Letter to the American Church by Eric Metaxas: An attack on "Faith Alone": a book review by Viola Larson

 

Sometime around 2011, 2012, my husband and I were boarding a plane on our way to a Presbyterian renewal meeting. It was an event meant to discuss forming a new Presbyterian denomination.  We discovered that many other Presbyterians were also boarding and many of them were carrying a book by Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. Some of us sensed renewal and courage in the book. I even used some thoughts out of the book to blog about the politics of 2016, Donald Trump, allowing himself to be an idol: playing with the Führer Principle not realizing that Metaxas evolving politically and religiously would, over the years, severely disagree with my posting.

Recently someone sent me a link to Metaxas speaking as a guest on James Robison’s show The Stream.[1] He was being interviewed by Robison about his new book Letter to the American Church. Metaxas has been interviewed by many evangelical pastors and has spoken at many evangelical churches about his book. Many will hear only his warning about their silence on abortion, transgenderism and same sex marriage, issues that are troubling evangelical and orthodox Christians. They may not hear his underlying attempts at justifying ultra conservative politics over the proclamation of the gospel. Many will not understand or realize that Metaxas is, probably unintentionally, attacking their faith and their vocation.

Metaxas is using Bonhoeffer, the church in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust to warn the American Church that if they are silent they will be the cause of an event worse than the Holocaust. In his interview with Robison he insists that the warnings are not his but God’s. Metaxas states:

“Of course it’s not me talking when you title a book Letter to the American Church I’m not arrogant enough to think that this is a letter from Eric Metaxas to the amer… this is in the tradition of letters to the Philippians. … You know you want to write exactly what you think the Lord is saying”

 Metaxas goes on to say, “what I believe the Lord is trying to say in this book is exactly what he said through Bonhoeffer to the German Church which they did not listen to.” He goes on to portray Bonhoeffer as the prophet that the church in Germany did not listen to and he blames most of the church in Germany for causing the Holocaust.

I see four problems with Letter to the American Church. First, although Metaxas does not, in his book, claim it is God’s word to the American church, still he has done so in public. But only Scripture is God’s word to the Church.  

Second, Metaxas lays out a simplistic history of the church in Nazi Germany and uses it to hold the American Church accountable for a future social disaster that is greater than the Holocaust. Third, Metaxas’ goes beyond concerns of orthodox Christians and includes what he refers to as globalism, which has nothing to do with biblical principles and is generally part of the debate about nationalism and isolationism.  It is a very political term. Fourth, and I believe this is the most troubling problem, Metaxas plays with biblical doctrine attempting to water down such teaching as salvation by faith alone and evangelizing/preaching the gospel, in order to emphasize the church’s need to be political.

Of the German church Metaxas does write in chapter five of the difference between the Confessing Church pastors and the German Christians but he only refers by name to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Niemoller and Karl Barth. Metaxas writes of the drafting of the Barmen Declaration, declaring “It essentially said that the German state must not and could not co-opt the Church, that the sanctity and separation of the Church from the state must be clear.”[2] Yet the Barmen Declaration said so much more, it begins with the essential truth of the Church, it begins with the Gospel, the word of God.

…1. I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” (John14:6) “Truly, truly I say unto you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber … I am the door; if anyone enters by me, he will be saved.” (John 10:1,9.)

Jesus Christ, as he is attested for us in Holy Scripture, is the one Word of God which we have to hear and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.

We reject the false doctrine, as through the Church could and would have to acknowledge as a source of its proclamation, apart from and besides this one Word of God, still other events and powers, figures and truths as God’s revelation.”[3]

Often, in Letter to the American Church, Metaxas is both outwardly and subtly pleading with the Church to fight its battles in the political arena more so than proclaiming: the gospel. He believes the Church must change its tactics because of the changing times. But Barmen places the Gospel as the priority of the Church. Karl Barth, who Metaxas acknowledges and who is the main author of Barmen (Bonhoeffer was in London pastoring when the synod of Barmen was held) writes in his small booklet, Theological Existence Today:

Of course something has to be done; very much so; but most decidedly nothing other than this, viz. that the Church congregations be gathered together again, but aright and anew in fear and great joy, to the Word by means of the Word. All the crying over the Church will not deliver the Church. Where the Church is the Church she is already delivered. Let persecution be never so severe, it will not affect her! ‘Still’ it is said, ‘still, shall the City of God abide, lusty beside her tiny stream’ (Psalm xlvi. 5; Luther’s translation).[4]

Metaxas too often merges the two differing church groups, the German Christians and the Confessing Church, using them as straw men in order to make his point that the silence of the church in Germany was the cause of the Holocaust and that the Church in America might also become a cause of disaster. There was a group of churchmen, the German Christians, who sought to gain power, political power, by aligning with a tyrant, a madman who constantly sought power and lied about his intentions to protect the Christian faith. His religion was in a positive Christianity with no place for the Jesus of the cross. 

The German Christians did not cause the Holocaust but they did contribute to it by their political maneuvering and their unfaithfulness to the Lord of the Church, Jesus Christ. They too had no place for a suffering Savior.

