Who was the "real" Bonhoeffer and why has he left such an enduring legacy? What can we learn from his life today? And is the new film about his life, Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin, accurate? In this interview, we talk with Dr. Brant Himes, a professor and scholar who has studied the life and theology of Bonhoeffer for two decades.

Brant is a full time faculty member at Los Angeles Pacific University (part of the Azusa Pacific University System), teaching online courses in Bible, theology, and history. He also serves as the Young Adults Coordinator at Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. His publications include Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Discipleship for the Common Good; Faith, Life and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Neo-Calvinism in Dialogue: Perspectives in Public Theology.



Episode Transcript

Sean: Who is Dietrich Bonhoeffer and why is he left such an enduring legacy? What should we think the new film about his life, Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Spy, Assassin? These are a couple of questions we're going to explore today with LA Pacific University's Dr. Brant Himes, who's the author of a 30-day devotional inspired by the new film. I'm your host Sean McDowell, and this is the Think Biblically Podcast, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology, 91. Brant, thanks for coming on.

Brant: Thanks so much for having me.

Sean: Well, we're going to jump into Bonhoeffer, but I want to hear what is your interest first? What got you into studying the life of Bonhoeffer?

Brant: Yeah, I've been really journeying with Bonhoeffer for I think almost 20 years now. It really started for me in I was working on my MDiv. I took a Bonhoeffer course in the summer, and I ended up spraining my ankle during the summer. And one of the assigned reading books was the almost a thousand page biography by Iber Harbetky on Bonhoeffer.

Sean: Wow.

Brant: (Laughing) So I had some time to sit and really just, yeah, just to invest in some time and really kind of reading through. I had heard of Bonhoeffer, I had read “Life Together, A Cost of Discipleship,” but reading the biography really drew me in in a way. It was pretty transformative actually to really see the history of World War II through this lens of Bonhoeffer's journey and his writing and his theology. So that was really the beginning of that for me. And then as I continued in my grad studies, I continued to do work around Bonhoeffer, and I ended up doing my PhD developing a theology of discipleship in conversation with Bonhoeffer and then Abraham Kuyper as well. And so really I've always been interested in how our theology informs our life and how understanding discipleship more than just kind of the set of religious practices that we do but more of an all encompassing life understanding and how our faith and action really works together. And Bonhoeffer has helped me just to explore the dynamic between faith and action in a really compelling way.

Sean: So before we go any further, for those who maybe say, you know, I know the name Dietrich Bonhoeffer associated him with kind of the anti-Nazi crusade. Who was he? And maybe why is the story so important still for today?

Brant: Sure. Yeah. Bonhoeffer came of age in Germany, kind of coming out of World War I into World War II. He grew up in the German upper class from a pretty established family. His father was the head of psychiatry at the University of Berlin. So just kind of had an upper class, very intellectual upbringing. He was very musical. He could have been a professional musician, but he chose theology. And it was interesting because his parents, particularly his father, didn't see theology as that prominent of a profession. It was kind of like, you're pretty smart. Are you sure you want to study theology? But he did. He had this call and this grip on him. And he was first of all, he was just brilliant. He got his Ph.D. at 21…

Sean: (Laughing) Oh my goodness.

