Resistance and Submission: Confronting Fate in Bonhoeffer’s Prison Letters

Although the German title of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s prison letters—Resistance and Submission [Widerstand und Ergebung]—suggests a direct reference to political activity, it actually comes from his reflection on two ways to confront one’s “fate.” “I’ve often wondered,” he writes in a 1944 letter to Eberhard Bethge, “where we are to draw the line between necessary resistance to ‘fate’ and equally necessary submission.” This essay situates Bonhoeffer’s remark within the frequent references to “fate” [Schicksal] among German theologians working between 1919-45, including Emanuel Hirsch and Werner Elert. It then shows how Bonhoeffer creatively engages with the question of fate by retrieving Martin Luther’s concept of social realities as “masks” of God, an insight that leads him to adapt his personalist philosophy. Finally, I demonstrate how Bonhoeffer’s treatment of fate is related to his disavowal of tragedy, both in his Ethics and in an unpublished note from the archive.