he had nothing left but despair. 01:26:28.800 --> 01:26:32.480 And so as he's talking about this religionless world and he's lamenting 01:26:32.560 --> 01:26:34.560 what else do we do, he doesn't realize it. 01:26:34.560 --> 01:26:38.640 It's his very teachings that created the world that he is now 01:26:38.800 --> 01:26:40.080 despairing in. 01:26:40.080 --> 01:26:43.520 And his despair was in part of his own creation. 01:26:43.520 --> 01:26:45.520 We don't want that for anyone. 01:26:45.840 --> 01:26:51.120 There's a real thread that runs throughout all of his writings 01:26:52.640 --> 01:26:56.080 that really comes to a head in some of the later letters 01:26:56.080 --> 01:26:59.920 while he was in prison, and that is there is an immense 01:26:59.920 --> 01:27:00.560 hypocrisy 01:27:01.760 --> 01:27:06.320 underlying so much of what Bonhoeff wrote. 01:27:06.320 --> 01:27:09.520 Now for some hypocrisy is not going to matter and for others 01:27:09.520 --> 01:27:11.680 it should matter a great deal. 01:27:11.680 --> 01:27:16.640 In politics hypocrisy is one thing. 01:27:16.640 --> 01:27:21.520 In religion, in Christianity particularly, hypocrisy is something else entirely. 01:27:21.520 --> 01:27:26.640 You, as a Christian, must not be a hypocrite with regard to 01:27:26.640 --> 01:27:27.520 your faith 01:27:28.720 --> 01:27:33.840 that doesn't mean that you can't be a Christian and a hypocrite 01:27:34.000 --> 01:27:36.480 in the fullest sense of cannot. 01:27:36.480 --> 01:27:40.400 Because of course you are going to say you should not do 01:27:40.720 --> 01:27:43.840 X when speaking to someone else, and then later on you may 01:27:43.840 --> 01:27:46.400 very well do that very thing. 01:27:46.400 --> 01:27:49.440 Does that make you a hypocrite to some degree, of course? 01:27:49.440 --> 01:27:51.760 Does it make you wrong for saying you should not do X 01:27:52.000 --> 01:27:55.520 no? So long as you are repeating a truth about the Christian 01:27:55.520 --> 01:28:01.840 faith. If any man says you should not lust after a woman 01:28:01.840 --> 01:28:05.520 who is not your wife, odds are pretty good that at some 01:28:05.520 --> 01:28:08.080 point in his life he is going to have done that and 01:28:08.080 --> 01:28:09.680 will probably do it again. 01:28:09.680 --> 01:28:14.400 That is just one of the realities of the fallen flesh. 01:28:14.400 --> 01:28:20.720 But we see in the writings of Bonhoeffer something Different with regard 01:28:20.720 --> 01:28:23.360 to hypocrisy. 01:28:23.360 --> 01:28:28.880 Because he writes about this deep sense of caring for others that 01:28:28.880 --> 01:28:31.680 you are supposed to have as a Christian. 01:28:31.680 --> 01:28:34.160 And then in so many of his interactions interactions 01:28:35.040 --> 01:28:39.040 he does not show it, and then he becomes a traitor to 01:28:39.040 --> 01:28:40.320 his own people. 01:28:40.320 --> 01:28:45.920 He abandons in the process his fiancee, notably, he was set to 01:28:45.920 --> 01:28:46.240 be married 01:28:47.280 --> 01:28:50.400 shortly after he was arrested. 01:28:50.400 --> 01:28:54.000 I think it was I think he was either three months after 01:28:54.000 --> 01:28:56.480 he got engaged or three months until the wedding, I don't remember 01:28:56.480 --> 01:28:59.120 which one it was. 01:28:59.120 --> 01:29:04.080 But this is his fiancee who had just lost her military commander 01:29:04.240 --> 01:29:06.400 father and her brother on the Eastern Front. 01:29:06.400 --> 01:29:08.480 He mentions that in one of his letters. 01:29:10.960 --> 01:29:16.000 He's just an immense and unsettling hypocrite in so many ways, but 01:29:16.800 --> 01:29:20.080 there's also another thread that runs throughout his writings where he is 01:29:20.080 --> 01:29:23.920 very clearly seeking to justify himself. 