Brant: …which was quite young. By 24, he was giving lectures at the University of Berlin. And his doctoral mentors, they called him brilliant and they were impressed by the work that he did. And as he continued to grow, he spent some time in America, in New York, at Union Seminary in New York, doing a fellowship there, a postgraduate fellowship. And he was really impacted by his time in Harlem and particularly the experience he had in the Black church at Abyssinian Baptist Church. And he really he talks about that point as he's reflecting back years later as this time when he went from a theologian to a Christian. And it's interesting he had this very academic mind, this very rigorous theology. And yet it wasn't until he experienced kind of the dynamic environment of the Black church that he recognized something deeper and more compelling in his faith. When he gets back to Germany, Hitler and the Nazis are starting to come to power in the early 30s. Hitler becomes chancellor in 1933. And from the beginning, he can see through Hitler. He doesn't- he's kind of appalled and shocked at his rise to power. And then quickly, the Nazis start to enact anti-Jewish laws that are impacting the church that he's part of. And so he begins to to speak out and try and encourage the church to to have a strong witness against the encroachment of the Nazis and of Hitler's laws. And so that continues and develops. And he has a very complex, complicated story. There's a ton of different, you know, lines that we can go. He ends up leading an underground preacher seminary. So the church in Germany splits off. And he's part of a group called the Confessing Church, where they're trying to equip pastors to oppose the Nazi-led Reich church or the German church, the German Christian church. Eventually, that gets shut down, and he ends up having to make these decisions where he can either join the military. So it was mandatory to join the military. If not, they would court-martial you and most likely shoot you by firing squad if you didn't join. So he was trying to figure out what to do, how to respond. He ended up going back to America in 1939, and he was only there for a few weeks because he realized that although he was safe in America, if he didn't go back to work in Germany during this time, he wouldn't have a voice. He wouldn't have a credibility to help rebuild the church after the war. And so he made this decision to go back to Germany. And he had a brother-in-law and some other contacts who were involved in the German military intelligence service. And they were compiling and starting to make plans for a conspiracy to overthrow the Nazi government. And so he got involved in that, becomes a double agent working for the German military intelligence. He had a lot of international contacts. So during the war, he's actually traveling to Sweden and Norway and Switzerland, trying to make contact with other allied clergy, particularly Bishop George Bell, who was from London and in the House of Lords, who could have the ear of the English leaders in Churchill. So he was trying to make those connections. And eventually he gets arrested, spends time in prison where he does some very productive theological work as well. It's amazing how much he writes during this whole time.

Sean: Oh my goodness. Yeah.

Brant: It's pretty fascinating. The tragedy is he ends up getting killed, hung about two weeks before the allies free the concentration camp where he is. So it's hard because you see his faithfulness and his dedication. And then, yet we have this tragic ending. But in the midst of that, I think we get to wrestle with his legacy in a really compelling way because of the complexity that he found himself in and his desire to be faithful to the work that God had for him.

Sean: Do you have a sense of where his convictions come from? I mean, how did he become the kind of person? He's obviously brilliant, right? He's obviously got a lot of energy and passion, but not anybody could just live the bold life and go back to Germany like he did and quite literally lay down his life. Where does that courage and conviction come from?

Brant: Yeah, I think early in his life, part of brilliance, I think there's an arrogance. And we can think of that as a negative thing, but it also gave him a confidence that what he believed in who Jesus is. Some of his best theology is around the reality of Jesus Christ and the nature of the church. And in his brilliance and maybe his arrogance, he saw a depth of the reality of what the world actually meant when Jesus Christ was the Lord. And so he had a confidence in how Jesus holds things together. Doesn't paper over everything and make life simple, but doesn't abandon his people in the midst of the most trying and complicated and hard situations. And so I think he had, I think part of his upbringing and then his theology and the experience that he has, I think New York was a very formative time for him to see how the African American church remained faithful through the heartbreak of their story and the continual turning to Jesus in the midst of all their hardship. And I think seeing that example as well gave him a concrete way to persevere in the midst of really difficult and challenging times.

Sean: You mentioned it a couple of times for him, kind of his experience at that African American church in New York. When I was watching the film again, it's called Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Spy and Assassin. There was this scene that was really powerful where he's sitting around a dinner table. There's maybe, I don't know, 15 or 20 African Americans who are there. And they kind of give him a little bit of an appropriate pushback where he wants the joy that they have. And as I was listening to that, I don't know the history Bonhoeffer. First off, when I heard that, I thought, okay, where does that joy come from? There was no sense of the gospel, at least in that scene. That's all I'm commenting on is that scene. I was like, wait a minute. He doesn't just want joy for the sake of joy, even though, like you said, he was such an academic and aired on the other side that he was drawn to the joy that he had. But in that scene, the gospel was completely absent from it. So I guess my part is, was that a part of what shaped him? And did he believe the gospel in the sense that you and I would proclaim and believe today?

