Living Wittily

Ernst Lohmeyer: Why he Matters, and Why He Should be Remembered.

Over the years I have had a close interest in the history of Christianity in Germany over the past two centuries. From the Enlightenment onward some of the most impressive and durable progress in several areas of intellectual scholarship was made in German universities. In areas of philosophy, theology and biblical studies, Germany led the field in critical scholarship, giving us some of the greatest names within these disciplines.

The first half of the 20th century has a star studded cast of names such as Harnack,  Bultmann, Dibelius, Bonhoeffer, names now pervasively present in theological and biblical scholarship a century and more later. One name almost entirely obscured by history is Ernst Lohmeyer. I have just bought the new theological biography of Lohmeyer, who for some time has been one of my heroes of whom I knew too little.

Along with other brave souls, Lohmeyer risked his life as a vocal and persistent critic of Nazi ideology, in particular the attempts to validate anti-semitism from the Bible. Removed from his post, banned from teaching, called up to the German army in 1943, and following the fall of Germany, taken as a prisoner of war by Russia, Lohmeyer virtually disappears. For long years no one knew if he was alive or dead. Until 1995. We now know he was executed by the Russians, but the full story has never been researched and told, until now. 

Once I've read J R Edwards' account of Lohmeyers life and fate, I'll post a review here. Meantime there is a brief introduction by Edwards  which you can read in Christianity Today here.

By the way, the title of this article is, I think, misleading and does justice to neither Lohmeyer nor Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a scholarly pastor whose story is now firmly embedded in post-war theology and German consciousness. Bonhoeffer's role in underground theological education, aiding the resistance, and his martyrdom in April 1945 has created an entire industry of scholarship, produced an ongoing theological ferment, and has left a legacy of division between those who see him as martyr, as theological revolutionary, and as one whose actions and involvement in an assassination attempt on Hitler goes against the very core of his own teaching in his seminal books, Discipleship and Ethics.

Lohmeyer, on the other hand was a major voice in the academy as an already established scholar of international stature, whose silencing and subsequent murder have remained obscure and politically awkward, and therefore his name, let alone his writings, have gone largely unpublicised. I look forward to having many of my own questions answered, and discovering much more of the truth about a man whose courage and integrity should not be forgotten. Lohmeyer was a German citizen, academic and soldier whose story, "like many who resisted Nazi and Communist repression, points toward Christ."  

Co-opted into the Life and the Prayers of Those Who Trust Us.

Today at the Community Cafe one of our regulars, a woman with significant learning disabilities, stood up, tapped the table and requested silence. She then spoke of the very recent death of her aunt Margaret, "who loved me and I loved her." And she told us she was now going to say a prayer for her Aunt.

Rarely have I listened to a prayer that was more direct, intimate, real and entirely innocent of the need to impress. In loud, clear and deeply felt words she told God: she was glad her aunt was now with God and would know how much she had been loved; she thanked God for opening the gates to welcome her aunt home because she was special; and she thanked God, and her aunt, for looking out for her and looking after her up to now, and knew that would still be true because God loves everybody all the time; then she asked God's blessing on us all finishing with an emphatic Amen.

This was a moment of pure spiritual connection and of human communion born out of trusted friendships. People who usually come to talk about the usual stuff, were co-opted into the life and love, the grief and prayers of someone brave enough to speak her heart, and trust those who heard her speak it. We were ministered to by someone wise enough to know when to pray, and when to ask for that prayer to be held in the hearts of her friends.

This is why we do what we do - thank God.

Beauty, Grief and Memory.

The other day, a moment of encounter in a garden, cream roses floating in sunlight above a carpet of lavender, and the surprise discovery that the ache of joy in beauty has a close affinity to grief. 

That wondering gaze on beauty unlocks an unnamed yearning which gathers in the deep place we call the soul, and to my surprise, gently it takes on a name, and becomes a key that releases powerful memories, of Aileen. 

In grieving, loss is experienced as persistent longing, grief is made sharper by gratitude, and love needs only the slightest reason to remember - and beauty is more than enough reason. 

So as we love those we love and have lost, we remember what was beautiful, we hold on to what brought joy; and we nourish within us what fuels gratitude that will be lifelong, soul deep, and will always be felt as a wound that tells the story of a life. And that wound will not heal, despite all the reassurances it will, because love will not be denied the familiar ache that comes from a felt absence.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: A Study in Power and Personality in Exclusive Christian Brethren.

