Bonhoeffer

Publisher’s Weekly

In this weighty, riveting analysis of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Metaxas (Amazing Grace) offers a comprehensive review of one of history's darkest eras, along with a fascinating exploration of the familial, cultural and religious influences that formed one of the world's greatest contemporary theologians. A passionate narrative voice combines with meticulous research to unpack the confluence of circumstances and personalities that led Germany from the defeat of WWI to the atrocities of WWII. Abundant source documentation (sermons, letters, journal entries, lectures, the Barman Declaration) brings to life the personalities and experiences that shaped Bonhoeffer: his highly intellectual, musical family; theologically liberal professors, pastoral colleagues and students; his extensive study, work, and travel abroad. Tracing Bonhoeffer's developing call to be a Jeremiah-like prophet in his own time and a growing understanding that the church was called "to speak for those who could not speak," Metaxas details Bonhoeffer's role in religious resistance to Nazism, and provides a compelling account of the faith journey that eventually involved the Lutheran pastor in unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Hitler. Insightful and illuminating, this tome makes a powerful contribution to biography, history and theology. (Apr.)

Christianity Today

Last month marked 65 years since the doomed Nazi regime hanged German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer on April 9, 1945. Christians across the theological spectrum continue to revere him. Some remember his advocacy for Jews, others his teaching on "costly grace," and still more his aid to officers plotting to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

But his legacy has been disputed over time. Some have championed him as a post-Christian prophet of ethics that transcend confession. Pacifists claim Bonhoeffer because he expressed scruples about war and his help with killing a head of state, even one so evil as Hitler. Many evangelicals revere him as an opponent of "cheap grace," champion of Life Together, and model of The Cost of Discipleship.

Eric Metaxas clears up many misconceptions, giving priority to Bonhoeffer's own words and actions, in a massive and masterful new biography, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. During a harrowing time when many churches adopted Nazi ideology and others buckled under government pressure, Bonhoeffer stood strong, if sometimes alone. Metaxas presents Bonhoeffer as a clear-headed, deeply convicted Christian who submitted to no one and nothing except God and his Word. In short, Bonhoeffer's life shows that theology has consequences.

Bonhoeffer earned his doctorate at Berlin University in 1927 when he was 21. Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of liberal theology, once served on the school's faculty. But while Bonhoeffer studied there, Adolf von Harnack reigned in his waning years. Harnack dismissed biblical miracles as fictitious and denied canonicity for the Gospel of John. Bonhoeffer highly esteemed Harnack, though they often reached differing theological conclusions. Bonhoeffer tended toward Swiss-born theologian Karl Barth's emphasis on God's transcendence. Countering Harnack's historical criticism, Barth taught that we can only know God because he has revealed himself in his Word.

German theology in the early 20th century set the global standard. Nevertheless, Bonhoeffer elected to spend some time in New York City studying at Union Theological Seminary, the capital of progressive American theology. Nearby, at the ornate new Riverside Church, the eminent pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick championed the social gospel. In 1922 he had preached the landmark sermon "Shall the Fundamentalists Win?" in which he rejected several key Christian beliefs, including Christ's divinity and the Resurrection. The New York liberals hardly impressed Bonhoeffer.

"There is no theology here," Bonhoeffer wrote to a colleague back in Germany. "The students—on the average twenty-five to thirty years old—are completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about. They are unfamiliar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level."

Bonhoeffer scoffed at American churches that traded away repentance and faith in Christ for unbounded faith in progress. Yet he found a more hopeful, traditional message in African American churches he visited. Not only did he hear the Word of God proclaimed with confidence, but he also saw how downtrodden people took comfort in the sure hope of deliverance. Looking back on Bonhoeffer's life, Metaxas observes a corresponding surge in piety after these visits. Friends noticed a newfound purpose to his life as Bonhoeffer passionately defended the voiceless and protected the church's historical witness. He began attending church regularly for the first time in his life. Though his mother believed, Bonhoeffer had grown up mostly surrounded by religious skeptics, including his father, Germany's most eminent psychologist. Even so, they all imbibed a culture undeniably shaped by Christianity, particularly Martin Luther.

