Was Bonhoeffer an evangelical? – or, Why you need multiple perspectives when reading history

Eric Metaxas‘ well-known biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer has received quite a number of very positive reviews from prominent evangelicals. By all accounts, it’s well written, accessible, engaging, and presents Bonhoeffer as someone evangelicals can identify with and learn from. (In the interests of full disclosure, though I’ve read several reviews, I have not yet read the book itself.)

The problem is that the book has received significant criticism from a number of Bonhoeffer experts. As Clifford Green states in probably the most widely-read critique of Metaxas’ work, “Hijacking Bonhoeffer,”

I will not linger over the numerous factual errors, including problems with the German words sprinkled throughout the text….I will not fret about the problems infecting the copious endnotes, especially the missing, incomplete and garbled sources. I will not dwell on the fact that a critical assessment of sources is absent…..

And, he then launches into all of those problems that he will discuss – overly simplistic argumentation, lack of scholarly research, dismissal of aspects of Bonhoeffer’s theology that don’t fit neatly into Metaxas’ presentation, and more. Green’s general conclusion, echoed by others, is that Metaxas has tamed Bonhoeffer in order to present him as someone palatable to contemporary evangelicals.

As Tim Challies, who has written a very positive review of the book, commented earlier today:

I did not want to believe what those authors (and authors) are saying about Metaxas and his biography. But I am inclined to believe them as they bring the weight of scholarship and experience. They may well be right in suggesting that…the true Bonhoeffer was simply too unorthodox to appeal to the likes of me—the kind of person who read, enjoyed and enthusiastically recommended the book.

Now, I’m not actually commenting on this to engage Bonhoeffer himself or even Metaxas’ biography. I’m a baby when it comes to Bonhoeffer and I am far from qualified to address the particulars of these critiques. I’m sure this is a discussion that is just getting going and it will be interesting to see how Metaxas (and maybe others) respond to these arguments.

My real point was to comment on the need to be careful with biographies. Biographical writing, like all historical writing, is a necessarily limited and subjective exercise. Each historian uses the subject matter to tell a particular story – leaving out some details and highlighting others. Thus, every biography shapes the subject according to the interests of the historian. That is unavoidable. The solution is not to avoid biographies (or history in general), but to recognize the subtle shaping  that accompanies  any particular “telling” of history and make sure that you engage the subject matter from multiple perspectives. Of course, even if you do this well, you won’t necessarily end up with “the whole story” either. You are also a part of the shaping process, molding the subject matter to fit your own subjective interests. But, it does mean that you’re more likely to develop a more adequate understanding of the whole than otherwise.

All this to say, if you really want to understand a historical figure, you can’t read just one biography. Come at the person from several directions and see how they look from different vantage points. When you’re done, you’ll find that you think some of those perspectives were more faithful representations of the person than others, but you’ll have learned from them all.

Advertisement

Flotsam and jetsam (1/11)

• Kyle Roberts offers some reflections on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together for responding to violence and brokenness as a Christian community.

Christian community is not some lofty ideal, but an objectively real “divine reality” (p. 26). This means that when we experience disillusionment with another individual in the community, when fragmentation occurs, all that is destroyed is the illusion of a utopian, harmonious existence. The reality—a real community of sinners saved miraculously by God’s grace—remains intact

• Bill Mounce deals with what it means to say that we “are being saved” in 1 Cor. 15:2. (Andrew Perriman offers a very different perspective.)

For me, it is Jesus’ gate and path analogy. Being a Christian is a being a follower of Jesus. You start following at the gate, continue following as you walk along the path, and at the end of the path of perseverance is life. So for me, it is easy to say that while I celebrate the finished work of Christ on the cross and the underserved, grace-filled, regenerative work of the Holy Spirit at my conversion, there is a very real sense in which my salvation is an ongoing process culminating in glorification, provided of course that I hold fast to the gospel.

• Madeleine Flanagan reflects on The Importance of Critical Engagement. Citing one study regarding teens in the church:

The study indicates that students actually grow more confident in their Christian commitment when the adults in their life — parents, pastors, teachers — guide them in grappling with the challenges posed by prevailing secular worldviews.  In short, the only way teens become truly “prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks” (1 Pet. 3:15) is by wrestling honestly and personally with the questions.

• According to a new study in the Journal of Personality, students crave boosts in self esteem through praise and good grades more than just about anything – including sex and money. (HT)

• Psychology Today offers some tips on How to Recognize When You’re on the Road to Burnout. (HT)

• And Texas is currently dealing with the 11th plague: wild pigs.

A prayer for Sunday…Dietrich Bonhoeffer

O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you:
I cannot do this alone.
In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me…
Restore me to liberty,
And enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before me.
Lord, whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised.

Good theology does not simply answer our questions

According to Tillich, the task of theology is to correlate the great questions of any age with the answers provided by the Christian faith. I recently ran across an article at the Guardian that exemplified this approach. According to the author,

Theology is at its best when it works in a triangular relationship with scripture, creation and culture, continuously asking how the texts and traditions of the Christian faith are to be interpreted in the light of the questions of our time.

Bonhoeffer takes a very different approach and offers and important warning about the danger of trying to engage the world through the questions people are asking. There is a role for this, but it has the undeniable drawback of making theological dialog entirely self-centered and limiting the Gospel only to the questions that people are actually asking, or that you can convince them they should be asking. As Bonhoeffer says here, God then becomes the deus ex machina who rescues us by addressing our felt needs.

God is being increasingly pushed out of a world that has come of age…and…since Kant he has been releaged to a realm beyond the world of experience. Theology has…accommodated itself to the development by restricting God to the so-called ultimate questions as a deus ex machina; that means that he becomes the answer to life’s problems, and the solution of its needs and conflicts. So if anyone has no such difficulties, or if he refuses to go into these things, to allow others to pity him, then either he cannot be open to God; or else he must be shown that he is, in fact, deeply involved in such problems, needs, and conflicts, without admitting or knowing it. If that can be done – and existentialist philosophy and psychotherapy have worked out some quite ingenious methods in that direction – then this man can now be claimed for God, and methodism can celebrate its triumph. But if he cannot be brought to see and admit that his hapiness is really an evil, his health sickness, and his vigour despair, the theologian is at his wits’ end. It’s a case of having to do either with a hardened sinner of a particularly ugly type, or with a man of ‘bourgeois complacency’, and the one is as far from salvation as the other.

Bonhoeffer concludes this section by arguing that we shouldn’t make our own questions, frustrations, and brokenness the focus of our theological engagement with the world.

You see, that is the attitude that I am contending against. When Jesus blessed sinners, they were real sinners, but Jesus did not make everyone a sinner first. He called them away from their sin, not into their sin. (Letters & Papers from Prison, p. 341)

Instead, we should call people to focus on Jesus himself. In this way we will point people to the one who is not deus ex machina, but just deus.