Brant: Yeah, I think that scene is, I think it shows the closeness that Bonhoeffer started investing into that particular community. We see a little snippet of him teaching Sunday school, of him with the kids. And he actually, that was, he did that. He spent several months teaching Sunday school at that church. And so he sampled a bunch of the mainline white churches in New York City. And he writes in some of his journals and actually his academic report that he had to submit as part of this. How they preached everything except Jesus at these white churches. And then he comes into Abyssinian Baptist Church. And he's just, one, kind of startled and taken aback by the just the culture and the ethos of, you know, the call and response and the vibrant worship. And I think through that, he hears the clarity of the gospel in a really compelling way that perhaps he hadn't, I think in a way that he hadn't experienced before, just the medium that it came across in that way. I think that in the evangelical context, we look for kind of a conversion moment, you know, as part of our faith journeys. For Bonhoeffer, I think, I'm not sure, he's pretty private even in all the writing that he does. He doesn't, and when he's writing and reflecting back on his time in New York, he gives this phrase, well, that's the time when I went from a theologian to a Christian, but he doesn't give us like a detail of how that actually went about or if he had this dramatic experience. So for him, I want to imagine or I think that he had these encounters and the process for him was kind of the journey of that unfolding. I don't know if he had this particular moment that we might think of, but I do see, and it's interesting, even before he's in Harlem, though, he's writing very, very Christ-centered, Christ-focused theology. And so he gets it academically, I think, in a really powerful way. And then I think he experiences it in New York in a way that kind of brings it to life for him.

Sean: That makes sense.

Brant: His understanding of who Jesus is, yeah.

Sean: Kind of connects his head to his heart. Now, one more thing on that. They kind of they portrayed a scene where they walk into a hotel for the night, he and a friend who's black, who was profoundly mistreated. And he's like hit in the head with a gun because of this. And it's framed like that's what helps him kind of fight for somebody who's being mistreated. And so when he goes back to Germany, the same kind of evil spirit is happening to the Jews. And that shaped him and prepared him for it. Was that a little bit of creative fiction there? Or do we have reason to believe that seeing the plight of the black church and their joy amidst it is what gave him some of the strength to fight against the Nazis?

Brant: Yeah, there's a significant book that came out. I think I'm not sure what year was maybe 2015 or so, maybe earlier. Reggie Williams actually did some of my PhD work with him at Fuller. But his dissertation and then the book that comes out of this is “Bonhoeffer's Black Jesus” is the name of the book. And he really goes in to depth on Bonhoeffer's experience in Harlem. And I think he does really good and important work that helps us to see that connection from his time in Harlem and seeing the African-American church and the plight of that and the joy that you're talking about also. I do think there's a connection to the clarity that then he demonstrates when he's back in Germany. One of the themes that Reggie draws out in his book, and it's a theological term, he calls it vicarious representative action.

Sean: Okay.

Brant: And in Harlem, he argues, and I agree with him, that Bonhoeffer's experience, he sees how Christians, part of their calling is to participate in the kind of vicarious representation of Jesus Christ on earth. And his experience both as the suffering servant on the cross and then triumphantly through the resurrection. Bonhoeffer gets, and I think he also gets this theology of suffering and theology of the cross from his Lutheran background as well. The Lutherans are strong on that. But I think coupled with this idea of part of the calling of Christians is this idea of suffering and how we suffer on behalf of others because Jesus suffered on behalf of others. And so he sees that in New York, in America, and then he sees that in Germany. And I think I do think that is an important connection. I actually appreciate that quite a bit about the film that they camped on that. I do know they actually brought in Reggie and they talked to him and he consulted on that part of the film because…

Sean: Interesting.

Brant: Yeah, that was a really, I think, important aspect of the story.

Sean: So creating any movie, even if it's based on a true story about a historical figure, is just going to have some trade-off between fitting a story within two hours and actually representing history. I am such a minimal historian on Bonhoeffer that I didn't have a clue watching what really matched up. But historically speaking, how accurate is the film and maybe what was left out and what was maybe added for cinematic effect?

