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- [00:00]
Cole Smead
Foreign.
- [00:03]
Eric Metaxas
You're listening to A Book With Legs, a podcast presented by Smead Capital Management. At Smead Capital Management, we advise investors who fear stock market failure. You can learn more@smeedcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.
- [00:22]
Cole Smead
Welcome to A Book with Legs podcast. I'm Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager here at Smead Capital Management. At our firm, we are readers and we believe in the power of books to help shape informed investors. In this podcast, we speak to great authors about their writings the late, great Charlie Munger prescribed using multiple mental models and analysis. We analyze their work through the lens of business markets and people. In this episode, we will think about being a light in a dark world. We will also discuss what it's like to be on the inside of people being led by evil. We will also think about the incentives of an outside world that doesn't care to understand the good being spoken from pulpits and from private conversations among military officers. Eric Metaxas is joining us to discuss his 2011 book, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Also to note for our listeners, this is based on the recent movie that was also released here. To give us a little background on Eric, Eric's an author, speaker, and also host his own radio show. He has published other books including Amazing Grace, William Wilberforce and and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, Martin Luther, the Man who Rediscovered God and Changed the World, and many other titles, including numerous, might I add, children's books. Eric is the founder and host of a New York City series called Socrates in the City. He graduated from Yale with a BA In English. And I assume, Eric, you're joining us from New York City.
- [01:45]
Eric Metaxas
Close. I'm in Danbury, Connecticut. This is the house that I grew up in, only about an hour and 15 minutes from where we live in New York City. So this is. Yeah, this is where I grew up. This is where I grew up.
- [01:59]
Cole Smead
So I got to tell you how I originally came across Bonhoeffer. You know, prior to you writing your book, I went to a small private Christian school and one of my teachers, my Bible teacher, I think it was my sophomore year of high school, had talked a lot about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and just kind of commented on his courage and what he had done in his life, which there have been other people to write about. Bonhoeffer, you know, I don't think anybody as noteworthy as you, but I say that because that was kind of my preference, or not my preference, but my introduction to Bonhoeffer prior. We've been reading your book for about 16 months internally here at our company, which I know that sounds weird, but we've been using as a devotional, where we're reading eight to 10 pages at a time and pairing it with proverbs, just so you know. And the reason why we started doing that was because we thought, you know, we're at a time where Jewish people are being persecuted. As my pastor has often said over the years, times change, demons don't. And therefore, I thought a lot about the paradigms of the past. And that's what we got into. Your book was kind of post Gaza is asking, what can we understand from history and similar situations or issues? But I'd love to ask you, what caused you to write about Bonhoeffer?
- [03:13]
Eric Metaxas
Well, I'll tell you, it's an amazing thing. You hear people say this and you don't know what to make of it, and then it happens to you. I look back on my life and it seems so obvious that God created me to write the Bonhoeffer book. I don't say this kind of stuff cavalierly. My mother, who was. Who's here, grew up in Nazi Germany. Her father was killed in the war. This is my history. These are my people. And when I had my conversion experience in 1988, the guy leading me to faith, my dear friend Ed Tuttle, says, have you ever heard about Dietrich Bonhoeffer? I said, no. You know, I went to Yale. They don't talk about Christian heroes at places like Yale University, Right. So he starts telling me about this German pastor who, because of his radical faith in Jesus, speaks up for the Jews. He tells me about a German pastor who, because of his radical faith in Jesus, speaks against the Nazis and gets involved in a plot to kill Adolf Hitler. I said, that kind of Christian hero I could. I could be interested in. I didn't know there was such a thing. And of course, because this is my story, because my family lived through this hell, I want to know what happened to all those who didn't agree with Hitler. Literally. This morning, Cole, this morning, my mom in the other room, she's 90, was going through some old letters, and she found. I can't even believe I'm telling you this. A 1943 sermon. The local village, her grandmother had just died, and she said, here is a sermon given by the pastor. He was. You could read how it's pro Nazi propaganda. In the sermon given at my great grandmother's funeral in 1943, the pressure was so strong that in a little village, the pastor felt this obligation to toe the line, to say something pro Nazi. The sermon is in the other room. It's typed up. Blows my mind. I've never seen it before. Every German had to deal with this. So the lie that all Germans were on board with Hitler, I knew in 1988 when I heard about Bonhoeffer, I said, I know that many Germans were not on board with Hitler. But then you hear about a man who used his influence. And Bonhoeffer was very influential. He came from a wealthy family, used his influence to try to wake up the church, to speak out, to try to get. I said, this is. This is an unbelievable story. Somebody needs to tell the story. And whenever I write a book, you know, the first question is, are there other books like it? And the answer is no. There are tons of books written about Bonhoeffer, but none of them definitively tells the story for a regular reader, not for academics or people interested in theology, but for a reader who's interested in the story, this amazing story. And so I said, I've got to write a book about it. I. You know, I didn't. In some ways, I never thought I'd write a book about it, but I said, somebody's got to tell the story. And then in 2008, I sat down and I wrote the book. Yeah.
- [06:18]
Cole Smead
Yeah. Nice. Well, so to your point, about, like, you were made for this book, Dietrich was made for the story. I mean, as I was reading through your book, I thought, gosh, this guy is such an oddball. The circumstances of just his family background alone is very unique. So can you kind of teach our listeners, like, know, what was the mother's side? What was his father's side?
