How Luther Became The Reformer by Christine Helmer (review)
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The title's emphatic "The" refers to the "Protestant modern liberal" narrative of Luther as the initiator of "freedom, individual choice, and linear progress" (79). Helmer asserts that the real, historical Luther (lower case "the") is "the reformer of Catholicism" (Helmer's italics, 103).
The first 100 pages and the conclusion (118–24) focus on the Luther reception she sees promoted by the early twentieth-century Luther Renaissance with particular attention to Karl Holl and his dialogues with Weber and Troeltsch. She places the construct of Luther as the epic German in the context of the traumas of World War I, the collapse of the Weimar Republic, and efforts to revitalize German national identity and patriotism. This, in turn, set the stage for acquiescence to Hitler's claim to make Germany great again. She presents a "test case" of her analysis with a chapter on Luther's "anti-Judaism" (83–98), claiming that Luther's life-long vicious supercessionism expressed through his law-gospel dialectic as well as his theology of obedience to authority promoted German capitulation to National Socialism and the Holocaust. These disastrous developments, Helmer argues, were to a large extent rooted in the efforts of Holl and the Luther Renaissance to make Luther a modern German. The antidote now is to find the historical Catholic Luther concerned to reform medieval ecclesial life to promote a community of love to serve all neighbors in a world of religious pluralism.
Perhaps this is a useful study for those unfamiliar with Reformation studies and Luther research; however, scholars in these fields long ago moved on from what Helmer perceives as the dark side of the Luther Renaissance. Over fifty years ago, Gerhard Ebeling, himself a student during the period Helmer explores, emphasized that the significance of Luther to the Reformation and its consequent [End Page 326] history was not his person but his "linguistic innovation" re hermeneutics (Luther. An Introduction to his Thought, 1970; German original 1964), a point that Luther himself had emphasized. Yet Helmer continues to focus sharply on the old Luther to Hitler trope, using a narrow view of the Luther Renaissance. Unfortunately, she does not alert readers to even a few of the studies rebutting this cliché such as Gordon Rupp, Martin Luther: Hitler's Cause or Cure? (1945); George W. Forell, Faith Active in Love (Minneapolis, 1954); Uwe Siemon-Netto, The Fabricated Luther: The Rise and Fall of the Shirer Myth (1995); Peter Blickle, Obedient Germans? A Rebuttal (1997). Helmer also does not mention the extensive literature on Luther-reception and the Luther Renaissance such as Horst Stephan, Luther in den Wandlungen seiner Kirche (1907; rev. ed. 1951); Walther von Loewenich, Luther und der Neuprotestantismus (1963), Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther im Spiegel der deutschen Geistesgeschichte (1955;1970); Jaroslav Pelikan, ed., Interpreters of Luther: Essays in Honor of Wilhelm Pauck (1968). These and comparable studies cover more extensively much of the same ground as Helmer.
Helmer's description of the nefarious effects of Luther and the Luther Renaissance upon German history also lacks mention of Holl's influence upon Hitler's opponents such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Freiburg Circle. Nor does she discuss the resistance specifically informed by Luther's theology in other Lutheran countries such as that of Norway and its Bishop Berggrav. Nor does she mention the literature on Luther's persistent critique of princes ("a prince is a rare bird in heaven") and his theology of political resistance. Recent developments in the United States, hardly a Lutheran or German nation, suggest that ideologies of national exceptionalism, nationalism, and racism are hardly culturally and theologically specific.
Helmer's claim that Luther was the reformer of medieval Catholicism states the obvious. He was so perceived by major Protestant reformers. Calvin saw him as "a first-born among the servants of Christ to whom we all owe so much." Following generations of Protestants saw Luther as "prophet, teacher, and hero" (see Robert Kolb, Martin Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero. Images of the Reformer, 1520–1620 [1999]). The...
