I found this book by chance in Waterstones a few weeks ago and was immediately gripped by it, as someone who knew something of Martin Luther already. As an undergraduate I had studied some of his writings and his influence on the German language. I was also aware of his hymn writing and the musical legacy that still shapes our choral work today. And I knew a little too about the Lutheran church and its declining influence across Northern Europe.
This book however puts the pieces of Luther’s extraordinary life together in a way that makes the whole very accessible. It is a scholarly work with over a hundred pages of footnotes and references, yet never does the book feel dry and technical. It tells of Luther’s background and sees much of Luther’s theology and struggles as being shaped by his relationship with his father – a psychological approach that is difficult to evaluate. It explains in accessible language how a monk came to understand justification by faith and why the reforms followed at such a rapid pace. Almost overnight Luther challenged at the deepest level many of the assumptions of medieval Christendom – the selling of indulgences, the monastic vows of poverty and celibacy, the celebration of private masses, and above all the Aristotelian schools of theology that sought to interpret the Bible through the philosophy of the ancient Greeks.
And yet the book also highlights some of the intrinsic contradictions in Luther’s personality. Luther could write so powerfully about his faith, but at the same time also attacked his opponents in the crudest way possible, and the chapter on his hatreds makes for very uncomfortable reading. He attacked the foundations of Roman Catholicism yet himself retained some kind of belief in the real presence in the bread and the wine, leading to some of the schisms that have bedevilled Christendom ever since. He sought to overthrow the established order yet devised a theology of two kingdoms that made the church subordinate to the state. This may have ensured the survival of the Reformation but led to an uneasy relationship that is still problematic even today, as the book makes clear. And although he empowered the laity, he ended up very much as part of a clerical dynasty overseeing the birth of a new denomination.
The portrait Lyndal Roper paints of Martin Luther deserves to be studied. She has also a way of making the issues that he faced real and relevant to us today. There are, however, some points which I would have loved to explored further. There is relatively little in this book about his musical output, for example. At another point I was intrigued by Luther’s fairly underdeveloped eschatology and I am not sure that the reason for this was fully explained. But these are relatively minor quibbles, and I would thoroughly recommend buying this book for yourself or as a present. The celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation reminds us that what happened in Wittenberg all those years still matters, and it is important for all of us to be clear why.
The Covenant Renewal Blog 