Fortress Press

Michael Hayes, a self-professing evangelical, offers in this volume perhaps the first--and only--biography that shows how Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life and legacy can be of great inspiration to evangelicals, while not diminishing or dismissing his (Bonhoeffer's) "liberal" theological, ethical and social commitments. Hayes understands Bonhoeffer's contribution to address key concerns for evangelicals: scripture, salvation, sin, Jesus Christ, church, and world. He argues -- throughout this biography -- that for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Bible had immense authority (a primary evangelical commitment) while he simultaneously avoided a fundamentalist hermeneutic. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ever the Lutheran, Jesus Christ is unquestionably the incarnate Word of God, present in preaching, community, and sacraments, at the center of the church, history, nature, and individual lives. Hayes challenges fellow evangelicals not to diminish Bonhoeffer's importance for lacking an emphasis on a "private" experience of conversion, as understood by American evangelicals. Hopefully, evangelical Christians will appreciate one of their own who has spent four decades of prayerful engagement, scholarly discernment, and ongoing "conversation" with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and here offers a masterful tome about this contemporary witness to Jesus Christ. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Follower of the Living Jesus, the life story of Bonhoeffer is told in a way that evangelicals can--hopefully--hear and respect, without distortion or domestication. Michael Hayes has gifted the church of Jesus Christ with a unique and marvelous gift that can instruct and inspire disciples in the the third millennium who seek to be "followers of the living Jesus."