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Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an inspiration and a revelation. I do not know anyone who does not find much to admire in Bonhoeffer. Even those who find Christian doctrines to stretch plausibility can admire Bonhoeffer's courage as a moral and principled man standing up to authoritarianism at the risk of his own life.

When the Nazis co-opted the Lutheran Church in Germany, he helped to organize a new church, called the Confessing Church, to oppose the Nazi's corruption of German Christianity. When it became clear that Hitler had widespread political support and would not fail on his own merit - something many influential people in Germany wrongly supposed would happen - Bonhoeffer joined the conspiracy lead by Admiral Canaris of the Abwehr and had no difficulty seeing that it was his duty as a Christian to support Canaris' plans for the assassination of Hitler and the violent overthrow of the Third Reich.

Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law, also a member of the conspiracy, maintained a list documenting Nazi atrocities. The list was to be used to win the loyalty of the populace - which for years was largely in the dark about the Nazi's most horrific crimes - after Hitler was gone. It was the discovery of the list by the SS that likely led to the order that Bonhoeffer be executed.

Bonhoeffer lived and died courageously and Metaxas provides the details of Bonhoeffer's life in this regard effectively. I think this explains the book's success.

Metaxas also wants his readers to understand that Bonhoeffer was a unique and innovative theologian. Here the book is a disappointment. Unquestionably, Bonhoeffer lived a sincerely Christian life and influenced friends to do likewise, even in the difficult circumstances of their time. But more than that, Metaxas is convinced that Bonhoeffer made important, even groundbreaking, contributions to protestant theology. He failed to convince me.

Metaxas just does not engage the substance of Bonhoeffer's theology in any serious way. I am far from an expert on this important subject, but Bonhoeffer seems not to have said anything about breaking with the bourgeois theology, that characterized Christianity on the continent before WWI, that his older contemporary Karl Barth had not already said even better. Though Bonhoeffer's LETTERS FROM PRISON is undeniably compelling as an account of Bonhoeffer's personal psychology of faith, it does not offer anything new regarding the reasons for faith. Or if it does, then Metaxas fails to develop it sufficiently for a reader like me to appreciate. In this sense, it seems to me that Metaxas failed to achieve much of what he set out to do in this ambitious book.