Waxing science, waning religion

Note: Per the tagline, I wrote this 12 years ago. While doing a search on my computer recently, I came across it and realized I'd never posted it here.

The slimmest clarion of new crescent moon 

Strives against being horizontally swallowed 

By a modern, urbanized mix 

Of haze, smog, high-rise skyline and near-solstice summer sunset. 

A totem of a more simplistic time 

(Whether simple or not) 

When times were measured by moons 

Along with sacrifices and other aspects of worship 

As the stench of old, dried, burnt blood 

Coated stones, steles, tabernacles and temples; 

Nasty, brutish, short and simplistic, even if not simple. 

Nor bygone. 

Yet today several million lobster loathers, 

And a billion followers of an illiterate itinerant peddler, 

Mark their calendars by that same crescent, 

While well more than a billion adherents 

Of a dead rebel Jew they cluelessly deify 

Mark his death by that same lunar orb. 

What would Earth by like without that Moon? 

No science of Galileo and Apollo landings, 

But no madness of Middle Eastern myths. 

 — May 31, 2009

Per the last stanza, a lot of people have written about how astronomy might be far different without Earth having a satellite, especially one as close as our Moon. And, that sets aside the issue of how the biology of our plant would be different without that.

But, given the centrality of lunar issues to many world religions, even if lunar month observances were secular, as a way of marking time, as well as endowed with religious import, I don't think you can talk about how science would be changed without talking about how religion would as well.

Martin Luther vs. Charles V

Last month, I noted that Martin Luther almost certainly did not say "Here I stand, I can do no other," at the end of the Diet of Worms, but likely ended with his "it's unsafe and unwise to go against conscience."

One of the links in that post notes that Charles V could just as well have said "to go against conscience is neither right nor safe." Good pious Catholic, he felt he had no choice but to eventually act against Luther. And, so he did on today's date 500 years ago, officially declaring Luther an imperial outlaw. 

That said, there appears to have been connivance between him and Duke Frederick. The bann was never officially promulgated inside Electoral Saxony. And Charles may have suspected early on that Luther's "kidnapping" was indeed just a ruse.

Charles remained a "good Catholic." BUT, after the Schmalkaldic War, he did NOT have Luther's grave desecrated. He also remained a good, dedicated Holy Roman Emperor wanting to keep the Empire unified without a degree of coercion that might crack it apart.

Since he likely knew nothing but royal schoolbook Latin, and in everyday languages, his knowledge of German trailed that of Flemish and Spanish, how much Luther's speech — and Luther's broader ideas — were translated for him is a big deal. Because, with translation would have come interpretation. If we're being charitable.

Could the two of them, with a pair of mutually accepted translators, or the two bringing their own sets of translators — plenty of German-Flemish/French dual speakers would have been available — gotten past Catholic hierarchical filters?

Possibly.

Even had Charles not been any more "sold" on Lutheranism, he might have had further degrees of toleration. After all, he waited five full weeks after Luther's speech, despite Eck being at Worms to lead the charge against Luther, before making his declaration.

But, likely?

Some part of me wants to think of Isaiah's "Come, let us reason together."

But, the facts of history point to Charles bringing the Inquisition to his native Netherlands in the early 1520s, where he could understand Calvinist and Lutheran claims without translation, at least in the Flemish regions. It points to him living out the last year-plus of his life in a monastery after abdicating his imperial and royal crowns. It points to him invoking his family tree when responding to Luther at Worms.

Facts of secular history also point to Charles having no qualms about maintaining the legend that his mother, Joanna, was "mad" so he could have control of the Spanish realms.

On the third hand, Charles, per the war issue, did not officially send a copy of the post-Worms Imperial bann to Elector Frederick, therefore it never had the force of law inside of Electoral Saxony. This, in turn, is why Luther went halfway to Augsburg in 1530. He went to the southern border of Electoral Saxon land.

