A HERO FOR OUR TIME:

Leadership and authority, argued Bonhoeffer, are important and legitimate callings. Far from being an idealistic pacifist or fanatic anarchist, Bonhoeffer's Lutheranism formed his understanding of the legitimate role of political authority. And in extreme cases, such as that faced by Germany in 1933, it is understandable how a powerful personality might exercise influence over a nation's citizens. But, warned Bonhoeffer, "the leader must radically reject the temptation to become an idol, that is, the ultimate authority of the led." This was, in fact, the critical feature of Hitler's leadership: his personality shaped politics, and his will became the law.

The consequences of such an inversion of the office of leadership were catastrophic. Individual people, created in the image of God, must stand before God in their callings. They could not place anyone else in the ultimate seat of judgment and authority. "Only before God," said Bonhoeffer with characteristic Lutheran emphasis, "does the human being become what he is, an individual, free, and at the same time bound in responsibility." To allow anyone else to come between the individual and God was to commit idolatry. To do this was essentially to replace God with another creaturely authority.

Sin has corrupted all aspects of human relationship: God, one another, and the world. Only Christ's mediating and redeeming work can restore those relationships. But where the Christian faith sees God as the ultimate authority and Christ as the mediator, the emerging Nazi ideology set the Leader in place of God and Christ.

"Leader and office that turn themselves into gods mock God and the solitary individual before him who is becoming the individual, and must collapse," concluded Bonhoeffer. "Only the leader who is in the service of the penultimate and ultimate authority merits loyalty." Without naming Hitler directly, Bonhoeffer challenged the pledge of ultimate and personal allegiance that the Nazi leader demanded. And he rightly predicted the disaster that awaited, albeit only after much suffering and loss.

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