The Real Luther: A Friar at Erfurt and Wittenberg: Exploring Luther’s Life with Melanchthon as Guide (review)

Throughout his career, Roman Catholic Reformation scholar Franz Posset has worked to recover the crucial role that St. Bernard of Clairvaux played in Martin Luther’s earliest theological development. Luther’s initial insights into the nature of justification came from within the broader catholic tradition and especially from Bernard. The present volume makes this claim based on the work of Luther’s closest colleague in Wittenberg, Philipp Melanchthon, who shortly after Luther’s death penned a preface to the second volume of Luther’s Latin writings, in which he sketched Luther’s life. Apart from a confused discussion of the much-debated reference to the posting of the Ninety-five Theses on the Castle Church on October 31, 1517, Posset argues convincingly, although disjointedly, that Melanchthon’s account contains other useful and accurate information about Luther, especially Luther’s recollection that an old Augustinian friar in Erfurt assured him that God expected him to believe that his own sins were forgiven and showed him a reference in Bernard’s first sermon on the Annunciation. Posset’s thesis needs be taken seriously.

Historical analysis has two sides: a strong thesis and proper evidence. It is here that The Real Luther falls short. Factual, logical, grammatical, and translation errors litter the book. The author seems unfamiliar with the latest and most important scholarly work on Melanchthon and consistently misdates documents. Thus, in a single section from pages 139 to 145 (where he tries to prove Melanchthon’s increasing respect for Bernard from 1521 to the 1530s—itself questionable), he misdates Melanchthon’s German translation of the Loci communes and his lectures on 1 Timothy, claims that Melanchthon preached on the Feast of the Annunciation in 1544 (he never preached), and leaves the impression that Melanchthon’s 1546 theses attacking Petrus de Malvenda centered on Bernard’s sermon. Instead, Melanchthon used Bernard as he used other church fathers: to defend Lutherans against attacks on their catholicity.

The last twenty pages offer a translation of Melanchthon’s preface—a well-intentioned contribution. Unfortunately, the translation is riddled with errors, as the following demonstrates. Posset translates:

And [the friar] proved [to Luther] that this interpretation is confirmed by a saying of Bernard, and he showed him the locus in a sermon on the Annunciation. . . . Luther said that he was not only strengthened by this voice [of the senior friar] but that he was also reminded of Paul’s entire sentence [Rom 3:24–28] who so often inculcates this dictum: “by faith we are justified.” Since he read many expositions on this he saw the vanity of their interpretations that were en vogue then. [The insight in such vanity] was based both upon the words [of the senior friar] and upon the fact that Luther felt the consolation of mind after having noticed their faulty interpretations.

(pp. 154–55)

But the sense of the Latin (confirmed by the German translation of 1554) should read:

And [Luther] said that this interpretation was strengthened by a saying of Bernard and the place in the sermon on the Annunciation was shown [to him]. . . . By this word, Luther said, he was not only strengthened but also reminded of Paul’s entire way of thinking, who so often emphasized this saying: “we are justified by faith.” Concerning this [text of Paul], when he read the expositions of many, then, based both on the words of this person and on the consolation of his mind, Luther realized the falsity of these well-known interpretations.

Such inattention to accuracy mars the book and thus obscures the “real” Luther.