Abstract
The quality of this book by an eminent German historian is very high, and its reception in the English-speaking world will be eased by an idiomatic translation by Rona Johnston of Yale. Schilling writes from no particular religious viewpoint and in a paradoxical tone: he evaluates Luther’s disputed impact on the modern world and affirms that, outside the transcendental spiritual sphere, Luther is ‘different, not one of us… he is foreign to our age’ (p. 3). His everyday encounters with God and the Devil as well as some medieval prejudices testify to this.
Luther’s 95 Theses helped generate two conventional axioms: first, the Reformation began in 1517; and second, the symbiosis between ‘1517’ and ‘Luther’ is ironclad. Consequently, while there have always been high-profile centenaries of Luther’s birth (1483) and death (1546), the 1517 anniversaries are usually taken as another Luther memorial, rather than remembering the Reformation in general. In literature and the various commemorations, Luther’s fame and celebrity status were widely acknowledged in 2017. Schilling, however, urges that Luther should now be liberated from the ‘cult of remembrance’. Most biographies emphasize Luther the religious revolutionary who took European Christianity by storm, resulting in what still seems to be an irreversibly divided Church. This was not Luther’s objective; rather, it was an unintended consequence. As Schilling points out, Luther was not just a blast of oxygen for an ailing Western Christianity; he was also a rebellious prophet driven by the captivity of his conscience to the infallible or pure divine Word in Scripture, rather than complying with what he saw as corruptible human teachings and traditions in the visible and fallible Church. Individualism and subjectivism as paths to truth were alien to Luther.
Schilling also reminds us that, despite limited success, Luther and the Reformation failed, since the aim had been for the whole Church and world to subject itself to the will of God as articulated in the Bible. This would derive from receiving God’s promised free grace in good faith and awareness of sin, rather than offering God one’s pretended virtue and list of good deeds – the basis of self-delusion which is toxic for the soul. This insight is Luther’s abiding contribution – a ‘paradigm shift’ (p. 119) away from publicly egocentric, self-righteous religion.
The book’s fascinating Prologue and Epilogue demonstrate that Schilling is not just another Luther biographer. His approach is fresh and unusual, since the focus is not on Luther’s religion, theology and spirituality per se. Instead, he illuminates the politics, sociology and culture of Luther and his environment, and so the reformer as he actually was, purportedly. Some of this is positive – Luther as a proud family man (something unheard of before), his humour and conviviality, his contributions to church music, Bible translation, theology in the language of the people, his astute political sense, and his preaching that time is not endless are all legacies of lasting value. Yet the dark side of the unreconstructed Luther is not airbrushed out: for example, his advocacy of government violence against civil disobedience, his intolerance of alternative theological viewpoints, and his shameless use of the Bible to call for the persecution and riddance (but not killing) of Jews, Muslims, witches, prostitutes and homosexuals – all seen as enemies of God beyond the reach of Christian love. Accordingly, Schilling’s Luther, immensely gifted but no saint, corroborates Luther’s self-image as a coarse, ill-tempered ‘rough woodsman’(p. 529). History conquers hagiography, but this is not to denigrate Luther, but rather to qualify him in a way he would admit to.