On Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Six Questions for Eric Metaxas.
While many members of the Confessing Church movement honored the separation of church and state, Bonhoeffer was more radical than his peers. In his 1933 essay, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” he criticized the NSDAP government’s adoption of the Aryan paragraph, which restricted those with Jewish heritage from holding public office.
In his essay, “The Church and the Jewish Question,” Bonhoeffer argues that two issues arise regarding the Jewish question: the first addressing how the church should respond to the actions of the state, and the second addressing what the ecclesial consequences will be if Jewish Christians are excluded from ecclesial membership.
Bonhoeffer took multiple steps to draw a proverbial “line in the sand” to create a shared vision throughout his life. He called for a clergy strike in response to the Aryan Paragraph, developed the succession Barmen Declaration, and repeatedly opposed the oppression of the Jewish race with declarations such as, “only those who cry out for the Jews may sing Gregorian chants” (Metaxas.
The period of the Holocaust was a terrible time. It took place from 1939 to 1945. When Hitler came into power he killed many people, most of which were Jews. Many people and countries stood by and did nothing while the Holocaust was occurring, but Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Per Anger, and Oskar Schindler.
In his April 1933 essay, The Church and the Jewish Question, he assailed Nazi state persecution. Bonhoeffer's defense of the Jews, however, was based on Christian supersessionism - the Christian belief that Christianity had superseded Judaism as the new chosen people of God.
When the Nazis began contemplating strictures against the Jews, in 1933, Bonhoeffer spoke out with his essay and speech “The Church and the Jewish Question,” in which he stated that the church.
His essay became an explicit ethical commitment to all those persecuted by the Nazis. He even drafted a message to Rabbi Stephen Wise, head of the Reform Jewish Movement in the United States. Theologically, Bonhoeffer still felt the Jewish question would be resolved if all the Jews converted and Judaism no longer existed.