North American Lutherans and Reformed: Chasing a Roman will o' the wisp?

While reading Schilling's biography of Luther, one thing that was new to me (and never taught at my conservative American German Lutheran seminary), Schilling does note that Europe-wide (it eventually extended beyond there), Lutherans and Reformed came to an agreement in 1973 in Leuenberg, Switzerland. The semi wingnut Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod doesn't discuss this, nor does the full wingnut Wisconsin Synod Nor, seemingly, does the ELCA in detail. It led to a United Protestant Church in France and was 13 years in the making. It covered other doctrinal issues as well, and led to a fellowship of Lutheran, Reformed, and Prussian Union type churches in much of Europe, which also included … Waldensians!

Besides the Eucharist, other areas of discussion and eventual agreement included Christology [remember the old “the finite is not capable of the infinite”?], predestination and justification. European, including British, Methodist churches joined in 1997. Interestingly, though it has spread to the New World, with America's UMC, among others, and even to Lutheranism and Reformed in Argentina, no Lutheran body in either Canada or the US has signed on to the Leuenberg agreement.

The header is the off the top of my head reason why I can draw such a conclusion in the header. Even that, though is weird. The ELCA is in "altar and pulpit fellowship" with the Reformed Presbyterian Church USA and the Reformed-derived, now quasi-Unitarian United Church of Christ, and with the United Methodist Church. The Moravian Church, which is one fellowship worldwide, including US churches, is a member of Leuenberg.

Of course, it cuts both ways. The PCUSA and other US churches aren't there either. Ditto for Canadians.

It's true that, per the member churches website, plus the Wiki page, that the agreement's members are referred to as "The Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe." (Interesting that English is the language.)

But, again, there's those Argentinian churches.

And, it's not like this undercuts the World Council of Churches or something. In fact, per the Wayback Machine, the history of Leuenberg negotiations says the WCC encouraged the whole process.

About two-thirds down, the piece speaks to non-European ramifications, and references the ELCA's fellowship agreement with the three other churches.

Part of why none of these churches may have jumped on Leuenberg is mentioned by the author of that timeline:

As we have seen, the Lutheran-Reformed conversations are among the few bilateral dialogues where church fellowship has not only been proposed but actually ratified. Why has this result not had more far-reaching consequences? The explanation is to be found in the ecumenical movement itself. The early seventies were probably the last moment at which the Lutheran-Reformed conversations could still be brought to a successful conclusion. A few years later an agreement between the churches of the Reformation would have encountered far stronger opposition. A strange development took place in those years. There was a growing fascination with new relations with the Roman Catholic Church. In the Lutheran World Federation in particular, priority was being given almost exclusively to the dialogue with Rome. The fellowship among the churches of the Reformation was of course still basically welcomed, but at the same time it was felt to be a complication. If the dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church was to be conducted on the basis of Lutheran confessional criteria, the challenge of the Leuenberg Agreement had to be kept within limits. Warnings were reiterated about unacceptable bloc-building in the Protestant camp. A strange kind of "ecumenically justified immobility" has resulted. Again and again the realization of fellowship with Reformation partners is postponed in the name of a supposedly wider ecumenical fellowship. Instead of putting into practice the fellowship possible here and now among the Protestant churches, the status quo is left in place in the name of an as yet unattainable fellowship.

Interesting indeed.

I wonder if this is still the case, as it was 20-something years ago.

I mean, Rome under late-term JPII and Benedict XVI enlightened not one bit on a married priesthood or women as priests or even as lay ministers.

The author offers an update on this and other issues at the end.

He notes that attempts were made to move Leuenberg beyond Europe, but in part because of the siren song of Rome, they didn't gain much traction. Plus, Leuenberg member churches have to decide whether to view other fellowship efforts either through the lens of Leuenberg or through that of their confessional tradition.

Finally, he notes, where do union churches fall, within the WCC, the Lutheran World Federation or the World Alliance of Reformed Churches?