- [06:40]
Eric Metaxas
Oh, yeah. No, it's so. It's so fascinating. And that's the thing is, like, when I write a book, I tend not to know that much going into it. You know, you start doing the research and you start thinking, this is amazing. I can't wait to put this on the page for people to discover. So his father, I mean, just to be clear, he came from what can only be described as an outrageously amazing family. His father was literally most famous doctor in Germany for something like 50 years. He was a very big deal in the scientific world, in the medical world. That's Bonhoeffer's father. Everybody in his family was amazing. His mother was amazing. I won't even go into that. But what's really interesting is that the mother was particularly religious. Strong Christian, came from a very strong Christian background. The father did not. But the father kind of let the mother catechize the kids and raise them in the way she thought. You know, he was very respectful of her. And you know, and so Bonhoeffer is raised by a mother and by two governesses who are hardcore, you know, pietistic believers, the Herrnhouter, the Moravians, you know, some people know that story. And so Zinzendorf is, you know, the figure behind all that. And so Bono forgets all this, but in the context of a very brilliant academic, well to do environment, he's unlike anybody. You could, you couldn't really make him up. He's a, he's a very, very interesting figure. And he's the only one of all of his brothers and sisters because there were eight who said, I want to go into the ministry, I want to go into theology. So he seemed to know from an early age that this was God's calling on his life.
- [08:25]
Cole Smead
Well, yeah, and to your point, I mean, interesting family because I think you comment in the book that, you know, they weren't regular churchgoers, but to your point, they had immense amounts of faith and they knew their Bible, for lack of a better term. But I mean, this intellectualism flowed. But like I think you talked about the evening entertainment. They get done with dinner and it's not like we just ate. I mean, these people would hang around together, they would have fun together. Could you kind of teach us like a typical post dinner evening of entertainment?
- [08:54]
Eric Metaxas
Well, this is why I put this all in the book. I mean, the first part of the book is all about his family and his early years because I thought people need to know what an extraordinary environment this is. And I put that in there to sort of whet people's appetite to think, could my life in my family be like this? Could I raise my kids so they have an appreciation for art and culture and music? They were all musical. They would have these musical evenings where, you know, various members of the family played instruments or sang or whatever. They had a tremendous respect and knowledge of classical music, that they were an amazing family, culturally speaking on every level, very educated, very broad minded, very well traveled. And they had this core of decency. So, you know, you get a lot of this, you get a lot of people that, you know, they're all into culture or this or that. But this family also had this deep core of decency about what's right and wrong, about standing up for the truth, that it was just part of the family culture. And you start realizing how important family culture is, how beautiful that is. And so that to me forms the basis, the foundation of Bonhoeffer's life.
- [10:08]
Cole Smead
So you talk about this idea of it's like they're conservative values with a liberalism that, I mean, the balance between those two is just a very unique chord that their family strikes. They're conservative in the way, I think you explain that war breaks out with Russia and they are your conservative pro Germans. Right? They're going to go fight in war, cousins go fight in war. And that was their conservative. But yet they didn't leave their brain checked in at the door. They'd walk in and think logically about what's going on in front of them.
- [10:39]
Eric Metaxas
Well, that's the thing is like, I think we have this false choice, you know, in America today, for example, that you can either be like a sophisticated, culturally sophisticated liberal or you know, a tobacco chewing, NASCAR rah rah, kind of love America conservative. And you think, wait a minute, wait a minute. No, that's a cliche. That's a cliche by the way of the left, that they act like they're sophisticated. They're the cultural elites. That's simply not right. Throughout history, you have had many people that were culturally sophisticated and had the values of patriots, of people who loved their country and are willing to die for, for what's right. And so in America, really, that's become very divided. And I think Bonhoeffer calls us to want to be sophisticated, but in the right way, not for its own sake, but to be rooted in the things that, you know, give us Western civilization. The Bonhoeffer family really understood that.
- [11:38]
Cole Smead
So you. And by the way, there's just a great, I mean, beyond in the background of all the Bonhoeffer story, I mean, if you want to just get a great history of what's going on in Germany in the build up to World War II, your book just tells it. It's like looking at a person's life as a picture of that history, which I really enjoy. The kaiser abdicates in 1918. They're living in Berlin. So they're up close and personal to, to what's going on. I think you use the story, for example, of, you know, Rathenau and his death as a picture to understand not only was, you know, you mentioned how unique Bonhoeffer is, but yet at the same time, he is at the cultural center of Germany where the highest seats of government are changing hands daily.
- [12:23]
Eric Metaxas
Well, this is what makes him so fascinating and I'm glad you mentioned that because, you know, nobody's ever brought up Rathenow when I've talked about Bonhoeffer. Probably hundreds, hundreds of times for sure. But I had to find out for myself as a German, right, as somebody whose mother has a German accent and grandmother's German accent and they grew up in Germany to find out what happened, what happened that Germany went down this demonic path. I had to understand it. So you look into the history and you realize it's kind of complicated. You know, they go into World War I, they lose horribly and suddenly. And this is, you know, this is true today, right? The Allied powers force this kind of democracy on them. They never had had democracy. Now I wrote a book called if youf Can Keep it about America and about, about how faith and freedom and virtue work together in America. We have a lot of conservatives. I mean, George Bush was utterly guilty of this. That you think, you know what, once people are free, boom, they'll become just like our founding Fathers. It doesn't work that way. So Germany did not have a history of self government. They had the Kaiser, it was a monarchy. So suddenly the Allies after World War I say, okay, now we're going to force you to have democracy to govern yourself. They didn't know how to do it. So it created all kinds of chaos because again, the ham fisted Allies, it's really like the, you know, when you think about the, the European elites of today telling countries what they need to do, telling Ukraine, we're gonna put you in NATO, telling, you know, just suddenly they have this power and they do very destructive things. So when you have the Allied Powers crippling Germany with the Versailles Treaty, which was punitive and horrible, and then forcing them to have this Weimar Republic, they didn't know how to handle it. So it created all kinds of chaos. And into that chaos steps something 10,000 times worse than the Kaiser, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. And so that chaos, you see a lot of Germans in the Bonhoeffer family trying to process after 1918. How do we do this? How do we do that? This is, it's confusing, it's difficult. And into that mess comes Adolf Hitler saying, I will be your savior. And anybody who's a serious Christian understands that we don't need a, a savior. We have a savior. Who are you? Well, they would soon find out.
