Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death

Marius's biography-true to the long tradition of writing inspired by Luther-is as polemical as it is riveting. In the preface, he pronounces Luther "a catastrophe in the history of Western civilization." That judgment is not tempered by the text, which not only locates Luther between God and death but also places Marius with Erasmus and Thomas More on the side of reason against the skepticism behind Luther's paradoxical embrace of faith. As a map of Luther and his time, this is fascinating. Because Luther sees the devil as "God's devil," the cosmic struggle of his world cannot be (in Heiko Oberman's phrase) between God and the devil. For Luther, the cosmic enemy is death, figured as annihilation, countered not by reason but by faith. show more While noting the influence of mysticism on Luther's thought, Marius characterizes this view as closer to tragedy. His Luther is neither a mystic nor a theologian of tragedy but the tragic emblem of a Western civilization marked since the sixteenth century by religious intolerance and violence. Marius ends imagining a world in which Luther was not born, in which Erasmian reason peacefully reformed the Catholic church toward tolerance without schism. That is an interesting vision in a world full of evidence that struggle toward tolerance still demands passion as much as reason. show less

For an avowed disbeliever, Marius can write surprisingly unannoying books about men of faith like Luther and Thomas More, but I found his argument that Luther was largely motivated by terror in the face of death unpersuasive (and possibly a case of projection on the part of Marius). *Lots* of theological discussion.

informative but very, very dry. did i mention it's pretty dry? it reads like a very dry history book. dry.