Letters and Papers from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Author:Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: A Touchstone Book
Published: 1953-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

To Eberhard Bethge

[Tegel] 21 February 1944

Dear Eberhard,

It was an indescribable joy to hear from you! And also from Maria today, that you wrote to her on my birthday. That really was a good token of friendship. Many thanks for both. Recently I’ve had to think, in connection with Job ch. 1, that Satan had received permission from the Lord to separate me from my friends at this time – and that he was not going to succeed!

I heard very briefly today about the audience in the Vatican and am now immeasurably curious to hear more of it. I’m very glad that you’ve had this impression, though I don’t expect that it corresponds completely to the old ceremonial which I experienced in 1924. Nevertheless, in contrast to the rest of your experience at present, it will have been particularly stimulating and important. I assume that some pig-headed Lutherans will put it down as a blot in your biography, and for that very reason I’m glad that you’ve done it…Otherwise there are only fragments, that I must put together into a mosaic.

About myself, I’m sorry to have to tell you that I’m not likely to be out of here before Easter. As long as Hans is ill, no changes can be taken in hand. I can’t completely rid myself of the feeling that something has been too contrived and imagined and that the simplest things haven’t happened yet. I’m fully convinced of the best will of all concerned, but one all too easily takes a conversation, a fancy, a hope for an action. I keep noting with amazement that in fact nothing has happened for six months, although a great deal of time and even sleep has been spent in considerations and discussions; the only thing that would have happened of itself, namely the clarification before Christmas, has been prevented. I wonder whether my excessive scrupulousness, about which you often used to shake your head in amusement (I’m thinking of our travels), is not a negative side of bourgeois existence – simply part of our lack of faith, a part that remains hidden in times of security, but comes out in times of insecurity in the form of ‘dread’ (I don’t mean ‘cowardice’, which is something different: ‘dread’ can show itself in recklessness as well as in cowardice), dread of straightforward, simple actions, dread of having to make necessary decisions. I’ve often wondered here where we are to draw the line between necessary resistance to ‘fate’, and equally necessary submission. Don Quixote is the symbol of resistance carried to the point of absurdity, even lunacy; and similarly Michael Kohlhaas, insisting on his rights, puts himself in the wrong…in both cases resistance at last defeats its own object, and evaporates in theoretical fantasy. Sancho Panza is the type of complacent and artful accommodation to things as they are. I think we must rise to the great demands that are made on us personally, and yet at the same time fulfil the commonplace and necessary tasks of daily life.

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