- [14:58]
Cole Smead
Yeah. And I think you also point out in the book that, I mean, getting back to the idea of just how pro German they are, I mean Bonhoeffer's family would say how terrible the Treaty of Versailles was. And that was a widespread German view. So the question was, why would we agree to something so bad and not, well, let's the Natural outcropping of Germany wasn't. We all agree on this, so let's cause problems. No, it was just. They all agreed how terrible that was in the economy.
- [15:25]
Eric Metaxas
I think it was terrible. I mean, we. Many people that, you know, following the Versailles Treaty, many, many people, including many famous Americans, said it was bad, it was punitive. There's some. Sometimes, you know, you do something that's so ungracious that you're going to. You're going to cause more trouble. The way we handle things after World War II was just the opposite, Right? We wanted to bless Japan, we wanted to rebuild Japan and rebuild Germany. That's the Christian way you deal with your defeated enemies. What they did after World War I backfired horribly and gave the world Adolf Hitler. So when you have a lot of, you know, I think of the European elites, I think of the neocons, the rhinos, the war party, the liberals in America, this is what they do. They throw their power around and it backfires horribly. People suffer. Regular people suffer, wars break out. And it's amazing because, you know, that is really what leads to Adolf Hitler. Because in the book, I wanted to understand, how did Hitler happen? How did the Nazis happen? I know that my family was not pro Hitler. How did Germany get taken over by these satanic forces, which they were. And that's really. That's Bonhoeffer's story when he was a traditionalist.
- [16:44]
Cole Smead
So I remember it was kind of like a breadcrumb you left in the book where you talked about the Eagle fraternity that he joined that his father was part of. So again, later in the book, you know, you're watching this traditionalist life and very pro German life with this very oddball, unique person. But you, you know, it's not like if someone sit down there and say, you know what? This is going to be the guy that does something just incredibly insane compared to everybody else. You would have actually been like, well, he's just kind of your typical German kid because, you know, he's part of dad's fraternity. It's like, you think in the American context, kid goes to college, joins his dad's fraternity. How is that any different? But that's not what we end up getting. The other thing too is you also talk about the paradigm of how the Nazi party used the church, but before that, you can also talk about where the church was. So he was very much part of the Lutheran Church in the ilk of Martin Luther, but obviously the Catholic Church was big at the time. He goes to Rome as a Younger man, what does he see in Rome and what are his impressions of the Catholic Church?
- [17:51]
Eric Metaxas
Well, this is so fascinating and this is what I think. This is an important lesson for Christians as far as I'm concerned. What does it mean to be a Christian? It doesn't mean rah, rah, I'm for Jesus. What does it mean? It means I care about truth. Jesus is truth. Therefore I care about whatever is true. It's not. I'm part of some club, some religious club. I care about truth. And my faith should carry me toward truth in every sphere. Which means that if I'm part of some church, my question is, is this church doing all the right things? What if I see in another church they're getting something right? A lot of people say, well, I don't care about that church, I'm part of this church. Well, Bonhoeffer was trained by his family, by his upbringing to be open minded in the best sense and to say, I'm simply interested in what's true. So here he comes from a Lutheran, German, Lutheran background. Now your average German believed like, you know, the Lutheran Church, that's it. Luther gave us Protestantism. I'm a Lutheran, I'm not interested in anything else. He was open minded. So he goes to Rome and he sees in Rome, he's 18 years old, what looks like the church universal, people of every color, celebrating the Mass at St. John's Lateran. And he starts thinking about the church as this is the body of believers who believe in Jesus throughout history, throughout the world, in the Catholic Church, outside the Catholic Church, in the German Lutheran Church, in the churches around the world. In other words, he, he wasn't all about, I'm a German Lutheran Christian. He was about, I'm a Christian. And true Christianity transcends national boundaries. It doesn't mean you're not patriotic. But as a Christian, your identity is deeper. But Bonhoeffer was not so naive as many progressive Christians are today, to say, I only care about the kingdom of heaven, I don't care about my country. That's nonsense. If you care about the kingdom of heaven, you will also love your country, but you don't make an idol of patriotism. And so Bonhoeffer really was willing to learn from other traditions, from the Catholic tradition. He discovers natural law. They didn't really have that in the Lutheran Church. He discovers that in the Catholics. But whatever is true, we're supposed to want. And so he was, you know, the best kind of ecumenical, open minded Christian.
- [20:17]
Cole Smead
Yeah. And to your point, I mean, if I use natural law. If you look at the US Supreme Court, effectively, the Catholic people on the court are natural law experts. To your point.
- [20:26]
Hi, I'm Cole Smead, CEO and Portfolio Manager here at Smead Capital Management and host of this podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, I'd like to invite you to check out smeedcap.com at our firm. We are stock market investors. We advise investors who fear stock market failure with a discipline that has proven success over long periods of time. Learn more about our funds@smeedcap.com past performance is not indicative of future results. Investing involves risks, including loss of principal. Please refer to the prospectus for important information about the investment company, including objectives, risks, charges and expenses. Read and consider it carefully before investing Smead funds distributed by UMB Distribution Services.