01:29:24.160 --> 01:29:28.240 And there are places where he speaks explicitly of self justification. 01:29:28.240 --> 01:29:31.200 We didn't get to those, and we won't deal with those in 01:29:31.200 --> 01:29:34.640 this episode because we don't want to run for four hours dealing 01:29:34.640 --> 01:29:37.600 with this man and his bad theology. 01:29:37.600 --> 01:29:40.000 But there is one more quote that I want to read that's 01:29:40.000 --> 01:29:43.920 related to this issue. 01:29:43.920 --> 01:29:49.040 There is clearly no historically significant action that does not trespass ever 01:29:49.040 --> 01:29:52.800 again against the limits set by those laws, he's speaking here of 01:29:52.800 --> 01:29:54.240 the moral law. 01:29:54.240 --> 01:29:59.360 But it makes a decisive difference whether such trespasses against the established 01:29:59.360 --> 01:30:03.440 limit are viewed as their abolishment in principle and hence And hence 01:30:03.440 --> 01:30:07.200 presented as a law of its own kind, or whether one is 01:30:07.200 --> 01:30:13.600 conscious that such trespassing is perhaps an unavoidable, guilty, that has its 01:30:13.600 --> 01:30:17.920 justification only in that law and limit being reinstated and honored as 01:30:17.920 --> 01:30:19.280 quickly as possible. 01:30:19.280 --> 01:30:23.280 Obviously there's one word there that was translated a little awkwardly, but 01:30:23.520 --> 01:30:27.200 the point nevertheless comes through. 01:30:27.200 --> 01:30:31.040 And for those of us with the advantage of hindsight, we can 01:30:31.040 --> 01:30:32.320 look at this and see 01:30:33.200 --> 01:30:38.800 he's trying to justify what he did, what he was doing, his 01:30:38.800 --> 01:30:44.880 involvement in a plot to assassinate the rightfully elected leader of his 01:30:44.880 --> 01:30:50.800 people. Now that is not something that a Christian can do, certainly, 01:30:50.800 --> 01:30:51.760 but it is 01:30:52.640 --> 01:30:57.200 very certainly, and much more so something in which clergy should not 01:30:57.200 --> 01:30:59.200 be involved. 01:30:59.200 --> 01:31:03.440 There are limits to what clergy can and cannot do. 01:31:03.440 --> 01:31:06.720 And there are some other quotes of his that are just rank 01:31:07.200 --> 01:31:11.200 clericalism we didn't get to those either, but at one point he 01:31:11.200 --> 01:31:15.200 says that scriptures belong to the clergy and not to the congregation, 01:31:15.200 --> 01:31:21.680 which is directly opposed to everything written in Reformation theology, particularly by 01:31:21.680 --> 01:31:25.840 Lutherans who focus the priestho focus on the priesthood of all believers 01:31:26.160 --> 01:31:29.760 and very strongly encourage the reading of Scripture. 01:31:29.760 --> 01:31:35.200 This is one of the major points of contention between Protestants and 01:31:35.520 --> 01:31:39.760 the pre Reformation sects, which is to say both Rome and the 01:31:39.760 --> 01:31:47.360 East. But in this quote and elsewhere he's justifying his wicked transgression 01:31:47.360 --> 01:31:50.960 of the law by saying, Well, it's fine, as long as it's 01:31:50.960 --> 01:31:56.320 transitory. That's not Christian, that's sub Christian in thought. 01:31:56.320 --> 01:31:59.680 You do not get to justify yourself, particularly when it comes to 01:32:00.160 --> 01:32:03.680 violating the fifth commandment because that is what he did. 01:32:03.680 --> 01:32:07.120 He was engaged in attempted murder. 01:32:07.120 --> 01:32:11.040 And people did die as a result, so actually murder, he's guilty 01:32:11.040 --> 01:32:12.320 of murder. 