Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

Summary

Eric Metaxas's Bonhoeffer is a full-length popular biography of the German Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), written for a general Christian readership. It begins with the large, cultured Bonhoeffer family of Breslau and Berlin: his father Karl, a leading professor of psychiatry and neurology; his devout mother Paula, who schooled her children at home in their early years; his twin sister Sabine; and the death of his brother Walter in the First World War, which marked the family deeply. Dietrich decides as a boy to become a theologian, studies at Tübingen and Berlin under Adolf von Harnack and others, and earns his doctorate at twenty-one. Metaxas follows him to a vicarate in Barcelona and to Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1930-31, where his friendship with the African American student Frank Fisher brings him to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and its worship and preaching. Back in Berlin he lectures at the university, teaches a confirmation class in a poor district, and joins the ecumenical movement. When Hitler comes to power in 1933, Bonhoeffer gives a radio talk on false leadership, writes on the church's duty toward the Jews, and opposes the pro-Nazi German Christians and the exclusion of pastors of Jewish descent. He serves German congregations in London, befriends Bishop George Bell of Chichester, and supports the Confessing Church formed around the Barmen Declaration of 1934. From 1935 he directs an illegal seminary for Confessing Church ordinands, at Zingst and then Finkenwalde, where the shared life of prayer and study he leads gives rise to The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together; the Gestapo closes it in 1937. In 1939 he travels to New York but returns within weeks, convinced he must share his country's trials. Through his brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi he joins the military intelligence office under Admiral Canaris, which shelters conspirators against Hitler; he uses his travels to carry messages to Bell and others and helps a group of Jews escape to Switzerland. In 1943 he becomes engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer and is arrested in April. Metaxas draws on his letters from Tegel prison, describes the failed attempt on Hitler's life of 20 July 1944, the discovery of incriminating files, his transfer to the Gestapo prison, Buchenwald and Flossenbürg, and his execution on 9 April 1945, weeks before the war's end. The book was published by Thomas Nelson in 2010.

Plot or Argument

• Family and education (1906-1929)

  The Bonhoeffer household in Breslau and Berlin, the influence of his parents, the death of his brother Walter in 1918, his decision to study theology, his student years in Tübingen and Berlin, a journey to Rome, his doctoral thesis, and his vicarate in Barcelona.

• America and the ecumenical years (1930-1932)

  His year at Union Theological Seminary, friendship with Frank Fisher and worship at Abyssinian Baptist Church, travels in the United States and Mexico, and return to lecture in Berlin, teach confirmands, and work in the ecumenical movement.

• The church struggle (1933-1935)

  Hitler's rise, the radio address on leadership, the Aryan paragraph and the German Christians, the Bethel Confession, his pastorate in London, his friendship with Bishop George Bell, and the founding of the Confessing Church at Barmen.

• Finkenwalde (1935-1939)

  Bonhoeffer directs the Confessing Church seminary, writes The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, sees the seminary closed in 1937, continues training ordinands in secret, and makes his brief 1939 voyage to New York before returning to Germany.

• The conspiracy (1939-1943)

  Through Hans von Dohnanyi he enters the Abwehr as a cover, works on his Ethics, travels to Switzerland, Norway and Sweden, meets Bell at Sigtuna in 1942, helps Jews escape, and becomes engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer.

• Prison and death (1943-1945)

  Arrested in April 1943, he writes letters and papers from Tegel; after the failure of the July 1944 plot he is moved to the Gestapo prison, then to Buchenwald and Flossenbürg, where he is hanged on 9 April 1945. An epilogue follows his family and friends.

Characters

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, subject

  Lutheran pastor, theologian, seminary director and conspirator against Hitler, executed in 1945.

• Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, parents

  His father, an eminent psychiatrist and neurologist, and his mother, a devout teacher of her children.

• Sabine Leibholz, twin sister

  Married to a lawyer of Jewish descent, she emigrates with her family to England in 1938.

