His relationship with the Nazi state became ambivalent, and he was removed from his post as vice-dean of the faculty of Bonn University in January 1943 for anti-fascist statements in a lecture on "Anthony and Cleopatra.
Although vindicated by a review of his writings, he advised the rector on 8 December 1947 that he would accept an offer from Erlangen University to take up the newly-created chair of New Testament Studies.
He showed that the Easter liturgy does not follow the Gospel but the funerary ritual of Julius Caesar[5] and that the Clementia Caesaris was the pre-Christian forerunner of Christ's forgiveness.
[1] He also taught that divine punishment after death was real, but that it was not arbitrary or vindictive, but remedial and limited as to duration, essentially Purgatory.
a new viewpoint impressed itself on the then flourishing apocryphal literature: the idea that suffering and martyrdom for one's faith are the very meaning of the happenings of history, for a double reason: (a) they represent a causal necessity in the great fight between the divine and the satanic order.
In short, the apocalyptic, pre-Christian literature offers this double justification of martyrdom: causally it is inescapable, and teleologically ("what for") it is absolutely meaningful.
The believer's conflict with the "world" is the surest indication that the disciple is true to the master, testifying for another reality and preparing for the coming of the kingdom.