The text asks various questions as to who Bonhoeffer was.

The author has probed both the work of Bonhoeffer and the Bonhoeffer legacy to divine his cultural significance. He shows how difficult it is to separate myth from reality, since his life and works have been sanctified over time.

Hayne's provocative study articulates the many motives and agendas that Christian readers and even scholars have brought to their Bonhoeffer work, and how these have created a Protestant saint and made it more difficult to assess objectively the relationship of his political and religious commitments, the real meaning of his theology, and especially his words and actions on behalf of German Jews.