“BEFORE GOD WITHOUT GOD”
At Arantzazu (Oñati)
October 2-4, 2026 (Friday afternoon to Sunday noon)
Facilitated by José Arregi
Txema Ormazabal: jmormazabal55@gmail.com
Kontxi Arregi: Tel. 620237634
PRESENTATION
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) stands as one of the great Christian witnesses of the twentieth century, through his radical ethical commitment and his groundbreaking theological insights. He inspired Martin Luther King and theologians—far too often overlooked—such as Tillich and Robinson. A prophet for our time.
In his brief and intense life, he never settled into certainty. He questioned, he sought, he walked the path. A brilliant and promising young theologian, he risked everything: his academic prestige, his standing in the Church, his religious faith, even his god. He lost it all, until he stood “Before God Without God”, like Jesus on the cross, like so many men and women of his troubled age and ours.
Arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo at age 37, his fellow prisoners—radically committed atheists devoted to justice—opened his eyes to the presence of divine Mystery at the heart of a world that could no longer believe in the distant supreme god, the providential god, the “stopgap” god, the god who explains our riddles and solves our problems. He felt himself one with them, abandoned by god. And, in abandoning god, he surrendered to God, the heartbeat within the joys and sorrows of a world without religion and without god. He was hanged at Flossenburg concentration camp on April 9, 1945. “This is the end. For me, the beginning of life,” were his last words moments before.
His theology and spirituality were ahead of their time and were not embraced by the Churches and the great theologians. They remain light for us in a post-theistic and post-atheistic age that seeks and needs a transformative mystical breath.
His foundational work is Letters and Papers from Prison, a posthumous collection of much of his correspondence written from his imprisonment until his execution, as well as the poems and theological meditations written during that time, from April 1943 to April 1945. It captures the best of his biography and a thought he never had the chance to systematize. At the Arantzazu retreat, we will breathe in the deep spirit of these texts.
José Arregi
www.josearregi.com