• Eberhard Bethge, student and friend

  Finkenwalde ordinand, closest friend, recipient of the prison letters and later his biographer.

• Hans von Dohnanyi, brother-in-law

  Jurist in the Abwehr who draws Bonhoeffer into the resistance.

• George Bell, bishop of Chichester

  English ecumenical friend to whom Bonhoeffer brings word of the conspiracy.

• Maria von Wedemeyer, fiancée

  Young woman from a Pomeranian noble family engaged to Bonhoeffer in 1943.

• Frank Fisher, friend

  African American seminarian who introduces him to the Harlem church.

• Wilhelm Canaris and Hans Oster, Abwehr officers

  Leaders of military intelligence who sheltered the conspirators.

Lessons

• Costly grace

  Metaxas presents Bonhoeffer's teaching that grace which calls for no discipleship is cheap grace, and traces how Bonhoeffer lived it out in the illegal seminary and in prison. The book invites readers to ask what following Christ requires when obedience is costly.

  • What did Bonhoeffer mean by cheap grace, as the book explains it?
  • How did the community at Finkenwalde put his teaching into practice?
  • What might costly discipleship look like in an ordinary life?

• Returning when it would be safer to stay away

  In the summer of 1939 friends in New York offered Bonhoeffer safety and work, yet after a few weeks he sailed home, believing he could not help rebuild the German church after the war if he had not shared its trials. The episode shows a choice made for conscience and solidarity rather than safety.

  • Why did Bonhoeffer go to America in 1939, and why did he return so soon?
  • What did he believe he owed to the German church and people?
  • When is staying with a community in danger the right choice?

• Speaking for those without a voice

  From 1933 Bonhoeffer argued that the church must stand with the Jews and must not exclude pastors of Jewish descent, and he later helped Jews escape. The biography presents his conviction that the church may be called not only to bandage the victims under the wheel but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.

  • How did Bonhoeffer respond to the Aryan paragraph in 1933?
  • Why did many church leaders hesitate to oppose it?
  • What responsibility do Christians have for neighbors who are being wronged?

• Conscience and conspiracy

  Bonhoeffer, who had admired Christian pacifism, joined men who planned to kill Hitler. Metaxas presents this as a costly act of responsible love; scholars have weighed how far Bonhoeffer was directly involved and how he understood it. The question of when, if ever, such resistance is right is left open for readers.

  • What role did Bonhoeffer play in the Abwehr, according to the book?
  • How did he reconcile his convictions with joining the conspiracy?
  • Can a Christian ever be justified in using violence against a tyrant?

Context

Bonhoeffer lived through the German Empire, the First World War, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. After 1933 the Nazi state sought to bring the Protestant churches under its control through the German Christian movement and a Reich bishop; the Confessing Church, organized at the Barmen Synod of 1934, rejected that claim, though it was internally divided and often cautious. Bonhoeffer belonged to the more uncompromising wing. During the war the military intelligence office (Abwehr) under Admiral Canaris sheltered a circle of officers and civilians opposed to Hitler, whose efforts culminated in the failed bomb attack of 20 July 1944. Bonhoeffer, Canaris, Oster and Dohnanyi were executed in April 1945. Bonhoeffer's prison writings, published by Eberhard Bethge in 1951, made him one of the most widely read theologians of the twentieth century among Protestants of many traditions.

Composition

Metaxas, a writer rather than an academic historian, drew heavily on the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English, on Eberhard Bethge's biography of 1967, and on the love letters between Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer, quoting them at length. The book was published by Thomas Nelson in Nashville in 2010 and appeared in later paperback editions.