There was a true Church, the Confessing Church, yes weak, and sometimes silent when they needed to speak out but nonetheless faithful to Christ holding to the teachings of the Word. Dean G. Stroud, editor of the book, Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow writes of the pastors preaching the gospel in such a way that Hitler and Nazism was confronted. He writes:

Compared to Christ how small Hitler appeared. Against the horrible distortion of words by Goebbels and his propaganda machine the Christian in the pulpit offered the truth of the gospel and the integrity of the “word made flesh.” In so doing certain themes stand out in these sermons of opposition: the authority of Jesus Christ; the sovereignty of God; both the Old and New Testaments as Holy Scripture; the purity of the church; the certainty of God’s judgement on Germany for immorality and for failure to love the neighbor, especially the Jewish brother and sister; the relevance of the gospel after the European Enlightenment and in spite of Nazi pseudoscience and paganism; and the gospel’ insistence that Christians must risk even their lives for the truth of Christianity. [5]

This leads to my biggest concern with Letter to the American Church. Metaxas plays with some basic biblical doctrines in an attempt to justify politics and advocacy over the preaching of the Gospel. Writing of Luther’s attempts at justification through his own works and his delight in the free gift of grace he found in Scripture, Metaxas states:

But in his understandably giddy joy, Luther may sometimes have gone a bit farther than necessary, or at least opened the door for others to do so. For example, when he translated Romans 3:28 from the original New Testament Greek into German, Luther added the single word “alone” to the following sentence: ‘For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the law.’ Luther’s version was, ‘Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith alone without the deeds of the law.’ Luther felt the need to add that word to underscore what for him was essentially the central idea in the universe, and he may be forgiven for this. [6]

Metaxas in his attack goes on to write:

We might say that Luther had in his zeal made an idol of his idea of faith, so that the genuine faith to which God calls us was crowded out.[7]

Bringing this idea to the question of the Church in Germany during the Nazi years and the American Church today, Metaxas writes:

The phrase ‘faith alone’ had made the Christian faith so simple—and ultimately so thin and one-dimensional—that over time it was easily and blithely assented to by nearly everyone in the German nation, so that Bonhoeffer wrote about it in the Cost of Discipleship.[8]

However countering Metaxas’ opinions about Luther’s translation is information on the web site Reformation Room. Luther was not attempting to develop new doctrine but was concerned with translation. He was “simply striving to bring the precision of the Greek into the German.” And while it is mainly Roman Catholics who dispute his translation still many of them except it. For instance Timothy George, Associate Professor of historical theology and church history at the Southern Baptist theological Seminary in Louisville, author of Theology of the Reformers, places a note under his commentary on Luther’s use of faith alone:

 Luther did not of course invent this phrase. The German Bible published at Nurnberg in 1483 translated Galatians 2:16 as ‘gerechtfertigt … nur durch den Glauben.’ [justified by faith alone] Further the term sola fide was well established in the Catholic tradition having been used by Origen, Hilary, Chrysostom, Augustine, Bernard, Aquinas, and others but without Luther’s particular nuances.[9]

Going further Metaxas mentions that Bonhoeffer in his Cost of Discipleship wrote about Luther’s translation and its bad influence on the German population. But the truth is Bonhoeffer never accused Luther’s translation, nor joy in grace alone, of being the reason the German Christians became so lukewarm. He in fact uses Luther to refute their lazy discipleship.  Bonhoeffer writes:

When he spoke of grace, Luther always implied as a corollary that it cost him his own life, the life which was now for the first time subjected to the absolute obedience of Christ. Only so could he speak of grace. Luther had said that grace alone can save, his followers took up his doctrine and repeated it word for word. But left out the invariable corollary.  There was no need for Luther to always mention that corollary explicitly for he always spoke as one who had been led by grace to the strictest following of Christ.[10]

Metaxas believes he is calling the Church to a righteous cause. Yes, Christians and others must speak against the killing of the unborn, for the sacredness of marriage between man and \ woman and speak against the mutilation of the body in order to claim a new gender identity. But the calling of the Church is much deeper. It is not a call to politics but a call to the cross, to the suffering Savior—a call to the gospel. Faith is a gift that God gives through Jesus Christ. As Paul writes in Ephesians:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph. 2:8,9 NASB)

Even the good works we are called to are prepared by God so we fulfill His purposes as a gift.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.(Eph. 10 NASB)

Rather than applauding Metaxas’ attack on “grace alone” the Church should be frightened at the possibility of a new, perhaps old, darkness entering the Church.

 

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[1] Let's Learn From the Silence of the German Church Before the Holocaust - YouTube

[2] Eric Metaxas, Letter to the American Church, (Salem Books: Washington D.C. 2022) 43.

[3] Arthur C. Cochrane, The Church’s Confession Under Hitler, appendix VII, ( Westminster: Philadelphia 1961) 239

[4] Karl Barth, Theological Existence To-Day: A plea for theological freedom, ( Hodder and Stoughton: London 1933) 77,78.

[5] Dean C Stroud, editor, Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow: Sermons of Resistance in the Third Reich, (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids 2013) 48.

[6] Metaxas, Letter, 57,58.

[7] Ibid, Letter, 58.

[8] Ibid, 67.

[9] CF.Kling, pp 249-250, Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, (Broadman Press:

Nashville 1988) 70-71.

[10] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, (A Touchstone Book, Simon & Toronto: New York 1995) 40-50.