- [21:07]
Llc Not affiliated the Catholicism it did affect him. It infected his own faith and I think a lot about some of the later parts of the book. He obviously went to go study theology at Berlin University, and I was thinking about all the professors that he had. So let's just use Harnick real quick. Harnick, you come in, you're a young theology student and I mean these people are big time at Burlington University and everyone's studying under them. But he comes in really with this view of like, okay, I have to prove to myself these things are true or not. Okay. I think you talked about Harnick, you know, what his theory was on miracles, I think, for example. So could you kind of teach us that? And then what, what Dietrich's view was.
- [21:50]
Eric Metaxas
That, well, bottom line is that Berlin University was like, you know, the theological center of the world, but it was theologically pretty liberal for the time. And what does that mean? It means that they have kind of drifted into this. We're going to study the text. Well, they kind of forgot about the God behind the text. They forgot that there is a God, that the Bible is sacred scripture, anointed by the Holy Spirit, it's God speaking. And so Bonhoeffer is in this realm. So he learns how to do this kind of liberal theological exegesis, but it doesn't mean he buys the whole thing.
- [22:31]
Cole Smead
Sure, he just does it for the purpose of class, professor, grade, etc.
- [22:35]
Eric Metaxas
Well, I don't know that he did it just for greatness. I think he was actually intellectually interested in everything and in learning different ways of seeing things, but he didn't get pulled into it. I mean, we have to be clear. He was so brilliant that he had an extraordinary intellectual confidence. He was very self assured. He'd been raised in a family where all his brothers and sisters are geniuses and they're arguing at the table when he was 10 and 11 and 12. And so he comes to Berlin University with a kind of self assurance intellectually that nobody would typically have. That was just a rare thing for Bonhoeffer. So he was willing to learn from those on the more liberal side not to say, oh, they have nothing to teach me. Sure, they can have something to teach me. But ultimately, he follows Karl Barth. He believes God is real and he's just open to whatever is true. So he was a very rare figure.
- [23:31]
Cole Smead
Well, yeah. And you talk about the other thing I wanted to mention about Bart is you talk about the Barthian view of God and the Bible. Can you kind of just explain that? Because this Barth is really, I'll call it from a theological perspective. He is really the mentor of Bonhoeffer in so many ways on that idea.
- [23:50]
Eric Metaxas
Well, I've forgotten most of what I learned about Karl Barth. But the reason Karl Barth is such a dramatic figure is that he comes into an environment where people have drifted away from. They've drifted away from the traditional Christian view. It's basically liberal theology, you know, historical, critical, you know, pulling the text apart. They've drifted away from a simple, I believe in God or whatever. Barth comes in and says, no, God is other with a capital O. There is a God behind the text. And that's the point of it all. That was a very big deal to say when everything is trending in the other direction. And Barth's famous Epistle to the Romans, I guess, comes out around. I don't know if it was 1918 or 19 or something, but it's like this monster book that just suddenly changes everything. And Bonhoeffer clearly was in that camp.
- [24:49]
Cole Smead
Sure. So let's jump forward a little bit. The Jewish question comes up in the German church with, like, the Arian paragraph. Okay, can you kind of teach us what the Aryan paragraph was and what was, you know, what was leading the church's view? And why couldn't Dietrich just punt? Because, I mean, very cliche, but Dietrich could look into that and say, you know what? These people are just being racist. Okay. Why could he not just punt and be, you know, simple about it like that?
- [25:20]
Eric Metaxas
Well, I think we forget. We think everybody thinks the way we do. You know, seeing things along racial lines was traditional throughout history. Right. So we can say, well, we know it's wrong, but if you go to 1930, whether it's in the United States or in Germany, there were a lot of people that kind of bought this idea that, you know, while the races should be separate or they're different or whatever. So when Hitler says, this is Germany and we want Germany to be full of only Germans, so we don't want there to be Jews in Germany, a lot of people would say, well, okay, that's. That's not a crazy idea, because they didn't have a tradition of what we have in America. I mean, what we have in America is essentially unique, that from our beginning, we have religious liberty. I mean, you have people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson defending the rights of people with whom they disagree on theological issues and saying, we can have a country where people agree to disagree, where you don't have to be part of a state church. Germany didn't have this history. So Bonhoeffer is suddenly confronted with this outworking of this thinking that Germans need to be German and you can't be. It's about ethnicity and this idea that, you know, was part of the Zeitgeist at the time, right? This, you know, blood and soil that we're from here. It's really a pagan idea. I mean, let's be clear. This is a pagan idea that, you know, it's almost like you worship the gods of your place or something. So this is this kind of paganism that's there, and it's crept in, but you have a lot of Christians that aren't sophisticated enough to say, wait a minute, that's wrong. That's antithetical to my Christian faith. So Bonhoeffer, of course, has the ability to see through this. And so when the Nazis propose this idea, and this is as soon as the Nazis take power that we're going to make, everything in Germany is going to be German, and we don't want Jews involved, right? So you can imagine a culture saying, okay, this is our country and we only want this kind of people. Now, we would say that's distasteful to us. But a lot of Germans thought, well, I guess that sounds reasonable. Bonhoeffer realizes the Nazis are going to try to do this to the church. And this is where he says, okay, now you have a real problem. Because the church, by definition, is anyone who believes by faith in Jesus. God doesn't look at our blood, right? He looks at our hearts, meaning he looks at our intentions and what we believe and what we care about. He doesn't say, you're this, you're that, you're Greek, you're German, whatever. So that's antithetical to the scriptural view, to God's view and the view of the church in history. So Bonhoeffer is confronted early in 1933 when Hitler takes power with this problem that the Nazis are trying to take over the church along these Nazified racial lines. And they're going to say if you are, if you have Jewish blood, you can't be part of the German church. And Bonhoeffer says that's not going to fly. If you have Jewish blood, the question is not on your blood. The question is not your parents ethnicity. The question is what do you believe? And if you believe in the scriptures and you've been baptized, it makes you a Christian. So then you're a Jewish Christian. But this is where Bonhoeffer has to assert himself. And there were a lot of German pastors that thought, well, maybe we don't love this, but that sounds reasonable that we'll have a German church and there could be a separate Jewish church and they can do their own thing. But, you know, so Bonhoeffer is forced to be the guy processing this and writing. He writes a famous essay, the Church and the Jewish Question, where he breaks this down, where he makes this clear about what is the biblical response to what the Nazis are trying to do to the church. I mean, it's amazing.