01:32:12.320 --> 01:32:16.240 Of course you're guilty of murder if you attempt murder, but that's 01:32:16.240 --> 01:32:22.160 an issue for philosophy and theology for another time. 01:32:22.160 --> 01:32:26.160 The real takeaway from this episode, what we want you to get 01:32:26.160 --> 01:32:31.760 out of this is not just that this particular man was a 01:32:31.760 --> 01:32:34.720 wicked man and he has been held up as a martyr in 01:32:34.720 --> 01:32:35.440 a new religion. 01:32:35.440 --> 01:32:36.080 That's true. 01:32:36.080 --> 01:32:37.840 That's an important takeaway. 01:32:37.840 --> 01:32:42.400 But more than that, we want you to understand that you need 01:32:42.400 --> 01:32:50.160 to be careful when engaging with materials, particularly materials for 01:32:50.160 --> 01:32:54.160 men like this, or an unknown quantity. 01:32:54.720 --> 01:32:58.320 Because it may be that the materials will use terms that sound 01:32:58.320 --> 01:33:02.160 Christian to you, that sound good, that sound like something that a 01:33:02.160 --> 01:33:03.520 Christian can affirm 01:33:05.200 --> 01:33:09.040 but that may not be the case, because as we have said 01:33:09.040 --> 01:33:13.360 repeatedly, Satan too can quote Scripture. 01:33:13.360 --> 01:33:19.680 There is a difference between the Christian knowledge, that is saving knowledge, 01:33:19.680 --> 01:33:24.240 that we call faith, which is fiducia, in the three levels of 01:33:24.240 --> 01:33:28.240 knowledge. Because the first is you take notice of the thing, you 01:33:28.240 --> 01:33:30.720 recognize the thing as a thing, the second is you assent to 01:33:30.720 --> 01:33:33.600 the truth the truth of the thing, and the third is that 01:33:33.600 --> 01:33:35.440 you trust in it. 01:33:35.440 --> 01:33:38.400 And it is that trust that we call faith. 01:33:38.400 --> 01:33:40.400 That is what saves. 01:33:40.400 --> 01:33:44.080 Satan has notitia and ascensus. 01:33:44.080 --> 01:33:47.520 Satan knows that Scripture is true. 01:33:47.520 --> 01:33:50.560 Satan as sense to the fact that Scripture is true. 01:33:50.560 --> 01:33:52.480 Satan cannot trust in it. 01:33:52.480 --> 01:33:55.200 Satan has no faith. 01:33:55.200 --> 01:33:57.520 Neither do his acolytes. 01:33:57.520 --> 01:34:00.640 Men like this will sometimes 01:34:01.600 --> 01:34:03.760 at least pay lip service to scripture. 01:34:03.760 --> 01:34:08.000 Sometimes they'll even assent to the truth of scripture. 01:34:09.040 --> 01:34:10.480 But then they go off the rails. 01:34:10.480 --> 01:34:12.800 In the case of Bonhoeffer and some of the others, some of 01:34:12.800 --> 01:34:17.440 the more egregious examples, they simply outright deny scripture. 01:34:17.440 --> 01:34:22.480 They reject the fundamentals of the Christian faith because he rejected time 01:34:22.640 --> 01:34:25.920 and again, the inspiration of Scripture. 01:34:25.920 --> 01:34:29.440 He didn't even go as far as some of the others and 01:34:29.440 --> 01:34:33.200 say, well, Scripture contains the Word of God, which you have to 01:34:33.200 --> 01:34:33.920 be careful for that. 01:34:33.920 --> 01:34:37.200 If someone says contains the Word of God, that is that is 01:34:37.200 --> 01:34:39.680 meant to deny that it is the word of God. 01:34:39.680 --> 01:34:40.960 Very different things. 01:34:40.960 --> 01:34:46.640 The Christian position is that the Scriptures are the Word of God. 01:34:46.640 --> 01:34:51.600 Bonhoeffer just denied that the Scriptures really contain anything. 