SCRIPTURE AND MYTH IN DIETRICH BONHOEFFER By Richard Weikart, University of Iowa
Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become a mythic hero in the pantheon of late twentieth-century Christianity. Admiration for him flows from such diverse and contradictory movements as fundamentalism and radical death-of-God theology, as well as from most groups located between these poles. American evangelicals1 have joined the chorus of his praise and actively promote his works. A recent review of A Testament of Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Christianity Today enjoins a predominantly evangelical audience to "sit... at the feet of Dietrich Bonhoeffer," whose life "rings with Christian authenticity."2
Two guidebooks to evangelical literature list Bonhoeffer's writings as important reading material for evangelicals.3 My own contacts with evangelicals and fundamentalists confirm that Bonhoeffer enjoys widespread approbation among them. Numerous factors have contributed to the popularity of Bonhoeffer among evangelicals. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he showed great courage in opposing Hitler's policies. However, this could also be said of Karl Barth, the theologian exercising the greatest influence on Bonhoeffer. Barth took a decisive stand against Nazism and penned the Barmen Declaration, which was the manifesto for the Confessing Church, yet most evangelicals reject his neoorthodox theology. Of course, Bonhoeffer gained great stature by his death at the hand of the Nazis, which is usually described as a Christian martyrdom.
Bonhoeffer's reputation among evangelicals, however, does not rest solely on his political involvement. Two of his theological works, The Cost of Discipleship 12i ' The words evangelical and evangelicalism will be defined in this essay as pertaining to the