Brant: Yeah. My first impression, so I got a chance to see a screener of the film in March. And actually, before it was all done, they made some edits and changes from them. And I was a little nervous. You know, I've spent this all this time and, you know, work on Bonhoeffer. And, okay, what am I going to see? And one of my first impressions was that the person that I've had in my imagination, you know, for almost 20 years now, I recognized on film. And that to me was pretty compelling. Was it exactly? No, you know, of course it wasn't the exact same. But it was there was elements, his personality. I loved the things they did to show his personality from the music to even, you know, the opening scene where he's jumping over the net on the tennis court. Well, he loved to play tennis. You know, that was that was part of he was very competitive, very athletic. The soccer scene where he shows up at Finkenwald with the students there and he goes and plays soccer. That's that's all part of who he was and how he related with people. And then as the movie progressed, I kept thinking, oh, did that happen? Then I thought, wait, what conversation is this? You know, I thought this was later earlier and I had to I actually pulled out that Becky biography I mentioned earlier and I was flipping through. And I finally got to the point where I was like, OK, I saw that, you know, they had to change some timeline things. And I also kind of I had to kind of take off my historian hat and put on my my film hat and be willing to appreciate the story that they're trying to tell. You know, in a film, you get two or three major plot lines and characters that you can develop. And Bonhoeffer's story is so complicated. And as you get into the conspiracy and his writings and his ethics, there's there's so many threads to pull. And I can't imagine trying to distill that into a film. So I kind of want to give- allow the film to be a film. And then I hope that the film will introduce people to Bonhoeffer's works to maybe some courses or groups that they can study with and some opportunities to learn more and generate the conversations about, OK, how did this really work? What was really going on? I think as far as your question about the timeline, the the way the film depicts, I think in the latter half, when Bonhoeffer is getting more involved in the conspiracy, particularly like the Operation Seven, where they're they drive that truck with the seven Jews to the Swiss border and they transfer that Operation Seven Bonhoeffer was certainly a part of that. They actually ended up freeing 14 Jews and not just seven. And it took it took place over two or three months. And so it wasn't this like cartload of people with this dramatic border transfer. It was kind of it was a kind of a couple people at a time that they were they were bringing through. And they he did end up getting arrested for the money they were the Gestapo was trying to was tracing this money and they thought he was money laundering as part of that. And that's what initially got him arrested. And they mentioned that in the film. And that's that's accurate. But, you know, you have to they they certainly dramatized that, you know, the Operation Seven and that piece of it. I would also say one more mention. So there were Bonhoeffer's group. They were aware and they were kind of part of planning three different assassination attempts on Hitler. The ones that we see in the film is the second one. And it takes place in like March of 1943. And it feels like in the film that it happens much earlier, maybe even I don't know, at the beginning of the war, maybe even before the war. It's kind of it's not exactly clear to me. And so and then there's the final attempt that fails. If you've seen the movie Valkyrie…

Sean: Yeah, yup.

Brant: …with Tom Cruise that came out years ago, that's the third attempt or the bomb goes off under the table. And the table, you know, is Hitler's, saved by the this big table that protects him from the explosion. That happens in July 20, 1944. And Bonhoeffer had been is in prison during this. But they're still they have this secret system where they're passing information through even even though they're in prison, they're passing information to each other to try and keep their story straight and to get updates on what's happening with the conspiracy. When that happens, and we see this in Bonhoeffer's writings and letters and papers from prison, when he learns that that attempt fails, that's when things really start unraveling. And then they end up discovering in September this cache of files that the German Military Intelligence Service, his brother-in-law, had kept kind of documenting all the atrocities of Hitler. And that names Bonhoeffer in those files and then they connect him to the conspiracy and then things start to unravel from there. So we don't see that kind of happen. We see this second bomb attempt, bombing attempt in the film.

Sean: Well, one of the things that surprised me is when I was just reading a little about this, the film is how many different causes and people, Christian, non-Christian, left, right, have claimed Bonhoeffer for their own kind of just position or statement. And one way, some of the criticism of this film, which again for any film on somebody as controversial, you're not going to please everybody. There's just no way around that. But some have claimed that it manipulated kind of his story to make a political statement for today, was released around the time of the election for kind of recreating Bonhoeffer in an evangelical image. What do you think about those kind of criticisms?

Brant: Yeah, I definitely knew they would come. I definitely saw them coming. And honestly, before, so I was contacted about a year ago in January or so by the producers to ask if I would help put a Bonhoeffer course together and help kind of do some educational material around kind of with the release of the film. And so as I was kind of learning about the project and having conversations, I was curious. My first question was, OK, what which Bonhoeffer is this film going to be about? Because like you said, there's there's so many. And actually, from the from the beginning of Bonhoeffer scholarship, really in the 1960s, with some of the first groups that that take Bonhoeffer, the death of God theologians from the 60s. And they use some of his phrasing of religionless Christianity in his letters and papers from prison. And they run with that and they kind of use it for their own agenda. And then we see kind of since then, all these different groups. Stephen Haynes actually has a book called The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon,

Sean: Interesting.

