The Battle is Not Yours
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on pastoral care, false teachers, and church discipline
I’ve been convinced for a long time now that Bonhoeffer’s fame works against us, making it hard if not outright impossible to take him on his own terms. The noise of what we think we know about him and his theology (his critique of cheap grace, say, or his part, whatever it was, in a plot to kill Hitler) drowns out what he actually did and said.
It’s worth asking why we are so drawn to Bonhoeffer’s story. I suspect it has something to do with how he functions as a kind of anti-scapegoat figure for us, one who, because of the way we tell his story, gives us the right to refuse to make peace with our enemies. That certainly isn’t the only reason for the attraction, but is it not at least a factor? It can’t be an accident, can it, that in the light of our re-telling of Bonhoeffer’s life we so often appear as victims and our enemies turn out to be purely and irredeemably evil?
Be that as it may, I remain convinced that we should read Bonhoeffer, not because of any (real or imagined) correlations between his situation and our own, but because his work is good! Presently, I’m finding his lectures on 1 Timothy, given near the end of his time at the seminary, very helpful, especially what he says about false teachers and the need to correct them:
Timothy is left behind in Ephesus “so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine” (1 Tim. 1:3). His commission is thus to thwart false teaching in the church-community. The church-community does not seem to be in a position to do this itself and instead needs an office, namely, the apostolic office, to fulfill this role. That Timothy is charged with instructing others shows that these false teachers are actually part of the community itself. Who are these false teachers? People who instead of sound doctrine present their own, self-made ideas, problems, and teaching. The simple truth does not suffice for them; instead, they get tied up with problems and worldviews to which no one can respond and which lead to endless questions but do not serve to build up the community itself… They suffer from the plague of controversy and disputes about words. They are perpetually learning and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. These people are eternally striving, wrestling, making things problematic, and are eternally uncertain. The teaching that emerges from such behavior is not healthy but rather sick…1
Bonhoeffer recognizes that hypocrisy, for Paul, is not so much about a pretense intended to deceive others as it is about pretentiousness and self-deception. False teachers of this kind are sneaky and predatory, trading smugly in secrets, conspiracies, and scandals. But they are also invariably sincere, even while they are eaten up by their anxieties and worries about their own and others’ ideas and beliefs. Bonhoeffer, as usual, makes the point sharply:
Although they live with the appearance of piety, they are liars (1 Tim. 4:2). We are never told that they are aware of this situation themselves. Precisely in their eternal uncertainty, they believe they are themselves the saints. Although they have the appearance of godliness, they deny its powers (2 Tim. 3:5). Although they have the appearance of sinners who live in trembling before God as those who have been justified, they deny God's powers…
It is not lost on Bonhoeffer, and should not be lost on us, that Paul’s statements about false teachers seem unduly harsh. “Why does Paul judge these serious, all-too-human people in the immediate vicinity so harshly?” Having raised the question, he answers it directly: because their sins are highly contagious and a grave threat to the life of the entire community.
Why does Paul speak thus? He knows that nothing is more seductive for the church-community than that this sarcic holiness and Christian orientation be somehow strengthened and that this pious flesh be somehow kept alive. This sickness is incurably contagious and dangerous. Paul knows that he would be giving in to these people by merely entering into discussion with them. He would only be strengthening their conviction that truth can be acquired only through disputes rather than through obedience. But one cannot hold discussions with people who do not want to obey. Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know... ((Jn 7:17) Knowledge comes from obedience. It is through obedience to the word that we are led to all truth (1 Tim. 1:5)… The only Christian service Timothy can perform for his church-community is to break off all contact with them when they despise sound doctrine.2
False teachers are not merely mistaken or flawed; they are rebellious and unteachable. Underneath it all, they are false because they “live and indeed want to live and persist in contradiction to God, because somehow, somewhere, they do not want to obey.” Theirs is, in Bonhoeffer’s words, “a gospel of appearance,” nothing more. They make a show of their spirituality, but in reality they are only moving from “sick faith to sick holiness” and infecting others in the process.
