Who Stands Fast?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Thomas Merton on Obedience By William D. Apel

Merton gained approval for the publication of Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, perhaps the most representative piece of his new writings. This work brought Merton the contemporary closer to Bonhoeffer the contemporary. Derived from his personal notebooks kept since 1956, Conjectures drew directly upon insights from Bonhoeffer's Ethics and his Letters and Papers from Prison. It reveals to us a transformed Merton. His years as a "petulant ascetic" had passed, and now his transformed obedience linked him in solidarity with movements for peace and justice throughout God's wider world. In Conjectures. Merton quotes freely from Bonhoeffer. He bemoans what Bonhoeffer referred to as " the failure of reasonable people to perceive either the depths of evil or the depth of the holy."23  Merton continued, "We are living under a tyranny of untruth which confirms itself in power and establishes a more and more total control over men in proportion as they convince themselves they are resisting evil." 24 Noting the insanity of the nuclear arms race, the rampant violence in American society, its racism and brutal escalation of the war in Vietnam, Merton unmasked the "masquerade of evil" he identified in American militarism abroad and racism at home. In short, Merton had discovered Bonhoeffer's observation that most ·'reasonable people" would rather acquiesce in the "tyranny of untruth" than ask the hard questions that uncover the Lie1.

 23. Merton, Conjectures 62.
24. Merton. Conjectures 68.

1(n.d.). Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Thomas Merton on Obedience. Retrieved November 5, 2019, from http://merton.org/ITMS/Seasonal/23/23-2Apel.pdf