Customer Reviews

Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation 1483-1521

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There is no other biography of Luther, in English, that surpasses this volume, and the other two in the series, by Martin Brecht. These volumes are the most comprehensive biographies of Luther available to day. Brecht is a very careful scholar and offers the reader a detailed description of Luther's life and work. While not as readable as Bornkamm's single volume's on Luther in mid-career, Brecht offers a depth and scope of detail available nowhere else.

Brecht's biography (3 volumes--this is volume one) was the first comprehensive biography in our century that fully explored the later Luther and is also the only Luther biography that tracks every single thing Luther ever wrote. If you are reading something by Luther and want to know the context, this is the place to look. It's readable and takes a conservative position on all of the major controversies. Beware, though: Brecht simply is not interested in source critique.

This book is the first part of a trilogy on the life of Luther. (The other volumes are: "Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation," and "Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church.") This book starts with Luther's birth and early life. We can feel as though we're at Luther's side as he begins study at the university, makes a vow to become a monk during a frightening thunderstorm, and sets out to become a very observant monk, developing the scolarship and focuses that will lead him to start an accidental reformation. Very interesting and detailed information. This volume takes us up to the posting of the 95 Theses. It also contains many interesting photographs.

Martin Brecht's monumental three-volume biography of Martin Luther consists of Martin Luther: His Road to Reformation 1483-1521, Martin Luther 1521-1532: Shaping and Defining the Reformation, and Martin Luther The Preservation of the Church Vol 3 1532-1546, all published in English translation from the German by Fortress Press. To date I have worked through the first two volumes and am now embarking on the third. [see update below]

These three volumes represent an extraordinary achievement. For a full appreciation, however, it is important to understand what exactly Brecht set out to do and what makes this work so valuable. His work is neither a traditional biography of Martin Luther, nor a systematic treatment of Luther's theology. What Brecht gives us here is closer to an exposition or digest of Luther's works (his books, sermons, and correspondence) set within a narrative context.

Luther produced an enormous amount of material during his lifetime, with the standard English translation of Luther's works running to 55 large volumes (Luther's Works, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann). Brecht seems to have mastered not only this material, but the writings of many of Luther's opponents and contemporaries as well. The great service he has rendered for those of us who are not Luther specialists is that we now can turn to the appropriate section of Brecht's work for summary expositions of any of Luther's works and understand them in their particular historical context. Or perhaps better yet, we can read the biography to get a sense of Luther's activity as a whole, pausing here and there to read for ourselves particular works that strike our interest. For that purpose an excellent, affordable companion to Brecht is the beautifully bound and boxed four volume set edited by Theodore Tappert called Selected Writings of Martin Luther (Fortress Press, 2007).

And what a benefit all this is to students and scholars! Imagine one is researching a particular event (for example, the Diet of Augsburg) or controversy (say, the sacramentarian controversy). Brecht will not only introduce us to those events and the major works related to them, but will bring into the discussion the more obscure sermons and letters of Luther from that period that shed important light of Luther's thinking. Consistent with his emphasis on primary sources is the fact that Brecht almost never mentions contemporary scholars in the body of his text. Endnotes cite the appropriate locations in Luther's Works (both English and German editions) along with any relevant secondary literature (the latter mostly in German).

As I mentioned, this is not a traditional biography. The best biography of Luther in my opinion remains Roland Bainton's, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Hendrickson Classic Biographies). In fact, Brecht seems to assume some knowledge of the key events, personages and locations on the part of his readers. Brecht includes helpful plates and illustrations, but no maps. He is less adept than Bainton and certain other biographers at painting the texture of a scene, or depicting the dramatic ebb and flow of events, or really helping us understand the driving inspiration behind some of the secondary characters. And to be honest, some narrative or descriptive portions can be tedious - for example, the initial chapter on Luther's ancestry and childhood (1:1-21) or the details of the struggle between Luther and the Zwickau city council (2:439-446). These are areas where Brecht seems to be striving for completeness or perhaps attempting to make an original contribution by unraveling the details of a complicated situation.

The weaknesses just listed are things we can live with. Brecht has rendered us a great service with the wisdom, time and talent that he has poured into these volumes. This leads me to a final comment on the quality of the printing. These volumes are printed by Fortress Press (now Augsburg Fortress). I called the publisher in September 2009 and discovered that all three of these volumes are now available ONLY in "Print-On-Demand." The volume I saw printed this way was very difficult to read, but with some effort I was able to track down copies from earlier, regular printings. Let's hope that the publisher will go back to a regular printing. "Print-On-Demand" is not the way such an extraordinary achievement should be treated - by a Lutheran press no less!

UPDATE: I have now completed the third volume and, as I expected, there are no changes necessary to my review above. Note that each volume has its own index, while volume three contains a additional, more comprehensive subject index covering the entire set. Finally, I assume that the "Print-On-Demand" problem noted above can be avoided entirely now with the appearance of the Kindle Edition.

Any one that wants to know what it was that was the motivation in Martin Luther's journey, needs to have this in the library! My only problem is that now I will have to order the other two volumes in the series! :)

"Man before God," that sums up Luther's resultant reformation in theology. Brecht in this volume of three, takes us into the context of this change and the resultant history thereof.

It is marvelously rich in its scope and depth, and written fairly and with good style. Originially in German, here it is aptly translated by James L. Schaaf.

One will receive fine insights into Luther's theology in this volume from his days at Erfurt through to the Diet of Worms.

Excellent Luther reading for those so inclined. All three volumes highly commended for your persual.

While I haven't read the book yet and am not at all commenting on the value of the content, I was shocked when it arrived and I opened it up to thumb through it to notice that it doesn't appear to even have been typeset, but photocopied. It is VERY difficult to read. Many of the illustrations are so highly contrasted that they are difficult to view in any detail. I'm guessing that the publisher simply digitally copied the hardcover version of this book, though I'm not certain about that. Whatever the method of creating it, I would suggest either purchasing a hardcover copy if you can find one or wait for this one to come out on the Kindle (if you have one), as the other two volumes of this trilogy are already available on the kindle. I'm hoping that I don't have the same problem with the typeface on the kindle, though given the poor quality of this book it may take me years to get through it and on to 2nd volume.