Yet over time, historical criticism of the Scriptures by scholars such as Harnack chipped away at the Lutheran fortress. When this bulwark fell, theology was up for grabs. Philosophers did their part to eradicate the last semblances of divine revelation. In place of a crucified Messiah, Friedrich Nietzsche substituted the Übermensch, a man unbounded by objective ethics. Like the Übermensch, Hitler pursued his ends of Aryan domination by any means necessary, dooming 6 million Jews and millions of other supposed enemies under the Nazi regime. German church leaders who had jettisoned divine revelation could not discern the threat.

At the same time, few Christians who respected Scripture bothered to oppose Hitler, either. With the embarrassment of World War I fresh in German minds, Hitler's early military successes led to a surge in nationalism. Bonhoeffer eventually soured on the relatively conservative Confessing Church when few pastors acted on the stirring anti-Nazi rhetoric of the Barmen Declaration, drafted primarily by Barth in 1934. Later, many Confessing Church pastors went so far as to swear a mandatory oath of allegiance to Hitler after offering nominal protest. Bonhoeffer's close friend, Eberhard Bethge, observed the urgent necessity of direct action against Nazi rule.

"We now realized that mere confession, no matter how courageous, inescapably meant complicity with the murderers, even though there would always be new acts of refusing to be co-opted and even though we would preach 'Christ alone' Sunday after Sunday," Bethge wrote. "During the whole time the Nazi state never considered it necessary to prohibit such preaching. Why would it?"

Even so, the Nazis targeted Confessing Church pastors and drafted them into front-line service. By the end of World War II, 80 of the 150 pastors trained by Bonhoeffer at the Confessing Church seminary in Finkenwalde had been killed. Bonhoeffer corresponded with these ministers until his dying days in SS prisons and concentration camps. Bonhoeffer treated his captors with undeserved grace. Theology, rooted in God's revealed Word, stiffened his resolve even as it softened his personal manner. In the end, however, theology mattered only if he was willing to act on it.

"Who stands fast?" Bonhoeffer asked. "Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God—the responsible man, who tried to make his whole life an answer to the call of God."

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/mayweb-only/28-21.0.html

The Wall Street Journal

In April 1933, during the early months of Nazi rule in Germany, the "Aryan Paragraph," as it came to be called, went into effect. A new law banned anyone of Jewish descent from government employment. Hitler's assault on the Jews—already so evidently under way in his toxic rhetoric and in the ideological imperatives of his party—was moving into a crushing legal phase. German churches, which relied on state support, now faced a choice: preserve their subsidies by dismissing their pastors and employees with Jewish blood—or resist. Most Protestant and Catholic leaders fell into line, visibly currying favor with the regime or quietly complying with its edict.

Such ready capitulation makes the views of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young Lutheran theologian in Hitler's Germany, all the more remarkable. Within days of the new law's promulgation, the 27-year-old pastor published an essay titled "The Church and the Jewish Question," in which he challenged the legitimacy of a regime that contravened the tenets of Christianity. The churches of Germany, he wrote, shared "an unconditional obligation" to help the victims of an unjust state "even if they [the victims] do not belong to the Christian community." He went further: Christians might be called upon not only to "bandage the victims under the wheel" of oppression but "to put a spoke in the wheel itself." Before the decade was out, Bonhoeffer would join a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and pay for such action with his life.

In "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy," Eric Metaxas tells Bonhoeffer's story with passion and theological sophistication, often challenging revisionist accounts that make Bonhoeffer out to be a "humanist" or ethicist for whom religious doctrine was easily disposable. In "Bonhoeffer" we meet a complex, provocative figure: an orthodox Christian who, at a grave historical moment, rejected what he called "cheap grace"—belief without bold and sacrificial action.

Since the 1960s, some of Bonhoeffer's admirers have seized upon a phrase from one of his letters—"religionless Christianity"—to argue that he favored social action over theology. In fact, Bonhoeffer used the phrase to suggest the kind of ritualistic and over-intellectualized faith that had failed to prevent the rise of Hitler. It was precisely religionless Christianity that he worried about. After a 1939 visit to New York's Riverside Church, a citadel of social-gospel liberalism, he wrote that he was stunned by the "self-indulgent" and "idolatrous religion" that he saw there. "I have no doubt at all that one day the storm will blow with full force on this religious hand-out," he wrote, "if God himself is still anywhere on the scene."

