Standing firmly against both the Nazification of the church as well as the tradition of liberal theology which made such a movement possible, Bonhoeffer called for faithful Christians to stand firm against the idolatries of the age. This makes Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer not only an interesting biography, but one profoundly relevant to the challenges we face today in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Having already written an award-winning biography on William Wilberforce (Amazing Grace, 2007), author Eric Metaxas has taken up the life of German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Spy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2010), 591 pages. ISBN 13: 9781595551382, retail price $29.99.

Biographies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer are plentiful, and the standard will probably always be the one written by Bonhoeffer’s best friend, Eberhard Bethge. However, Metaxas’ biography is perhaps the most significant one written by a native English speaker (Bethge’s biography was written in German and later translated into English).

At over 500 pages, Metaxas’ work is hefty, but is surprisingly an easy read for a subject so significant. Metaxas’ prose pulls the reader into the book so that it is hard to put it down. It is also a biography that has generated no little controversy regarding Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as Metaxas challenges many of the “academic” readings of Bonhoeffer so prevalent in liberal religious circles today.

One of the strengths of Metaxas’ biography is that it is written for an American audience. Bethge’s biography (which is more than twice as long as Metaxas’ work) was written for a German readership and assumes that the reader understands many of the details of the government and church bureaucracies in the time of the Third Reich. Metaxas, on the other hand, does not assume this for his readers, and thus does a good job of explaining basic aspects of life in Germany and in the Protestant Church in the time of Bonhoeffer.

Read More: http://www.layman.org/Resources/BookReviews.aspx?article=28079

[Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]