One thing Vischer does not address is that of greater fellowship with Orthodoxy. As with Rome, the question of how Leuenberg churches pursue such fellowship — what framework they use — seemingly looms large.

This gets much more into the weeds of inter-Christian issues than is normal for here, but ... I scratched an itch!

'Breath' is metaphysical New Age bullshit

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book is ultimately New Agey, yogic-breath metaphysics peddling cultic bullshit.

Note: As is sometimes my wont, I expand reviews of books I do on Goodreads for either this or my primary politics blog. This one has critical religion elements involved, and wrongly framed so here it is. As usual, additions are italicized.  

Pure and simple, based on the end of this book, and what I’ve glommed on reviews of other books, this is a vehicle to promote yogic breathing practices AND the metaphysics behind them, disguised as a vehicle of a “better breathing” book. That part is addressed more below, as is the classism.

It’s quackery and cultism right there. Beyond that, it promotes pseudoscience elsewhere as well as potentially unhealthy and even dangerous practices.

It seems to have lots of interesting insights, but they’re largely anecdotal. It does have lots of problems. These are mostly at the end, but there’s a few early on, and more pile up in the middle of the book even before Nestor goes New Agey.

He does mention the domestication of fire, eons before refined foods, was the first major jaw-shrinkage time. But, he doesn’t go back older, far far older, to our australopithecine ancestors walking upright, and how that affected sinus drainage (as well as backs and fallen arches). More here, in a review of a great book about how fucked up we are.

Nestor also, although he talks about how the change in the larynx affect our possibility of choking, doesn't talk about how the post-infancy descent of the epiglottis, in conjunction with that, puts reverse pressure on the nasal passages, also increasing the tendency toward mouth-breathing. See here. At that link, Dr. Gelb, a dentist, also notes our nasal passages are too small for an animal our size. Don't forget that "Lucy" was under 4 feet tall, and less than 100 pounds by a fair shot. Our upright posture plus our big brains combined to squeeze those nasal passages. Dr. Gelb also speculates, with an actual scientific mindset, that epigenetics may play a role in our problems.

The non New Agey pseudoscience starts on page 60 with emphysema, which, first of all, is not the medical term used to day, rather, of course COPD.

The claim that emphysema is mainly due to poor breathing rather than cigarettes is a howler. So is the hint that COPD is curable. It is not. Its progression can be slowed and some of its symptoms can be ameliorated, in part through breathing exercises and related items, yes. But it can’t be cured.

From here, Nestor drops hints, while carefully avoiding direct statements, that other medical maladies can be cured just by breathing right.

The bad stuff is when he goes New Agey on yoga 30 pages before the end. And yes, dude, that’s what it is.

He talks about the “invisible energy” of our breath called prana in Sanskrit, etc., which he equates to chi and other things, which (setting aside the New Agey bullshit that any of this is real), no, they’re not the same.

He next raves about acupuncture. Reality? As Western medicine, starting in the 1700s, started making scientific discoveries, it started replacing acupuncture in China, which only rose again with the aid of the Great Helmsman (Wrecking the Ship of State), Mao.

Beyond that? China and India didn't even communicate 1500-500 BCE. Certainly not religiously and philosophically, and qi or ch'i as a metaphysical idea has been documented at circa 200 BCE. Ergo, Vedic religion or Brahmanism/Epic Era pre-Hinduism did not lead to qi. After all, Buddhism didn't go "over the mountain" for another 800 years.

He then talks about the spiciness of Chinese and Indian food. In reality, Chinese food, especially, was pretty bland before the Columbian Exchange. Beyond that, a lot of Chinese and Southeast Asian food today isn’t that hot. (Contra the claims of someone on Quora, Szechuan pepper is NOT “hot.” Indian long pepper, of the same genus as black pepper, is somewhat hotter, but not that hot.