- [29:20]
Cole Smead
Yeah. I'm going to use a quote from your book. It is rather quote. It is rather the task of Christian preaching to say, here's the church where Jews and Germans stand together under the word of God. Here's the proof whether a church is still a church or not. End quote. You know, to your point, he can see what's counterfeit, which tells you what's real because that's how you can always tell what's, what's real is you can see what's counterfeit. You can see the counterfeit church in front of him. Let me, let me pivot a little bit. Could you just touch on what were the kind of restrictions that Bonhoeffer seeing in his day among friends he had, you know, you talked about some of his Jewish friends and what they were seeing in their work lives and in their personal lives day to day?
- [30:01]
Eric Metaxas
Well, it was like any of these things, it takes over slowly. It's not all at once. And look, you even, you've seen it in America, right? I mean, if you are in the psychiatric world and you say, oh, I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and I'm a Christian, I don't believe that men can marry men suddenly in the profession of psychiatry, you will be ostracized. You can't have that Christian biblical point of view. You better change. That has happened like crazy in American life until very recently, that if you have a biblical view, you begin to be ostracized in business, whatever it is. Bonhoeffer saw this, of course, dramatically in Germany. And it starts in some ways slowly, where if you were in a certain profession, they would say, well, we're not going to. If you're Jewish, we're not going to allow you to participate. Here they start ostracizing the Jews from different professions. Obviously, they tried to do it with the church and say, we're going to have a German church, a Reichskirche, and no Jews are welcome in that church. So Bonhoeffer is also in this rare position. You mentioned it earlier. He grows up in this very sophisticated environment in Berlin where his family knows everybody. They're very connected, and they know tons of Jews. They are not some parochial German family living, you know, in a village. They, his sister, his twin sister, marries a man who's ethnically Jewish. Now, he was baptized. He identified as a believer in Jesus. But the point is, they were surrounded in this academic elite community with Jewish people. So they had a very different view. And so they saw up close the persecution of the Jews, and they simply knew it was wrong. I mean, they had the best kind of liberal values that any of us in America would have today and say that that's wrong to discriminate along racial lines. We don't do that.
- [31:59]
Cole Smead
Sure. Well, I'm gonna use Christ says, the body of the church is like the bride. Okay. And so Goebbels and Hitler understood that, though, because, you know, Hitler is like, hey, like, stay in the church, because that bride is a better vessel for our will. Call it, you know, the Nazification of the church than trying to go out and say the church is bad. Because so many people, they believe in the idea of the church, at a minimum, whether or not they're following God's word. And I say that because I think a lot about that in terms of if people said, you know, what's the problem with the body of Christ? We typically reflect the culture around us. Right. So to your point, you're thinking about this in what's going on in the German church. And if the culture around it is saying, hey, you know, this Hitler guy, he's got some interesting ideas. We're getting more excited about him, and maybe he's right. What do you see going on in the church? Same thing as going on in the culture. Is that how you think about that too? You know, looking to today, or do you think it was very different for how the body of Christ would be affected by the culture?
- [33:00]
Eric Metaxas
Well, it cuts both ways. There's always the temptation for the church to conform to the world. There's always the temptation. And so if you're really, really persecuted, that temptation doesn't exist because you are already demonized, ostracized, persecuted. But if you, if the church has made enough inroads so that you're living in some kind of a culturally Christian culture, a culturally Christian culture is tempted because sort of everybody's a Christian. And so the distinction between what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be just a part of the culture is no longer so clear. So you begin to be pushed to accept the mores and the thinking of the surrounding culture. So in America today, you have it with, whether it's gay marriage or whatever it is that, like, you know, we don't want to take a sharp stand on that. We don't want to be unpopular. We just. We want to be a big tent. So in Germany, Bonhoeffer realized that if you're a really devout Christian, you're going to see things fairly clearly. You're going to also have the guts to speak against evil or speak against something you think is wrong. But if you don't, if you're not such a strong Christian, just like in America today, and you're really looking for the approval of people, you're willing to bend, you're willing to keep your mouth shut when you should speak up. Everybody's talking about a critical race theory, blm. You're going to go along with it. You don't want to be. Wait a minute. That's not right. That's cultural Marxism. That's atheistic. We need to stand against that. So unless you really understand things, unless you're not only a serious Christian, but a serious, theologically sophisticated biblical Christian, you don't know which way to turn when the pressure comes. And the Nazis, of course, and you see this with a lot of institutions in our own world, they thought, well, we're not stupid. We're not going to try to cancel the church. We'll just try to take it over. We'll try to infiltrate it with our values. That, of course, has happened in the American church. I mean, you see rainbow flags outside of all kinds of churches, whatever. Twenty years ago, that would have been unthinkable. But. But over time, these secular forces thought we can Infiltrate the church. Why do we need to shut churches down? That's what the Nazis tried to do. And you know, Bonhoeffer was a pretty lonely voice speaking against it.
- [35:27]
Cole Smead
Sure. And I think the movie actually did a pretty good job of showing this. So, like, Niemoller starts kind of at odds with what the church should or shouldn't do versus, as you point out in your book, Bonhoeffer from the get go was very much on the page of. There is one right way to deal with this and we have to be quick and decisive and make a statement. Can you explain maybe Niemoller as a picture of someone who came back to what the church should be doing versus where he started on that discussion?