As the storms of hatred raged in Germany, Bonhoeffer moved beyond "confession"—that is, preaching and writing—and into rebellion. By the summer of 1940, he was recruited by Adm. Wilhelm Canaris and others as a double agent for their conspiracy against Hitler, an effort that operated out of the Abwehr (Nazi military intelligence). Henceforth he would pretend allegiance to the regime and pass along to the conspirators—whose goal was Hitler's assassination—whatever intelligence he could gather. He depended on deception for his survival.

It was a bizarre role for a religious man, and a hitherto loyal German citizen, to play. As Mr. Metaxas notes: "For a pastor to be involved in a plot whose linchpin was the assassination of the head of state during a time of war, when brothers and sons and fathers were giving their lives for their country, was unthinkable." And yet it became thinkable for Bonhoeffer precisely because his understanding of faith required more than adhering to tidy legalisms about truth-telling and nonviolence.

Mr. Metaxas notes that Bonhoeffer drew deeply from historic Christianity, especially its emphasis on the love of God expressed in the life and teachings of Jesus. Bonhoeffer also had an extraordinary capacity for empathy, responding with ever more horror to the plight of those around him. In his book "Ethics" (1949), he chastised those who imagined they could confine their faith to the sanctuary and still live responsibly in an unjust world. In "The Cost of Discipleship" (1937), he made unreserved obedience to Jesus—in every realm of life—the mark of authentic belief. "If we worry about the dangers that beset us, if we gaze at the road instead of at him who goes before, we are already straying from the path."

It is here that many who invoke Bonhoeffer for their own causes stumble grievously. Atheists such as Christopher Hitchens praise his "admirable but nebulous humanism." Liberals exalt his social conscience while setting aside his belief in sin and judgment. The theologian Stanley Hauerwas has even tried to recruit Bonhoeffer for the pacifist cause. But Bonhoeffer argued pointedly in the opposite direction. "Only at the cost of self-deception," he wrote, can observant Christians preserve a facade of "private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world."

After a failed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1943, Bonhoeffer was arrested on charges of assisting Jews and subverting Nazi policies. Two years later, in early April 1945—after his full involvement in the conspiracy became known—he was executed at the Flossenburg concentration camp in Bavaria. By all accounts he faced with courage and serenity the ultimate consequence of his choices. His was a radical obedience to God, a frame of mind widely viewed today with fear and loathing, even among the faithful. In "Bonhoeffer," Mr. Metaxas reminds us that there are forms of religion—respectable, domesticated, timid—that may end up doing the devil's work for him.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303491304575189132952513158.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Kirkus

A welcome new biography of one of the 20th century's leading lights.

Metaxas (Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God: The Jesus Edition, 2010, etc.) magnificently captures the life of theologian and anti-Nazi activist Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), who "thought it the plain duty of the Christian—and the privilege and honor—to suffer with those who suffered." In the finest treatment of the man since Eberhard Bethge's Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Man of Vision, Man of Courage (1970), Metaxas presents a complete, accessible picture of this important figure, whose story is inspiring, instructive and international in scope. Coming of age in Germany at the close of World War I, the precocious Bonhoeffer quickly became a rising star on the international theological scene. In the 1930s he became a leader of the Confessing Church movement, which stood against Hitler, and helped organize its underground seminary. He also joined the Abwehr, the German intelligence agency in which foment against Hitler was most active. Bonhoeffer took part in the conspiracy to kill Hitler, which caused his imprisonment and eventual hanging, just weeks before the end of the war. Throughout this period he also wrote some of the greatest works of practical theology to come out of the first half of the 20th century. Metaxas rightly focuses on his subject's life, not his theology, though readers will learn plenty about his theology as well. The author makes liberal use of primary sources, which bring Bonhoeffer and other characters to vivid life. For the most part, Metaxas allows this epic story to play itself out, unhindered by commentary; where he does add his own voice, the conclusions are sage.

A definitive Bonhoeffer biography for the 21st century.

Books & Culture

A decade ago, Christianity Today published a list of the ten best religious books of the 20th century. Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship came in second, behind only C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity—a measure of Bonhoeffer's standing among contemporary Christians, and evangelicals in particular. And yet until now, American readers have lacked an account of Bonhoeffer's life that is both thorough and engagingly readable, a book that captures the full sweep of his remarkable story and highlights its meaning for us today. In Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Eric Metaxas has given us just such a book.

Library shelves are already loaded with studies of Bonhoeffer from every conceivable angle. In The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon: Portraits of a Protestant Saint, Stephen Haynes argues that Bonhoeffer fits the criteria for a saint, while Craig Slane has written a monograph entitled Bonhoeffer as Martyr. But for the television and movie-soaked American evangelical, perhaps Bonhoeffer's appeal can be explained best with the term "hero," in the "Entertainment Weekly All-time Coolest Heroes in Pop Culture" sense: James Bond, Superman, Spider-Man, Jack Bauer, Batman, etc. An intelligent, courageous, romantic figure faces stark choices as the world is threatened by a ruthless evil that perhaps only he has the power to stop.

Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who joined the Nazi intelligence service so that he might travel abroad and covertly plot the overthrow of the Nazi regime. Meanwhile, he wrote critically acclaimed prose, lost his professorial position at Berlin University for his convictions, opened a secret training facility for young pastors, and fell in love. In the end, his story took a tragic turn: he was captured, imprisoned, and executed in 1945.

The instinct for a good story is not new to Metaxas, whose biography of William Wilberforce served as the "official companion book" to the 2007 feature film Amazing Grace. Of course it is a subject that has been treated many times before—in a Peabody Award-winning Focus on the Family radio series, a documentary shown on PBS, and in many other formats and venues. Because Bonhoeffer's story is so inspiring, it has never lacked people ready to appropriate it. Hearing of Bonhoeffer's perilous situation in 1939, Reinhold Niebuhr, the most famous American theologian of his era, personally rallied others to welcome Bonhoeffer to the United States to escape Hitler's Germany, and a lecture tour was duly organized. (Some things change in America, but much remains the same.) Bonhoeffer ended up abruptly cancelling the tour to return to the struggle in Germany. In 1945, a memorial service held for him in England was heard live on BBC radio before his parents in Germany even knew for sure that he had died.

In 1969, Robert Huldschiner wrote an article on "The Quest for the Historical Bonhoeffer" because radicals, liberals, and conservatives alike were claiming his heroic story as an embodiment of their distinctive convictions. Haynes explains it this way: "His spirituality may be cast in traditional categories familiar to orthodox Christians (e.g., commitment to prayer, Bible reading, preaching), in more progressive terms that appeal to mainline liberals (e.g., discipleship that emphasizes peace and justice), or in quasi-secular terms suited to a pluralistic, post-Christian culture (integrity between his convictions and behavior, advocacy for human rights)." It is a rare figure who is invoked in the liberal treatises Honest to God (1963) by John A. T. Robinson and The Secular City (1965) by Harvey Cox as well as This Momentary Marriage (2009) by conservative Reformed pastor John Piper and Performing the Faith (2007) by postliberal pacifist Stanley Hauerwas.

And now we have this riveting biography, published by Thomas Nelson, with a foreword by Presbyterian Church of America pastor Tim Keller. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Eric Metaxas gives us a Bonhoeffer who looks a lot like an American evangelical—an extraordinarily courageous American evangelical. Bonhoeffer grows up in a family with privilege, travels abroad, gets advanced degrees, teaches Sunday school, daily reads his Bible and prays, is dismissive of American liberal theology, breaks with the institutional church, is not a complete pacifist, and is concerned about abortion. All of this is accurate, and yet it may induce cognitive dissonance for readers who are familiar with Bonhoeffer's theology and Eberhard Bethge's definitive scholarly biography—readers who have repeatedly been struck by cultural differences (and perhaps also theological differences) between the way Bonhoeffer and American evangelicals talk about matters such as evangelism and biblical interpretation. Still, this new biography is a welcome and significant contribution. Metaxas keeps a firm grasp on the scholarly consensus while holding the reader's attention from the first page to the last, and his book will serve as a gateway for many people to a much fuller understanding of Bonhoeffer.

What will be the impact of this heroic tale on American evangelicals? Haynes insightfully warns us that people tend to unreflectively associate themselves with Bonhoeffer and draw parallels between their perceived enemies and Nazi Germany. In other words, Bonhoeffer's story can be misused to fuel self-righteousness. Evangelicals in the United States are not a persecuted minority threatened with annihilation. On the other hand, evangelicals are similar to Bonhoeffer in that they find themselves citizens of a militarily powerful country consisting predominantly of conservative Protestants. Like the church in Bonhoeffer's Germany, evangelicals need to seek renewal through truth-telling, accountability, education of the young, and Scripture.

FOREWORD

“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe.”

These haunting words of pastor, theologian, and murdered anti-Nazi spy Dietrich Bonhoeffer resonate in a captivating biography by Eric Metaxas. In Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Metaxas examines the life of a man caught in a heart-rending dilemma: stand up to the Nazis and Hitler himself, necessitating deceit and complicity in an assassination; or remain silent, allowing the murder of thousands. This is the true story of a pastor whose life influenced great leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu, and others, and whose teachings have been embraced by conservative and liberal theologians alike. But this book suggests that the choices of his life may provide his greatest lesson, as they raised powerful questions about ethics and theology that challenge us today.

Bonhoeffer explores the murky shadows that sometimes exist when one stands firmly on one’s beliefs. Right actions come easily when they require little sacrifice and avoid moral gray areas. But what happens when none of the available options appear wholly pure? Metaxas leads the readers through such questions, revealing the depth of conviction and theological grounding supporting Bonhoeffer’s life choices and causing readers to grapple with their own sense of right and wrong.

Bonhoeffer’s journey, physically, intellectually, and theologically, serves as the heart of Metaxas’ book. He reveals that for Bonhoeffer, the path to conspiracy rose directly out of righteous conviction, deep theological thought, and an unparalleled family background. The author details Bonhoeffer’s early life in an elite family that was highly respected in German social, political, and academic spheres. His family valued independent thought and carefully delineated convictions. So when their trusted positions allowed them to see the Nazi atrocities the moment they occurred, many in the family stood against Hitler’s regime.

As a pastor, Bonhoeffer further believed godly people must stand for those who could not protect themselves, especially the Jewish people. His deep faith and desire to follow God’s will, which he shared with his theology students and congregants, meant he could not be silent. But when conferences, letters, and calls to action brought few results, he knew further action must be taken. One of his closest allies in the fight said, “We now realized that mere confession, no matter how courageous, inescapably meant complicity with the murders.”

Eventually, through his powerful connections in the church and government, Bonhoeffer became a spy and joined a group that attempted to assassinate Hitler and many of his leaders. Bonhoeffer’s leadership influenced others, from pastors to generals close to Hitler, to take bold stands as well. After several unsuccessful attempts on Hitler’s life, however, Bonhoeffer’s role was eventually uncovered. After a lengthy imprisonment, he was killed by the Nazi regime just three weeks before the end of the war.

Metaxas masterfully weaves a tantalizing story even as he explores the biblical justification behind Bonhoeffer’s philosophy and the events that shaped it. Christians interested in Bonhoeffer’s theology will find it illuminated in the fuller context of his life. Believers seeking inspiration for living a bold life of faith will receive it in abundance. Readers fascinated with this era in history will discover revealing glimpses behind the scenes of the anti-Hitler movement.

Yet historians will find this a solid academic work. Metaxas uses primary sources such as personal letters, speeches, government documents, first-hand accounts, and documentary footage for his research. Although, at times, one feels the book seems at bit too glowing, lacking any alternative opinions, the author’s experience with historical material shines. A Yale graduate, Metaxas authored the New York Times bestseller Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery. He has served as a cultural commentator for Fox News and CNN and hosts the Manhattan speakers’ series Socrates in the City.

Metaxas strives to help readers comprehend a complicated man with complicated views that are often misunderstood. Bonhoeffer’s story quietly provokes readers to radically live out their convictions and to wrestle with how those beliefs would impact their lives should they be lived to their fullest extent. One of Bonhoeffer’s students said he “was a person about whom one had a feeling that he was completely whole, a man who believes in what he thinks and does what he believes in.” This book inspires the reader to be that kind of person, too. And one can’t help but delight in a story of someone doing what at first glance appears to be wrong, just to do right. After all, as the author says, Bonhoeffer “was not a ‘worldly’ or ‘compromised’ pastor, but a pastor whose very devotion to God depended on his deceiving the evil powers ranged against him. He was serving God by taking them all for a long ride.” (April) Diane Gardner