Abstract
The commemoration of the quincentenary of the beginning of the European Reformation in 2017 brought with it a flood of new books on the life, thought and legacy of Martin Luther. Given the volume of publications that year it is inevitable that many of these works will be forgotten within a decade or so, if not sooner. However, many will still be used much longer into the future; the present volume certainly belongs to that latter category.
The contribution of Timothy J. Wengert and his associate editors has been to bring together a stellar cast of scholars of Luther and Lutheranism and produce an authoritative guide to Luther and his legacy globally. The last word here is important. For many, the most striking contribution of this Dictionary is both its chronological and geographical reach.
Want to know something of the fastest-growing Lutheran church in Angola? Look no further. Or, indeed, the 300,000-strong wave of German economic migrants to Brazil after its independence from Portugal in 1822, 60% of whom were Protestant. Or what about the Slovak Lutheran theologian, Jozef Miloslav Hurban (1817–88), who was superintendent of the Bratislava district and a leader of the Slovak uprising in 1848–89: you will be introduced to him here. You may wish to discover something of the 300-year history of Lutheranism in India which has led to approximately 2 million out of 25 million Christians in India identifying as Lutheran. Or perhaps you are interested in Lutheranism in Japan, which has six major Lutheran church bodies and some 30,000 members and a lively missionary tradition to North and South America, Germany, Indonesia, and Hong Kong. Then there is the Russian Lutheran martyr, Kurt Muss (1896–1937), arrested first in 1922 on charges of espionage for assisting with the distribution of food and clothing to Lutherans suffering from famine in southern Russia, and later again in 1929 for organizing Sunday school classes in apartments scattered across the city of Leningrad. In the eighth year of his sentence of forced labour in the Gulag, he was executed. Those interested in Lutheranism and more recent hot-button issues such as human rights, ecology, ecumenical dialogue, sexuality and gender will also find much to explore here, with useful lists of further reading.
As a church historian who teaches survey courses in the history of Christianity, and whose favourite lecture topic happens to be Luther and the early Reformation, my interests in this Dictionary were also a little more traditional. I wished to discover how useful it might be to students navigating their way through the development of Luther’s thought, some for the very first time. Therefore I spent more time closely reading entries such as: Justification; Sanctification; Good Works; Law and Gospel; Lord’s Supper; Scripture; Patristics; Authority; Papacy; Priesthood of All Believers; Confession (Private); Iconoclasm; and Eschatology. I searched these entries, attempting to read them with the eyes of a student grappling with some of these ideas and their development in Luther, but also with the eyes of a teacher seeking to explain Luther’s theology in as accessible a manner as possible. I was not disappointed.
The entries in this volume on key concepts and ideas relating to Luther and the early Reformation contain a myriad of gems which will serve both lecturers and students equally well. Christ’s word as a ‘performative word,’ for instance: ‘[it] does what it says and says what it does.’ The idea that ‘God needs no works, but the neighbor does.’ That ‘God is working sanctification in sinners, not sinners working it in themselves,’ or that ‘in order to become holy, people must despair of themselves, even of their best works [as Luther learned the hard way], and trust in the forgiveness of Christ.’ Or, regarding the often-misunderstood concept of sola scriptura: ‘Scripture alone did not mean only Scripture.’ In fact, ‘the early Reformers drank deeply from the patristic well of scriptural interpretation.’ Moreover, ‘by the measure of Scripture alone were all of the Church’s doctrines, practices, and morals to be judged.’ And yet, as Melanchthon cautioned, Scripture was not to be interpreted without respecting the ancient church’s exegetical tradition. David Steinmetz’s pithy clarification is also usefully quoted: ‘sola scriptura generally meant prima scriptura.’
Of course sola scriptura is not the only commonly misunderstood concept. There is also the notion of the priesthood of all believers. Here another pithy clarification cuts through much of the confusion: it is called the priesthood of all believers, not the ‘priesthood of a believer.’ Laypeople read the sacred texts ‘in conversation with other Christians in the Church, especially with pastors and scholars.’ Luther called not for an individualistic reading of the Bible, but a corporate reading. Furthermore, although all Christians are considered by Luther to be priests in common, not everyone is called to publicly minister and teach. The Church, therefore, sets certain persons aside for the special role of preaching God’s Word and administering the sacraments, but it is ‘a priesthood that is nothing else than a ministry’ and this is to be by common consent of the community.
On the subject of private Confession, Luther had an abiding attachment to this practice, and was in favour of retaining it in a revised form. Indeed when Kalstadt moved to abolish it in 1522 Luther would preach ‘I will allow no man to take private confession away from me.’ While he rejected medieval confession as having promoted works-righteousness and anxious consciences (such as experienced by himself for many years) and he believed it impossible for someone to confess ‘completely,’ reciting all their sins, in confession, he nonetheless regarded private confession and absolution as retaining their value. Indeed, private confession continued to be practised in Lutheran churches through the 17th and 18th centuries, although the creeping in of some abuses, not least the reintroduction of the ‘alms’ given to a confessor, the beichtgeld, led to its later being jettisoned. One of the more recent proponents of the practice, incidentally, was Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
One of the many surprises my students receive when we study Luther’s theology concerns his theology of the Eucharist and, more particularly, his views regarding the bodily presence of Christ in, with, and under the bread and wine. While rejecting transubstantiation, Luther defended the ‘real presence’ of Christ, most famously in his discussions with Huldrych Zwingli at the Marburg Colloquy. If one wishes to learn more about his views on the Eucharist, one must look up the entry ‘Lord’s Supper’ or, indeed, ‘Marburg Colloquy.’ Once again, there are some helpful pithy reminders of what Luther found objectionable with medieval sacramental theology in this regard, such as: ‘we . . . do not offer Christ as a sacrifice, but . . . Christ offers us.’
Given the importance of this topic, however, it is strange not to find any entry for either ‘Real Presence’ or ‘Eucharist’ (even one that says something like: Eucharist: see Lord’s Supper). Neither can either word be found in the extensive Index at the back of the book. Simply from the point of view of a reader getting as quickly as they can to their desired entry, this seems a pity. Given the comprehensiveness of the volume, and the huge ground it covers, it also seems odd that there is an entry for Convents but not Monasteries or Monasticism. The closest we come to the latter is Monasteries, Evangelical. There is also one entry I would have dearly liked the editors to include, given the difficulty of the concept and the frequent confusion surrounding it: simul justus et peccator. This was an opportunity missed. But these are minor quibbles.
This Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions offers a cornucopia of authoritative scholarship condensed into 850 pages of accessible, readable entries in which the Lutheran traditions are firmly placed within the church catholic and are here presented on a global stage. Institutions will want it for their libraries. For their part, scholars will want this volume not on their bookshelves, but to hand on their desks. Tolle, lege!