- [35:56]
Eric Metaxas
Well, first of all, thanks for mentioning the movie. It is just a great movie and I hope everyone will see it. It's now available on Amazon prime and available on Apple tv. So check out the Bonhoeffer film. It is. It is a spectacular.
- [36:09]
Cole Smead
But you gotta buy the book first. Cause I'm sure you make better money on the book, I think.
- [36:12]
Eric Metaxas
Of course I want people to buy the book, but sometimes if people see the film, that whets their appetite and they say, okay, I want to know more.
- [36:18]
Cole Smead
I agree. I'm going to ask you a question on that later, by the way. So I'll get. I have one question from the film that I didn't like that I want to get your opinion on.
- [36:25]
Eric Metaxas
Well, anyway, but so the story. I wrote a book very recently called Letter to the American Church and a sequel called Religionless Christianity. And in those books I talk about how these things relate to today, what happened in Bonhoeffer's day. And Niemoller is kind of the classic example of a good guy who was fooled. He's not a bad guy. He's not got his finger in the wind thinking, how can I be more popular? How can I get more people into my church by telling them, not being political or whatever, he was a hero, but he was duped, a good man, duped by the Nazis into thinking, you know what, maybe we don't agree, but we can trust them.
- [37:04]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [37:04]
Eric Metaxas
Niemoller had a meeting with Hitler in 1932 before Hitler takes power. And he's a very powerful pastor, a patriot. He got the Iron Cross in World War I. So he's a respected leader in the church. Hitler meets with him and says to him, number one, if I come into power, I will not bother the church and I will not institute pogroms against the Jews. Niemoller takes him at his word.
- [37:28]
Cole Smead
Sure.
- [37:28]
Eric Metaxas
And so Hitler gets into power and suddenly starts doing all this stuff he said he wasn't going to do. And Niemoller thinks I'm missing something. It must be the people around Hitler, these radicals around Hitler. I need to get a meeting with him. Well, it takes literally almost a year to get the meeting. And in the meeting, Hitler shows his true colors. There's a story in the book. In my Bonhoeffer book, I tell the story. And in my recent book, Religionless Christianity, I go into depth. Niemoller suddenly realizes he's been completely duped. Hitler is a monster. He pretended to be friendly and open, but as soon as he got into power, he's just going to crush the opposition.
- [38:10]
Cole Smead
Yeah.
- [38:11]
Eric Metaxas
And so I won't get into that further. But that was a chilling moment for Niemoller. And also he realized, and we now realize Niemoller woke up too late. And this is the key. There are a lot of Christians have this idea that, well, you know what? God's a gracious God. He'll give us a second chance, a third chance. Sometimes it's like the plane left. It doesn't matter if you're a minute late or an hour late, it's gone. You can't get on it. And that's what happened. Germany, the German church did not speak up in time. And about a year into Hitler, it was game over. If you woke up a year, a year and a half later, which is what Niemoller did, it was basically too late. And Niemoller regretted that for the rest of his life.
- [38:50]
Cole Smead
Well, and I mean, I could take your book and probably just dissect it as a game theory course. I mean, to your point, it's like you're reading about Bonhoeffer and what he's trying to do in the church. And it's so obvious things are moving way too slow. I mean, all the way out to, like, there's the Bethel confession, okay? And it's like they're writing a confession, and it's like by the time they get done, it's so watered down, it takes a stand on very little in comparison. And so that was the time and time again, now's the time to take a stand. That was Bonhoeffer's typical line. And when it was those moments of like, it's now or never, you know, it was never in effect. And so, you know, by the time people were willing to die. Right. It didn't matter. Is that a fair way of assessing a lot of this, because, again, you had to be. You had to be strong up front. You couldn't try to be strong once you had no power.
- [39:46]
Eric Metaxas
Well, that's really the issue is, and this is why we're supposed to have a living relationship with the God of the Bible. It's not just about a book. It's about, I have a living relationship. And the question is, what is God saying now? What is he saying right now? Whatever he says will not contradict the scriptures. But the point is, what God says now may be different from what he says a year from now. And what is God urging us to do now? Bonhoeffer seemed to be attuned to the urgency of the moment, and many in the church were not. They had different ideas. And he understood that if you do not act now as one, it's going to be over. And by the time you get to 1935, it's over. And Bonhoeffer knew it was over. So everything he did after that was kind of like a changing response because he knew that our chance to save the country in the way we could have before, that's gone. Now what do we do? What is God calling me to do now? And throughout my book on Bonhoeffer, you see him reacting to the more draconian laws, to the persecution. And then, of course, finally he gets involved directly in the plot to kill Hitler, which was because of. That's where he found himself. And so it's so fascinating that he was always really asking God to lead him, which is what we're supposed to do.
- [41:03]
Cole Smead
Yeah. And I also think it's interesting, you know, back to our discussion on what he saw from Catholicism. He asked God to lead him in many times in very quiet spaces on his own, which was not a typical, I'll call it a Lutheran practice, you know, that I took away from your book.
- [41:20]
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- [42:03]
Not affiliated. Let's talk about George Bell. George Bell enters. You know, he's in the uk. He becomes really a special relationship to Bonhoeffer. What. What was his role in this story? And why was he so important all the way through the end?
