Bonheoffer, Tiller and Assassination – UPDATED

Bonheoffer, Tiller and Assassination – UPDATED June 4, 2009

Forgot to mention that I have a piece featured in First Things today, entitled Tiller, Long, Bonhoeffer and Assassination. Can you guess what it’s about?

An Excerpt:

Bonhoeffer was a brilliant theologian; his book The Cost of Discipleship is one of those books a Christian reader goes back to again and again in the course of growth. In weighing the moral question of obedience to institutions who were exceeding their own rights, he once argued, “if a teacher says to a child, ‘did your father come home drunk again last night,’ is the child bound to tell the truth?” Bonhoeffer decided no, the teacher [institution] had intruded beyond her scope, and therefore the child, to honor his father, is not obligated to subject him to judgment or mockery, or for that matter governmental intrusion. Bonhoeffer was, in the course of a terrible war, able to extrapolate that small, defensive lie into a plot to assassinate Hitler.

I hope you’ll read it all.

And I wonder if I have finally written enough about the murder of George Tiller to please some?

UPDATE: You may also want to read this excellent piece by John Zmirak, who suggests that the murder of George Tiller violates the teaching on Just Wars. (H/T Mark Shea)


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