01:34:51.600 --> 01:34:55.360 Religion is some other human constructed thing which he compares at one 01:34:55.360 --> 01:35:00.320 point to Buddhism as another potential path to God, another human constructed 01:35:00.320 --> 01:35:01.920 path to God. 01:35:01.920 --> 01:35:05.360 Different, but that But not so fundamentally different that it's not a 01:35:05.360 --> 01:35:09.120 path to God. 01:35:09.520 --> 01:35:14.320 you engage with materials, Particularly those that the world is telling you 01:35:14.320 --> 01:35:18.320 are great or important or this person is a giant of the 01:35:18.320 --> 01:35:24.320 church. Engage your critical faculties. 01:35:24.320 --> 01:35:27.040 Compare them to scripture. 01:35:27.040 --> 01:35:31.520 Do these men say the things of God in the same words 01:35:31.520 --> 01:35:35.360 as God used, because that's another important matter. 01:35:35.360 --> 01:35:38.320 One thing you will see in these men, just to throw in 01:35:38.320 --> 01:35:39.760 a point here right at the end. 01:35:39.760 --> 01:35:42.640 One thing you will see in these men is that they will 01:35:42.640 --> 01:35:46.000 speak of Christ as an example, the example of Christ. 01:35:46.000 --> 01:35:50.000 We have to follow the example of Christ. 01:35:50.000 --> 01:35:52.240 What does Scripture actually say? 01:35:52.400 --> 01:35:54.560 It's a subtle difference, but it matters. 01:35:54.560 --> 01:35:57.760 It's not always a definitive 01:35:59.040 --> 01:36:02.720 conclusion that if the person says example of Christ he is a 01:36:02.720 --> 01:36:06.720 false teacher, but the false teachers tend to use example of Christ 01:36:06.960 --> 01:36:10.560 or Christ as example or some wording like that, instead of what 01:36:10.560 --> 01:36:16.160 Paul says become imitators of Christ. 01:36:16.160 --> 01:36:20.400 So someone feels a need to to change the words of Scripture, 01:36:20.400 --> 01:36:22.560 there's probably a reason. 01:36:22.560 --> 01:36:26.560 So compare what these men say to what God says in his 01:36:26.800 --> 01:36:30.080 word, if they do not match up. 01:36:30.080 --> 01:36:32.960 Get rid of the former. 01:36:33.120 --> 01:36:37.680 We spent a fair amount of time slogging through this material, reading 01:36:37.680 --> 01:36:40.880 these books, essays, letters, etc. 01:36:42.400 --> 01:36:45.360 Because we had a very specific purpose in mind, we had a 01:36:45.360 --> 01:36:49.360 reason to do it, we are not recommending that anyone read these 01:36:49.360 --> 01:36:53.120 materials. Life is short. 01:36:53.120 --> 01:36:58.320 If you are going to read theology, read good theology. 01:36:58.320 --> 01:37:01.280 Don't read these wicked men. 01:37:01.280 --> 01:37:04.880 That's not because we're saying, oh well you can't read and understand 01:37:04.880 --> 01:37:06.800 this and no, it's not that. 01:37:06.800 --> 01:37:09.120 It's don't waste your time. 01:37:09.120 --> 01:37:11.920 Read scripture, read good theology. 01:37:11.920 --> 01:37:18.080 Don't spend your time reading men who are now in hell. 01:37:18.080 --> 01:37:20.640 Because if you read the materials by those who are now in 01:37:20.640 --> 01:37:26.480 hell, you're not decreasing the odds certainly of joining them. 01:37:26.480 --> 01:37:27.680 Most likely. 01:37:27.680 --> 01:37:30.720 Now again, if you're doing it for a critical reason, perhaps that's 01:37:30.720 --> 01:37:37.440 fine. But these materials are dangerous. 01:37:37.440 --> 01:37:43.840 Wicked writings, evil materials are themselves, in themselves, dangerous. 01:37:43.840 --> 01:37:46.240 Look at what happened in Scripture. 01:37:46.240 --> 01:37:52.000 When those who had previously practiced the dark arts had practiced magic, 01:37:52.320 --> 01:37:59.520 converted to Christianity, they burned their evil materials, worth enormous 01:37:59.520 --> 01:38:04.960 sums of money, to day, and certainly, of course, then. 01:38:04.960 --> 01:38:06.880 Because that is the Christian response. 