Chaplain (Colonel) Timothy Mallard, command chaplain of US Army Europe, spoke about Dietrich Bonhoeffer during Providence’s Christianity and National Security Conference in November 2019. His remarks are his views and are not representative of the US Army or government. The following is a transcript of the lecture.
Well as Mark said good morning. I’m Chaplain Timothy Mallard, here in an unofficial capacity so I’m wearing my suit today as opposed to my classes last night. But I still, since I’m an active serving officer in the United States Army, have to predicate my remarks this morning with the standard disclaimer that my words today don’t represent the policy, programs, or position of the United States Government, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, the US Army Chaplain Corp, or anybody associated with any of the DoD. They’re simply mine and mine alone for purpose of academic discussion here for the education of the group. That’s all.
And I’m glad I’m speaking after Emily’s fine talk and Dan’s this morning because I’m continuing on this theme of ontology. Mark, would it be possible to get a glass of water? This is also a question of critical importance within the profession of arms today. What I’m going to do this morning is tackle Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 20 minutes, leave time for Q&A, ask a question, provide the context, draw the five points of Bonhoeffer’s theology, specifically his ecclesiology. I’ve done my work on his ecclesiology as opposed to his Christology. Then I want to apply that in the context of the American profession of arms.
The question is this: What will be the intrinsic value of a warrior as a person in the 21st Century in the American profession of arms? What will be the intrinsic value of a warrior as a person in the 21st Century in the American profession of arms? I can’t speak for Britain, France, Germany, or other traditions. They must ask that question in their context, but we can ask it in this context. That’s a question that deepens for each of us, and I’ll demonstrate that at the end.
What will be the intrinsic value of a warrior as a person in the 21st Century in the American profession of arms? That may seem straightforward, and it is. But the context in which that question must be answered is increasingly complex. As I said last night at an IRD book launch, I thank Mark and the team at IRD for hosting that event, and I’ll talk more about the book in a minute.
As I said last night, the profession of arms exists in several contextual changes. The return of great power competition is a strategic reality for the United States. The demonstrated threat potential of Russia and China and the rise of risk in major-theater war. The increase of technological reliance in future war – the rise of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons systems. The growing divide between the American public and its military services. The growing divide between the American public and its military services, and I can elucidate that more at the end of the forum. Also, the advance of America’s joint-operational doctrine known as multi-domain operations. I don’t think the American public understands that operational doctrine for the United States military has turned toward multi-domain operations in the context of great power competition, which will be simultaneous and continuous warfare in land, sea, aerospace, and cyberspace.
As I said last night, for the first time in human history, that now includes the first synthetic domain of war – cyberspace. Previously, those other four domains were natural. I must note that last month, the United States Army introduced its Army-People Strategy. I’m not being euphemistic; that is the title. I love the Army. Only we could come up with a title like Army-People Strategy. Riveting.
It’s actually a very important document. In the preface, it says: “The total Army must remain ready as the world’s premier combat force. That readiness relies upon people. Equipment does not learn, understand, innovate, build cohesive teams, or exercise judgment. People do. Human capabilities such as resiliency, critical thinking, comfort with ambiguity, the ability to accept prudent risk, and the ability to adjust rapidly all define our profession.”
The Army published that last month. That’s an aspirational statement. It’s also a statement of strategy and policy for the United States Army. The Army is going to remain people-centric, and you can understand why. That total Army force – active, guard, reserve – is 1.4 million people. The Army takes in 11,000 people a month. The Army exits that many people a month as well because people retire or move on.
That’s an amazing context for the profession of arms. In response to that context, what does theological ethics have to say about this issue? I want to give one voice: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I want to give five concepts from his ecclesiology. Understand, Bonhoeffer never jumped straight to mission like we do as Americans. He predicates his argument on foundational ideas. His ability to talk about an ethical issue like the nature of the human person within the military force, the profession of arms, is predicated in his ecclesiology on five things.
