Tocmai am luat-o! O citesc! Uneori detaliile istorice sînt prea îndulcite și romanțate, dar … cam așa trebuie scrisă o biografie (ca să fie citită în ziua de astăzi!).

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In vremea in care Adolf Hitler si nazistii reuseau sa amageasca o natiune, sa brutalizeze un continent in incercarea de a-i extermina pe evreii din Europa, o mana de dizidenti si diversionisti au cooperat pentru a distruge din interior regimul celui de-al Treilea Reich. Unul dintre ei a fost Dietrich Bonhoeffer – pastor si autor.

Eric Metaxas surprinde cele doua fatete ale vietii lui Bonhoeffer: de teolog si spion – un barbat prins intr-o dilema sfasietoare: sa se impotriveasca nazistilor si lui Hitler sau sa taca in continuare – oferindu-ne o imagine clara a uneia dintre cele mai intunecate perioade din istorie si o analiza fascinanta a influentelor familiale, culturale si religioase ce au contribuit la formarea unuia dintre cei mai mari teologi contemporani.
Pe baza unor documente indisponibile anterior, inclusiv scrisori perso­nale, notite detaliate de jurnal si insemnari personale de prima mana, Metaxas dezvaluie povestea de viata incredibila a lui Dietrich Bonhoeffer, un om care nu doar a scris despre costul uceniciei, ci l-a si platit.

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Citiți și 6 întrebări pentru Eric Metaxas

The question for Germans in the 1930s is the same question we face today. When do state concerns begin encroaching on the authority of the church to a point where the church needs to shout “halt”? If the church is healthy and is playing its role correctly, it will check the unbridled growth of the state and will protect its own members–and others, too–from illegitimate state power. Bonhoeffer wrote about this in his famous essay “The Church and the Jewish Question.” He said there were three ways that the church must behave with regard to the state. First, it must question the state. In a sense it must call the government to account, and be a voice that speaks out if and when the state is not behaving legitimately. Second, if the state is harming anyone, it’s the role of the church to help those whom the state is harming. And thirdly and most radically, if the state is behaving wrongly, it is the role of the church to directly oppose the state. That’s where he lost a lot of people. They couldn’t believe a good Lutheran German would say such a thing. But Bonhoeffer was a Christian first and a German second.

Such state encroachment usually concerns the fundamentals, such as the definition of a human being. The Nazis did not believe that human life was sacred, because they didn’t believe that human beings are created in the image of God. They were essentially pagans with a social Darwinist worldview and they began to “legally” define humanity according to this bleak, utilitarian worldview. So a German Jew was no longer a human being in the way a Gentile German was a human being. And a mentally or physically handicapped person was no longer equal to others and was therefore “disposable.” Jewish babies could be legally aborted, but German babies could not. The Nazis began to define such things in a way that aggressively challenged the beliefs of all serious Christians, so the church had to make a choice: be the church and fight the state on these issues, or accede to the state’s definitions of humanity and effectively cease to be the church. Most in the church simply acceded to the Nazi’s definitions. Those who didn’t give in formed what came to be known as the Confessing Church. Bonheoffer was one of its leaders, of course.

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