Reformation Resources: The Exegetical Luther & Companion Books for Reformation Commentary on Scripture
Crisler, Channing L. and Robert L. Plummer, Editors. Foreword by D. A. Carson. Always Reforming: Reflections on Martin Luther & Biblical Studies (Studies in Historical & Systematic Theology). Ashland, OH: Lexham Press, 2021. 174 Pages. Paper. $29.99. https://lexhampress.com/
A Lexham title joins two by IVP Academic in this review.
As of this review's original draft there were 27 volumes in print or pending for the Lexham Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology. That's an impressive start!
Our first title challenges readers to focus on Luther's focus: Scripture, the Word of God.
Luther as a Biblical Scholar
Luther challenges the academy to speak beyond itself.
Whatever the theological malady, Martin Luther prescribed the same remedy: the word of God. For Luther, the Word was central to the Christian life. As a lover, translator, and interpreter of Scripture, Luther believed the Bible was too important to be left to academics. God’s word has always been and must always be for God’s people. What, then, can biblical studies learn from Luther?
In Always Reforming, leading Lutheran, Reformed, and Baptist scholars explore Martin Luther as an interpreter of Scripture. The contributors elucidate central themes of Luther’s approach to Scripture, place him within contemporary dialogue, and suggest how he might reform biblical studies. By retrieving Luther’s voice for the conversations of today, the contributors embody a spirit that is always reforming.
(Publisher's Website)
In this understandable volume by eleven contributors, including one from my seminary, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, one will read about The Bondage of the Will as a defense of the clarity of Scripture (12-13), Luther's reluctance to allegorize Biblical texts (29-30), how suffering helps make a theologian (48-49), pastoral formation (62-64), concerns regarding current teaching with regard to baptismal (and other) regeneration in the Mission Diocese of Finland (65ff; this deserves further investigation), Luther's contribution to modern understandings of Pauline intertextuality (115ff), simil iustus et peccator (126), the importance of the book of Romans for Christianity (139ff), two kinds of righteousness (153ff), and hear a sermon by Oswald Beyer (167ff).
Books like this are a reminder for me to remind you to read more Luther in addition to what we need to read about Luther. Always Reforming can be an encouragement as you (re)discover titles of Luther's own works to add to your reading list.
We thank Lexham for their supply of new titles for us to review. We will review more of them soon.
Our second title is an auxiliary volume to Reformation Commentary on Scripture.
Did the Protestant Reformers understand Paul correctly? Has the church today been unduly influenced by Reformation-era misreadings of the Pauline epistles? These questions—especially as they pertain to Martin Luther's interpretation of the Pauline doctrine of justification—have been at the forefront of much discussion within biblical studies and theology in light of the New Perspective on Paul.
But that leads to another question: Have we understood the Reformers correctly? With that in mind, these essays seek to enable a more careful reading of the Reformers' exegesis of Pauline texts. Each chapter pairs a Reformer with a Pauline letter and then brings together a historical theologian and a biblical scholar to examine these Reformation-era readings of Paul. In doing so, this volume seeks a better understanding of the Reformers and the true meaning of the biblical text.
Michael Allen (PhD, Wheaton College) is associate professor of systematic and historical theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. He is the author of several books, including Justification and the Gospel: Understanding the Contexts and Controversies, Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics: An Introduction and Reader, Reformed Theology and The Christ’s Faith: A Dogmatic Account. He is also the coauthor, with Scott Swain, of Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation.
Jonathan A. Linebaugh (PhD, Durham University) is lecturer in New Testament studies in the faculty of divinity at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of God, Grace, and Righteousness in Wisdom of Solomon and Paul's Letter to the Romans.
(Publisher's Website)
It's hard to ignore an older Luther on the cover of this paperback. It's one of two art pieces that I know of that feature him at a graying age. The other is on a 500th Anniversary of the Reformation commemorative cover of The Lutheran Difference, one of my favorite practical pastoral resources and gifts.
This volume is a fresh take on the resources available in the main Reformation Christian Commentary on Scripture series. I recommend reading the Conclusion essay, The Story of Reformation Readings, first. It is suitable as a second Introduction.
