Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lived

1906–1945

Era

Twentieth century and after

Where

Germany

Tradition

Lutheran

The cost of discipleship, and a plot against Hitler

A young German theologian who opposed the Nazi state from 1933, helped lead the Confessing Church and its illegal seminary, and returned to Germany from safety in New York in 1939 on the ground that he had no right to share in the rebuilding if he had not shared the trial.

Why it matters

He joined the conspiracy in military intelligence that attempted to kill Hitler — a pacifist deciding that the guilt of acting was preferable to the guilt of not — was arrested in 1943, and hanged at Flossenbürg two weeks before the camp was liberated. The Cost of Discipleship set "cheap grace" against costly grace. The fragments smuggled out of prison, asking what Christianity means in a world that has stopped needing the idea of God, have been argued over ever since.

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.