Yes: He tried to kill Hitler, and was martyred for it. If you know nothing else about Bonhoeffer, you just might know that. So no one truly reads Bonhoeffer apart from his biography. As a pastor and theologian, he is always a tyrannicide and martyr first, and I don't apologize for reading him accordingly.

This does not limit the force of his writing. Nothing about his biography would explain how he got to where he ended up. How does a Prussian aristocrat become an anti-racist activist in Germany and in America? His life can tell that story, but only in dialogue with his gospel.

The richness of his life is nevertheless a valid key to the work. I've now read Discipleship three times: once as a devotional, once in a course on Bonhoeffer's theology, and most recently, with anti-fascist applications in mind. All three readings have instructed and convicted me in different ways, and all are true to Bonhoeffer's life and work. He was always a pastor, and a theologian, and an activist, all at once. And his vision of the disciple, too, partakes always of all three facets. Christians cannot be activists unless we are first, second, and last of all disciples of Jesus-- which will make us pastors and theologians too, defined by God's people and grounded in God's Word.

A few salient points from this reading:

--The text never calls out its true (Nazi) targets by name, but its meaning was clear enough to its readers. When Jesus calls disciples, Bonhoeffer shows, he calls them specifically out of the blood-and-soil relationships the Nazis idolized, into an anti-racist fellowship that the world will hate. This was a deeply contextual theology, phrased in universal terms: "Each call of Christ's leads toward death", not only the calls of martyrs under fascism. I find this example compelling as a theologian: We may write fearlessly to and about our times without letting our times define or confine our writing. Nor do we need to chase eternity or perfection. Many of Bonhoeffer's phrasings, emphases, and claims are "of his time" at best, but his whole work's provocation remains intact.

--For Episcopalians, whose liturgy leads us often to remember our baptisms but who seldom speak in terms of discipleship, Bonhoeffer's chapter on baptism is especially crucial. For him, everything the synoptic gospels say about the disciples, Paul says about the baptized. I want to try preaching this now and see how it goes.