Illegal Seminary

The day began and ended with two long services .... The services did not take place in church but around the ordinary dinner table. They began with a choral psalm and a hymn selected for that day. This was followed by a lesson from the Hebrew Bible, a set verse from a hymn (sung daily for several weeks), a New Testament lesson, a period of extempore prayer, and the recital of the Lord's Prayer. Each service concluded with another set verse from a hymn. Only on Saturday did he include a sermon, which was usually very direct.

To avoid interpersonal dangers, Bonhoeffer asked the ordinands to observe only one rule--never to speak about another ordinand in the person's absence or to tell that person about it afterward when such a thing did happen.

On Sunday's he didn't permit any class work to be done, but organized all kinds of games. When he discovered the inadequacy of his students' literary background he gave them novels. Amid protest that it was a "monkish custom" he introduced the practice of reading aloud during meals.

One evening a week was devoted to the discussion of current issues. Early in the first semester Hitler proclaimed Germany's rebirth as a military power. The ordinands in Zingst listened with excitement to his speech on the radio, wondering when it would be their turn to put on the uniform. (This was May 1935). Most of them looked forward to it, unaware of their director's feelings on the subject. The number of conscientious objectors in the Evangelical church at that time could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

It was from the underground seminary that two books were published (his last published works). One was Discipleship (Cost of the Discipleship in America) and the other was Life Together. Bethge summarizes Discipleship this way:

1. Bonhoeffer was seeking to reaffirm the elusive concept of "faith" in all its implications: "only the believer is obedient, and only those who are obedient believe."
2. the social nature of discipleship--"It is impossible to become a new person as a solitary individual... The new person is not the individual believer who has been justified and sanctified, but the church, the Body of Chris, Christ himself."
3. He drew a sharp distinction between discipleship and and ideal. Ideals and programs lead to a craving for caustic realization; this was the very opposite of the step into discipleship. To be called, to go and to follow--this is a true Christology. To be called and not to follow, but instead to work out a program for us in this or that situation--is a false Christology. It leaves Christ out in the cold as an occasional aid toward salvation.

"The Word is weaker than any ideology, and this means that with only the gospel at their command the witnesses are weaker than the propagandists of an opinion. But although they are weak, they are ready to suffer with the Word, and so are free from that morbid restlessness which is so characteristic of fanaticism."

4. Discipleship is participation in Christ's suffering for others, as communion with the Crucified One. Disciples are the kind of people who take upon themselves what others would like to shake off. On the last page of the book, Bonhoeffer writes, "Christ's life on earth is not finished yet, for he continues to live in the lives of his followers."

Bonhoeffer also required the ordinands to half an hour of silent meditation every morning after breakfast before the theological work was to begin. They did not like this. Some people said that they went to sleep, others that they spent the half hour working on sermons, since they had absolutely no idea what else to do; others admitted that half an hour's recollection was too much for them and their minds wandered, so they read commentaries instead. However, Bonhoeffer didn't let them off, convinced that this was an important part of their training. Other seminaries were already regarding Zingst as a joke--a place, they said, where the ordinands had to meditate while they brushed their teeth and were forced to submit to an unevangelical legalism.

"The charge that these [periods of meditation and prayer] are legalistic I find totally incorrect. How can it possibly be legalistic for a Christian to learn what prayer is, and to spend a fair amount of time learning it? ... The kind of questions that young theologians seriously put to us today are: How can I learn to pray? How can I learn to read the Bible? Either we can help them do this, or we can't help them at all. None of this can be taken for granted."

All these quotes come directly from Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge.