Review of "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy"

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough for us to find our way back?" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Eric Metaxas has provided a valuable service to God's people--and to the German evangelical heritage in specific--by providing a new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor executed for his part in a conspiracy to assassinate Adolph Hilter. The Gestapo hanged him 3 weeks before Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies.

Metaxes seems to have two aims behind his writing: to rescue Bonhoeffer from theological progressives who have co-opted his views as their own, and to distinguish evangelicalism from what passed for Christianity in Nazi Germany.

As to the first aim, the book provides much-needed context for Bonhoeffer's views, and it's that lack of context that has given some progressives the idea that Bonhoeffer was an early advocate of notions they later embraced (most famously, his passing comments of the need for "religionless Christianity" in one of his prison letters). 

In pursuit of the second aim, Metaxas overplays his descriptions of Nazi leadership so that Rohm is described as "that bull-necked pervert" (230), Himmler as "superlatively despicable" (232), Heckle pursued "a strategy of double-barreled flatuence" (242), and Hitler was "the former Vienese vagrant" (313) who operated out of "canine sensitivity" and "lupine ruthlessness" (230). The words and decisions of these men in history were chilling enough without such over-the-top descriptors. Still, Metaxas leaves no doubt of the huge difference between evangelical Christianity and the abberant version that advocated for Hitler's policies in the 30s and 40s.

It was touching to read the exchanges between Bonhoeffer and his fiance (a relationship that never made it to the altar), and eye-opening to read his thoughts on his exposure to American Christianity--particulary his disappointment with liberal pulpits, his appreciation for what was then called "fundamentalist" preaching, and his fascination with African-American worship.

Since this year marks the 100th anniversary of Bonhoeffer's birth, it would be a good year to get familiar with this "pastor, martyr, prophet, spy" through Metaxas' biography of the man.