01:38:06.880 --> 01:38:11.280 Sometimes the Christian response is a book burning. 01:38:11.280 --> 01:38:15.280 And I know that doesn't sound very winsome, as it were, to 01:38:15.280 --> 01:38:19.360 modern ears, because we're supposed to believe in some sort of absolute 01:38:19.360 --> 01:38:22.240 freedom of speech in the press, but that is not the Christian 01:38:22.240 --> 01:38:26.560 position. Some things are evil in and of themselves, and it is 01:38:26.560 --> 01:38:28.080 best for the Christian to avoid 01:38:28.960 --> 01:38:33.920 them. So the best advice we can give you is for men 01:38:33.920 --> 01:38:38.480 like Bonhoeffer or Bart or any of a number of others, just 01:38:38.480 --> 01:38:39.440 avoid their writings. 01:38:39.440 --> 01:38:44.000 There is no reason to read this material. 01:38:43.920 --> 01:38:45.440 It's good to have 01:38:46.800 --> 01:38:51.200 the sort of cursory information provided in this episode, because now you 01:38:51.200 --> 01:38:54.720 have a response when someone comes up to you, and unfortunately it 01:38:54.560 --> 01:38:58.240 may very well be your pastor, but when someone comes up to 01:38:58.240 --> 01:39:03.520 you and says, This man was a great Christian, a great theologian, 01:39:03.760 --> 01:39:08.240 he stood up for the church, he opposed those evil Nazis, whatever 01:39:08.240 --> 01:39:11.680 it is he says, it'll most likely be something along those lines. 01:39:11.680 --> 01:39:13.680 Now you have some sort of response. 01:39:13.680 --> 01:39:15.440 You can ask some questions. 01:39:15.440 --> 01:39:16.400 You can say 01:39:17.760 --> 01:39:21.440 Is it good for a Christian to deny the virgin birth? 01:39:21.440 --> 01:39:24.160 Like your pastor or whomever will say no. 01:39:24.160 --> 01:39:26.160 Well Bonhoeffer did it. 01:39:26.160 --> 01:39:30.080 Is it good to deny the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture? 01:39:30.080 --> 01:39:30.960 Well no. 01:39:30.960 --> 01:39:33.280 Bonhoeffer did. 01:39:33.440 --> 01:39:36.080 A dozen other things. 01:39:36.080 --> 01:39:41.840 The Christian response When other Christians, brothers in error, bring up evil 01:39:41.840 --> 01:39:45.520 men like this and say they were greats, is to rebuke them. 01:39:46.160 --> 01:39:49.120 Because if you believe that this man was a great of the 01:39:49.120 --> 01:39:53.680 church, you are endangering your own soul, and you are endangering every 01:39:53.680 --> 01:39:58.880 soul entrusted to your care, and unfortunately today, many of those who 01:39:58.880 --> 01:40:02.880 believe this wicked man was a great man of the church, are 01:40:02.880 --> 01:40:07.120 in charge of many souls, because they are pastors, they are shepherds 01:40:07.200 --> 01:40:08.400 of flocks. 01:40:08.400 --> 01:40:10.960 And that's why we did this episode. 01:40:10.960 --> 01:40:15.760 Because Bonhoeffer was an evil man and he is burning in hell. 01:40:15.760 --> 01:40:16.000 I 01:40:16.000 --> 01:40:19.920 want to conclude just briefly by reiterating the quote that I used 01:40:19.920 --> 01:40:24.320 from the very beginning from the LCMS Concordia Seminary in St. 01:40:24.320 --> 01:40:29.920 Louis in two thousand six, because it's probably the most true quote 01:40:29.920 --> 01:40:32.720 that we have read to you today. 01:40:32.720 --> 01:40:37.360 Dietrich Bonhoeffer may well be the most widely admired and respected Christian 01:40:37.360 --> 01:40:41.440 theologian among Christian pastors and theologians in the USA. 01:40:41.440 --> 01:40:46.160 The scope of his appeal is exceptionally broad, spanning across virtually all 01:40:46.160 --> 01:40:53.120 Christian denominations and across perspectives ranging from the traditional to the liberal. 