Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German minister in the twentieth century. He ran an illegal underground seminary in Nazi Germany, was associated with the July 20 plot to kill Hitler, and was arrested and eventually executed by the Nazi regime. In Christian circles, he’s sort of the emblem of contemporary martyrdom. He resisted the Nazis and died in service of his faith. Whenever someone talks about heroic Christians, Bonhoeffer will work his way in – he’s cited, for example, alongside Martin Luther King and Jesus in the reviews for George Pell’s prison journals.

Bonhoeffer died young – not quite forty – so he doesn’t have any of the mature, late-career titles of some of his contemporaries. His most famous work is The Cost of Discipleship, first published in 1937. It has this distinction between cheap grace and costly grace – we’re not really going to talk about the book today, so this is just context. The idea is that cheap grace is when you’re a Christian but also kind of a selfish asshole – still Christian, sure, but the grace is cheap. It’s not been taken on in any meaningful or particularly deep way. Costly grace is grace that costs. It’s giving up your desires and needs, giving up everything in favour of the gospel. It’s very much the kind of distinction you expect to find in this thing. It’s about martyrdom and sacrifice, surrender to the call of God – all the stuff you expect from a man murdered by the Nazis.

We’re not talking about that today, though. We’re just starting with the introduction to this edition I’ve got in front of me. Penned by one Bishop Bell, it offers a potted history of Bonhoeffer’s life, and some reflections on the political or ideological foundations of his belief. In the fourth section – page 28, if you’re reading along – there’s this whole bit of fluff about how the Second World War was a war for Europe’s soul. The war was, Bell says, “ideological in its basic character”. The resistance movement in Hitler’s Germany “were in truth the upholders of the European and Western tradition in Germany,” and Bonhoeffer was special among the resistance because, more than anybody else, he “realised that nothing less than a return to the Christian faith could save Germany.” There’s a bit to unpack here. Obviously WW2 today is thought of as your quintessential battle between good and evil. We don’t often use the language of upholding Western tradition, but this idea of an heroic resistance movement holding out against a fascist government – it’s set deep in our cultural consciousness. People like Bonhoeffer are the ones who stayed true. They could have become Nazis, and they didn’t. There’s obviously a bit of hagiography going on here – Bell is talking up his guy, and he’s talking up Christianity as the one thing that will solve all the problems – but we can sort of get where he’s coming from.

Bell goes on to set up this opposition between nationalism and faith. Bonhoeffer was obviously opposed to the Nazis, who were extreme nationalists – they’re fascists. But Bell also sets Bonhoeffer’s resistance above all the other resistance fighters in countries under Nazi occupation. All these other resistance movements can appeal to their own forms of nationalism, he says. The French resistance can resist the Germans for the sake of France. The Polish resistance can do it for Poland. But Bonhoeffer, Bell says, worked for the downfall of his own country. He couldn’t appeal to nationalism, because he was trying to overthrow his country. He had to reach for something higher – for God. “It was Bonhoeffer and his friends who proved by their resistance unto death that even in the age of the nation-state there are loyalties which transcend those to state and nation. They proved that even in this age nationalism stands under God and that it is a sin against him and his call for fellowship with other nations if it degenerates into national egotism and greed.” You can see the general thrust here: the Nazis were nationalist, but Bonhoeffer reached for the divine, which is above nationalism. It ties into the theme of costly grace – setting aside any national sentiment, any desire for your nation to come out on top – in favour of doing the right thing.

That’s fine as a rhetorical gesture, but some of Bell’s argument gets confused. There’s this idea that Bonhoeffer replaced nationalism with a higher allegiance, with faith, but faith is also posed as the ideal outcome for Germany’s future. Bell describes Hitler and the Nazis as “traitors to their own country” – really, here, Bell sets faith above nationalism, but he also makes it a type of nationalism. In 1933, Bonhoeffer was ministering in London. He was perfectly safe living there – he didn’t need to return to Germany. If you’re going to put the demands of your faith above the demands of national allegiance, you can do that from overseas. Really, Bonhoeffer’s return to Germany was a matter of national pride. Earlier in the introduction, Bell related that Bonhoeffer wanted to share the trials of his fellow Germans. Bonhoeffer wrote to his friend Reinhold Niebuhr: “‘I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.” He’s deeply invested in what it means to be German. He’s already looking ahead to after the Nazis, and he feels that he can’t reasonably be part of post-Nazi Germany after sitting things out in the UK. It’s not faith above nationalism: it’s both together.

Really all we’re identifying here is the very mundane reality that different people want different things for their country. We touched on this with Hannah Arendt all the way back in 2016. The tension of the democratic nation is that people have conflicting interests. National sentiment or shared heritage is a way to cement a sense of community, but it lessens tension rather than resolving it. You can care about your country and also feel like it’s going in the wrong direction. You can care about your country and feel like certain groups are fucking things up for everybody else. You can care about your country and feel like it would be better off if it was more religious – you can fight the Nazis because you think they’re ruining your Christian heritage. There’s a much more complicated interplay between faith and nationalism going on here. Bonhoeffer isn’t really subordinating national pride to God by hoping that the Nazis lose the war. He’s just got a different vision of what his nation means.