Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet by Lyndal Roper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I missed this book when it came out, I think in part due to moving to a new job. Someone who liked my review of Eric Metaxas' dreck about Luther asked if I were familiar with this book, and I said no.
Interlibrary loan did its magic and voila.
This is a much-extended version of my Goodreads review, which ultimately led me to ILL another Luther bio, one from a few decades ago.
I was worried in the preface that, despite many conservative Lutherans complaining in other reviews that it was too harsh on Luther's antisemitism, that Roper might pull punches. Tis not the case.
I was also worried, from the introduction that Roper might be too kind to the late 1520s and beyond Luther vis-a-vis the Reformed, when it talked about dialogues he had with them over the Eucharist. They were actually more monologues than dialogues, and Roper spells that out in detail.
Roper starts with a good grounding on just how well off Luther's father might have been. In the late 1400s, she says Mansfeld was producing one-quarter of Europe's new copper as well as significant amounts of silver. Hans Luder was not a mine owner, but managed smelting, and later other operations, for several mine shafts. (Miners were as rough a bunch then as today, and Luther was worried about them during the Peasants Revolt.) That said, the mines were already playing out before Luther's death, a factor in the last dispute he tried settling between the counts of Mansfeld.
Chapter 2, without going specifically Freudian a la Erick Erickson, does start looking psychologically at Luther and father figures. Obviously, the papacy, il papa, was rejected. Hans had been rejected when Luther honored his vow to St. Anne and became a monk. Roper looks at Staupitz as being a father figure, also later rejected. Duke Frederick died before Luther could get to a point of possible rejection. Even though Karlstadt was younger, he was at the university first, and Roper speculates on him as also a one-time father figure. Near the end of the book, she notes that most of Luther's close associates were young enough to be his children — Melanchthon's age or so, or even younger. She does note, rightly, that this led most of them to be yes-men, but for some reason, doesn't pick up directly on this being Luther in the father figure catbird seat.
Nor does she look at Luther's explanation to the commandments in his Small Catechism: "We should fear and love god ..." Isn't that exactly what a 1500s German paterfamilias expected? Love, but love following fear?
I also got to wondering about his monastic years, if his emotional self-abuse was a form of emotional masochism, ultimately a source of mental pleasure. Roper misses this point.
The one full chapter, and parts of others, on Karlstadt are simply excellent. Though not an Anabaptist, his Gelassenheit combined with his reforming instincts led him more that way (though NOT a "Schwarmer") than Luther's or the Reformed's ideas in some ways. He was trying to combine medieval mysticism and reform.
Roper also shows the first hints of the late-life Luther in his treatment of Karlstadt. The groveling that he made Karlstadt do at times reinforces Luther seeking the father figure upper hand, though Roper doesn't comment specifically on that.
Roper also misses something that doesn't directly connect to Luther, but yet. When Staupitz left the Augustinians and became a Benedictine, his last letters to Luther? Sure are open, at least, to the possibility that Staupitz had erotic interest in Luther.
After this, as noted above, Roper shows how Luther's battles with the Zwickau prophets et al, then with the Reformed, left him more and more surrounded by yes men. But it was left to others, like Duke John and Melanchthon, to establish a new church that eventually became known as Lutheran.
Meanwhile, Roper, like others, shows Karlstadt had the draw on Luther on Greek exegesis, specifically the words of Institution of the Eucharist. Maybe this is part of why Luther hated Zwingli at the Marburg Colloquy. It becomes clear that Luther never had an intent of moving, per the famous tablecloth story with "hoc est meum corpum" (in Latin, not Greek of course) written underneath it. That said, given that I've read elsewhere long ago that Melanchthon wanted Luther to be firm in the hope of some Catholic compromise, maybe this too is myth?
I had never before heard that Luther went as far as accusing the Reformed of being Nestorians. Interestingly, my conservative Lutheran seminary didn't mention it. Perhaps even they recognized it was a bridge too far.
Especially after Marburg and other such colloquies and so forth, it's clear that Luther was monologing, not dialoging. And, he didn't care — and also apparently didn't recognize — how much so much of south Germany was against him.
