Bonhoeffer: Liberal, Evangelical, or None of the Above?

Tim Challies wonders about the picture we get of Bonhoeffer from Eric Metaxas' new and very popular biography. Challies considers the concerns raised by a number of academics about Metaxas' "evangelical" Bonhoeffer: "They may well be right in suggesting that Metaxas got in over his head; and they may 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."

In response, I'll point out that part of the academic critique is simply what academics are wont to do when looking at a popular book. There isn't enough nuance here, this detail is wrong there, and so on. As I've said elsewhere, Metaxas' biography is not a substitute for a scholarly biography like Eberhard Bethge's. Still, it does show some surprising sensitivity for a popular biography. Metaxas rightly notes that Bonhoeffer was seeking to articulate a Protestant form of natural law in his Ethics, an aspect of Bonhoeffer's work that has largely escaped the notice of academics. Perhaps you don't get a modern political left/right dichotomy in scholarship all that often, but in Bonhoeffer's case you do get a Barthian/liberal theology divide.

And so academics have their own vision of Bonhoeffer that they are invested in, too, and so they are not simply objective or unbiased observers. Clifford Green's criticism is summarized by Challies: "The purpose of his article is to say that Metaxas essentially hijacked Bonhoeffer, tearing him out of his own time and context and rewriting him in such a way that he would appeal to contemporary evangelicals." But Green is the same scholar who, as discussed previously in the comments section here, rips Bonhoeffer's criticism of abortion out of its own context of a discussion about marriage and the family and instead reads it as simply a rebuke of eugenics and forced abortion by the Nazis.

We must realize that it is a real temptation to appropriate Bonhoeffer (or any famous moral example, such as Martin Luther King Jr.) and exploit them for other contemporary purposes. It is true that Metaxas is quite sanguine about depicting Bonhoeffer as someone who would undoubtedly support the Manhattan Declaration, for instance. I doubt, despite what many at the institution would claim today, that Bonhoeffer's opinion of Union Theological Seminary would have improved in the intervening years. But even though I'm sympathetic to Metaxas' biography, I don't think its so clear at all what Bonhoeffer would look like in a modern context. Would he be evangelical? Liberal? Other?

On this point it is worth reading Alan Wolfe's lengthy and helpful review of Metaxas' biography in The New Republic (my own review is introduced and linked here).

And in related news, the Becket Fund has announced that Metaxas is going to be the recipient of the 2011 Canterbury Medal. Archbishop Chaput made the announcement earlier this week, and Becket Fund president Kevin J. "Seamus" Hanson said, "Eric Metaxas has written a prophetic biography of a prophetic figure.  His account of Bonhoeffer's resistance to the Nazis is more than just the heroic story of one man of conscience standing tall against a monstrous evil of the past. Rather, he reveals Bonhoeffer's life as a template for all people of goodwill who find themselves confronting evil states and ideologies. It is a bracing-- and timely-- call to conscience."

Comments

[Bob Srigley]

I think if Rod Laver had been born in our time and played with a modern racket he would have still been one of the greatest tennis players; but his game would have been quite different. So with Bonhoeffer, it seems quite legitimate to see the contours of his faith against the backdrop of our age as well as his own. Especially as the fundamentals have not really changed that much, if at all.

[Jordan]

A good point, Bob. A great player transcends the confines of a particular context. Great people do, too.

But I wonder if the change between then and now, especially a much more distant time, is more substantive than simply the change between kinds of rackets. Aren't the rules (in this analogy) a good deal different, even if human nature hasn't changed?

[Anthony Christian]

I am reminded of attempts by secularist liberals in today's America to "recruit" or is that "appropriate" Jefferson for their cause. When facts are brought to light, it is a decided failure. So firmly Christian was Bonhoeffer that liberal appropriation fails here too, ultimately.

[Ryan]

Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor through and through, a fact often missed or overlooked by so many Protestant Evangelicals who would claim him as their own--or else dub him a "liberal."

[Tad Trapp]

Bonhoeffer's biggest problem, from an evangelical's perspective, is that his view of Scripture is thoroughly un-evangelical. It was not iimportant to him whether or not Scripture is historically accurate, or "true" in the historical sense. In his thinking, Scripture functions quite a bit like a "myth" which God uses for our benefit. This is thoroughly un-evangelical, but most evangelicals do not bother looking at such presuppositions, and are not philosophically astute enough to identify this massive problem.

[Jordan]

Tad, I'd be interested in hearing the evidence for some of those assertions.

[Tad]

You need to have a little bit of background in philosophy and theology to get this, but ... after Kant's revolutionary new ideas in epistemology (the philosophy of knowledge) hit the scene (or the fan!), scholars who followed him (i.e., liberal "Christians" [I use the term loosely]) began to handle the Bible very differently than Christians had for the 1500 plus years prior. The Bible was seen to be a very flawed, human book, written from a naive, unscientific, superstitious perspective. These liberal "Christians" (I use the term loosely), then basically redefined Christianity. Enter Karl Barth, who then rocked the world of these psuedo-Christians by arguing for old-fashioned Christianity (orthodoxy), BUT STILL BELIEVING WHAT THE LIBERALS DID CONCERNING HOW SHOT UP THE SCRIPTURES ARE. What Barth ushered in was called neo-orthodoxy, and the basic idea is this--we know the Bible is a shot-up, very flawed human document, but we will treat the storyline as it stands, and by faith believe that God will magically transform it into something meaningful. AND Bonhoeffer was neo-orthodox! Anyone who has probed him deeper and discerningly understands this--unfortunately most people just read him on a surface level and don't understand his presuppositions, like, what is Scripture!!!

[Jordan]

Tad, thanks for following up. One of my current research projects is precisely on the relationship between Barth and Bonhoeffer, and then by extension neo-orthodoxy. I appreciate what you have to say about the importance of the 19th c. philosophical and theological contexts. But at the same time I'd caution that things in this area are fairly complex, and a simple move from Barth to neo-orthodoxy to Bonhoeffer and ascribing neo-orthodox views of Scripture to Bonhoeffer is a bit facile.