McKim, Donald K., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. 320. $60.00 hardback, $22.00 paperback.

Eighteen essays by scholars on a variety of themes relating to the life, work, historical legacy, and contemporary relevance of Martin Luther fulfill the goal of the Cambridge Companion series to “provide an accessible and stimulating introduction to the subject for new readers and non-specialists.” The collection provides an overview of the many different perspectives that meet in the study of Luther today. Competent treatments of Luther's life and context in the town of Wittenberg (Beutel, Junghans) are followed by essays that introduce his writings via various editions available in English (Lull), his work as translator and interpreter of scripture (Gritsch, Bayer), his theology and moral theology (Wriedt, Wannenwetsch), his work as a preacher and polemicist (Meuser, Edwards), his spiritual journey (Strohl), and his contributions to social-ethical issues and contemporary politics (Lindberg, Whitford). In a third section, essays treat Luther's influence on the next generation of Lutherans (Kolb) and on subsequent generations of European culture (Hillerbrand), as well as how the reformer can be approached by readers today (Nestingen). A final section offers evaluations of Luther's impact on modern church history (Kittelson), his contemporary theological significance (Jenson), and his reception in the ecumenical environment of worldwide Christianity today (Gassmann).

Space allows only a brief comment on some particularly helpful essays. Oswald Bayer offers a compelling view of Luther's interpretation of the Bible in terms of the reformer's insight that God's Word is not mere sign but creative reality that effects what it says. Herein is a view of God and creation that says a great deal to a modern world that seems determined to live without God. Bayer offers modern readers a challenge: “Whoever shuts himself off to the reliable word, the promise, loses the world as a home and trades it in as a wasteland.”

Bernd Wannenwetsch effectively trumps an old intra-Protestant debate about the law by revealing a positive expression of the law's message in Luther's moral theology. The law-gospel antinomy is “not meant to function as an all-encompassing category,” for the ultimate meaning of the law for Luther is worship, as shown in his comments on God's command concerning the tree of knowledge as the “foundation of the church” (WA 42:79). In this understanding, faith and love function together but in a way opposite the scholastic formula that faith needs to be formed by love; it is, rather, love which needs to be formed by faith.

While there are no poor essays in the volume, there are certain weaknesses in this type of collection. Chief is that of coherence: as a whole the volume serves as a helpful tool for exploring the riches of Luther's life and work, but there is no coherent interpretation offered. Some of the essayists cling to the old saw that since Luther himself offered no systematic overview of his theology, therefore such coherence lies beyond the capability of scholarship, if indeed it existed in the reformer's thought. But the volume itself shows that lack of coherence in Luther is often the result of the methods or agendas used in approaching him. Is theosis or deification in Luther's thought the result of an ecumenical agenda based “at least in part on the barest shreds of material evidence regarding the presence of Christ in the justified” (Kittelson)? Or is it a reality in Luther based on “overwhelming evidence” (Jenson)? Do confessional churches identifying themselves with Luther's teaching in fact have no right to exist “according to their founder's own Reformation approach” (Wriedt)? Or is the public act of confessing the enactment of Luther's concept of the Word of God that defines the church “as an institution governed by its doctrinal pronouncements” (Kolb)?

Numerous similar (and substantive) contradictions in interpretation are present in this volume. The result is that these essays may serve as helpful guides into the enigmatic world of Luther research, but that new students of Luther's thought will probably find themselves lost in the maze created by Luther's interpreters.

John A. Maxfield
Heidelberg, Germany