And, the idea of heat or not in food is in both India and China's traditional beliefs a highly metaphysical, and pseudoscientific, idea.

He then gushes about Swami Rama, ignoring that good skepticism has shown with other yogis, they’ve never been able to actually stop their heart for more than a second or two; rather, they’ve used body control to muffle their heartbeat and other things. …. And ignoring that outside of that, he behaved like many another modern Indian guru, complete to the point of losing a sexual assault lawsuit.

He then says rocks differ from birds and bees based on the level of energy or “excitability of electrons.” This of course ignores uranium and radium ore rocks in his attempt to put a pseudoscience veneer on things.

After that, no, the Indus Valley Civilization of Harappa et al has nothing to do with pre-Hindu Aryan religious ideas. Since we still can’t translate their language, in fact, we don’t know what it has to do with anything! And, calling the Aryans “black-haired barbarians from Iran” is all wrong. They came from today’s central Asian “stans,” first of all, not Iran. The Indo-Aryans split from Iranians before this migration. And, of course, we have no way of knowing their predominant hair color. And, if this was an attempt to separate Indo-Aryans from Nazi ones, well, the Hindutva-fascism of today’s RSS, the backbone for the BJP political party of Indian PM Narendra Modi, has muddled that back up.

Beyond that? Contra Nestor, though all the main types of yoga may not have evolved at once, ancestors of all of them were in place, not just the postures one, by the time of the turn of the Christian era. 

The postures yoga may have been brought by the Aryans completely, in part and merged with the Harappa civilization, or it may have been a pollination synthesis after the Aryans were on the ground. We do have some good evidence that the postures were originally used by priests as part of sacrifice. (Yep, just like the Israelite cult in Jerusalem and Samaria, and Greeks at Olympos etc., pre-Hindu Indian religion involved bloody killing of animals. The New Agers won't tell you that!)

In addition, the use of the scientific-sounding word "pulmonaut" seems deliberate hand-waving to obscure the yoga background.

One further science-based note. I noted that he doesn't account for upright posture's effect on our sinuses. He does talk about American Indian, Indian and Chinese accounts emphasizing the value of nasal breathing. These were long before white flour, etc., especially in the New World. Why would such emphasis be needed unless mouth-breathing were already a partial problem back then?

As for the actual breathing ideas? Why precisely 5.5 seconds? What makes this better than either 5 or 6 seconds? Outside of a modern “app” (the stress of whose use might negate breathing benefits) who’s counting half-seconds?

Beyond that, Nestor misses an even simpler exercise that I’ve known about for years: the 8-8-8 breathing. Breathe in for 8, hold for 8, out for 8, preferably nasally in and orally out. Maybe the orally out doesn’t address mouth breathing, but that’s only one part of his breath focus, so I can go beyond that, too. It does “ground” one by doing it this way, both on the counting which is full seconds (or if you count a bit fast, still 6 seconds or so), and on focusing on breathing by alternating the nasal in and oral out. In addition, the ‘hold’ part mimics Nestor’s push for a long exhale.

Pursed-lip breathing is something else simple, but non-New Agey connected, that Nestor doesn’t mention. Wiki specifically says, per one health thing that Nestor does hammer, that pursed-lip breathing works on the parasympathetic nervous system.

That then said? There’s little controlled evidence for benefits of alternate nostril breathing, and very little for one nostril controlling one nervous system, and the other the other. Most studies that DO claim benefits are of yogic-influenced alt-med research, and are of the same line as "you're only using 10 percent of your brain."

Other things not mentioned? Many of Wim Hof’s records have been broken by others. Multiple people have died following the Wim Hof method.

That said, the subtitle of his “Deep” book containing the phrase “renegade science” should say something.

So, I won’t even recommend this book for the breathing exercises. (Part of them are yogic, to boot.) Find another.


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May Crowning: The Catholic Juggernaut of sorts

 Showing that there's nothing new under the sun of religious practice?

