Why Luther nearly collapsed celebrating Mass
An outrageously accomplished book shows that Luther's theology is more interesting than is often supposed,
finds Jonathan Wright
3 July 2009

Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith
By Robert Kolb
OUP £16.99

Poor old Martin Luther. Few historical figures have had so many shoddy biographies written about them or endured so many absurd misinterpretations of their thought.

Scholars and philosophers have often approached Luther as a kitten approaches a ball of wool. He has been a plaything, a commodity to twist and tear.

Over the centuries, luminaries from Leibniz to Lessing, and from Hegel to Engels, have had their cerebral fun with scant regard for what Luther actually said or the times in which he lived.

As Robert Kolb explains, the endless reinterpretations of Luther say much more about the interpreters than about the thing being interpreted. It is high time that we returned to the authentic Luther.

Luckily for us, Kolb has taken on the task. His splendid book is far more than the convenient introduction to Lutheran theology that it purports to be.

Given everything that happened - the implosion of western Christianity - it is easy to forget just how intricate and fascinating Luther's theological odyssey was. As Kolb reveals, Luther made "his own brew of the traditions he inherited". And, goodness, how bewildering that legacy was.

When people write about Luther they usually feel obliged to go through the motions of adumbrating the squabbles between late-medieval realism and nominalism, making mention of the mystical tradition that did good devotional business in contemporary northern Europe, and providing a neat account of the arrival of humanism. Such accounts can often seem rather schematic: arrows pointing towards Luther's great intellectual breakthrough.

Kolb, by contrast, relishes the messiness of it all. There simply wasn't a Damascene moment in which Luther saw some new theological light. On the contrary, his journey was a struggle of constant shifting and revision.

The ideas that were percolating in his mind - those so-called traditions, easily reduced to intellectual cartoons - were not nearly as well-defined as we might think. In other words, making a Reformation was hard work. Thinking Luther's thoughts was a nuanced, detailed business.

The great virtue of Kolb's book is that it takes us, step-by-step, through the tortuous process. As an exploration of a troubled, fecund mind Kolb's study deserves the highest praise.

The nub of Luther's malaise was a sense of terror. He felt himself a sinning, puny creature who clearly didn't deserve God's grace. When he first celebrated Mass, an event that brought him intimately close to God's presence, he almost collapsed.

The solution was to look closely at two things: the words of Scripture, not least the musings of Paul, and the sight of Christ on the cross. Perhaps, so Luther suggested, the promise of eternal salvation might best be thought of as an unwarranted gift. God loved his children, even if they were corroded by sin: so much so that the events at the crucifixion - "the purest theology", as Luther wonderfully put it - unfolded under his auspices.

It has been said that if Luther had read or re-read the biblical, patristic and medieval sources on which he depended then he needn't have reached his specific conclusions. That's a matter for important debate, but we shouldn't ignore the fact that Luther's theology is far more interesting than is often supposed.

He is routinely dismissed as inhabiting some wishy-washy middle ground between the radicalism of Calvin and Tridentine Catholicism. This isn't fair.

Let's bear in mind what Luther had to say about biblical analysis, ecclesiology, the nature of God, and the interplay of the sacred and the profane - the word, despite its modern usage, that really only means beyond the temple. Luther was all about the creation of a Christian society: his theology intersected with economics, with politics, with devotion to the virtues of marriage and family. Let's approach all this not just as a trigger to momentous events, but as an intriguing theological puzzle in its own right.

Luther had his idiotic lapses, and said some grubby things along the way, but I've always insisted that the best of his thinking possesses hidden depths.

Kolb's outrageously accomplished book convinces me that I was on the right track.