From Publishers Weekly
Marty, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago and winner of the National Book Award for Righteous Empire, offers a sterling biography of history's irascible reformer. In concise, accessible style, Marty outlines Luther's life and times, gauging why this man changed the face of Europe and Western Christianity. Marty excels in distilling debates that were matters of life and death 500 years ago but seem obscure to Christians today. Although the celibacy of the clergy is a controversy that no contemporary reader will need explained, other issues such as infant baptism, communion in both kinds (the laity receiving both the bread and the wine) and justification by grace through faith are made accessible by Marty's skillful narration. He depicts Luther as a "man of extremes," bound up in contradictions. Marty wryly notes that Luther's biographer is doomed to qualify any statement about him with the phrase "at the same time." The theologian was tender, yet at the same time blustery and arrogant; he could be a superbly cogent thinker, yet near the end of his life he published a horrific attack on Jews that unthinkingly drew upon "traditional Christian rumors" and "whispered claims" about alleged Jewish atrocities. Even his beliefs seemed rife with contradiction: Christians were simultaneously justified and sinners; they were perfectly free but bound in service to all; God was both revealed and inscrutable. Marty is sensitive to Luther's deep, lifelong quest for theological assurance and his struggles with doubt. This is the best brief biography of Luther ever penned. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Renowned historian of religion (and Lutheran minister) Marty, author of multivolume studies, here gives us a short, vivid biography. His portrait confirms Luther's stubborn integrity; he was serious about Scripture as the sole authority for Christian practice, and that led him to repudiate clerical hierarchy and priestly celibacy, and to declare the priesthood of all believers and the goodness of God's gift of the body. He was, however, humanly contradictory, "a man of conservative outlook," Marty says, "but also a person of radical expression." He identified and sympathized with the common people yet so feared disorder that he sided with the abusive barons during the Peasants' War of 1524-25 rather than possibly overturn secular authority, even when it flouted Christian morals. Of course, he had his further reasons: utopian firebrand Thomas Muntzer was inciting the peasants to murderous class warfare, which Luther couldn't tolerate. Anti-Semitic in old age, he disgusted even his right-hand man, Philip Melancthon. Warts and all, however, Luther remains intrinsically admirable, a bulwark of conscience as well as faith. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
Martin Marty—professor, author, pastor, historian, and journalist—is, in Bill Moyers’s words, "the most influential interpreter of American religion." In Martin Luther this man of unswerving faith, rooted in his own Lutheran tradition yet deeply committed to helping enrich a pluralist society, brings to powerful life the devout Reformation figure whose despair for a perilous world, felt anew in our own times, drove him to a ceaseless search for assurance of God’s love. It was one that led him steadily to a fresh interpretation of human interaction with God—as born solely from God’s grace and not the Church’s mediation—and to the famous theses he posted at Wittenberg in 1517. Luther’s persistence in this belief, and in his long battle with Church leaders—embellished by rich historical background—make Marty’s biography riveting reading. Luther’s obdurate yet receptive stance, so different from the travestied image of "fundamentalism" we currently face, restored the balance between religion and the individual. Martin Luther is at once a fascinating history, a story of immense spiritual passion and amazing grace, and a superb intellectual biography.
About the Author
Martin Marty, one of today’s most respected theologians, is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, where the Martin Marty Center has been founded to promote public religion endeavors. His more than fifty books include Modern American Religion. He is a winner of the National Book Award and was the first religion scholar to receive the National Humanities Medal.
Martin Luther (Penguin Lives Series) FROM THE PUBLISHER
As the last millennium drew to a close and lists of the most influential people of that time were drawn up, Martin Luther always appeared near the top. Who was this famous rebel? Martin Luther explores the records left by Luther of his inner struggles and his conflicts with the papacy, the Holy Roman Empire, leaders of the emergent Protestant movements, and, in the greatest stains on his reputation, peasants in their uprising and Jews. This is also a portrait of a man of conscience and courage who risked death to witness to his beliefs and whose arguments drew fellow believers who together created changes that altered the destiny of Christendom, the shape of Christianity, and the rise of new freedoms in church and state.