Earlier this week, the local Catholic school had a procession Wednesday afternoon. It looked to be a purely religious event, what with seeing some girls wearing what looked like First Communion dresses. A statue of Mary was in a cart. We're in Texas, not on the border, and the statue was blue, so it couldn't be a Cinco de Mayo Black Madonna deal.

So, on Thursday I did a Google. I didn't think it was Corpus Christi; this good Lutheran knows that that's normally further after Easter (it's in June this year) and that this would have been a church, not school, processional, and I have not heard of the local church doing a Corpus Christi procession. (That said, since then, both churches in my news area have gotten new priests.)

Well, my Googling, or Duck Duck Go-ing, quickly led me to "What is May crowning for kids?" And here's a description from a Catholic church.

And, with the statue of Mary in what was essentially a large flower cart or a small Mormon handcart, and, knowing the Hindu roots of the English word "juggernaut," I was reminded of that. The article notes that, in fact, Franciscan missionaries of the thirteenth century were the first Westerners to record the event. That, in turn, is part of the larger Indian phenomenon of temple car.

Now, no Catholic throws themselves under the Mary cart, which unlike the temple cars for Jagannath, the namesake of the English word, aren't big enough to crush people. (That said, the idea that the faithful threw themselves under the cart wheels seems to be mainly if not entirely a European visitors' religious urban legend.) Well, maybe some Penitentes types do? I don't know. I'm thinking of the secret flagellationists, many of whom still carry a cross on Good Friday and a few of whom, in secret events, actually will be hung from one. (Side note: the veneration of Jagganath appears strongest in portions of Eastern India with the highest percentage of Dalits and Scheduled Classes for most of the country outside Kashmir. And, the fact that Kashmir is high on Scheduled Tribes is a further "interesting" item vis-a-vis the post-1947 history of Kashmir.)

For something less severe than that, maybe some Catholics throw written Lenten vows in the cart or something?

Finally, is there some explicit syncretism involved? May Crowning recognizes Mary as "queen of heaven," and Jagannath comes from two Sanskrit words meaning "lord of the universe." That said, Wiki says that before the rise of Hairy Fishnuts (thanks, Opus), aka Hare Krishnas, aka, International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Jagannath was little known in the west.

And, Wiki also has a piece about May festivals for Mary. It says the May crowning didn't start until the 1700s CE and its roots are unknown. For American Catholics, it's gotten tied to Mother's Day. Also per that, I blame John Paul II for its revival. Eastern European Catholic and Marian devotee.

To wrap up? Mary as "Queen of Heaven" comes from the official declaration of her as Theotokos at the First Council of Ephesus. And, THAT in turn is another sign that old Martin Luther himself didn't go far enough, vis-a-vis his Reformed counterparts, in rejecting Marianism.

A third relatively new Luther bio is, overall to me, the least impressive

 As with Lyndal Roper and Heiko Oberman, this take on Heinz Schilling's "Martin Luther: Rebel in an Age of Upheaval" is an expansion of my Goodreads review, as with the other two. And with that, let's dig in.

Martin Luther: Rebel in an Age of Upheaval by Heinz Schilling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was kind of tough book to rate.

Schilling gets partway behind the 8-ball in the prologue, when he repeats as fact the “Here I stand” legend — and legend it is — from Worms. He states it again when the time comes to discuss Worms in more detail. I was ready to 4-star and no higher for that reason. At the same time, he clearly rejects stuff clearly considered legend, like the story of throwing the inkwell at the devil. Elsewhere, he tries to split the difference on Oct. 31, 1517, claiming that Luther or somebody had a copy of the 95 affixed somewhere, but not the door, at the Castle Church, while ignoring what Luther may have done in the days before that to speed their dissemination.

