The ancient author of Ecclesiastes wrote, “Of making many books there is no end,” and that is undeniably true as we consider Martin Luther. With the sole exception of Jesus Christ, more books have been written about Luther than about any other person who has ever lived. In 1983, the 500th anniversary of his birth, more than 320 books and journal articles focused on the reformer. And this year marks the 500th anniversary of the putative beginning of the Protestant Reformation when, on October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his 95 theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg.
Given how many volumes have examined Luther in the half-millennium since he lived, it is not surprising when another excites little more than a yawn: how hard it is to plumb new depths of this challenging personality; how difficult to bring forward some insight that has not already appeared multiple times. Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet manages this remarkable feat, and Lyndal Roper offers here an admirably researched and winsomely written treatment of the powerhouse of the Reformation. It serves up profound insights into the man whose struggles ended up shattering the unity of the church and initiating a new period in European history.
Studying Martin Luther is a daunting task: The Weimar edition of his works runs to more than a hundred volumes of dense print, with volumes typically exceeding 500 pages. Once he had become Professor of Bible at the University of Wittenberg in 1512, he averaged a major article or book every two weeks until his death in 1546. His works include sermons, biblical commentaries, theological treatises, polemics, hymns, liturgies, letters by the hundreds, and reflections on political issues of his day. Many scholars have focused on these abundant resources in their attempt to decipher Luther and the development of his remarkable—often startling, sometimes repulsive—perspectives, and their studies have assisted readers to become familiar with this most intriguing and challenging of the Protestant reformers. But Roper brings another package of scholarly expertise to her investigation of Luther, and because of that, her work offers keen and valuable insights.
Since 2011, Lyndal Roper has been Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, the first woman to hold that prestigious position. A respected and productive scholar of the Early Modern period, she already has innumerable significant studies to her credit. And in turning to Luther as subject, she utilizes her special expertise in social and cultural historical research.
Roper brings an interesting background to her academic labors. She notes that her early years were spent as a daughter in a Presbyterian manse in Australia, and strains of that experience periodically bubble up in comparisons with (or interesting asides about) some Protestant attitudes in the present day. An example of the former is her contrast between Luther’s emphasis on “by faith alone” and the contemporary Protestant experience of “being saved.” Particularly striking is her declaration that Luther’s “religiosity had nothing saccharine about it. His relationship with God was not that of a believer cheerfully confident of having been ‘saved.’ ” An example of the latter is her comment contrasting Luther’s attitudes about enjoying creation with “Calvinism, which was obsessed with disciplining pleasure.” In this regard, hers is an unschooled familiarity, though: She points out that unlike most of those who have produced biographies of Luther, she is not a trained church historian, but a historian of religion. This self-identified contrast points to both the strengths and weaknesses of this remarkable book.
Martin Luther is admirably written, sparkling with wit and insight, shaped in engaging prose. Roper has read and assiduously analyzed the archival resources about and personally traversed the streets of Mansfeld (where Luther spent his childhood), Eisenach (where he received his early schooling), Erfurt (where he took university training and entered the Augustinian monastery), and Wittenberg (where he received his doctorate and served as professor). She writes with insight about how the economies and social structures of these locales would affect a young person with a father eager for his son to rise in the world. Roper also assesses sharply how the deferential culture of Germany at the time influenced society, spawning both dependence and tensions. And she is especially alert to the interpersonal dynamics manifested in the small university at Wittenberg, where Luther soon grew from a junior member in the theology faculty to its dominant presence.
Her account of how that dominance played out in Luther’s relationships with those who had the effrontery to disagree with him, or even place emphases differently than he did, may cause readers to squirm as they see manipulation and raw power used to humiliate and sideline others. For Luther’s influence over others did not “just happen.” He shrewdly recognized the opportunities afforded by the printing press for communicating his perspectives to increasing numbers of readers in Germany. He developed an attractive, entertaining vernacular style. Between 1518 and 1525, his publications outnumbered those of the next 17 most prolific authors combined!
Moreover, Roper emphasizes that “Luther’s inner development .  .  . is the abiding focus of this book.” She criticizes previous biographers for neglecting the social and cultural world in which Luther grew up and lived, leading them to focus on Luther as a “lone theological hero who stands above time and space.” Roper strives to rectify these portrayals by interpreting the Saxon reformer in terms of his sociocultural milieu, assessing the development of his views in terms of his relationship to father-figures—and his own sense of paternal authority for the movement he had unleashed. Her analysis of his correspondence also leads Roper to many useful assessments of how Luther related to others and the ways his thought developed. His perspectives stumbled forward by fits and starts, as he intuited and embraced further implications of his earlier assertions, reacted to arguments others brought against him, and repudiated ways some would-be supporters appropriated his teachings.
Readers familiar with Luther’s life and writings will have no cavil here, but they will sense a glaring omission. It is not just that “justification” plays so small a role in Roper’s narrative: Numerous scholars have found that you cannot understand Luther the reformer unless you understand Luther the monk—and Roper does not seem to understand Luther the monk. Of course, she deals with the details of his monastic life, but she does not acknowledge, or wrestle with, the driving impulse that both dominated and enervated the young monk. By entering monastic life, Luther sought to place himself in a situation where he could best prepare to meet his Maker; but his efforts, while exceeding even the strictest, most demanding, counsels, did not result in the slightest confidence that he might find peace with God. The anguished quest which led to his training under the guidance of his father-confessor, Johann Staupitz, brought him a doctorate but no relief in his search—until his labors brought him to wrestle with the words of St. Paul in Romans 1:16-17. There Paul rejoiced in what terrified Luther (“the righteousness of God,” revealed in the gospel) until Luther discerned the emphasis that “the righteous one will live by faith“—and not by endeavors to placate a wrathful divine judge. Luther had stumbled upon the teaching from then on associated with him: Justification sola fide, being accounted righteous before God by faith alone.
This brought him “relief,” which he later humorously associated with an experience in the cloaca—the privy in the tower where he resided. Roper acknowledges that connection, but her otherwise-insightful treatment fails to discern how this not only freed Luther from his anguish but grew to dominate all his thought and actions. Other students have shown that the affirmation of justification by faith lies at the base of the subsequent developments of Luther’s thought until it became the recurring leitmotif in the thoughts and deeds of the reformer. Luther could also discern threats to this foundational conviction under every rock and behind every blade of grass in the landscape—and when he did, he thrashed out vigorously, even hatefully, against erstwhile colleagues and the peasants who had appropriated the freedom that he celebrated as a call to social revolt.
This is essential to appreciating Luther’s emphasis on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which Roper stresses. But her presentation, gifted as it is, fails to perceive the connection to Luther’s monastic quest. The point for Luther was that in the Eucharist, he received the actual body and blood of Christ, in whom he had received righteousness solely by faith. This was comfort to Luther—and should not be vaporized by some mental recourse to “memory,” as Ulrich Zwingli and those Luther dismissed as “sacramentarians” did.
As was common in monastic discourse at the time, Martin Luther could engage in crude, coarse language and personal vituperation. Those who crossed him in his later years discovered that his bombast was not without focus, if without restraint. Roper presents this clearly and unflinchingly—and her treatment of the anti-Semitic diatribes of Luther’s later years puts them into context but does not excuse them by relationship to what were common patterns then but are repugnant now. So Lyndal Roper presents Luther here, raw edges and all, and offers a significant addition to Luther scholarship.
James R. Payton Jr., professor emeritus of history at Redeemer University College in Ontario, is the author of Getting the Reformation Wrong.