On the Eucharist, as a secularist ex-Lutheran, I accept that he was wrong exegetically on the Eucharist. Given his slowness to abandon the veneration of the host, the Reformed weren't all wet (maybe partially so) in wondering if Luther wasn't still peddling a version of the sacrifice of the Mass. That's doubly true when one looks at their different stances on what the unbelievers receive (and although papered over) what the "unworthy" receive. On this, it's not a matter of Calvinists limiting the power of Christ; nor is it tied to the limited atonement, since Zwingli, Bucer and others before John Calvin felt this way.
Indeed, as an interlinear clearly shows, it is most likely that the Τοῦτό of "this is," being neuter, refers back to δεῖπνον, or "dinner." A Westar book that I otherwise one-starred recently now has me thinking that, in light of this, Paul's Eucharist was not a Greek mystery religion dinner Judaized up, but rather, that, his Corinthian house church(es) had a monthly fellowship meal similar to those that the various guilds held in Greek towns and cities of any size. And, instead of Artemis being their patron, as with Ephesian metal smiths, Yahweh was.
That said, this is another area where Roper left things on the table, if more were available.
WHY was the sacramentarian issue life and death to Luther? Did he see the Reformed as being humanists? Did the fact that Karlstadt was the one calling him out on misunderstanding the Greek of the Words of Institution (while Wittenberg Greek scholar and son to Luther Melanchthon kept silent) get him to egg himself on? Why was he so polemical against the Reformed in general? Was it a competitive streak that recognized he was losing arguments, so he figured he would yell louder? I mean, to me, that's part of the issue right there.
That said, exegetically, and going beyond Roper, it's laughable that the Reformed appealed to John 6, and that Luther did as well to spots in the end of that chapter. Today, it seems clear that John 6 had at least three editorial rewrites before the final version of the gospel, and that Jesus almost surely said none of those words.
Roper does a decent job on "Bondage of the Will," or "The Enslaved Will" as she translates the title (probably a better translation) and the broader issues with Erasmus. But here too, items were left on the table, and the biggie again relates to the Reformed. If, per Luther, either god or devil is always in the saddle, even if "just" for individual actions, isn't that ultimately double predestination by other words?
On father figures, near the end of the book, she goes back to Luther's thunderstorm. She has Luther wondering if his dad weren't right and this was Satan, not God, though god ultimately using it.
She misses the chance to speculate on why the man who called so many things in church liturgy and ritual "adiaphora" couldn't say that many acts of life were "adiaphora," just "happenings" uncontrolled by either a god or a devil.
I mean, most mainline Protestants and more liberal Catholics today reject the idea that every action in this world is caused by either god or devil. (Beyond that, to hoist the literalists by their own petard, since god created you know who, and said in Isaiah "I bring darkness," the ultimate blame lies at his feet, as Calvin recognized logically.)
But why couldn't the Luther who rejected both Catholic and Anabaptist on sexuality, among other things, see more of life as "adiaphora" in this way? There may not be a lot to glean from Luther's writings, but let's have more of what there is to glean. As it is, he, who derided Saxon peasants for not knowing much Christianity, seems to have one foot planted in a medieval semi-superstitious mindset himself. Heiko Oberman nails this. Maybe Roper felt she didn't need to say anything, but I think she should have. Indeed, per the end of this Wisconsin Synod pastor's review of Oberman's book, I think said reviewer gets it wrong and Oberman nails it on how fear-driven Luther was. Again, the explanation of the Commandments, "that we should fear and love God ..." comes to mind. Surely good Lutheran Rev. Jeffrey Samelson knows that too — and represses it.
Third, the Jews. Roper notes, as I've read elsewhere, both that Luther's antisemitism arose from before the 95 Theses and that he wasn't along, with Eck among others being worse than Luther's earlier antisemitism. And, she does delve into the basics of his late-life virulent antisemitism, exemplified in "On the Jews and their Lies." But she doesn't ask the "why" as much as she could here, either.
Was this related to Luther's increasingly apocalyptic mindset? But the likes of Savonarola were never this vehement; no religious leader of medieval and early Renaissance Christianity ever went this far off the bend.
Anyway, again, a good to very good book, but ... there could have been more.
And, that other book on order? Oberman.
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