And, no for sure on "Here I stand," as I recently explained. Per the same piece, and in yet more depth, per this blog post, the nailing of the 95 Theses, IF it happened, was not done to the door of the Castle Church, but rather, some sort of "bulletin board" beside it. And, IF it happened, Luther had also mailed out copies of the Theses to people like Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, so the nailing, IF it happened, was pretty much superfluous. But, it almost certainly didn't. Melanchthon, who wasn't at Wittenberg yet in 1517, was the first to write up this claim, and Luther never made it in his own life.

He is also behind that 8-ball, though not as egregiously, when in the first section, he seems to indicate a certain chunk of educated people besides Columbus weren’t sure the world was round. I’m sure he doesn’t directly claim that of the Portuguese court, but it was a bit verstimmeled here. In reality, after the Spanish rejected him the first time, the Portuguese rejected him because they knew his distance estimates were off. I’m not sure if Eratosthenes’ guesstimates of the Earth’s size had come back to light yet, but I have no doubt that by the 1480s, Portugal had sailed far enough south in nearly a straight line that they knew Ptolemy was off. (The book 1493 claims that Columbus accepted Muslim rulers' guesstimates on the length of a degree of latitude at a flat 60 miles, so came up with an estimate between that of Eratosthenes and Ptolemy.)

But, Schilling also has some very good stuff. His framing of two main, important issues, led me to be ready to given him the benefit of the doubt on the above and five-star him.

Here’s some lesser things I either learned or had refreshed for me that aren’t mentioned in Oberman and Roper.

He talks early on the number and variety of vernacular translations of the bible long before Luther. Schilling says many of them were lay driven, like with the Waldensians, which has issues for Luther’s “priesthood of all believers” not being quite in line with the Predigeramt, which then gave him room to smash down lay-led Anabaptists. (That said, Schilling does touch a bit on Luther backtracking from his true “priesthood of all believers.”)

Notes the family name of Luder and how Luther, pulling a humanism, Graecizied it to Luther based on Eleutherios. He had “tried on” Eleutherios as a new, humanist surname, but soon let it go again.

Luther the hypocrite? Twenty years after supporting bigamy for Philip of Hesse, Schilling notes he accused Spalatin of supporting incest by OKing a widowered pastor to marry his dead wife’s stepmom. (Apparently our Old Testament scholar hadn’t read up on levirate marriage and other things, nor did he recognize how Rome’s ever tighter rules on marriage had led to the incipience of something like the “nuclear family.” Nor did he ever wonder if Roman canon law on this issue shouldn't be challenged.)

He notes Charles did not officially send a copy of the post-Worms Imperial bann to Elector Frederick, therefore it never had the force of law inside of Electoral Saxony. (This was apparently some sort of handshake deal between the two.) This, in turn, is why Luther went halfway to Augsburg in 1530. He went to the southern border of Electoral Saxon land.

He's better than Oberman or Roper on Luther vis a vis the Reformed, though not by much, especially compared to Roper on the Sacrament. Still no depth, nor whether Luther ever had an answer for Karlstadt on Greek grammar. (Oberman ignores this issue entirely; Roper and Schilling both never answer whether Luther ever tried to call out Karlstadt.)

New to me (and again, never taught at my conservative German Lutheran seminary) Schilling does note that Europe-wide (it eventually extended beyond there), Lutherans and Reformed came to an agreement in 1973 in Leuenberg, Switzerland. (LCMS doesn't discuss this! Nor, seemingly, does the ELCA in detail. It led to a United Protestant Church in France and was 13 years in the making. It covered other doctrinal issues as well, and led to a fellowship of Lutheran, Reformed, and Prussian Union type churches in much of Europe, which also included … Waldensians! Besides the Eucharist, other areas of discussion and eventual agreement included Christology [remember the old “the finite is not capable of the infinite”?], predestination and justification. European, including British, Methodist churches joined in 1997. Interestingly, though it has spread to the New World, with America's UMC, among others, and even to Lutheranism in Argentina, no Lutheran body in either Canada or the US has signed on to the Leuenberg agreement.)

