The Word Does Everything. Key Concepts of Luther on Testament, Scripture, Vocation, Cross, and Worm. Also on Method and on Catholicism: Collection of Essays by Kenneth Hagen (review)

Kenneth Hagen was a professor of Historical Theology at Marquette University, who specialized in Luther and the Reformation. This book, published posthumously, gathers twenty-four of his writings and essays on a variety of topics. Hagen stated in the introduction that these works are well worth bringing to the public again, because many of the issues they dealt with are still current.

After a biographical prologue on Martin Luther, originally found in the Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, the book is divided into six sections. The initial essay in the first section demonstrates why this is a valuable book. In it Hagen made the point that Luther was a friar who was attached to an order and served his vocation in the secular world, not a monk who was attached to a place for life. Why is this important? A monk living a life of contemplation in a secluded community would never have had the opportunity to do the work of reform that Luther accomplished. Hagen wrote next how important it is today for both Protestants and Roman Catholics to understand the Reformation in order to understand theology. He sought to aid this understanding by exploring when Luther came to his understanding of justification. Another essay utilized a letter from the Wittenberg professor John Land to George Spalatin, demonstrating the early excitement among students caused by Luther's lectures on the Bible. The final essay in the first section argued that Luther's theology was the traditional sacra pagina, written from faith, to faith, about faith and for faith in God.

The second section demonstrates Hagen's expertise in Luther's biblical exegesis. The section begins with an historical survey of how Scripture was understood from the time of the Early Church up to the present, including a particularly valuable summary of the late medieval and early Reformation periods. Another article in this section reminds the reader that Luther followed the medieval practice of referring to Scripture in an abbreviated manner because Scripture was considered not a collection of proof texts, but a whole piece.

Luther's concept of vocation is the topic of the third section. Pastors might be particularly interested in a study of three sets of Luther's sermons, which led Hagen to make some interesting recommendations for modern Lutheran preaching. Lutheran preaching should, according to Hagen, remind his daughter that changing diapers is just as important in the whole scheme of things as the theological lectures her father gives. Another essay makes the point that, for Luther, the direction of vocation is not one's own fulfillment; rather it is the good of one's neighbor.

The fourth section is concerned with Luther's theology of the cross. Hagen returned to a favorite theme of his—Christ as a worm on the cross, based primarily on Psalm 22:6, "I am a worm and not a man." Hagen wrote that the force of the image of the worm is illumined by examining early Christian writers such as Clement, Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Gregory of Nyssa. Hagen pointed out that Luther referred to Gregory the Great when the reformer wrote how God took a sharp fish hook and put a worm on it. The worm was the humanity of Christ, the hook His divinity. The devil attempted to devour the worm, but was instead defeated by the hook.

The quality of Hagen's scholarship is on full display in an essay contained in the fifth section, which questions the use of the term Judenschriften to classify writings of Luther that supposedly were directed against the Jews. Hagen examined the collected works of Luther from the sixteenth century to the Weimar edition of the late nineteenth century and discovered the term and classification Judenschriften did not...