I find the first two chapters of Luther and Galatians to be fair, though I think treatment of Luther's approach to iustitia Dei to be weaker than other treatments, like the tomes on that topic by Alister McGrath. The next two chapters on Melanchthon on Romans by Kolb and Seifrid are more nuanced. Melanchthon is the hero author of the Augsburg Confession, but the infamous author of its Variata. The changes in his Loci over time show the same theological drift, motivated by a desire for unity, though a "unity" on fewer Scriptures than Lutherans had together before Luther's death.
Where individuals of the broader reformation depart from Scripture or even contradict its clear text, I feel free to ignore them.
Calvin on Corinthians makes me angry.
Calvinists and Lutherans do not view Luther the same way. As a Lutheran, I am confident in Luther the Conservative Reformer, who retained much, yet reformed liturgy, theology, preaching, and practice so that much was recognizable from the received tradition, yet purified of error.
Is a book worth purchasing for the sake of five chapters? Sometimes, yes. This may be one of those cases for you.
There is room for more titles auxiliary to Reformation Commentary on Scripture. I could envision Reformation Readings of the Gospels, Revelation, the Pastoral Epistles, etc.
Another auxiliary volume to RCS, our next title follows a pattern in titles released to accompany Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.
Worship of the triune God has always stood at the center of the Christian life. That was certainly the case during the sixteenth-century Reformation as well. Yet in the midst of tremendous social and theological upheaval, the church had to renew its understanding of what it means to worship God.
In this volume, which serves as a companion to IVP Academic's Reformation Commentary on Scripture series, Reformation scholar Karin Maag takes readers inside the worshiping life of the church during this era. Drawing from sources across theological traditions, she explores several aspects of the church's worship, including what it was like to attend church, reforms in preaching, the function of prayer, how Christians experienced the sacraments, and the roles of both visual art and music in worship.
With Maag as your guide, you can go to church—with the Reformers.
Karin Maag (PhD, The University of St. Andrews) is professor and director of the H. Henry Meeter Center for Calvin Studies at Calvin University. She is the author of Does the Reformation Still Matter?, Lifting Hearts to the Lord: Worship with John Calvin in Sixteenth-Century Geneva, and Seminary or University: The Genevan Academy and Reformed Higher Education, 1560-1620. She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(Publisher's Website)
We find a younger vibrant Luther preaching on the cover of Worshiping with the Reformers. That's appropriate. That alone gave me encouragement to continue studying how Luther himself preached, using classical rhetoric, employing what many today would term "expository preaching," yet properly distinguishing Law and Gospel, that the Word of the Lord would be clearly and comfortingly preached (cf. 66ff, et al).
Chapters cover the experience of going to Church at reformation-era congregations, as well as preaching, prayer, the sacraments, vocational prayers in daily life, music, and visual art. Yes, the reader will read about the expected variations according to each reformer, location, era, and practice following denominational theology.
Let's zoom in on page 13. I will commend the author about explaining the different numbering systems for the Ten Commandments, though I would further quibble about some of the wording used, asking for more detail and history. I would emphasize to the author that a closer reading of the mentioned Large Catechism of Luther has less to do with the Sabbath itself (Lutherans reject Sunday as a new/transferred Sabbath), and more on a focus of hearing God's Word and receiving the Sacrament of the Altar. I'll let Luther explain:
79 The word holy day (Feiertag) is rendered from the Hebrew word sabbath which properly signifies to rest, that is, to abstain from labor. Hence we are accustomed to say, Feierabend machen [that is, to cease working], or heiligen Abend geben [sanctify the Sabbath]. 80 Now, in the Old Testament, God separated the seventh day, and appointed it for rest, and commanded that it should be regarded as holy above all others. As regards this external observance, this commandment was given to the Jews alone, that they should abstain from toilsome work, and rest, so that both man and beast might recuperate, and not be weakened by unremitting labor. Although they afterwards restricted this too closely, and grossly abused it, so that they traduced and could not endure in Christ those works which they themselves were accustomed to do on that day, as we read in the Gospel; just as though the commandment were fulfilled by doing no external, [manual] work whatever, which, however, was not the meaning, but, as we shall hear, that they sanctify the holy day or day of rest.
