Beeson podcast, Episode 434 Eric Metaxas March 5, 2019 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. Well I tell you, we have a great surprise for you on the podcast today. I have a conversation with my good friend of many years now, Eric Metaxas. Eric is a world renowned author. He's a great speaker for the gospel over the place. He's been with us at Beeson several times in the past. He's coming back again in a few weeks to our campus. Eric, welcome to the Beeson Podcast. Eric Metaxas: Well it is a joy to be back. Thank you my friend. Timothy George: Now, I wanna talk particularly about two of your books, your book on Bonhoeffer and your book on Luther. Now it was ten years ago, in the year 2009 that Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, and Spy was published. It became the book of the year. It became a New York Time's best seller. It won the John C. Pollock award for biography here at Beeson. You had written other books before including a wonderful biography of William Wilberforce so biography is a genre that seems to appeal to you but this Bonhoeffer biography took off like an exploding rocket into the sky of publishing. Why Bonhoeffer? Eric Metaxas: Well I have to say, there many good answers to that question. I will give the blanket statement that I felt led of the Lord to write the book and that even beyond that, it had a deep personal meaning for me. When I came to faith seriously, in 1988, the man who led me to faith, my friend Ed Tuddle, gave me a copy of Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship and he says have you heard of him? You went to Yale. And I thought are you kidding? I've never heard of this man. Watch TV my whole life, went to good schools, never heard of him. And so I started looking into his life and then started reading the Cost of Discipleship and I was just staggered. I said this is the kind of Christianity I could get behind. This is amazing. So it was a big part of my coming to faith. Eric Metaxas: And it was personal because my family lived in Germany when Bonhoeffer was there, when Hitler took over. My family lived through this and all my life I've heard the stories of what it was like and my grandfather who was anti-Hitler but who had no voice, tried to stay out of the army. He was finally forced to go in in '43, that late. He managed to stay out and he was killed in 1944. My mother was ten years old and I dedicate the book to him because there were many Germans who were not on board with what was happening but they didn't have a voice. Bonhoeffer was their voice. Bonhoeffer was the voice of the church. Bonhoeffer was the voice for the people of God, the Jews. And when I heard his story I said I hope somebody tells the story some day, never dreaming that I would write a biography. I never had any ambition to write a biography in my life, ever, but God had different plans. Eric Metaxas: And when I wrote the book, it was such an agony people won't believe me. They think I'm exaggerating. The publishing of the book was a tragedy and an agony. The first publisher wanted me to cut it in half and I said look, I know what I have here. I know that the story is so fascinating and rich that if you cut it in half, you're going to destroy as much as you're going to gain and so I switched publishers to Thomas Nelson. They published it as I wrote it and imagine publishing a 600 page biography of a German theologian and expecting maybe it'll sell 20,000 copies if we're very lucky and watching as the Christian American reading public embraces this book in a way that they never dreamt and so what happened to the book was, to my mind, the Lord's doing because I never dreamt I would write the book. I never dreamt that publishing it would be such an agony. It was horrible but I prayed and prayed and the Lord actually spoke to me, I don't say that kind of thing lightly, about the book, made it clear that he had his hand on the book. I didn't know what that meant but here we are all these years later, it sold over a million copies, we're making a movie that's actually happening right now, it's exciting. Timothy George: Wonderful. Eric Metaxas: And it's been translated into 20 languages. I never in a million years, never dreamt this could be and actually the greatest honor i think I've ever gotten just the other day I saw a copy. The Cost of Discipleship, the book that made Bonhoeffer as famous as he because it's the book that everybody seems to be familiar with, it sold zillions of copies over the years, I was asked by the publisher Touchstone Simon & Schuster to write a new forward to a new edition. The greatest honor I could ever have. And I saw the first copies of the book just two days ago and so it's been a crazy past. I'm the first person who could never have imagined that the story of this great man, and let's be honest, why did all this happen? Because the story of this man is unlike any other. It's not because of my book. His story effects people. It effected me, it changed my life, and when people read the