Richard Rex

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/the-making-of-martin-luther-by-richard-rex/

it’s quite a good book. The intellectual context needs a lot of unpacking for the reader unfamiliar with sixteenth-century Christian theology, but Rex takes us through Luther’s thought processes about what Luther was thinking, saying and teaching, as well as guessing at his (much-explored) psychological impulse to resist authority. I’d have liked maybe a little more on the micropolitics of the German statelets show more which created a context where (some) governments were more receptive to religious innovation than might have been the case in earlier centuries.

Rex does enlarge at length on the technological revolution of printing, which made the spread of new ideas possible, and which left the ecclesiastical authorities reeling. I must say I found strong similarities to the rise of social media today, and the ability of new political forces to seize the momentum and disrupt existing authority. There is a vivid description of Worms during the Reichstag meeting, festooned with posters of Luther and with the Elector Frederick ready to print off the pro-Luther side of the story for mass consumption as soon as it happened. Meanwhile the Pope had no idea what was happening.

Not a book for beginners, but certainly OK for my level of prior knowledge. show less

A lucid account, and explanation, of the development of Luther's theology. Although Rex does not claim to have written a biography, his book seems to cover much of the ground.