Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death [Paperback]

Richard Marius (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2000

Few figures in history have defined their time as dramatically as Martin Luther. And few books have captured the spirit of such a figure as truly as this robust and eloquent life of Luther. A highly regarded historian and biographer and a gifted novelist and playwright, Richard Marius gives us a dazzling portrait of the German reformer--his inner compulsions, his struggle with himself and his God, the gestation of his theology, his relations with contemporaries, and his responses to opponents. Focusing in particular on the productive years 1516-1525, Marius' detailed account of Luther's writings yields a rich picture of the development of Luther's thought on the great questions that came to define the Reformation.

Marius follows Luther from his birth in Saxony in 1483, during the reign of Frederick III, through his schooling in Erfurt, his flight to an Augustinian monastery and ordination to the outbreak of his revolt against Rome in 1517, the Wittenberg years, his progress to Worms, his exile in the Wartburg, and his triumphant return to Wittenberg. Throughout, Marius pauses to acquaint us with pertinent issues: the question of authority in the church, the theology of penance, the timing of Luther's "Reformation breakthrough," the German peasantry in 1525, Müntzer's revolutionaries, the whys and hows of Luther's attack on Erasmus.

In this personal, occasionally irreverent, always humane reconstruction, Luther emerges as a skeptic who hated skepticism and whose titanic wrestling with the dilemma of the desire for faith and the omnipresence of doubt and fear became an augury for the development of the modern religious consciousness of the West. In all of this, he also represents tragedy, with the goodness of his works overmatched by their calamitous effects on religion and society.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death is an empathic, critical, and beautifully written account of the life of one of the most important figures in Western history. Marius's primary goal is to describe the inner life of Martin Luther--specifically, to describe the way Luther's near-obsessive fear of death drove him to search for a gospel that would convince him that God offered real hope for everlasting life. Marius argues that Luther's failure to find the answers he sought was a primary cause of the Reformation--and that it led him to demonize whoever he believed had taken shortcuts to find those answers. Marius defends his arguments with close readings of Luther's voluminous writings and with ample documentation of the political movements during which the Reformation occurred.

The book's broad scope gives it an appealing quality of honestly grappling with the fullest possible understanding of Luther's situation as a man of the middle ages, even if Marius's ultimate verdict on Luther and his legacy is quite harsh. Marius claims that Luther's angry denunciations of Catholics, Jews, and other Protestants exacerbated the disastrous nationalist movements and religious schisms that determined the subsequent course of European history. "Luther's temperament was his tragedy," Marius writes. "He was an absolutist, demanding certainty in a dark and conflict-ridden world where nothing is finally sure and mystery abounds against a gloom that may ultimately be driven by fate, the impersonal chain of accidents that takes us where we would not go because our destiny is to be the people we are, and so we have no choice but tragedy." --Michael Joseph Gross --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Marius, a retired Harvard professor, provides a thoroughly challenging and scholarly biography that brings theological giant Martin Luther into human scale. He traces Luther's life from his birth in 1483 to his ordination and on to the tumultuous years of Luther's reformation of the Church, from 1517 until the end of his life. Through a close reading of Luther's many writings, Marius narrates Luther's development as a theologian and as a cultural figure. Marius characterizes Luther as a "catastrophe in Western civilization," a judgment stemming from Luther's struggle with death as the cosmic enemy, a struggle that could be overcome only by faith. Most intriguing is Luther's confrontation with the humanist Erasmus. Marius contends that Luther discounted Erasmus's perspective, thus dismissing the possibility of a peaceful reform of the Church through reason. Laid at Luther's doorstep, then, is the tragedy of a 16th-century Western civilization torn by religious intolerance and violence. Marius's biography is bound to be an influential and, for some, definitive study of Luther's life and work.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (November 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067400387X
• ISBN-13: 978-0674003873
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #981,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #50 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( L ) > Luther, Martin

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Clear and well written, March 8, 2003

By 

Tom Munro "tomfrombrunswick" (Melbourne, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death (Paperback)

Marius the author appears to have been a Roman Catholic. He is a former academic (he died in 2001) and has written a number of books including one on Thomas More which sold reasonably well.

