Transfiguring Luther: The Planetary Promise of Luther’s Theology by Vítor Westhelle (review)

This is an impressive reinterpretation of Luther’s theology by a leading South and North American theologian. The book collects twenty-three essays, five of them revised from prior publications, under four main headings: (1) the Genius of Language: Grammar and Rhetoric, (2) Theology Matters, (3) the Planet Luther: Transfigurations, and (4) Economy and Politics: The Paradigms. Since Westhelle’s roots are in Brazil, one might think his take on Luther would be through a liberationist lens, like Walter Altmann’s, but the path between Altmann and Westhelle is indirect. Clearly, a driving theme for Westhelle is that increasingly Lutheran populations have shifted away from Europe and North America to the global South. While the stance of the underprivileged is never absent from Westhelle’s concern, he is best seen as offering a post-modern Luther, that is, a Luther no longer interpreted through the lens of Kant’s philosophy assuming a universal reason, as Luther was presented for thinkers like Albrecht Ritschl and Karl Holl, but instead through voices like Mikhail Bahktin and Jacques Derrida, for whom reason is contextual and/or masking power.

Westhelle’s work reads as much like that of a poet as a prophet. The most important key that he uses to think theologically is etymology. He notes, “categories are always haunted by their etymology that lingers on as a specter or a ghost, long after they are consciously remembered” (99). Throughout his work Westhelle appeals to the roots of words to help him harvest insights for how to interpret theology. Most importantly, building off the work of Erich Auerbach, Westhelle interprets Luther as a figura. Figurae are ciphers which in themselves have no value but in relation to other values their worth is changed exponentially. Figurae are related to symbols in which ideas are active in images, but figurae additionally have a historical trajectory impacting thought. They are closer to allegories whose boundaries are fluid. In Luther’s specific case, the texture of his thinking ever includes the warp of ultimate concerns, matters coram deo, and the interconnected woof of penultimate concerns, matters coram mundo (8).

Westhelle starts with Luther’s view of language, a most important category for postmoderns who tend to see reason as a product of language rather than language as subordinate to and in service of reason. Unlike Lindbeck or Wittgenstein, for whom language structures reality, or Schleiermacher and liberal theologians, for whom language harkens back to an experiential depth dimension, Westhelle interprets Luther’s view of language through Bahktin for whom language is communication (30). Luther masterfully brought the language of carnival and burlesque into the pulpit and academia in order to subvert institutional values (35). Against those who accentuate the principle that it is Scripture which interprets humans and not vice versa, Westhelle appeals to Luther the translator and affirms that language requires the task of interpretation always (48).

Some of Westhelle’s best work is found in the two essays specifically devoted to Christology. He notes that the flesh is liberated through and by the flesh (103) and that in light of gift there is no economy of exchange or return as in the “I give so that you’ll give back to me” mindset (105). Creatively, he looks at Christ as a “hybrid” in order to explain the communication of attributes of the divine and human in Christ (107).

The section “planet Luther” is devoted to tracing the theological dynamics between the North and the South in the Lutheran World Federation. As an insider to both North and South, Westhelle can bring a remarkable critique of postcolonialism to bear upon both indigenous and colonial churches. Again, drawing on figura’s power both to be grounded in a history and able to migrate across time and cultures, he claims that a “postcolonial” approach to Christ will honor Christ not as a conqueror but as a brother (187–88).

Insightfully, Westhelle perceives that at its...