Response To The Aryan Paragraph Summary

Perhaps the best work of opposition to the Aryan Paragraph as a protest against antisemitism was that of Bonhoeffer’s response to the Aryan Paragraph. In response to the Aryan Paragraph, Bonhoeffer answers the many objections to the German Church. First, and perhaps the most important was the question of the Christians Jews who already belonged to the fellowship of believers. Even the Nazi theologian Paul Althaus rejected the notion that a Jew who was already in office (which according to Romans 13, God had instituted those who are in office and must be honored as such) should be expelled, unless it was for a good reason. Next, Bonhoeffer asserts that the excommunication of Jewish Christians from the church diminishes the substance of Christ’s church because it would reject the work of Paul who emphatically stated that the cross of Christ broke down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles and that Christ had made both groups into one. Furthermore, Bonhoeffer states that “A church today that excludes Jewish Christians has itself has itself become a Jewish Christian church and has fallen away from the gospel, back to the law.” The church of Jesus Christ was never meant to be a physical or tangible organization or realized Kingdom of God here on earth. The opposition was that of an appeal

All believer are part of God’s race and we have been called to proclaim the Gospel no matter what physical race we