The Angel Studios Bonhoeffer: Pastor Spy Assassin was a commercial failure, earning less than half of its production budget at the box office. Evidently, the film is a critical failure with Christianity Today, a leftwing outlet run by Russell Moore, its editor-in-chief. However, Christianity Today’s objection to Bonhoeffer’s portrayal is based on their opinion that Bonhoeffer had a consistent moral framework. Christianity Today thus ironically attacks the Bonhoeffer film for portraying the liberal martyr as a moral relativist.
In their review titled, “‘Bonhoeffer’ Bears Little Resemblance to Reality” Christianity Today argues that the film “twists the theologian’s life and thought to make a political point.”
Figures as complex as Bonhoeffer are notoriously difficult to interpret well. Bonhoeffer left behind numerous monographs, sermons, correspondence, and theological writing, and since his death, there have been as many volumes of personal remembrances by friends and colleagues. All of this creates a complex and at times elusive figure, difficult to categorize within contemporary ideological movements. If we aren’t careful, situating Bonhoeffer in our own moment can be an exercise in wish fulfillment.
This is the trap into which the new film Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. falls. In the latest offering from Angel Studios, the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is an empty container into which our own desires—in this case, desires for a faith that serves political ends—are poured.
Christianity Today fails to realize that Bonhoeffer’s being “notoriously difficult to interpret” is a testament of a man who did not clearly articulate a belief or consistent worldview. Alternatively, Bonhoeffer was consistently heretical but acknowledging this is inconvenient for our sensibilities that have been warped by the 20th-century liberalism that lionized him.
Rather than depicting a man of deep theological convictions and subtle intellect, Bonhoeffer tells the story of a man for whom moral convictions are a flexible and useful tool, a man whose actions are determined not by concerns for the church’s witness but by perceived historical necessity.
It is the story of a Bonhoeffer willing to do anything—including disavow the teachings of Jesus as he understood them—to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Christianity Today laments the depiction of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a moral relativist; however, this is a mainstream understanding of Bonhoeffer and has been for several decades. In the above Evangelical Dark Web video, Saint Militant argues that Bonhoeffer was a moral relativist, in apparent agreement with the film’s portrayal. Moreover, Joseph Fletcher author of Situation Ethics: The New Morality credits Bonhoeffer and argues he uses a situational method.
But for the Bonhoeffer movie, there’s no debate: Dietrich Bonhoeffer not only knew of a plot to kill Hitler but also was intimately involved, his earlier convictions about how to understand Christ’s teachings rendered irrelevant by the rise of the Nazis.
In researching Bonhoeffer, it became clear that Bonhoeffer’s involvement in Operation Valkyrie to assassinate Adolf Hitler was more a myth than how Bonhoeffer viewed Genesis. He was in prison for over a year prior to the July 20 plot.
Christianity Today thus argues that Bonhoeffer was not part of the plot and was a pencil-pushing spy which was consistent with his morality.
The similarity between this rendering of Bonhoeffer’s life and Metaxas’ own trajectory is telling. Though Angel Studios has downplayed any connection between Metaxas and this project, consider the similarities (beyond the film’s subtitle). Both movie Bonhoeffer and Metaxas begin as religious thinkers, become primarily concerned with political life, and ultimately dally with the use of force in service to their ideals.
The film is criticized for Metaxas’s influence, who is an avid promoter of the film.
Especially in the aftermath of two assassination attempts on a former president, we do not need an argument for theologically motivated government overthrow; we do not need further justification for political violence. What we needed was a film about a man concerned with how God might be calling the church to be steadfast amid the great temptation to mold our faith to our politics.
Wow, I can’t believe Christianity Today published the argument I have been making, as I have called the attempted assassins “would-be Bonhoeffers” so for Christianity Today to also draw that comparison despite being a Democrat cesspool is quite interesting.
In any case, Bonhoeffer was a massive liberal while alive, and even the liberals today do not like the movie about him.
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Yeah, the scene where “Bonno” is leading a wild jazz group in a Harlem bar while rockin’ the walls down, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, a glass of whiskey on ice at the piano, as he rocks out the boogie-woogie…
I mean: c’mon!!
Still, Eric Metaxas (while conceding he had nothing to do with the production) did manage to set up some screenings at a few large churches around the country — making sure, of course, to bring many copies of his own crazed Bonhoeffer biography to sell to the brain-addled faithful. (His biography — presenting Dietrich as a right-wing conservative Republican to appeal to the Reagan/Bush and, since 2016, MAGA masses — had every credentialed historian reviewing the book exclaiming: God Almighty!!! This book is a historical and intellectual disaster!!!!).
But, hey: Metaxas figured out a way to make a few thousand dollars off this cinematic debacle.
So, at least, that’s something, right?