Who is Dietrich Bonhoeffer for us in Africa today?

‘Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called the children of God’ (Matthew 5.9).

‘There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security’ (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

From his reflection on his own historic dialogue with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prof. John de Gruchy reframed the leading Bonhoeffer question, ‘Who is Jesus Christ for us today?’ in a contextual sense of the reception of Bonhoeffer in (South and West) Africa to say, ‘Who is Bonhoeffer for us today?’ (see John de Gruchy, A Theological Odyssey: My Life in Writing, Stellenbosch: SUN Press, 2014, p. 52). Bonhoeffer has been many things to many people; a friend, a colleague, a teacher, a freedom fighter, a justice seeker, a pastor, a prophet, an ecumenist, etc. It is right for us to say that Bonhoeffer was a man of peace for us in African context. I am speaking from the northern part of Nigeria. We have witnessed many things that challenge us and change us, but best of all, these realities have opened our eyes and our spirituality to the essence of our faith in Jesus Christ who is our ‘peace’, our ‘prince of peace’. Bonhoeffer was a good disciple of Jesus Christ, thus he embodied the reality of Jesus in seeking for peace as justice for the oppressed of the world.  Peace, as Bonhoeffer would see it, is not safety from danger. It is not the human comfort or the search for happiness for its own sake. But rather it is a great quest for responsibility that leads to the justice of God on earth. This embodies the reality of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

One of the serious pressures of Christianity as a religious body today is on its meaning and project in the world. So many people in the modern world have been asking on the meaning and possible significance of religion, even a religion like Christianity. Is religion necessary? Is Christianity a religion like any other religion in the world? For me, the point goes back to the central question of Christian discipleship: Who is a human being in the world today? And the Christians should ask critically, ‘Who is a Christian?’, ‘What is Christianity today?’ or ‘Who is Jesus Christ for us today?’ These questions have been explored in the meditations and writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his Letters and Papers from Prison, especially between the years of 1943 and 44, Dietrich Bonhoeffer experienced ‘the dark night of the soul’ (a phrase used severally by Jürgen Moltmann in his Christian vs. Jewish dialogical theology): the darkness of injustice, the darkness of merciless wars, the darkness of the silence of God that confronts the faith critically, and the darkness of loneliness from the friendship of the soul and its freedom to reach out to others, even as it yearns for the company and love of others too.

Christianity is under pressure today to point to the path of God’s peace in the world. Peace is not the absence of war, but it is the assurance of healing and restoration from the devastation of wars and all forms of injustices and sufferings in the world. Peace is the provision of good life to the lives of others. Peace is God’s reconciling grace from human alienation and abuse. Peace is the restoration of hope in the midst of hopelessness. The urgent call to Christianity in the world today is to remember that we are called to be the beacons of hope for the world. Hope means the assurance of life in the midst of death. Hope means the gift of grace in the midst of despair. Hope means the coming of God to raise the dead, heal the sick, forgive the sinner and embrace the lonely. Christianity is given a central mandate as the salt and light of the world; not to collapse under the pressures of the world but to arise in the strength of the Lord to provide hope and true healing for the brokenness of the world today.

Saint Francis of Assisi prayed for God to make him an instrument of peace in the world. That he would bring the light of God’s healing and peace and joy where there is trouble, suffering and death. This is possible even for us today. This world can be redeemed in the power of God’s love.

I am very thankful to my friend and father in Christ, Prof. Dr Keith Clements who has been praying for me and also encouraging me to be a peace-seeker in justice, like Bonhoeffer, in my Nigerian context. Prof. Clements helped me in Nigeria to get the complete set of Dietrich Bonhoeffer works in English with the help of Tyndale Baptist Church, Bristol. They have been received with all gratitude. Bonhoeffer briefly visited Africa as a young student in 1924, and in 2024, after 100 years, the complete set of his works have come to bless us and accompany us in our theological, ethical and spiritual journey. With the entire Bonhoeffer volumes at my disposal, I was able to complete my forthcoming book, titled Being A Disciple in a World Come of Age: A Reflection on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theology. I look forward to seeing it and also pray that it will further challenge its readers across the world with the urgency for discipleship and the life of faith and hope as the Church of the Kingdom of God in Africa.

Hassan Musa teaches at ECWA Theological Seminary in Jos, Nigeria and is a Research Fellow at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

His new book, Being A Disciple in a World Come of Age, is out this month and available to order here, with 20% off all orders before the end of May.