59 pages • 1 hour read
Eric MetaxasBonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Eric Metaxas
Eric Metaxas is a well-known figure in the circles of American Christianity and conservative thought and culture. His writing, which has centered on biographies of major Christian thought-leaders (William Wilberforce, Martin Luther, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer), has been well-received by a broad range of readers across many denominational and theological backgrounds. While he is lesser known for his other writing than his biographies, he has added substantial works in the fields of apologetics, cultural and theological reflection, and children’s literature. While he writes and speaks as a Christian, he has usually avoided being associated with any particular denomination, preferring to speak of himself as a “mere Christian” (a turn of phrase from the Christian thinker C.S. Lewis, describing one’s faith as consisting of those elements agreed upon by all Christians, regardless of denominational tradition).
After his writing, Metaxas is best-known as a speaker. He is the organizer of the popular “Socrates in the City” events in New York City, which use public dialogues to invite and engage prominent voices in thought and culture. He also works as a radio/podcast host on his eponymous program, The Eric Metaxas Show, and as a speaker for conservative events. As his conservatism has grown to embrace not only cultural issues but also politics in the 2020s, he has come to be viewed as a more controversial figure due to his vocal support of Donald Trump and his outspoken anti-vaccination stance during the Covid-19 pandemic. His biography of Bonhoeffer was a New York Times bestseller, but has attracted criticism from some prominent Bonhoeffer scholars such as Richard Weikart and Clifford Green, who have criticized the work for lacking scholarly engagement and what they regard as theologically-motivated inaccuracies. Nevertheless, the biography has attracted a wide popular readership, particularly in American Evangelical circles.
Ideological Context: German Theology
Bonhoeffer’s story is tied up in the complicated theological movements of the early 20th century, in which German theology played a leading role. Across the whole span of Protestant Christianity, great rifts were forming between liberal theologians and fundamentalists.
Nearly all German Protestants were members of the Lutheran church, but the theological currents within that communion (and many other denominations) were broad and diverse. Academic German theology in the early 20th century emerged directly from the pioneering work of 19th-century scholars who had introduced the historical-critical method for studying the Bible. This methodology had made significant discoveries about the literary structure and composition of the biblical texts, but also fostered an air of skepticism about traditional Christian claims concerning the Bible’s divine inspiration. As a result, many German academics developed ties to liberal theology, which downplayed Christianity’s supernatural claims in favor of presenting Christianity as a purely rational and ethical religion.
There was also a strong countercurrent to these liberal theological developments, rooted in traditional Christian positions regarding doctrinal orthodoxy and the supernatural inspiration of scripture. Karl Barth became one of the most prominent German thinkers of this movement, presenting a neo-orthodox position that accepted scripture as the means by which God communicated the gospel kerygma (i.e., the core truth of Jesus Christ as representing the Word of God). Neo-orthodoxy did not entirely disavow critical analysis of the scriptures, but it argued that God’s transcendent action in Jesus rendered such analysis immaterial to one’s reception of the text. Thus, for neo-orthodox thinkers, the Bible remained a divinely-inspired text instead of a man-made one.
While Bonhoeffer’s theological education took place almost entirely under the liberal Protestantism in vogue at the Universities of Tübingen and Berlin, his own theological instincts drew him closer to Barth’s position. Nevertheless, he tended to write and speak in a theological idiolect that was at home in the vocabulary of liberal theology. He emphasized the core values that stood at the center of both schools of thought, on one hand underscoring his passionate adherence to the Bible as the Word of God, while on the other hand framing most of his theological work around questions of ethics rather than dogma. Due to this duality, Bonhoeffer’s writings have been claimed by both the liberal and traditional theological camps ever since. Regarding this question, Metaxas’s biography argues that while Bonhoeffer engages with issues of liberal theology, his viewpoint is closer to the traditional position than to the liberal one.
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