Christmas with Bonhoeffer

What makes Christmas truly meaningful? Today, Stephen Nichols reflects on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 1939 Christmas sermon, uncovering timeless insights on the miracle of the incarnation, the sacred mystery of God becoming man.

Merry Christmas! Over the years, we have had many Christmas episodes here at 5 Minutes in Church History, and this year we're going to have another one. We will spend Christmas with Bonhoeffer. Two weeks ago, we visited with Bonhoeffer and looked at his thought in five sayings, but today, on Christmas day, we will look at a sermon that Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote for his students. This was December 25th, 1939. Yes, Hitler is firmly in power in Germany. Bonhoeffer had long ago been kicked out of the University of Berlin where he was a professor. They had established the underground seminary at Finkenwalde. It too was shut down by the Gestapo. And these young seminarians, what Bonhoeffer saw as the hope for the Lutheran Church on the other side of the war, these young seminarians scattered, and Bonhoeffer continued to train them, and he would send them letters and he would send them sermons and he would keep them up with their studies. And so he wrote them a letter for Christmas Day, December, 1939.

He begins by saying, “No pastor, no theologian stood at the cradle of Bethlehem. And yet all Christian theology finds its origin in the miracle of miracles, that God became man. Theologia sacra, sacred theology. It originates in prayerful kneeling before the mystery of the divine child in the stable.” Bonhoeffer goes on to say, “Without that holy night, there is no theology. God revealed in the flesh, the God man Jesus Christ. that is the holy mystery which theology was instituted to preserve and protect.” Now, Bonhoeffer goes on to explain why theology protects that moment. He says, “What foolishness! As if it were the task of theology to decode God's mystery, pulling it down to the commonplace, miracleless words of wisdom based on human experience and human reason.” What is Bonhoeffer talking about here? Well, he's talking about liberalism. When he talks about human experience, he's going back to Friedrich Schleiermacher, the founder of modern liberalism and that German theologian who stressed it's all about feelings, not about propositions in the truth.

On the other hand, there's rationalism, and the emphasis on human reason, which wants to dispense with miracles, dispense with the Bible as the authoritative Word of God. Against this, we must see this moment, this miracle of the incarnation. Bonhoeffer goes on to say, “If Christmas tide does not succeed in kindling in us anew something like a love toward holy theology so that we are captured and overcome by the miracle of the cradle of the Son of God,” he goes on to say, “there is something seriously wrong with us and wrong with the church.” But if we flip that around and make it a positive statement, Bonhoeffer wants us to see Christmas tide, this day, this Christmas day, as kindling in us anew a love toward holy theology.

As he moves to the end of this sermon for his students, and keep in mind, they're not in a classroom, they're not gathered on some academic campus. They're scattered. They're living in farmhouses. They are truly underground as they're training to be future ministers. He says to them, his prayer that “through one or another of these thoughts, we will be led to read and contemplate the biblical testimony to the mystery of God's becoming man with more reverence and adoration, and perhaps even to sing Luther's Christmas hymns more thoughtfully and joyously.” Well, as those are Bonhoeffer's, thoughts and prayers for his students, those are also my thoughts and prayers for you, dear listeners, to 5 minutes in Church History. Merry Christmas!