This book is not so much a biography but is an account of Luther's early life and his break from the Church. It is more an explanation of the doctrinal divergence which led to the Reformation. A number of people who have reviewed the book have suggested that Marius is biased against Luther. To some extent this is true and the last chapter of the book is a summation of what Marius sees as the negative aspects of Luther?s legacy. The fragmentation of Christianity the over reliance on Scripture and other problems. Some of these are a bit far fetched for instance Marius suggests that one of the reasons for the falling away of Christianity is that the key to worship in the evangelical church is preaching. This depends on the quality of the individual minister in a parish. The Catholic Church depends on ritual and thus even mediocre priests can keep a congregation because of the power of the ritual.

Despite what is said in the last chapter this is a readable and simple account of what is a complex subject. The Catholic Church in the 15th Century had developed doctrinal practices that were very different from the early church. The role of Mary, the importance of the saints, the importance of purgatory as a doctrine and the role of the Pope and the church were things which would have been difficult for those in the early church to understand. Luther believed that the key to an understanding of Christian doctrine lay with reading Scripture which he thought was the word of God. He placed no faith in the role of the Church as an institution and believed that all men could spread Gods word. He in fact called for the secular authorities to intervene in the affairs of the church and to reform it. The Church believed that it was an organisation which had been established by the word of God and that if no bible had been written then it and Christianity would still exist.

Marius is able to explain these two positions clearly giving justice to both sides of the debate. He in fact is able to talk about how the church had evolved and he is able to explain how reformers would be appalled by the veneration of relics and the use of the Popes powers over suffering after death to generate income.

The one weakness of the book is the overplaying of the suggestion that Luther was driven by a fear of death. An alternate explanation is simply that he was appalled by some of the practices of the contemporary church and he was a man who thought he had an insight in how it could be reformed.

The one weakness of the book is that it looks mainly at Luthers life and doctrine. It fails to explain why Luther was protected by the princes in Northern Germany and the institutional reasons why his message was accepted. Never the less an interesting and well written book.

21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent work on Martin Luther, December 13, 1999

By 

Alexander J. MacDonald - See all my reviews

This review is from: Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death (Hardcover)

Marius has performed an incredible task in bringing Martin Luther, and his times, to life for us in this new book.

I found the author's knowledge of Luther; Luther's writings and temperament; the history of the sixteenth century and the theological issues at stake during the Reformation, to be superb. I was especially impressed by the author's knowledge of the theological issues, and his insights regarding them.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I first got the book, but I soon discovered that I had found not only an excellent biography of Luther, but simply a very well written book. The material is very interesting, and Marius presents it in a very readable, and captivating style. The chapters are only as numerous, and as long, as necessary (which makes the reading easier). It was an enjoyable read from begining to end, and I doubt that a better biography of Luther has ever been written.

I hate that I finished it, and I am sure that I will read it again.

Did Luther truly follow his own standard of sola scriptura? Was Luther one of the first Higher Critics of the Bible? Did he really say: 'Here I stand, I can do no other' at the Diet of Worms? Were the ninety-five theses really posted on the church door at Wittenburg?

Read the book and find out!

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting but flawed bio., June 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death (Hardcover)

I consider myself a secular humanist, so while some of the most interesting figures in history are religious , I am always apprehensive reading about them because I fear a story told with a religious bent. Here, however, there is too much of a good thing. The author uses Luther's story to continually make examples and preach his personal atheistic philosophy. At first it becomes distracting but eventually it becomes repetitious and then, finally, plain annoying and out of place. This biography had great potential, because after the intial point had been made, if an editor would have cut the repetition, the biography would have been first rate. One can get a sense of the horror of living during the plague and the psychological effects that had on individuals, and how that may have helped shape Luther's neurosis and theology. It is a shame that so much of this book was so heavy handed.