First, drawing heavily although not exclusively on Martin Luther’s two kingdoms construct, Bonhoeffer called for an understanding by the culture and the state of the Church’s role in society. That’s the first concept, the Church’s role in society. Bonhoeffer was interested in the form of the Church within the world because he presciently saw the problem arising from the post-World War I German social crisis. He knew the Christian community in Germany was struggling for a renewed identity. It had led its theological enterprises to support the nationalism that underlay the imperial ambitions of Kaiser and Germany, both prior to and during World War I.
Second, related to Bonhoeffer’s distinction between Church and state was the idea of the Church as the “bearer of office.” That’s his term. The “bearer of office,” for all factors relative to the administration of ecclesial life. Bonhoeffer’s thinking is complete and prescriptive, encompassing rites, sacraments, and ordinances of the Christian faith, the administration of theological education, the ordination and assignment of ministers, and the regulation of collective Protestant Church life – remember that is his context.
Moreover, for Bonhoeffer, it was impossible for the Church to function in society without a clear understanding of its continuing ecclesial responsibilities to lead parishioners in the traditional craft and practice of the preaching of the Word and the right administration of the Sacraments. However, this role would come into conflict during the Church struggle, the Kirkenkampf, where the state’s usurpation of Church authority and practices resulted from the passage of the Aryan paragraphs, principally in 1933 and 1935.
Third, the fallen nature of the Church within humanity. As Bonhoeffer termed it in Latin, the Church has imperfect or corrupted status – status corruptus is his term. This is a major idea of Bonhoeffer’s early ecclesiology, one he ties directly to the Fall and the Creation account of Genesis 1. Bonhoeffer considered that the Church must always consider its sinful nature, but in a departure from Luther and traditional Lutheranism, this was not only an individual but also a corporate reality and a natural outgrowth of the rupture of sin in the Fall.
Such a collective nature must remain in the forefront of the Church’s self-understanding, leading to humility and greater fidelity to its communal calling of vicarious, representative action to the culture, the state, and witness to Jesus Christ. That term vicarious representative action is critical in Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology and comes from his doctoral dissertation Sanctorum Communio. The German term for vicarious representative action ultimately finds its ultimate expression in Jesus Christ on the cross for us. Bonhoeffer links this to the Church’s role in the world. Such a corporate self-understanding is grounded in a posture of fidelity to the character of Christ and humility in the Church’s continuing need for redemption and engagement with the world.
Fourth, ally to the system, to this fallen nature, is another theological concept: the ongoing temptation of the Church in sin to want to be like God. Bonhoeffer’s term in Latin is sicut et Deus. Sicut et Deus. From his exposition of the first three chapters of Genesis, Bonhoeffer sees that the Church must face the pressure and its continuing temptation to assume the status of God in the world. This is particularly true when the state assumes the idolatrous nature of a God in God’s place and calls the Church to shift its allegiance to the state in false worship and discipleship.
For Bonhoeffer, there are two critical theological realities related to the Fall: the sinful nature of the Church and the temptation to supplant God as God. For him, these are not only historical antecedents to the present situation. As is so often the case with Bonhoeffer, these are continual theological descriptors of reality with immense political and sociological implications for the Church, state, and culture.
Fifth, a fifth idea of Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology is his early distinction between the concept of orders of Creation versus orders of preservation. As Dan discussed, one of the early moves by the Nazis was to co-opt theology and theological terms. Bonhoeffer did as well. One of the major moves of the Third Reich, or the National Socialist Party, was to co-opt the Lutheran ideal of orders of Creation, establishing that the Church and state must be valid as one, because that was part of the orders of Creation going back to the Creation of mankind and Genesis. Bonhoeffer categorically rejected that and distinguished orders of Creation versus orders of preservation. For him, the task of the Church was to remain in the latter. We are to preserve our role and nature in the world, because that is what the world needs.