story of this man totally sold out to God, willing to buck the establishment and by the establishment I'm talking about the church of his day, not just the Nazis. Eric Metaxas: I have to say that when people come in contact with a life given over to God in this way, it's so inspiring that you can't help but want to become closer to God, a better person, and you can't help but wanna share the story. So it's been a crazy beautiful journey for me. Timothy George: Wonderful. You know, when Beeson Divinity School was begun 31 years ago, Bonhoeffer was immediately chosen as kind of the mentor for our school. We read his books, we read Life Together it was kind of the required reading in the curriculum for all of our students in those early days. We have a statue of Bonhoeffer in our chapel. So he's a person we're continuing to learn from and to live through. Why do you think it was that so many people, particularly in the American church but elsewhere, internationally, were struck by Bonhoeffer in this way? He's a name we know but we didn't really know his story. Many people didn't until your book came along. Eric Metaxas: Well I think the answers actually quite simple. This happens over and over. Now you're an academic and you understand that the world of academia does not always serve the public well. In other words, when you're a specialist and you're a scholar it's possible to miss the bigger picture. The bigger picture with Bonhoeffer is so spectacular that I think once people really saw that in my book, they realized he was everything they hoped he might be. A lot of the scholars, the Bonhoeffer scholars, I would label them as either agnostic or as so theologically liberal that they created a Bonhoeffer in their own image. Clifford Green who is the editor of the Bonhoeffer works in English, Victoria Barnett, a lot of the people affiliated with the International Bonhoeffer Society drifted very far, not just theologically liberally but politically liberally and they kind of created a Bonhoeffer in the image of a 60s radical and overplayed, well dramatically misunderstood what he said in his letters and papers from prison when he talks about religion-less Christianity. They really horribly misunderstood that phrase and painted a kind of a humanist ethicist who had moved beyond traditional Christianity. Eric Metaxas: That's dramatically wrong. It's the opposite of what Bonhoeffer was saying in a personal letter to his bet friend. And so a lot of people were confused about Bonhoeffer. I was one of them and I said when I do the research, I'm gonna have to write what I find. If at the end of his life he slid theologically away from the historical faith, I'm gonna have to write about that. But on the contrary, what I discovered to my total shock was that all of these scholars had missed the man. They had missed that this man, at the end of his life, became closer to Jesus, closer to the faith, given us by the Saints and I think when I put the facts in my book, in other words most of it comes from his own letters, from his own journal, it becomes in controvertible. There's really nothing we can say when you hear the man speak for himself and usually scholars are more interested in his scholarly writings which are difficult and so somehow when people saw who he really was, it changed everything. People thought we always wondered is this the man who wrote the Cost of Discipleship or did he become some kind of a post-Christian humanist? Eric Metaxas: And the fact is, no. We now have the proof and you don't need to be a scholar to be able to see it. That's the beauty of it is some of this is so clear and I think that when I, almost in my ignorance said, I'm just gonna write what I find, I don't have any dog in the fight, let's just see what it is. It was so incredible that I think a lot of people were shocked and thrilled and some people were very angry. Some people wrote very vicious reviews because they maybe were embarrassed or something. I don't know what happened but I can tell you I never expected the reception of this book but I think that Bonhoeffer, when people saw him for who he was, you cannot help but fall in love with him. He was a saint of God who loved God so much that he did not count his own life as anything. I mean how do you fail to be inspired by a beautiful intelligent man willing to live out his faith in the darkest times? Eric Metaxas: And so it really, as I say, the whole thing was an amazing surprise to me and I'm glad that all these years later it continues to be translated. It was just translated into Greek two years ago and I thought my Greek friends in Greece can read it. I'm just thrilled. Timothy George: You know, the first time I ever remember reading the name Bonhoeffer or even hearing about him, he was not a part of my Sunday school curriculum in my Southern Baptist church growing up, it was in a book I read in college called Honest to God by John A. T. Robinson who was a bishop in the Church of England and he presented Bonhoeffer as an exemplar of