German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer had deep insight into the necessity of "intervention" as an aspect of the responsibility to protect. Pastor, university professor, and ecumenist, he was also for some years both a military counterintelligence agent for the Nazi War Ministry and one of the inner circle of those planning to assassinate Hitler. In early 1943 he was arrested and charged with helping Jews to flee from Germany. After the failed attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944, Bonhoeffer's involvement became known and he was hanged on 9 April 1945 at Flossenbürg concentration camp.

Shortly before his arrest, he composed an essay addressed to some of the inner circle of conspirators. First published in post-war Germany as "After Ten Years," in reference to Hitler's 'reign' from 1933 to 1943, the essay is partly a theological reflection to help those colleagues who had no connection to church and held no personal religious faith to understand how he assessed that decade using as a basis a theology that regards itself as "responsible to intervene" in all aspects of public life but without imposing its doctrine on it. Here Bonhoeffer illumines a variety of aspects that contributed to the moral imperative to remove Hitler from power, that is, to "intervene."

At the end of that text he asks, in the light of all that had transpired under the command of Hitler - the deceit, brutality, atrocities, the contempt for humanity - "are we still of use?"

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learned the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward human beings. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?

There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have ... learned to see ... the events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled - in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. The important thing is that ... we should have come to look with new eyes at ... strength and weakness, that our perception of generosity, humanity, justice and mercy should have become clearer, freer, less corruptible. We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key ... for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune. This perspective from below must ... do justice to life in all its dimensions.

Here we find the perception that a particular way of seeing the world is necessary so that honesty, justice to life, what in Project Ploughshares we call "common security," is possible: "We have … learned to see … the events of world history from the perspective of those who suffer." Bonhoeffer was thinking of the victims of Nazi politics: Jews, slave labourers, prisoners, the civilian populations of the invaded territories. But I believe one can make a transfer to the human beings who are at the centre of our discussions here today.

I want to propose that, in our explorations of the theological, ethical, and political dimensions relevant to models of intervention, the cries - loud or silent - of those who suffer have hermeneutical and moral priority. We must understand that what we say and do has to be "credible in the presence of burning children," as Rabbi Irving Greenberg put it, that is to say, in the very presence, before the faces of the dead, the children, women and men, taken, murdered in their youth, maturity, old age, in the very presence, before the faces of those now dying in Darfur, those still capable of hoping, of dreaming of a different future for themselves. What University of Toronto philosopher, the late Rabbi Emil Fackenheim, called "the commanding voice of Auschwitz," is for us the commanding voice of Darfur, the worst human catastrophe at the present time, in the judgment of the United Nations.

What Bonhoeffer shows us, especially those among us who seek to live out of faith in "the prince of peace," is that the use of force - even when it contravenes the divine commandment - is not to be ruled out if no other option is available to bring to a halt the oppressive, murderous use of force. Violence is always a last, and probably also desperate, resort, but it is not outside the scope of divine forgiveness. But violence or the use of force - military force if this option has been clearly declared acceptable under particular circumstances - must be a choice to be embraced if the commanding voice of victims so indicates. I would make this argument also in relation to "civilian intervention." In my view, shaped by my experience in Nazi Germany, the threat of the use of force has to be available to that form of intervention when those to be protected are faced with continuous violence, particularly that spawned by the incredible availability and use of "small arms." I believe that models of "civilian intervention" need to include the use of force, possibly related to military force.

I would plead that, in our exploration of the theological, ethical, and political considerations relevant to "intervention models," we carefully test if our "guiding principles" here in the relatively "safe" part of the world have become "ideological," that is, "verities" beyond critique, not to be abandoned, "sacred." The "outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled" demand more from us than adherence to our principles, given their struggle against and victimization by "the principalities and powers of this world" that the Apostle Paul long ago named and opposed.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Rumscheidt is an ordained United Church minister and retired professor of theology, Atlantic School of Theology, Halifax, Nova Scotia.