Reception

The biography became a bestseller, appearing on the New York Times list, and was named Christian Book of the Year by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association in 2011; it introduced Bonhoeffer to a large popular audience. Scholars of Bonhoeffer received it more critically. Clifford Green, executive director of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works translation project, argued in The Christian Century (2010) that it presented Bonhoeffer too much as an American-style conservative evangelical and neglected his debts to Karl Barth and modern Lutheran theology; Victoria Barnett, general editor of the English edition, welcomed a readable life but pointed to errors and heavy reliance on long quotations; and Richard Weikart offered a critique from an evangelical perspective. Admirers of the book praised its narrative vividness and its attention to Bonhoeffer's personal faith and prayer. Readers can weigh these views by turning to Bonhoeffer's own writings and to Bethge's biography.

Comparisons

• the-cost-of-discipleship

  Bonhoeffer's 1937 exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, written at Finkenwalde, is the book whose teaching on costly grace frames much of Metaxas's portrait; reading it shows Bonhoeffer's thought in his own words.

• letters-and-papers-from-prison

  The Tegel letters on which the biography's final chapters draw; the later letters on religionless Christianity are where scholars most dispute Metaxas's reading.

• the-hiding-place

  Corrie ten Boom's memoir is another account of Christians who hid and helped Jews, were imprisoned by the Nazis, and wrote of faith in captivity; one is a memoir by a survivor, the other a biography of a man executed.

• mans-search-for-meaning

  Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who survived the camps, and Bonhoeffer, a Christian pastor who died in one, each found inner freedom under Nazi imprisonment, in logotherapy and in faith respectively.

• unbroken

  Another 2010 popular biography of the Second World War era that made its subject widely known, centered on endurance in captivity and on faith; comparing the two shows the strengths and limits of narrative biography for a general audience.

• early-christian-lives

  The ancient lives and martyr narratives shaped Christian ways of telling the story of a witness unto death; Metaxas's subtitle, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, both draws on and complicates that tradition.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How the Bonhoeffer family's habits of learning, music and honesty prepare Dietrich for later choices.
• What Bonhoeffer finds at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and how it affects him.
• The steps by which the German churches were pressed to accept Nazi policies in 1933-34, and how Bonhoeffer responded.
• Daily life at Finkenwalde and how it connects to The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together.
• How Metaxas interprets Bonhoeffer's part in the conspiracy and his final months, and where his reading differs from other scholars'.

Key terms and names

Confessing Church

The movement of German Protestants who rejected state control of the church and the German Christians, organized at the Barmen Synod in 1934.

German Christians

A Protestant movement that sought to blend Christianity with National Socialism.

Aryan paragraph

A 1933 rule excluding people of Jewish descent from offices, which some church bodies adopted for pastors.

Barmen Declaration

The 1934 confession, largely drafted by Karl Barth, affirming that Jesus Christ alone is Lord of the church.

Finkenwalde

The Pomeranian village where Bonhoeffer directed an illegal seminary for Confessing Church ordinands from 1935 to 1937.

Abwehr

German military intelligence, which sheltered a resistance circle and employed Bonhoeffer as a cover.

Cheap grace

Bonhoeffer's term for forgiveness preached without repentance or discipleship.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What was the Confessing Church, and why did Bonhoeffer join it?
2. Comprehension What happened at Finkenwalde, and why was it closed?
3. Comprehension Why was Bonhoeffer arrested in 1943, and what happened after the July 1944 plot failed?
4. Interpretation How does Metaxas explain Bonhoeffer's movement from his earlier sympathy with pacifism to involvement in the conspiracy?
5. Interpretation What does the subtitle Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy suggest about how Metaxas wants us to see Bonhoeffer?
6. Interpretation Why have some scholars argued that the book makes Bonhoeffer resemble a modern American evangelical, and how might Metaxas reply?
7. Big Question When must a Christian disobey the government?
8. Big Question Can a biographer write about a hero without shaping him in his own image?

Faith Connections

• Matthew 5-7 (Scripture)

  The Sermon on the Mount is the text Bonhoeffer expounded in The Cost of Discipleship and the foundation of the common life at Finkenwalde.