what was being called the death of God. Eric Metaxas: Yeah, this is hilarious, isn't it? I mean it's just so unbelievable that these people were able to twist and twist and seemingly not care and there was nobody to speak up for Bonhoeffer. It's very strange. Timothy George: What do you think Bonhoeffer meant by those terms religion-less Christianity or the world come of age? Those were the phrases they latched onto and they do come from very late in his prison period. What's your interpretation of that? Eric Metaxas: There's sometimes when people don't get a joke. It's the same type of thing. They're so tuned in to another frequency that they're not listening to the sense of what someone is saying. Bonhoeffer was not a delphic oracle writing poetry. He was a prisoner writing to his best friend and so his best friend would understand what he meant and the scholars who read it clearly didn't understand what he meant or wanted to read what they wanted to read. So when he says religion-less Christianity, what he is basically saying is look. This phony religious Lutheran church that bowed the knee to Adolph Hitler or that was not willing to stand against Adolph Hitler until it was too late, this is not the church of God. The church of God must stand, must risk everything, for the truth of Jesus and if we hesitate, if we don't discern what the Holy Spirit is saying, that is mere religion. It is dead religion and it becomes a tool of the devil and Bonhoeffer in prison, imagine, knows that we in the German church have failed. Eric Metaxas: And he says, in order for us to be the people of God, it's just like the Old Testament prophets calling the people of God to be the people of God, they're saying just because you're a Jew doesn't make you a person of God, you have to live your faith. Bonhoeffer's saying the same thing to the German Lutheran church. He says you don't get to call yourself the church unless you live as the called out ones and so Bonhoeffer when he says we need a religion-less Christianity, he's saying to his best friend, our going to church on Sunday and saying I'm a Lutheran, I'm saved by grace, I'm German, that is nothing. We need a Christianity that we live out outside the church. That we live out Monday through Saturday. That we live out with our whole being and are willing to risk our lives for the faith. If that had existed in Germany, Hitler could have never risen to power. Eric Metaxas: And so it's clear when you read his other writings and when you read Carl Bart's views of quote, unquote, religion, he's speaking of it in the pejorative sense that when we become merely religious we fail. Eric Metaxas: And I think that when he talks about a world come of age, imagine living at a time that the Nazis are in power. You think if we can not live out our faith with guts, with a muscular Christianity willing to do anything for Christ including getting involved in a plot to kill the Head of State, if we don't live out our faith with everything we have in this world come of age meaning where evil is riding a horse through the center of the town square. Evil has triumphed and he says well, okay, the only thing that can stand against that is Jesus and we need to understand that we're facing that level of evil now. This is not 1880 when the kaiser was a Christian and everything is okay. That will no longer fly. It's a world come of age. Eric Metaxas: And I think that the misunderstanding of that by the theologians in the death of God movement and so it was a kind of willful misunderstanding and they were able to twist these little phrases. I mean imagine writing a letter to your friend, you're in prison, and then somebody comes along and writes a white paper, a 30 page white paper based on five words by Timothy George and you'd wanna get out of your grave and say excuse me, I didn't mean. Excuse me, you got it wrong. But there was no one to speak for Bonhoeffer and his best friend [inaudible 00:16:21] did speak against this but he feared doing it strongly. I think he thought as long as Bonhoeffer's getting attention it'll all work out in the end but it took a lot longer to work out because my book didn't come out til 2010 and for many, many years people were persuaded by the death of God theologians, if you wanna call them that, and then by the other theologians who weren't sufficiently strongly against that misreading. Timothy George: Now Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran theologian and very much indebted to Luther in many ways. He quotes Luther, I think, more than any other text except the Bible. And you have now moved, in a way, back in history from the 20th century, Bonhoeffer, to Martin Luther and have written a wonderful biography published in 2017 by Penguin, Martin Luther: the Man who Rediscovered God and Changed the World. Does the world need another biography of Luther? Why did you write this? Eric Metaxas: Well for many similar reasons to why I wrote about Bonhoeffer. I said I'm a popular writer, I'm not a theologian and I'm not an