Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the book's central figure, a well educated, passionately thoughtful German intellectual and theologian born in the latter days of the 19th Century and executed at the conclusion of one of the most world shattering events of the 20th - World War II. He was raised in a well-to-do family at a time and place in his country's history in which anything approaching liberalism, intellectualism and / or religion (all important components of Bonhoeffer's family life) was increasingly frowned upon. While completing an extensive and quickly completed education in theology, Bonhoeffer developed a deep and abiding faith in God - in God's word, as manifest in the Bible, and God's will, as manifest in faith but, more importantly for him, in action. This belief, that faith was truest only when acted upon, led him to active participation in the resistance movement against Hitler and Nazism, said...