As is well known in the history of the Church struggle, the Nazi Party government apparatus sought to co-opt the Church and ecclesiastical, theological ideas for its purposes, often inverting them. Bonhoeffer saw this and altered Luther’s ideal to emphasize the importance of preservation. He relates this to the distinction between Church and state and the state’s proper role to set the conditions for the Church’s office role as the presence of witness to and embodiment of the suffering of Jesus Christ in the world. Bonhoeffer says the state has a clear role, which is to set the conditions for the Church to be preserved in the world. Though he later, in Ethics, altered the term “orders of preservation” to “mandates,” for Bonhoeffer this aspect demarcated the power and authority of the state and maintained the theological integrity of the Church’s identity, task, and culture.
Why is this important? In Bonhoeffer’s mind, why are these five concepts, among many in his ecclesiology, important to the question of the ontology of persons in the world? Because ecclesiology has important ethical implications. For Bonhoeffer, you cannot divorce ecclesiology from the ethical task of the Church in the world. It cannot be done. Remember his context: working and serving in Nazi Germany at the time. This plays out in two critical ways in Bonhoeffer’s writing, some early in his career as a theologian and much more later.
The first involves the question of the Jews, the “Judenfrage” in Germany. With the Aryan paragraphs, the initial challenge to the Church was that the Nazi state, the National Socialists, were dictating to the Protestant Church – co-opting Bishop Ludwig Müller – the idea that they could use state-imposed quasi-scientific standards of blood and heritage to determine who could accept the sacraments in the Church. They particularly wanted to use these standards to deny the sacraments to Christians of Jewish heritage, Jews who had converted to Christianity, and even those with nominal bloodline connections to Judaism. The National Socialists sought to deny them the sacraments and use that to begin separating them from the Church.
Bonhoeffer later fully confronted the Church in his role as a traitor against the Nazi state when he saw the full scope of the National Socialist program of the Final Solution. Early on, he still saw the ethical implications of this idea for Jewish Christians and Jewish citizens in Weimar German life.
Second, Bonhoeffer’s later writings from this period include a subtle invective against what he termed “the elimination of the weak.” Bonhoeffer challenged the uncritical support of the culture and often the Church for the Nazi goal of purifying the German people of the tainted racial effects of state-labeled undesirables: marginalized citizens such as Jews, gypsies, the aged, the mentally or physically handicapped, and others.
In Bonhoeffer’s theology, any attempt to cull the populace of such people denies their status as persons created in the imago Dei, because they are God-bearers just as the Church is an office bearer. It aggravates the state’s responsibility to preserve their social care and human rights and lessens the culture’s understanding of the breadth of human creation. Most importantly, it challenges the authority of God alone as the Author and Preserver of the world and of all life. This was the full import of Bonhoeffer’s attempt to stand against the elimination of the weak.
To review, I discussed five ideas about Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology. First, Bonhoeffer called for an understanding by the culture and state of the Church’s role in society. Second, related to his distinction between Church and state, was his idea of the Church as the bearer of office for all factors relevant to the administration of ecclesial life and culture. Third, the fallen nature of the Church within humanity, whose work, as Bonhoeffer termed it in Latin, is the Church’s imperfect or corrupted status corruptus. Fourth, the ongoing temptation in sin of the Church to be like God – sicut et Deus. Fifth, Bonhoeffer’s early distinction between orders of Creation versus orders of preservation.
In his own day, this played out in two critical ethical trajectories: the Church and the Jewish question, and the Nazi attempt to make the state take on the task of eliminating the weak.
Now, how do we apply this to the 21st Century American profession of arms? This will be my conclusion, and then we’ll go to Q&A. First, the Church must reclaim its role of speaking to the culture and the state on the nature of human personnel. As Emily’s talk elucidated, this is a question of incredible importance in our society and around the world but is often reduced to ornament. It becomes only about sexuality, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Bonhoeffer would say this is a very reductionist view of what it means to be a person created in the image of God. The Church must reclaim its role in speaking to the culture about the nature of the human person.
The Church, however, must follow Bonhoeffer in avoiding the temptation to assume God’s status or succumb to the power of, or supplant the role of, the state. Bonhoeffer drew stark lines between the nature and functions of Church and state.