academic and I believe one of the gifts that God has given me is the ability to communicate clearly and I think that when I looked at what had been written about Luther the best general biography you could really find was by Roland Bainton and the book is 70 years old. Timothy George: It was published, Eric, the year I was born, 1950. Eric Metaxas: I mean, I think of 1950 as not that long ago and then I realize, wait a minute, it's now 70 years and I thought to myself, we need a new biography for a few reasons. First of all, I think as good as Bainton's book, obviously, is, it can be a little dull in parts and I realize that there are many sides to Luther that are so crazy and so wonderful and so wild and he was such a maniac in so many ways I said this ought to be a very, very entertaining and funny story because this guy was a very, very entertaining and funny man. He was just extraordinary and I thought that needs to be communicated in the book and then of course, let's be honest, 2017 was the 500th anniversary of when he nailed the theses to the door of the Catholic church in Wittenberg and so it was this huge celebration, this huge moment in history and my friends, Greg Thornbury and Marcus Speaker convinced me. Eric Metaxas: They said Eric you've got to do this. You're the one to write the book and they began to make me see the significance of Luther which frankly I had not seen before that. I mean as little as I knew of him, I didn't know that he had been the one chosen by God, in a way, not just to turn over the tables in the temple, but to really re-orient the entire West in a way that prepared it for the future in which we live. A future of self government and liberty and religious liberty. It took a maniac like Luther to have the guts to fight the way he did and I didn't know this so when I began to see this and when I began to see how entertaining and funny he was, I said wow. I really am gonna write this book because I said it's gonna be fun. Once in a while I like to write something that's really entertaining. There's no Nazis in the book. It's a little bit more fun to read and so I actually enjoyed writing it and as a writer I can tell you I normally don't enjoy writing. Writing is really hard work but the Luther book to me, it's just one of the most entertaining stories I've ever encountered Eric Metaxas: So I was particularly thrilled that it got such a great reception. It was the first time I had a full page review in the New York Times that was positive. It ended up being a wonderful experience. Timothy George: Well Luther was a flesh and blood character and you make him come alive off the pages so if you haven't read Martin Luther: the Man who Rediscovered God and Changed the World, Penguin 2017, I recommend it to you. It's a great read and one of the great figures. I'd say Luther is one of the four great theologians in the history of the church. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and I would put Barth in that category. I don't always agree with Barth but Luther very much helped shape the way in which we understand God and ourselves and the world and you bring this out in this biography. Timothy George: I want to go back to another book, actually two books that you wrote. They're not as large as we've talked about Bonhoeffer and Luther and they're not about one person, they're actually about, two books, seven men, seven women. Now they're all interesting characters that you deal with in those books but one in particular I want you to focus on and in Seven Men one of the characters is Chuck Colson and it's actually through Chuck Colson that you and I first met. We were his friends, his colleagues, we were both with him the night in which he collapsed which led to his death. I'll never forget that standing with you, with Chuck there on that platform. Say a little bit about Chuck. Your relationship to him and why he's still a person we need to remember ten years after his death. Eric Metaxas: Yeah, well first of all, Chuck Colson is only in my book Seven Men because he died. I said I will never put anyone in the book Seven Men or Seven Women or any subsequent books like that, 'cause I'm planning sequels of those books, there's so many great figures but if somebody is still living I wouldn't put them in the book and I knew that Chuck was on his deathbed after that evening. You and I, obviously, with John Stonestreet will never forget it. It was a moment in history that the three of us ought to be five feet behind him when he collapsed. I mean it's one of the most extraordinary moments in my life and I realized that he was dying and I said oh my goodness, I get to write about Chuck in this book because his story is perfect for my book Seven Men. And obviously as horrified as we were that he passed away I thought I can write about him and the world who doesn't know him can learn about him because it kind of amazed me. Eric Metaxas: When I came to faith in 1988, everybody was talking about Chuck Colson. He was the biggest figure that there