01:40:53.120 --> 01:40:54.720 That's absolutely true. 01:40:54.720 --> 01:40:57.600 And as Corey just said, that is deadly. 01:40:57.600 --> 01:41:00.080 That is the state of our church today. 01:41:00.080 --> 01:41:04.800 A state of free fall apostasy where a man who literally denies 01:41:04.800 --> 01:41:09.760 the creeds as a predicate for all of his other teachings is 01:41:09.760 --> 01:41:13.840 upheld as a great theologian of the 20th century. 01:41:13.840 --> 01:41:16.800 Why? Because he didn't like Nazis. 01:41:16.800 --> 01:41:17.680 That's the religion. 01:41:18.640 --> 01:41:23.760 The religion of this age, the New World religion, is one where 01:41:23.920 --> 01:41:25.520 Nazis bad. 01:41:25.520 --> 01:41:28.560 I'm sorry to have to keep bing bringing that crap up because 01:41:28.560 --> 01:41:31.840 it's boring and it's tedious, but it is the religion. 01:41:33.040 --> 01:41:37.200 Men are damned for being Nazis, not for being sinners. 01:41:37.200 --> 01:41:38.800 That is the sin. 01:41:38.800 --> 01:41:42.800 And so when Concordia Saint Louis says he is a most widely 01:41:42.800 --> 01:41:47.760 admired and respected Christian theologian among so called Christian pastors. 01:41:47.760 --> 01:41:49.600 Yeah, that's probably true. 01:41:49.600 --> 01:41:53.360 And that's exactly the problem that we're hoping we can make some 01:41:53.360 --> 01:41:58.240 small contribution to solving, because Christianity will not survive in an environment 01:41:58.560 --> 01:42:02.880 where men like King and Bonhoeff are seen as Christian martyrs. 01:42:02.880 --> 01:42:06.560 These men were destroyers of souls and they are paying the eternal 01:42:06.560 --> 01:42:07.520 price for it. 01:42:07.520 --> 01:42:10.880 We don't want anyone to join them in the And the surest 01:42:10.880 --> 01:42:13.920 path to joining them is to agree with them, to uphold them, 01:42:13.920 --> 01:42:17.840 to believe what they say, and then to evangelize those beliefs to 01:42:18.000 --> 01:42:20.480 others. That is the world religion. 01:42:20.480 --> 01:42:22.000 It's the popular religion. 01:42:22.000 --> 01:42:24.880 You will fit in if you love Bonhoeffer. 01:42:24.880 --> 01:42:28.000 And the more you talk about him, the more friends you're gonna 01:42:28.000 --> 01:42:33.200 have. Scripture has a lot to say about the popularity of scripture. 01:42:33.200 --> 01:42:38.720 True doctrine is usually not popular, at least not for very long. 01:42:38.720 --> 01:42:44.080 Unpopularity doesn't mean it's right, but popularity certainly doesn't mean it's wrong. 01:42:44.080 --> 01:42:50.480 This man, like King, like Barf, these men were destroyers of the 01:42:50.480 --> 01:42:51.840 Christian faith. 01:42:51.840 --> 01:42:55.920 And today we have so many men in pulpits and in positions 01:42:55.920 --> 01:43:00.320 of authority and power that literally can't tell the difference. 01:43:00.320 --> 01:43:02.880 This is a crisis for the entire church. 01:43:02.880 --> 01:43:05.200 This is a crisis for every Christian. 01:43:05.200 --> 01:43:08.960 Because even if you don't have the aptitude to delve into these 01:43:08.960 --> 01:43:11.920 matters, most of you probably don't, and that's not meant as an 01:43:11.920 --> 01:43:15.520 insult. God God dispenses his gifts unequally. 01:43:15.520 --> 01:43:19.760 There are men who are capable of seeing through these lies. 01:43:19.760 --> 01:43:25.520 Those men should have your support and your protection because they're outnumbered. 