Schilling doesn't father-figure psychoanalyze Luther, unlike Roper does at times (but not all the time by any means). He simply portrays him as obstinent, and increasingly so with age, and not just due to torments of aging. Says this was the case after Worms onward.

That said, per the subtitle of “Rebel in a Time of Upheaval,” Schilling nailed Luther’s psychology quite well. Per a Sherman T. Potter comment on a M*A*S*H episode, he was just a stubborn Missouri mule and got more that way the older he got, especially from the Peasants’ Revolt on. It’s why he addressed Zwingli and other Reformed at Marburg and elsewhere with as much vituperation as he addressed at popes.

That said, Schilling doesn’t extrapolate this to its conclusion.

Luther essentially as an individual acted just like he said the popes and councils he deplored acted: As though being infallible.

Spoiling for a fight with Erasmus yet biding his time?

Schilling is definitely good on Lutheranism emerging as a territorial church vis-a-vis the various Calivinisms that sought, rather, to take over the state, or the Separatist types who sought to be separate. This relates to one of two main issues he gets better than Roper or Oberman, or maybe somewhat to both.

Schilling, as a professor of early modern history, rather than one of theology, is good at Luther’s Sitz im Leben, the actual transition to early modernity. At times, he contrasts the Luther of the 100th, 200th, 300th, 400th and 500th birthdays, at least as celebrated in Germany states in the first three cases, united Germany in the fourth and East and West Germany in the fifth, vs. the reality of Luther’s stance on economics and other things. He ties some of this to the development of Lutheranism vs. Calvinism.

The other item that he was good on, and stressed a lot in the second half of the book, was Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms.

Well, at first. He was great about talking about Luther on the two kingdoms on paper, but NOT as this played out, or mis-played out, in reality.

In other words, there’s a WHOPPER of a misfire on Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms vs Luther’s reality, namely in his comments about Jews and Turks. Luther’s comments about the Jews are well-known, including his willingness to invoke the power of the state against them. And, that’s highly contradictory to his professed doctrine. Read more about Luther on the Jews here.

And, a lesser failure, IMO, of claiming Luther showed his two-kingdoms theology by leaving war against the Turks in the secular hand. If Luther had not peddled every Christian PR line about Muslims, would he necessarily have called for the Imperial state to wage war against the Ottomans primarily because they were Muslim, not because they were a threat to the Empire? After all, Francis I of France made an alliance with them.

Schilling then claims that Luther’s focus re the Jews was only a religious anti-Judaism but later admits Luther talked about Jewish blood at the end of his life. Related: Jewish occupational stereotypes, if not about “blood,” are about culture and not religion.

Schilling tries to defend himself here as writing a historical presentation, not a critical history. To me, it comes off as an apologia, in its theological and related use, as in a 1531 Lutheran foundational work, rather than a historical presentation.

So, five bottom lines:

1. This is a more uneven four-star than Roper for sure and maybe than Oberman.

2. Had Schilling not peddled the two-kingdom issues so hard, I'd been kinder. But he left himself open.

3. Of the three, Roper is best. She’s arguably a 4.5 star, but still leaves enough off the table to not get the bump. The two gents don’t cross 4.0 stars.

4. The back of my mind wonders if Schilling is a member of the “free” Lutheran Church in Germany.

5. None of the biographies does a great job (other than the Jewish polemics issue) of dealing with post-Augsburg Luther, tho overall, Schilling is the best, mainly at talking about how Luther got more stubborn, egotistical, and convinced of his own terminal rightness.


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On the big picture? Contra what I said at the end of Oberman, I hadn't scratched my Luther bio itch enough. NOW I have. 

Of "giants" from the past? Bainton, were I to re-read it for review purposes today, would probably get a 3.5. Maybe a bump up to four. Erickson's "Young Man Luther" would be a flat three, if that. And, I have no desire to re-read either one.