- [42:18]
Eric Metaxas
Well, Bonhoeffer spent a lot of time in England. At the end of 33, he was really disgusted with the. With the church in Germany. So he kind of escapes to England, even though he was going back and forth. But he befriends a bishop, a famous bishop, George Bell, and begins to share with George Bell, who's, of course, in England, what is happening in the German church. Because if you weren't in Germany, you wouldn't really know. It's not like the world we live in today. And so Bonhoeffer finds an ally in George Bell. And George Bell realizes that Bonhoeffer is this heroic, brilliant, young Christian man. And so that was a very important relationship that they had because there was still time to get word out outside Germany, through church circles, through the ecumenical movement. Bonhoeffer had relationships with church figures in the United States because he was here in 30 and 31, and then he has relationships with George Bell and others throughout Europe. So he's trying to get word to the church what is happening in Germany so that they will wake up, because there were many, many people that were naive or slow to understand the threat of Hitler. And so Bonhoeffer's relationship with George Bell was very central in that.
- [43:35]
Cole Smead
Yeah. The other thing, too, that was central to him was when he visited America, when you told the story that they, like, crossed the Mexican border, I just thought, this guy is just a hoot. I mean, like, you just want to be his buddy, along for the ride. But he talks a lot about the, you know, the African American churches, the black churches in Harlem and New York. Why was he so empowered by what he saw from those people and really their faith and their relationship to God?
- [44:04]
Eric Metaxas
Well, this is what's so interesting is. I mean, first of all, the story of Bonhoeffer is such an epic story. I mean, you cannot believe. Where didn't he go? What didn't he see? What did. He just goes everywhere. And I really want to make a series like the Crown because it's. It's an epic, epic story. And getting into all this stuff is. It's so fascinating. And you're talking about his relationship. I mean, he goes to New York in 1930, 31, doesn't have a clue what he's going to find. He finds theology. So Liberal that he's disgusted by it.
- [44:35]
Cole Smead
At Union. Union, at the time Union Theological Seminary.
- [44:38]
Eric Metaxas
He then goes up to Abyssinian Baptist Church. An African American from Alabama who's one of his fellow students at Union says, well, you know, why don't you come with me up to this church in Harlem? And there he finds the kind of faith that he maybe had seen it once or twice in his life before. When he was like, 15, he went to some kind of evangelical meeting that General Bramwell Booth, the son of the founder of the Salvation army, held in Germany. And so Bonhoeffer, when he was 15, sees this, you know, really evangelical expression of the faith, of the love of Jesus, and it blows his mind. At 15, now he's 24 years old, he's in New York, and he sees it in the black church in Harlem. And part of him just says, this is it. They're actually living their faith. This is not just like Pius Lutheran. We do our thing and then we go back to our lives. Yeah, he was really attracted by that. And then he gets pulled into, you know, I mean, imagine America in 1930, the real racism. And then going into the Jim Crow South. He goes to Washington, D.C. and he sees real Jim Crow racism. It blows his mind. And he sees the church, the African Americans standing against this. And that makes him realize, I need to really live out my faith when I go back to Germany. Of course, then he goes back to Germany and what happens? The Nazis are taking over the. Persecuting the Jews. So suddenly he realizes how he needs to live out his faith, and that's the story of the rest of his life.
- [46:10]
Cole Smead
Yeah, I agree. You know, he joins the conspiracy. You know, he does that through the abwear, which. Which is just. It's like you're somewhere in, you know, James Bond money laundering land. Very fun. Again, just. The guy's a freak show. He just does pretty much everything you could ever dream of to do, to be interesting. And yet it's like in his mind, he's like, this is just part of God' will. What a blessing. There's a paradox that comes up. This came up for Bonhoeffer, but I'm going to use Wedemeyer as a picture of this. You said he dealt with a paradox in his own life. And I think it was very symbolic for the conflict that Bonhoeffer dealt with. Quote, like so many of his era, he was caught between his hatred of Hitler and his love of country. End quote. Can you just kind of. We don't have a ton of time, but I'd just love to touch on that because these were Germans who loved their country very in the Prussian sense of loving their country and their heritage, but yet they hated Hitler.
- [47:07]
Eric Metaxas
Well, look, it's not complicated, right? You could be, you know, a couple years ago, I loved America. And it was my firm conviction that the President of the United States was destroying America and that his values and the values of his party were destroying the country that I love. Bonhoeffer and his family loved Germany. And they saw that Hitler, who proclaimed himself to be the greatest champion of Germany, was in fact the enemy of Germany. So the question is, if I love America, what America do I love? Do I love God's idea of America or do I love the KKK's view of America? Do I love God's view of America or do I love the Marxist view of America that they want America to, you know, become a globalist nonentity? Bonhoeffer loved God's view of Germany. There was a Germany of which he was proud. The Germany of Goethe and Schiller and Bach. Many people loved that Germany. Hitler hijacks Germany, he takes it over. He wants to turn it into a country that is fundamentally pagan, that destroys. I mean, Germany was very Christian. Obviously Luther gives us Protestant Christianity, so he's a very Christian nation. So that's always the question is, what is God's view of the nation? Not do you love the nation? But what version of the nation do you love?
- [48:33]
Cole Smead
So I just got to mention this because there's a lot that I've skipped over from my notes. You know, the conference in Fano Finkel Wall, which is, you know, they show, you know, a portrayal of it in the movie that looks like it's right out of Middle Earth in the movie, by the way. It's like very JR Tolkien looking in my mind. I really enjoyed that. You know, we don't talk other than the quote there. We don't talk much about the Prussian officers, which were a very, you know, from a non religious perspective. They were conflicted as Germans like we just talked about. He also, you know, the other quote I love from Bonhoeffer, he didn't romanticize the past quote, but he explained that the idea one could ever go back to time before troubles and death was false to begin with, end quote. Which is just like. So it's like just pours wisdom into the reader to think about. Wait, we can't go back. And romanticizing it is just as foolish as the time that we're in, which I really liked. Let me throw out one thing to you. And I'll use the movie as the picture of this. So I think of Bonhoeffer as this highly intellectual, highly logical, very cerebral, but again, pragmatic. He's always learning. He's trying to ask, what am I seeing? How does that fit in the lens of what God's given me and his Bible? And how do I use that as a lens for understanding the world? And the people that I'm meeting and running into in the movie, they show him quite a few times getting really emotional, like in prison or other situations. Was that just dramatic? Because when I read your book, I was like, this guy is. I mean, he's like a rock. He's like the Rock of Gibraltar. And when I saw him get really emotional at times, the movie, I was thinking, I don't know if that was the Dietrich that. That I read about.
