Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas
Week 13: Flossenbürg — The End and the Beginning
Read Chapters 27–28 of Bonhoeffer. Key biblical texts: John 12:24–26; 2 Timothy 4:6–8.
Previewing Week 13 of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
Read 3 of 7 discussion questions below. Unlock the complete 14-week guide when you’re ready.
In the final pages of Bonhoeffer's story, a man's life ends on a gallows in a Nazi concentration camp — and yet the final word is not death.
Discussion Questions
7 questions1.Metaxas narrates Bonhoeffer's final weeks with great care — his transfer through several concentration camps, his conduct among fellow prisoners, and the extraordinary Sunday morning worship service at Schönberg where he preached to a gathered group of prisoners on the text 'By his wounds we are healed.' Hours later, the SS came for him. What do you make of this final sermon — delivered on what he must have known was the edge of death?
2.Captain Payne Best, a British officer who was a fellow prisoner at Schönberg, provided one of the key eyewitness accounts of Bonhoeffer's final days. He wrote: 'Bonhoeffer was all humility and sweetness; he always seemed to me to diffuse an atmosphere of happiness, of joy in every smallest event in life, and of deep gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive.' How do you account for this joy? What is its source, and what does it say about the relationship between faith and human flourishing?
3.Bonhoeffer's last recorded words, passed through fellow prisoner Payne Best to Bishop Bell, were: 'This is the end — for me the beginning of life.' What theological conviction lies behind this statement? How does it function as both a farewell and a confession of faith?