Brant: …and he he pegs all these different groups throughout the years that have that have taken Bonhoeffer and put him in their own image. And it's interesting because, yeah, we can do that. And also, in a sense, when you have this spectrum, it also gives you kind of a wider view and appreciation for how for Bonhoeffer's thoughts and his and his ideas. And so for me, you know, it can kind of draw us in to study and wrestle more as far as whether this was a an evangelical, you know, a strategically evangelical film. In the conversations that I was having with the filmmakers, they were very they were very much not wanting to make a political film. They knew that this, the timing of the release was going to be around the election. I don't I think that's just kind of how the timing happened. I don't think I'm not sure if you know how strategic that was. I think they knew that was going to that was going to make things maybe complicated. But that was just how things were falling. I know that- and I see this that and it's interesting. I kind of some of these criticisms of the film, I kind of scratched my head a little bit because I can I mean, I'm an evangelical. So I can I guess I can be I can see and even maybe whatever evangelical pins there are in the film, maybe don't trigger me. But I don't, I don't see the film and feel like it's this political, you know, ultra-conservative political film. It feels like it's on this different level where it's it's trying to tell this story about Bonhoeffer. For me, the question is, and this is why Bonhoeffer has always drawn me, because Bonhoeffer is always challenged me to to look closer to who Jesus is. And this question of what is my discipleship mean in my life? What does it mean for me to follow Jesus each day? And I think the film, I hope it's pointing people to Jesus, but not in this kind of big religious kind of baggage. You know, that sometimes these different perspectives can carry. I hope it shows how people like Bonhoeffer, our convictions make a difference and can equip us really for a life of what it means to follow Jesus. And life's not easy or clear. It's complicated. Bonhoeffer had one of the most, I think, complex historical situations that that we've seen in history. And what does it mean to have a faith that can stand up and that can navigate that? I remember some of the earliest thoughts I had when I was reading Bonhoeffer is like, man, I don't think I'll ever find myself in a situation like that. But if I did, what would my faith do?

Sean: Yeah.

Brant: You know?

Sean: Those are big questions.

Brant: Yeah. And so for me, those are the questions that Bonhoeffer raises. And I think I'm not surprised at the criticism the film has received. It's almost like the criticism came out before the film did. You know, it was like we already had our judgments, you know, and then…

Sean: Sure.

Brant: So, yeah, you know, I don't know. Of course, there's things.

Sean: That's fair. That’s fair.

Brant: Yeah.

Sean: So let me ask you this. I'm curious.

Brant: Yeah.

Sean: And this is, we could do a whole two hours just on this. But if you were like to sum it up, what was the ethical reasoning or justification that Bonhoeffer gave to be able to go assassinate a political ruler?

Brant: Yeah.

Sean: As a pastor.

Brant: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is one of the great questions, right? I think Bonhoeffer. So I look at Bonhoeffer's theology and his ethic even as contextual, not in a way to kind of undermine principle. But he really had to wrestle with this with this reality of this historical situation he found himself in. In his book Ethics, which he was working on when he when he got arrested, it was kind of still a work in progress on his desk when he was arrested. And he's working through all of these ethical questions. And you can see in the book some of the way that he wrestles with the situation that he finds himself in. One of my favorite things that he does when he opens his chapter at the start of the book is he talks about how often in Christian ethics, the first thing we ask is, how can I be good or what does it mean to be good? And he says we actually have to ask a different question. And that's what is the will of God? And so ethics becomes this call to discernment, which for me is a question of discipleship. Bonhoeffer knew that he was going to be guilty either way. If he does nothing, he's guilty. If he chooses to participate with his group, he's also guilty. We hear this in the film with his friend. That's actually Ibrahim Har-beghi in the film, who ends up being his biographer. We see that that student friend that he is and we hear him say, you're a pacifist. How can you be doing this? And Bonhoeffer had a really strong peace ethic, really believed in the clarity of the Sermon on the Mount and the nonviolence. He actually had an invitation to go study with Gandhi in India.

Sean: Oh, wow. Interesting.

Brant: Yeah. Yeah. So he was all in on nonviolent resistance. And yet he's in this place where he has, you know, he ends up with this group, you know, Hans, who we see in the film. That's his brother-in-law and people that he knows, the circles that he's in. There's people that are involved and he needs a way out of, you know, is he going to get shot for not being in the military or is, you know, he can't be it. He wanted to be a chaplain. He didn't qualify to be a chaplain. So I think like pragmatically, he's trying to figure out what to do in order to not go to the front lines. And then he also as a theologian, he takes seriously, OK, God is in the midst of this complexity. And so how do we wrestle with it? And he knows at the end of the day, he's going to be guilty and he can only rely on God's grace. I don't think that gave him the justification. Well, I'm going to be guilty. God's grace is going to cover me. So we're going to do this thing. I think he really wrestled with. I mentioned earlier this idea of vicarious representative action, kind of suffering on behalf of others. And Bonhoeffer saw his role in the guilt that he had to take on was part of the suffering that was his role as a Christian to take on the guilt of what he had to do in order to to bear witness to the faithfulness of Jesus and to stand for the victims, for the Jews, for all those who were who were being killed and murdered. And so he saw that as part of his his witness, not the avoidance of suffering, but the realization that to be a Christian means to suffer on behalf of others.

