Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer
by scott h. hendrix
yale, 368 pages, $35
Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom
by carl r. trueman
crossway, 224 pages, $17.99
F
rom the European perspective, American history looks like a laboratory experiment on the impact of the Reformation. We see in the United States the manifold fruits of toleration, democracy, religious pluralism, individualism, and liberalism. According to scholars like Brad Gregory, all these stem from Martin Luther’s renewal program. In Latin America, by contrast, the overall Roman Catholic culture continued, dominating religious life until the twentieth century. During this time, the continent suffered from the political and economic ill effects of a repressive Catholic colonialism. The contrast is stark.
On the eve of the Reformation festivities of 2017 we need to ask, however, whether this picture of an individualistic Reformation and a holistic Catholicism represents anything more than a cultural prejudice. Do we have in Martin Luther’s biblical theology the beginnings of modern individualism and subjectivism? Does his renewal program contain the seeds that led later Protestants to establish a new kind of Western society in North America? Among the variety of new studies of Luther, two books should help the reader answer the question.
