In a review titled, "Metaxas's Counterfeit Bonhoeffer: An Evangelical Critique," Richard Weikart, professor of modern European history at California State University, writes:

Eric Metaxas's Bonhoeffer biography has won many accolades from evangelicals, not only because Metaxas is an excellent writer, but also because he serves up a Bonhoeffer suited to the evangelical taste. Many evangelicals admire Bonhoeffer and consider him a fellow evangelical. Metaxas's book confirms this image. In an interview with Christianity Today Metaxas even made the astonishing statement that Bonhoeffer was as orthodox theologically as the apostle Paul.

As orthodox as Paul? Metaxas does not seem to know that in his Christology lectures in 1933 Bonhoeffer claimed, "The biblical witness is uncertain with regard to the virgin birth." Bonhoeffer also rejected the notion of the verbal inspiration of scripture, and in a footnote to Cost of Discipleship he warned against viewing statements about Christ's resurrection as ontological statements (i.e., statements about something that happened in real space and time). Bonhoeffer also rejected the entire enterprise of apologetics, which he thought was misguided. . . .

How did Metaxas get it so wrong? Part of the problem, perhaps, is that Metaxas simply got in over his head.

Bonhoeffer was a sophisticated thinker immersed in early twentieth-century German philosophy and theology. Even though I have a Ph.D. in modern European intellectual history and have read Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Barth, Bultmann, and many other philosophers and theologians who shaped Bonhoeffer's thought, I do not find Bonhoeffer's writings an easy read. For one thing, Bonhoeffer (like his mentor Barth) admitted that Kierkegaard was one of the most powerful influences on his theology, which means that Bonhoeffer was committed to an irrationalist, existentialist worldview that is quite different from the mindset of American evangelicals.

Though most evangelicals probably do not know it, most Bonhoeffer scholars dismissively reject the idea that Bonhoeffer's theology is compatible with American evangelical theology.

Weikart is author of The Myth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Is His Theology Evangelical? and says he is writing another book on the topic, with the working title Why Evangelicals Do Not Understand Bonhoeffer.