• Proverbs 31:8-9 (Scripture)

  Open your mouth for the mute. Bonhoeffer cited this verse in the 1930s as the church's charge to speak for the Jews.

• Acts 5:29 (Scripture)

  We must obey God rather than men. The apostles' answer to the council underlies the Confessing Church's refusal to accept state control of the church.

• Martyrdom of Polycarp (Church Fathers)

  The earliest Christian martyr account outside Scripture; comparing it with Bonhoeffer's death helps students ask in what sense he is called a martyr.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Bonhoeffer's faith was not merely theoretical: he believed Christ calls disciples to costly obedience. That obedience led him to oppose the Nazification of the church, to train pastors in secret, to return to Germany in 1939, and finally to join resistance to Hitler. Therefore Metaxas argues that Bonhoeffer's life and death are a coherent witness of faith in action, worthy of imitation.

Rhetorical device: narrative characterization through extended quotation. Metaxas lets Bonhoeffer's letters, sermons and diaries speak at length, setting long passages from them within his own narrative so that the subject's voice carries the argument.

Debate: Resolved: that Bonhoeffer's decision to join the conspiracy against Hitler was consistent with the teaching of The Cost of Discipleship.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Metaxas calls Bonhoeffer pastor, martyr, prophet and spy. Choose the title you think fits him best and defend it from the events of his life, noting where historians have disagreed.

Comparison with The Cost of Discipleship: Read the opening chapter of The Cost of Discipleship on costly grace and compare Bonhoeffer's own words with Metaxas's account of them. Does the biography capture his meaning?

Medical Lens

The biography touches the history of psychiatry through Bonhoeffer's father, Karl Bonhoeffer, professor of psychiatry and neurology at the Charité in Berlin and one of the leading German psychiatrists of his day, whose scientific skepticism and moral restraint shaped the household. Metaxas also discusses the Nazi programs aimed at the disabled and the mentally ill: the Bethel institutions led by Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, which Bonhoeffer visited in 1933 and where the Bethel Confession was drafted, cared for people with epilepsy and other disabilities and later faced the euthanasia program; Bonhoeffer's Ethics addresses the taking of innocent life. These subjects are treated within the biography's narrative rather than as medical history, and readers wanting detail should go to histories of German psychiatry under National Socialism. The book's final chapters describe prison conditions and Bonhoeffer's execution with restraint.

• Early chapters on the Bonhoeffer family

  Karl Bonhoeffer's career as a psychiatrist and neurologist and his influence on his children.

  Physicians Doctors
• Chapters on 1933

  Bonhoeffer's stay at Bethel, its care of people with epilepsy and disabilities, and the drafting of the Bethel Confession.

  Asylum Institution
• Chapters on the war years

  The Nazi euthanasia program and Bonhoeffer's ethical writing on the protection of innocent life.

  Medical Ethics
• Final chapters

  Buchenwald, Flossenbürg and the execution of April 1945.

  Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Compare Metaxas's account of Bonhoeffer's 1939 decision to return to Germany with Bonhoeffer's own reasons as given in his letters, and judge whether the biography represents them faithfully.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation at Finkenwalde between Bonhoeffer and a seminarian who asks whether the Confessing Church should compromise to survive.

• Classroom

  Build a timeline that sets Bonhoeffer's life beside the major events of the Third Reich, from the Aryan paragraph of 1933 to the 20 July plot of 1944.

• Essay

  Read Clifford Green's review and a defense of the book, then write an even-handed account of their disagreement about Bonhoeffer's theology.

Further Reading

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, Eberhard Bethge

  The standard life by his closest friend.

• Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Charles Marsh

• Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  His account of Christian community, born of Finkenwalde.

• Love Letters from Cell 92, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maria von Wedemeyer

• Bonhoeffer: A Brief Overview of the Life and Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Stephen R. Haynes and Lori Brandt Hale