Martin Marty -- professor, author, pastor, historian, journalist -- is, in Bill Moyers's words, "the most influential interpreter of American religion." In Martin Luther, Marty sees Luther as someone who was engaged in a lifelong search not only for the grace of God but also for assurance that it was directed toward him. He sought this certainty partly so that he might lead others to explore their consciences, see their faith nurtured, and be ready to take public stands. People of any faith or of no faith can discover in his struggles and affirmations templates for their own paths, and will find him an engrossing subject, a person capable of living with apparent contradictions along with firm convictions.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Marty, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago and winner of the National Book Award for Righteous Empire, offers a sterling biography of history's irascible reformer. In concise, accessible style, Marty outlines Luther's life and times, gauging why this man changed the face of Europe and Western Christianity. Marty excels in distilling debates that were matters of life and death 500 years ago but seem obscure to Christians today. Although the celibacy of the clergy is a controversy that no contemporary reader will need explained, other issues such as infant baptism, communion in both kinds (the laity receiving both the bread and the wine) and justification by grace through faith are made accessible by Marty's skillful narration. He depicts Luther as a "man of extremes," bound up in contradictions. Marty wryly notes that Luther's biographer is doomed to qualify any statement about him with the phrase "at the same time." The theologian was tender, yet at the same time blustery and arrogant; he could be a superbly cogent thinker, yet near the end of his life he published a horrific attack on Jews that unthinkingly drew upon "traditional Christian rumors" and "whispered claims" about alleged Jewish atrocities. Even his beliefs seemed rife with contradiction: Christians were simultaneously justified and sinners; they were perfectly free but bound in service to all; God was both revealed and inscrutable. Marty is sensitive to Luther's deep, lifelong quest for theological assurance and his struggles with doubt. This is the best brief biography of Luther ever penned. (Feb. 2) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
"Penguin Lives" has made an inspired choice in asking Marty (emeritus, Univ. of Chicago), the dean of Protestant church historians, to write on Martin Luther, the progenitor of the Protestant Reformation. This work is a model for popular biography, exhibiting a love of the subject but not fawning admiration. Marty does not dwell on Luther's faults but rather lets them speak for themselves, through the use of well-chosen quotations. He does not excuse Luther's anti-Semitism and keeps a good balance in his discussion between Luther's life and his works while citing telling incidents that give a good view of Luther's character. Like most great figures, Luther was a person of contradictions, and Marty's biography is an excellent popular introduction to his life. It will replace Roland Bainton's Here I Stand as the popular Luther biography. Readers seeking a more detailed approach should consult Martin Brecht's three-volume work. Highly recommended for all libraries.-Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A noted Lutheran historian turns to the founder of his faith, delivering a thoughtful portrait of a complex, controversial figure. "I will begin with Luther's birth and end his story at his death, largely leaving to others the accounts of his posthumous influence and its global consequences," writes Marty (Politics, Religion, and the Common Good, 2000, etc.). So he does, and if he goes lightly on the revolutions and wars that Luther (1483-1546) touched off with his radical reshaping of the church, Marty gives a careful accounting of the man. One constant in Luther's life seems to have been a rather dark view of humankind, and perhaps even of God: his parents were harsh disciplinarians; his schoolteachers assured him and his classmates that "Jesus the Son of God would judge them after their death," and "in school Luther lived in terror of the 'wolf,' the classmate charged to tattle weekly on the children and finger them as candidates for physical punishment"; the young Catholic monk Luther and his mentor, Vicar General Johannes von Staupitz, "inhabited a universe in which they thought a threatening God kept a suspicious eye on every human act." Whence, perhaps, Luther's keen interest in hellfire and damnation, and with the problem of Everyman's working out his own salvation-and without the vehicle of priestly indulgence, which allowed the well-off to "become complacent about their situation before God. They would feel that they could sin and not fear purgatorial punishment." Marty portrays Luther as both conservative and radical, as torn by doubts and pained by illness-yet resolute in his devotion to ecclesiastical reform and his belief that the personal search for salvation was far moreimportant than the "papal and imperial threats" he faced over most of his theological career. Throughout, Marty does not shy from unpleasant questions, notably Luther's anti-Semitism; nor does he fail to point out inconsistencies and paradoxes in the Lutheran legacy. "Sin boldly," Luther proclaimed. The only flaw in this bold interpretation, and one by design, is that it is too short. A fine brief on a world-changing figure.
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