Exporting the Rapture. John Nelson Darby and the Victorian Conquest of North American Evangelicalism, Donald Harman Akenson. (Oxford: 2019) 504 pages.

There are a number of very fine histories of the Plymouth Brethren and the several offshoots in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries. The classic is by Roy Coad, but more recently and with considerably more historical documentation, there are the volumes by Neil Dickson (Scotland) and Tim Grass (UK and beyond).

This volume is different. It is a careful, detailed, and unsparing account of the role played by J N Darby in the origins and formation of the Brethren movement. Outside of brethren circles Darby is less well known; inside the movement he was a giant whose shadow loomed over the Brethren movement for 60 years, and continues to influence large swathes of Christian fundamentalism. In particular, this book traces the emergence of the Exclusive Brethren following the split of the Plymouth Brethren  in the 1840’s, and it details the decisive role of Darby in the creation and consolidation of the Exclusive Brethren.

Akenson’s main contention is that the Exclusive Brethren meet the criteria for a cult. A charismatic leader of magnetic personality; backed by authoritarian, tightly organised systems of oversight, discipline, and privileges of belonging; over-againstness as a way of relating to surrounding culture; a set of doctrines, beliefs and practices that give adherents identity and group solidarity; and in the case of a Christian cult, a particular and peculiar hermeneutic approach to the Bible.

This book is a gripping read. It is not a biography of Darby. It is a detailed critical narrative of the emergence of the Exclusive brethren under Darby, and near the end, a brief account of how the movement disintegrated in Darby’s later years and following his death. Within the constraining boundaries of the Exclusives, Darby operated as an organisational genius, with at times deep pastoral purpose, and at other times ruthless excision of any opposition, real or perceived. The narrative of events leading to the split of 1847/8, makes harrowing reading. Darby was a master tactician, a skilled manipulator, a master of argumentative rhetoric and damaging insinuation, but also a catalyst for those who sought comfort, identity and spiritual security within a tightly controlled community.

The demolition of Benjamin Wills Newton, his character, status and social networks in the 1840’s which led to the split, and the breaking of Edward Cronin in 1880, the oldest surviving member of the originating Assembly, by excluding him from fellowship for life and ruining his economic and social capital as a doctor, read like case studies in post-graduate Machiavellian outmanoeuvring. These narratives about the use and abuse of power, as told by Akenson, are a character study in ecclesial realpolitik underpinned by adamantine spiritual self-confidence. Darby emerges from these two episodes as one whose ways of treating those he opposed contradicted the more obvious virtues expected of those who believed their way of being embodied as “the (only) church of God.”

Following his death, Darby’s theological legacy would make enormous in inroads in North America, so that “premillennial dispensationalism” would develop in the 20^th Century to become one of the most popular and powerful clusters of theological ideas amongst millions of evangelicals. Ideas such as the rapture, the millennial reign, a two stage Second Coming of Jesus, the separation of Israel and Church into two dispensational realities, were peculiar aberrations from all previous expressions of the Christian eschatological tradition. Decisive in that process, was the influence over 60 years of JND, the founder, theological arbiter and unassailable authority within the movement during his lifetime.

This is a big book. It covers the origins of the Brethren, the start of Faith Missions, the developing of a peculiar biblical hermeneutic on prophecy and the end times, the formation of tight knit, radically committed separatist Assemblies, and the evolution of a cult centred on the teaching, influence and sheer force of personality that was J N Darby. There are kinder, more sympathetic even admiring accounts of Darby’s life; but they too have to find ways of explaining let alone justifying, the sometimes deplorable methods by which Darby established, maintained and propagated the true and only Church of God on earth.

Answering the Question Everyone We Meet Asks Us.

In the novel Gilead, a grandfather writes long letters to his grandson. He is a very old pastor, and has learned stuff that it’s important to know, and important for his grandson to learn. Here’s one of the bottom line lessons of a good life:

“This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, what is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation.”

Jesus taught some astonishing things. Like this. “Forasmuch as you did it for one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.” Whether food for the hungry, company for the lonely, clothes and dignity for the poor, care and protection for the vulnerable – in each encounter with others, “What is the Lord asking of me, here, now?” Answer; treat this stranger the way you would treat Jesus.