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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

Verified Quotes

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.

• Chapters on 1933

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

• Chapters on the war years

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

• Final chapters

  Buchenwald, Flossenbürg and the execution of April 1945.