What, then, are pastors to do? How do they help false teachers recover from their error? How can they “thwart” false teaching for the good of the congregation, the church-community? How do they defend God’s people against ways of thinking that make it more difficult than it needs to be to pray with and for one another? Here is how Bonhoeffer answers those questions:
What is Timothy to do? Should he go after them and overcome them with patient love? Should he support those who seriously do want to be Christians as brothers in the church-community? Should he begin anew evangelizing with the basic truth of the gospel itself? That would be commensurate with what pious flesh considers correct. Paul, however, gives different instructions: Teach sound doctrine, the doctrine of human sin, of repentance, of compassion, of obedience to the commandment, then you have done it. If they do not listen, then avoid them (1 Tim. 6:5; 4:7; 6:20; 2 Tim. 3:5).3
All this cuts right to the heart of the matter, does it not? It casts so much light on our situation. Here’s some of what I’m taking away from the study:
False teachers are as much a threat now as ever. And they are recognizable, now as then (that is, Bonhoeffer’s time, as well as Paul’s), not only by stubbornness and self-promotion (disguised, as it invariably is, in exaggerated piety and “righteous indignation”) but also by an unhealthy attachment to their own opinions, delight in vain speculations, addiction to controversy and fascination with scandal.
The surest sign of these false teachers’ falseness is their argumentativeness. For them, everything depends on winning arguments. They believe that the truth comes through dispute, not obedience. And so, at the end of the day, there is nothing they are not willing to say or do in order to win. The justness of the cause (as they understand it) justifies every means, however at odds with the spirit and teachings of Christ.
We must not question the sincerity of these teachers’ beliefs. Indeed, the intensity of their conviction is what gives their argumentativeness its power. But in reality it is only “fleshly” power, which ultimately “availeth nothing” (Jn 6.63). As Bonhoeffer saw so clearly, false teachers are false because they concerned with making others submit to the will of God as they claim to know it. They are not themselves obedient, and the proof if their disobedience is their unteachability. They have no desire to be true as Christ is true; they only want to be right and to make others conform to their vision of rightness. The anger of these false teachers cannot produce the righteousness of God, not because their anger is insincere or feigned, but because God’s justice cannot be done to others but only for them. And they are motivated not by love for their neighbor but by the fear of death and disgust toward their enemies.
In response to false teachers, pastors have to keep the main thing the main thing, holding to the truth in their preaching and teaching, as well as in their “private” conversations, as the truth is known by the pure-hearted. That means our responsibility as pastors, for which we answer finally to Christ alone, is not to lead or problem-solve or manage and resolve conflict but to be trustworthy ministers of Word and Sacrament, devoted to prayer and the study of the Scriptures. Rather than disputing with others, we ought to be presiding in worship, preaching the gospel, teaching the faith, visiting the sick and shut-in, hearing confessions, leading quiet, lovely (or at least not entirely stupid), God-delighting lives, which grant some measure of credibility to the promises of the gospel.
We must not get trapped in fruitless arguments (online or elsewhere). At some point, we have to do what Jeremiah did when the false prophet Hananiah made such a show of disputing with him in the temple: we have to walk away and wait for the truth to out.4 We have to be willing to do as Christ taught the apostles to do, shaking the dust off of our feet, leaving people alone in their disobedience before God—so they can learn what it means that they are never alone.
We can afford to appear to have lost these fights because we can trust everyone, including false teachers, to the judgment of God. As Brad East has said, “Christians must be on principle—in imitation of Christ and the apostles and all the martyrs—willing to lose. If we ever see a temporal, political cause as so important that we would be unwilling to accept loss, then we have fundamentally mistaken our calling and mission as disciples of Christ. Why? Because we follow someone who lost. We follow someone who was arrested, and interrogated, and tortured unjustly, and whose followers suffered the same fate.”
Not that we’re afraid of conflict or intimidated by questions and challenges. We must “fight the good fight.” But that can only be done by letting the Lord be our champion. “The battle is not yours but God’s” (2 Chron. 20.15). We must know how to be still if we want the Lord to be known and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. This, finally, is the only measure that will stay “the plague of controversy.” Lord, help us!
What are your thoughts?
Bonhoeffer, Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 948.
Bonhoeffer, Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 949-50.
Bonhoeffer, Theological Education at Finkenwalde, 949.
See Jeremiah 28.
I think this take is exactly exactly right. The truth and don’t waste your time naming names of counter examples to what you’re describing. Everyone will know who you’re talking about without talking about them.
Where I think this gets really complicated is that we live in a world of diffuse authority in which even truthful teachers speak in an economy of the marketplace, where ideas are put into competition, even if the speakers themselves do not create the competition.
I hear in this another true pastor/ teacher, George MacDonald.