Sean: And that's about as harrowing of a question as somebody can have what you do in that situation. And you're right. I think the line. What do you say about him being a pacifist? He's like, I was before the war or I was before Hitler is kind of the wording that he sure frames. Was that historical, by the way?

Brant: That particular quote? I have to dig. There's there's scholarly debate on whether Bonhoeffer like remained a pacifist to the end. I go I use the I use the term peace ethic because it's I don't know it's it's pacifist is has a very particular definition and whether Bonhoeffer stuck to that definition throughout his life is kind of up for debate.

Sean: Fair enough.

Brant: But what I do know is he he was committed to peace throughout his life. And so he has this peace ethic, even when he's in this this conspiracy, you know, this group of conspirators, he's trying to he's working out what it means to bear witness to the peace ethic of Jesus in the middle of when violence is taking place.

Sean: Well, I enjoyed the film again is called Bonhoeffer, Pastor Spy Assassin. I'm curious how you know, I appreciate you're saying that you really felt like it was faithful to the spirit of Bonhoeffer and one element of his life. But it's not meant to be taken as like gospel and should be compared to biographies of his life. But maybe just briefly you did a devotional that goes along with this. How would you encourage churches or families to use that and or the film?

Brant: Yeah, the devotionals a 30 day. I introduce a scripture and I take a quote from Bonhoeffer and I really try and encourage people to think about their own discipleship and actually what it means when Christ calls us. And how do we discern and then be faithful in what God's calling us to. And as people and churches continue to look for other resources, there's a lot out there. I also worked with the Bible Mesh Institute to put together an eight-week course on Bonhoeffer that anyone can take. And again, it kind of walks through eight, eight units and themes. And there's a short lecture and some readings. I really like the Ibrahim Har-beghi biography. I know it's kind of the gold standard. All the biographies that have been written use Beghi as their source because he it's it's the it's really long. But if you, you know, sprain your ankle and you're up for two or three weeks, it's definitely worth it.

Sean: Fair enough.

Brant: Yeah. There's also there's also a graphic novel. I think it's called The Faithful Spy by Hendrix, I think is the last name. And, you know, it's a really it's a really accessible way to kind of get into the story of Bonhoeffer as well. That's a recent one. There are definitely biographies. I mean, Eric Metaxas is the big one that most evangelicals have read that one. I he's done more, I think, than anyone to introduce people to Bonhoeffer. The caution that I give people is, you know, like we've been talking about, there's different agendas and different kind of just worldviews and audiences that we bring to our Bonhoeffer interpretation. And Metaxas has gotten some pushback from the scholarly community on how he's interpreted Bonhoeffer as a clear evangelical. There's books on the other side that kind of frame Bonhoeffer as a progressive. And so I would say whatever you're you're you're going to read and dive into, you know, give yourself read with some discernment, get a little bit of perspective on kind of the angle that you're taking and then read Bonhoeffer himself. I mean, read discipleship, life together, his ethics, letters and papers from prison. I love he has a book called Creation and Fall where he works through Genesis one through three. There's all sorts of great Bonhoeffer stuff out there. You could just hang out with him and do just fine.

Sean: Oh, my goodness. Sounds like there is more than I even knew. That graphic novel especially sounds interesting and the courses you've done are are really great. So thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for giving us a back kind of story to the movie itself.

Brant: Yeah.

Sean: And yeah, I really appreciate your good work. Thanks for taking the time to join us.

Brant: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Sean: This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically, conversations on faith and culture. The Think Biblically podcast is brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at 91. And we've got programs in theology, in church history, Old Testament, marriage and family, apologetics, so much more in person and online. To submit comments or ask questions, please email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. Please consider giving us a rating on your podcast app. Every rating helps, and consider sharing with a friend. We appreciate you listening, and we will see you Friday for our weekly cultural update. In the meantime, remember to think biblically about everything.