82 This commandment, therefore, according to its gross sense, does not concern us Christians; for it is altogether an external matter, like other ordinances of the Old Testament, which were attached to particular customs, persons, times, and places, and now have been made free through Christ.
83 But to grasp a Christian meaning for the simple as to what God requires in this commandment, note that we keep holy days not for the sake of intelligent and learned Christians (for they have no need of it [holy days]), but first of all for bodily causes and necessities, which nature teaches and requires; for the common people, man-servants and maid-servants, who have been attending to their work and trade the whole week, that for a day they may retire in order to rest and be refreshed.
84 Secondly, and most especially, that on such day of rest (since we can get no other opportunity) freedom and time be taken to attend divine service, so that we come together to hear and treat of God’s Word, and then to praise God, to sing and pray.
85 However, this, I say, is not so restricted to any time, as with the Jews, that it must be just on this or that day; for in itself no one day is better than another; but this should indeed be done daily; however, since the masses cannot give such attendance, there must be at least one day in the week set apart. But since from of old Sunday [the Lord’s Day] has been appointed for this purpose, we also should continue the same, in order that everything be done in harmonious order, and no one create disorder by unnecessary innovation.
86 Therefore this is the simple meaning of the commandment: since holidays are observed anyhow, such observance should be devoted to hearing God’s Word, so that the special function of this day should be the ministry of the Word for the young and the mass of poor people; yet that the resting be not so strictly interpreted as to forbid any other incidental work that cannot be avoided.
87 Accordingly, when asked, What is meant by the commandment: Thou shalt sanctify the holy day? answer: To sanctify the holy day is the same as to keep it holy. But what is meant by keeping it holy? Nothing else than to be occupied in holy words, works, and life. For the day needs no sanctification for itself; for in itself it has been created holy [from the beginning of the creation it was sanctified by its Creator]. But God desires it to be holy to you. Therefore it becomes holy or unholy on your account, according as you are occupied on the same with things that are holy or unholy. (https://bookofconcord.org/large-catechism/ten-commandments/)
I appreciate the extended discussion on the language of prayer (98ff). My classical Lutheran school uses Latin alongside English. The chapter on Baptism is thoughtful and tactfully written. The chapter on Communion does a better job than most reformation surveys, and does a respectable job of explaining controversies and honest differences within reformation traditions.
I also thank IVP Academic for their long-term provision of review copies for LBR and Liturgy, Hymnody, and Pulpit Quarterly Book Review.
We previously reviewed an earlier auxiliary volume, Reading Scripture with the Reformers (https://lhplbr.blogspot.com/2018/12/ancient-and-reformation-church-fathers.html). There is still room for volumes with the titles Learning Theology with the Reformers and Living Wisely with the Reformers, paralleling similar auxiliary volumes like those for Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture.
It is heartening to see volumes that remind readers of Luther's Biblical theology, volumes that focus on how various reformation traditions read Scripture. Scripture remains our holy source and norm. It is superior to all Church Fathers, Reformation or Ancient, as inspired, inerrant, and infallible.
Rev. Paul J Cain is Senior Pastor of Immanuel, Sheridan, Wyoming, Headmaster of Martin Luther Grammar School and Immanuel Academy, a member of the Board of Directors of the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education, First Vice-President of the Wyoming District of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and a member of its Board of Directors, Rhetoric Teacher for Wittenberg Academy, and Editor of Lutheran Book Review. He has served as an LCMS Circuit Visitor, District Worship Chairman, District Evangelism Chairman, District Education Chairman/NLSA Commissioner, and District Secretary. A graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Rev. Cain is a contributor to Lutheran Service Book, Lutheranism 101, the Hymnal Companion hymn and liturgy volumes, and is the author of 5 Things You Can Do to Make Our Congregation a Caring Church. He is an occasional guest on KFUO radio. He has previously served Emmanuel, Green River, WY and Trinity, Morrill, NE. Rev. Cain is married to Ann and loves reading and listening to, composing, and making music. He dreams of running his own publishing house some day in the Lord's timing..