was for me. He was my biggest hero and I'm reading his books but all these years later a lot of young people don't know who he was and I said not only should they know who he was but he is exactly the kind of person that I wanna write about because he did what everybody in my book seven men did to be great. They put themselves aside and they put truth and virtue and God in the forefront and the story of Chuck, I mean, I remember when I was about ten and all the Watergate stuff was breaking, I remember his name and seeing his face in the papers and stuff and then I came to faith and I realized oh my goodness, that guy, that genius became a born again believer, gave everything to God, went to prison, and spent the rest of his life going into prison to help the least of these. Eric Metaxas: It was such an amazing story so I started reading all his books and I got to meet him in the 90s and then he asked me if I would work for him and so I worked for him with Breakpoints and got to spend some time with him and then over the years we'd see each other and when my Bonhoeffer book came out, I'll never forget it because I'm looking for the father's blessing. Somebody you admire, revere, like I admired Chuck Colson so much. When he read my book on Bonhoeffer, he wouldn't stop talking about it, he invited me to conferences and it's like we actually became friends and I thought this is such an honor that God would allow me to be friends with my hero and he was even talking about my book a few minutes before he collapsed that day and I thought this is like a dream. The man that I have admired so much who belongs in this pantheon, sees that what I've done on the story of Bonhoeffer is in many ways an encapsulation of what we all care about. Religious liberty and standing up for the faith. Eric Metaxas: And so we became friends as I said but when I put him in my Seven Men book it's for one basic reason. Well for two. He, just like George Washington, was offered power and he said no. Chuck Colson was offered a plea deal and anybody would be crazy to refuse the plea deal. His lawyer begged him and thought he must be insane to refuse the plea deal but Chuck Colson said listen, I'm a Christian. I'm gonna trust Jesus. I'm not gonna lie and if God wants me to go to prison, I wanna go to prison. It was the kind of thing that shows you that faith is real and that this man was willing to trust God and he did go to prison because he trusted God and then when he got out of prison he did the thing that nobody does. He said I'm not gonna put this behind me. I'm gonna spend the rest of my life going into prisons. I'm gonna make this my identity. I'm Chuck Colson, the man who went to prison and who encountered the prisoners. Those who we've forgotten. Eric Metaxas: And he became a hero for those of us who care about prisoners. He became a hero for many prisoners and he was willing to, instead of get a lucrative job and put that behind him the way anybody like Martha Stewart or anybody who goes to prison, they just put it behind them and they forget about it, they don't talk about it, he did the opposite. And it was because of that that God was able to use him incredibly powerfully and so it's a lesson to all of us that you can't out-give God. You can never make a mistake trusting God radically and to be able to put that in my book as the seventh of the seven men, I have to say I really believe that was God's plan because it's just one of the stories of our time. Timothy George: We've been talking about a book, Seven Men by Eric Metaxas. He also has a book Seven Women. Fascinating profiles of godly people who have shaped our life in many ways. When Chuck died in 2012, Eric, you, along with John Stonestreet, became the voice of Breakpoint which continues to air across our country on 1350 outlets. You are one of the voices that carries forward the legacy, the message, the mission of Chuck Colson and I'm very grateful to know you, to call you my friend, and to work with you in this witness for the gospel in our time. And Eric, thank you so much for this time on the Beeson Podcast. We look forward to seeing you soon. God bless you in every way. Eric Metaxas: And right back at you. It's just an honor to be with you here and I cannot wait to see you in person in one of my favorite cities. God bless you. Thank you so much. Timothy George: We're looking forward to having Eric Metaxas here at Samford University in a special lectureship sponsored by the Orlean Bullard Beeson School of Education, the 2019 Percy Cook Ratliff Lecture Series. This is gonna take place on March the 19th, 2019 7:00. Reserve seating ranges from 10 to $25 and can be reserved at Samford.edu/go/EricMetaxas. Opportunities to meet Eric are also available through VIP ticket options. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson Podcast at our website BeesonDivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational Evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. 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