- [50:11]
Eric Metaxas
I would agree with you. I love the movie. I think everybody has to see it. Tell your friends. It's. It's astonishing movie. I just mentioned it's out on Amazon prime and Apple tv. Jump and tell everybody. You know, I agree with you that there were things about it that I said now that doesn't seem right to me. And that, to me was your. Your. Your take on that, I think, is absolutely correct.
- [50:32]
Cole Smead
Okay, well, you're making me feel like I'm being a good student. Let me just throw it back to you and just say, if there's one thing that we just didn't tap or touch on that you think has to be mentioned about his story, or just a breadcrumb, if you will, what would that be?
- [50:48]
Eric Metaxas
Well, I mean, you said that, you know, in your company there, you're kind of reading the book as a devotional, my Bonhoeffer book. And I have to say, when I was writing it, there's so much of Bonhoeffer in there and so much scripture. And I said, people are gonna read this. Some people are gonna read this as a devotion devotional. And that makes me happy because there's just a lot that's there. Bonhoeffer offers so much that it's worth reading it that slowly and reading it as a devotional for your faith. On the other hand, I've met people that, you know, literally read it in two days, and they said I couldn't put it down. You know, and so there's that aspect of it as well. And I. And I. And I'm glad that it can be read in both ways, but I think that, you know, the. The Bonhoeffer story, ultimately, you know, I mentioned I said that I know that God created me to write this book. This is, you know, it's not me writing it. This is God giving us this story for such a time as this, I believe God called me to write this book when he did because it really is a story that we need to know. And the story of Bonhoeffer, I mean, I remember thinking before I wrote it, why isn't there a book that tells the whole story? This is an insane life. This is amazing. Somebody needs to do him justice. That's why I wrote the book. And I think that, you know, you don't need to be a Christian to read it. I mean, I think it's a great book to give to somebody who's Jewish or who is just not somebody who goes to church, because it's a true story. It's not a Christian book. It's a book, you know, it's not a Christian life. It's a life. And so to me, there's something about Bonhoeffer that again, I can take zero credit. I just happened to write the book, but he speaks to almost everyone. And it's something that, again, I tried hard to do it real justice in writing the book. And so I'm excited that it's getting to a wider audience. I just was. Jordan Peterson asked me to do an eight hour course for Peterson Academy. I finished filming that a couple of months ago and it just went online recently. But it's eight hours in depth on Bonhoeffer. There's just a lot there, you know, and so I'm, you know, when I talk to somebody like you, who's obviously read it so carefully, I really can't say how gratifying it is. It's very gratifying to me as a writer, you know, to see the way you've appreciated it. So let me say thank you.
- [53:09]
Cole Smead
Oh, it's a wonderful book. I was also going to ask you, I kind of taught people a little bit about your background. Where else can our listeners follow you going forward? Do you have a, another book in the works that you kind of have as your, as your working project right now?
- [53:21]
Eric Metaxas
Yeah, I'm writing a big book on the American Revolution. It'll be out next year. And I see it as similar to the Bonhoeffer book. I want it to be definitive. The whole story of how did the greatest nation in the history of the world come into being. So I've just started writing that and I'm very excited about that. People can find me my website. It's Eric Metaxas.com I hope people will sign up for my newsletter because there's so much stuff, so many people that I'm interviewing every week and so much stuff that's going on. And then I do a thing called Socrates in the City, which I recommend especially to thoughtful people. Socratesinthecity.com is the website. I've interviewed tons of people, from Peter Thiel to RFK Jr. Malcolm Gladwell, tons and tons of people. That's Socrates inthecity.com and you know, I I hope people will continue the journey of seeking truth. And that's just a big part of what I try to do.
- [54:26]
Cole Smead
Well, I, I appreciate it and our bias. I mean, if you didn't pick up on this, our podcast is really like a liberal arts education and wandering, if you will. I call it kind of like my intellectual walkabout. To your point, we're seeking truth and we're recognizing patterns and the only way we do that is looking at other fields and studies. And so I just love this book for thinking about it, for the theological reality of it, for the physical, for the practical game theory part of this. There's just so many elements to this. Thank you for your time, Eric. This has been wonderful. Your book reminds me that we must all examine our own hearts and lives to ask what is right for our spiritual, political and to our discussion everyday lives. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had to rectify all that with his life. Go and buy a copy of Bonhoeffer to think about your difficult decision in each of our lives. If you enjoy this podcast, go to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to A Book with Legs podcast, give us a read and tell other people about this podcast and what you did or didn't like for our tribe. If you have a great book that you'd like to recommend, you can email us@podcastmeedcap.com that's podcastmeadcap.com you can also send your suggestions to us on X. Our handle is Meadcap. Thank you for joining us for A Book with Legs podcast. We look forward to the next episode.
- [55:42]
Eric Metaxas
Thank you for listening to A Book with Legs, a podcast brought to you by Smead Capital Management. The material provided in this podcast is for informational use only and should not be construed as investment advice. You can learn more about Smead Capital Management and its products@smeedcap.com or by calling your financial advisor.