01:43:25.520 --> 01:43:29.520 And the men who are seeking to leave the world where there's 01:43:29.520 --> 01:43:34.880 no gospel left, where there's no promise of Job nineteen, where he 01:43:34.880 --> 01:43:37.520 knows that he redeem his Redeemer lives. 01:43:37.520 --> 01:43:40.160 And he knows that he will see him with his own eyes 01:43:40.160 --> 01:43:41.440 on the last day. 01:43:41.440 --> 01:43:42.560 We know that too. 01:43:42.560 --> 01:43:44.320 That is the Christian promise. 01:43:44.320 --> 01:43:47.280 It is not the promise of the faith of these men. 01:43:47.280 --> 01:43:51.520 Those who deny the resurrection, who deny the true Christ, will meet 01:43:51.520 --> 01:43:55.680 him and the worst possible way, we want for every listener and 01:43:55.680 --> 01:43:58.800 for all of your families and all of your communities to meet 01:43:58.800 --> 01:44:03.840 Christ on the last day, covered in the white robes, washed white 01:44:03.840 --> 01:44:05.760 in the blood of the Lamb. 01:44:05.760 --> 01:44:06.720 The forgiveness of sins 01:44:07.600 --> 01:44:09.920 is the purpose of Scripture. 01:44:09.920 --> 01:44:12.320 It's why it's given to us. 01:44:12.320 --> 01:44:15.440 Everything that we ever do wrong in our lives, everything that Bonhoeffer 01:44:15.440 --> 01:44:18.320 ever did wrong in his life, everything your pastor's ever done wrong 01:44:18.320 --> 01:44:20.560 in his life, getting some of this stuff wrong. 01:44:20.720 --> 01:44:23.680 Jesus paid the price for that. 01:44:23.680 --> 01:44:26.640 When we deny that that price was paid, when we deny that 01:44:26.640 --> 01:44:30.800 these things are sins, that these things are lies, we take it 01:44:30.800 --> 01:44:31.840 back on ourselves. 01:44:31.840 --> 01:44:34.640 And on the last day God will say, Okay, if you say 01:44:34.640 --> 01:44:36.480 that's your sin, I believe you. 01:44:36.480 --> 01:44:40.880 That is not what we wish for anyone, because the eternal punishment 01:44:41.200 --> 01:44:42.880 is infinite. 01:44:42.880 --> 01:44:46.720 Just as the eternal reward is infinite for all the wonderful things 01:44:46.720 --> 01:44:52.320 that God has prepared for us, it's it's literally either or and 01:44:52.320 --> 01:44:54.080 it's not our doing. 01:44:54.080 --> 01:44:58.000 But when we tolerate evil teaching, when we all tolerate evil teachers, 01:44:58.000 --> 01:45:02.000 we ensure that there's no room left in the world for Christian 01:45:02.000 --> 01:45:05.440 teaching. The last thing that we want is to see Christian teaching 01:45:05.440 --> 01:45:06.960 die out. 01:45:06.960 --> 01:45:11.200 I long for a day when stone Choir is no longer necessary. 01:45:11.280 --> 01:45:13.520 Doing these episodes is unpleasant. 01:45:13.840 --> 01:45:17.040 we put this off for a while because it stinks so much 01:45:17.040 --> 01:45:18.640 to read this crap. 01:45:18.640 --> 01:45:19.840 It's painful. 01:45:19.840 --> 01:45:22.320 But the fact that it's harming people is one of the reasons 01:45:22.800 --> 01:45:23.280 we did. 01:45:23.280 --> 01:45:26.400 We had a lot of requests for this episode. 01:45:26.400 --> 01:45:29.600 If in some small way anything that we do or you do 01:45:29.600 --> 01:45:33.920 can help to turn the tide against these evil teachings, we would 01:45:33.920 --> 01:45:36.800 like to see the entire church get that back to the point 01:45:37.120 --> 01:45:41.680 that our pulpits and our seminaries and wherever men are faithfully raised 01:45:41.680 --> 01:45:45.360 up to spread the word of God, they all see these things 01:45:45.360 --> 01:45:48.720 that are contrary to scripture and say, Yeah, I I'm of a 01:45:48.720 --> 01:45:51.600 different spirit.