Alan Wolfe on Metaxas's Bonhoeffer

In the Feb. 3 New Republic, Alan Wolfe, the magazine's
go-to reviewer on matters of religion, seems to buy into the account of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that Eric
Metaxas gives in his new biography Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

Wolfe shows none of the reservations expressed, for example, by
the Century reviewer Clifford Green, who notes that Metaxas misleadingly presents
Bonhoeffer as a conservative evangelical (American-style) rather than as what
he really was, a very modern postliberal Lutheran influenced by Karl Barth.

Wolfe has never shown much interest in theological nuances, but
this review displays something else: his unease with religious commitment
itself. At the end of the review, Wolfe strains to force Bonhoeffer's
courageous and deeply theological witness against the Nazis into a secular
framework of personal "choice":