Third, the Church must retain its primacy in its critical ability to do what only it can do: preach the Word and administer the sacraments. Following Bonhoeffer, this is essential. Additionally, in America, the Church must play three further roles, which I discuss in the book A Persistent Fire. The chapter I wrote includes unsparing comments for most American Christian denominations regarding their role in the body politic of the Republic and their relationship to the profession of arms. The three roles are as follows:
First, the Church must morally form its confessing adherents for their individual roles as citizens of the Republic. I cannot overstate this. In one of my previous positions at the Pentagon, I worked with all 192 endorsing agencies or Churches that send clergy to the United States Army Chaplains. Among these 192 denominations, Churches, and endorsements, I cannot think of one that has a denomination-wide program to morally form its people for their role as citizens in this Republic. There may be individual Churches or individual Presbyteries, but not denominations.
As I described the context of the 21st Century profession of arms, I found that once people launch their careers in public theology, they are often distant from the original body of faith in which they grew up. This is a critical goal. If we want leaders in the military and public theology to act ethically in accordance with their Christian morality, that morality must be well-formed when they are initially in that denomination.
Second, Churches must intentionally care for veterans and their families before, during, and after war. This must go beyond a simple “thank you for your service.” Churches must reassume a role as bodies of faith in caring for veterans and their families before, during, and after war. Many veterans and actively serving members in congregations are “congregational ghosts.” They are present in the congregation for a time, but they often deploy and endure horrendous experiences in war, which the congregations and Churches fail to acknowledge.
Ed Tick, a psychiatrist from Massachusetts, has written extensively about the Church’s abdication of its role in sending and receiving warriors back with rites, sacraments, or ordinances. This ideal is foreign to many denominations.
Third, Churches must do this because we are part of this Republic. As I mentioned earlier, there is a growing divide between the American military and civil society. A four-star general once told me in a speech to about 1,000 Army majors in 2004 that we are at risk of becoming a mercenary organization. The separation between the American military and the people it serves is, for me, a huge chasm. Churches and bodies of faith have abetted that separation by failing to pay attention to it.
In my reading of recent American history, this divide goes back to the rise of the all-volunteer force, when mandatory conscription was eliminated. I’m not arguing for mandatory conscription, but an unintended consequence was the creation of a technically and tactically proficient group we couldn’t afford to let go. During the 18-year conflict we didn’t expect, we repeatedly deployed the same people, putting their families through the same cycle.
Strategically, denominations, not just local congregations, have largely been silent as this gulf has widened. We need to lead the culture in reclaiming care for veterans and their families and healing this divide.
I’ve said enough. Thank you for your time and attention. I’ll take questions and answers. Well, nothing provocative.
Q&A
Question: In your mind, what would those rites look like for Churches to both send and receive, if you have a sort of thumbnail sketch?
Answer: In the just war tradition, and obviously that was something that developed over the course of Catholicism, a warrior was sent off, could not come back and reenter a congregational life until they had gone through a sacrament of confession and penance, right? So there was a type of cleansing on returning to the body of faith. I think at a minimum, and by the way I’m pushing our Chaplains in our forces… I’m pushing our Chaplains in Europe, at least where I’ve been… as we consider if we’re preparing to deploy forces and we’re going to war and then receive them back into the same communities, whether they’re Catholic, Protestant, whatever, to have sending rites of blessing and consecration for those warriors and for their families, and then when they return some sort of theological appropriate rite or sacrament or ordinance to receive them back into the life of faith but to help them then face what they’ve experienced in the war.
Over and over again one of the things that we are beginning to see as we study issues of moral and spiritual injury is that to… Number one, as Marc LiVecche has written brilliantly, moral formation acts as a hedgerow against future moral injury in war, right? So the more well-formed our warriors are morally, the less likely they are to have lasting damage from moral or spiritual injury.
But secondly, when they do return and we provide them with those rites, they have a vehicle then to face what they’ve done and perhaps then share that injury within the family system and for the type of healing to become a type of healing for the family as well. And then for the community to re-embrace them. That would be at a minimum. At a minimum. But I can’t overstate the importance prior to that of well thought-out intentional programs of moral formation, principally through institutions.
