“Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World”, by Eric Metaxas

496 pages, Viking, ISBN-13: 978-1101980019

Having been raised Lutheran (for a little while, at least), it was with some curiosity, and then considerable delight, that I began to read Eric Metaxas’ Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World. I knew some of the basics about Luther’s life and works, but the Martin Luther I found on the pages of Metaxas’ book was not the man of Protestant and Catholic myth, but a living, breathing human being, both brilliant and difficult (but then I repeat myself); indeed, I knew I was in good hands when the first thing Metaxas did was to enumerate and then sweep away the legends that have grown up about Luther over the centuries: he didn’t come from a family of peasants; he didn’t have a hardscrabble upbringing; there was no literal bolt of lightning that led him to become a monk (although there was a thunderstorm involved); his trip to Rome did not convince him of the need for a reformation; he didn’t literally hurl a pot of ink at the devil; the nun who eventually became his wife didn’t escape the convent hidden in an empty herring barrel; and he most likely did not nail his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg on October 31^st, 1517 (that probably happened two weeks later); instead, what he did do on that fateful day was to send a letter to the Archbishop of Mainz, and it was that letter that officially began the process we came to know as the Reformation.

Perhaps the most critical thing Metaxas tells us about Luther is that he was a passionate reader of the Bible, and that this, in turn, made him the member of a tiny minority, not only amongst the great mass of Christians – who, let’s not forget, couldn’t read the Bible, as they were Latin illiterates – but also amongst nobles, priests, archbishops, cardinals and even popes, none of whom any like excuses. And it was his understanding of Scripture that framed the Reformation. The church’s practice of selling indulgences (allowing people to pay money for time off in purgatory, for themselves and departed family members) was the flashpoint, but it was Luther’s knowledge of Scripture that propelled what could only be called the most significant revolution in human understanding and development of the last 500 years; perhaps longer. The church had become comfortable with the teachings of Aristotle, but Luther (who also knew his Augustine) saw the inherent contradictions the church had either missed or glossed over. The church taught that only the priests could drink the wine in communion; Luther made the startling claim, based on the Bible that all people were equal in God’s eyes and all people should partake of both the bread and the wine. That shocking idea of the equality of all people would find political expression more than 250 years later in a document called the Declaration of Independence. Luther articulated the ideas of each person being free subject to none, and each person being a servant subject to all. He understood that anyone could and should understand Scripture; it wasn’t only church officials who should have the magic power to read and interpret the Word of God. And to that point, as he stayed hidden in the castle of Wartburg while church and state looked high and low for him, spending his time in translating the New Testament into German to better spread the Gospel to the common folk and, incidentally, practically inventing the modern German language, to boot, taking only 11 weeks in which to do so. Damn.

Metaxas tells this story of Luther extraordinarily well as the man has a gift for storytelling. Never would I have imagined that I would become fascinated with the account of the theological debate between Luther and Johannes Eck at Leipzig in 1519, but I was – and that’s due entirely too how well the author tells the story. Martin Luther, then, is not only an outstanding biography; it is an incredible reminder of what one man accomplished, often in the face of great personal and professional peril. And it is a reminder that the Reformation was only something that happened 500 years ago, but something that is still happening, and needs to continue to happen, especially in our increasingly godless and hopeless world.