Question: Hi. Clare Brenden, Virginia University. I was just curious because we were talking about the Church’s need to step in to lessen the gap between the American public and the American forces. What methods do you imagine as being most effective for accomplishing that?
Answer: Well again, so, my charge here would be to denominations as a whole to make that a national priority as a denomination. And Frankly, I know many denominations who are in pressure just to keep the lights on and to try to look at things like evangelization and things like that. I know that there are a lot of priorities. But, to make that a national priority at the denominational level with considered, well-formed programs of religious education morally for warriors and their families, and their adherence to become the life of citizens of the republic.
But then locally. Locally I do think it’s absolutely critical for local congregations to ally themselves first of all to assess what warriors, active duty, those that happen to be in their formation, right? In their formation. In their congregation. Sorry. Uh, Active Guard Reserve and their families, and to have a microprogram of care and sustain for them, but also for the veterans who have gone beyond returning from military service. Many of you know veterans who’ve cycled.
I worked at the VA last summer. The new statistics were released. So that, it’s just over 22 veterans a day commit suicide. Now if you think about that, over the course of ten years that’s 80,000 veterans take their lives. That is four times more than we’ve lost in Iraq and Afghanistan in 18 years. So caring for those veterans in the pews I think is a test for many congregations. And if they can do that in concert and with intentionality, if there happens to be a local unit, like a National Guard Unit or reserve unit or even an active-duty base close by, and the Chaplains, they’re… they’re on, I think that that would simply be ideal.
So I think it is both a local issue, yes, but a national issue as well.
Question: Thank you so much, Chaplain. I’d like you to quote that quote again so I can get it right about the risk of us becoming a mercenary military because I think part of the problem is we don’t see our army in action. I know in Israel all the people just seem to admire the IDF a lot more and have that closer relationship than we do as Americans with our military. So I’d like to shock some people with that statement, yeah. So I need to get that right.
Answer: So I don’t have that written in my notes, but the quote is from a general, and I won’t attribute it publicly here and say who it was. He said “we are at risk of becoming a mercenary force on behalf of the American republic we serve.” Now he meant that to arrest the attention of those majors that were there in that audience that day. He did. He got all of our attention.
But I think what he was using that as a teaching point to say, and again this is 2004, so this is just three years after the war on terror has begun and we couldn’t proceed that point in 15 more years of that conflicts. But I think he was trying to get their attention and help them understand that they also have, as uniformed officers, they also have a responsibility to try and interact with and engage the public we serve
And I will say, if I can be completely selfish, that’s exactly one of the reasons I come to events like this. And I love all of my friends here, Joe, and Mark and Dan. I have a great time and I appreciate the interaction with students, but I want you to be able to interact with at least one officer from your United States Army. Right? So that is an incumbent responsibility on us who do serve in uniform now. But I also think it’s a response on the part of the incumbent, responsibility on the part of our people, to seek to engage our military as well.
By the way, if I could just tell one funny story, I was on a team at the War College. I was selected as an Eisenhower fellow and went around the nation. And our task was to engage university audiences, so we spoke at multiple universities, about what we do in the military. And so I literally… I had a nuclear physicist, I had a sub driver, we had a special operator, we had all that, and then they put me on there as a chaplain. So I talked about religion and the geopolitical issues of religion in the contemporary world. In the contemporary orbit.
And we war gamed as a team, we war gamed all of these really complex questions, how would we answer these questions, and we were all ready for them. And the first night, we spoke to an audience, this was indicative of what was to come. First people started to get in to ask questions to say what’s it like to carry a gun, and have you ever… do you like MREs? Do they taste that bad? Now some people began to get into these really complex questions, but often there was just this lack of understanding of what it’s like to be a warrior in the 21st Century American profession of arms.
And we never castigated anybody for that. We tried to answer professionally and courteously, but it was illustrative to me of just, again, how wide that gap is because at that point, and we had been serving for, all of us, 20, 21 years, 22 years, we were the first people they had ever seen in uniform who was from their military forces. I really don’t think that that should be so. Thanks very much.
