One of my three favorites among new biographies is Scott Hendrix’s Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer (Yale, 2015), which shows how “separating religion from moralism was Luther’s revolutionary innovation.” Moralistic religion meant designating holy ground, building temples as places to make sacrifices, creating ceremonies, and going through procedures that, when checked off, would guarantee eternal rewards. But Luther said, “True religion demands the heart and the soul, not deeds and other externals, although these follow if you have the right heart. For where the heart is, everything else is also there.”

With the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation coming up on Oct. 31, the hour just before midnight has been my time to read books on Martin Luther and what he accomplished. That timing seemed appropriate because Luther came to understand that Europe, facing internal demoralization and external assault from Islam, faced a very dark night unless beliefs and culture changed.

That time and ours are both different and similar. A powerful and corrupt church no longer dominates Europe. A powerful and corrupt European Union does. Muslim armies are no longer at the gates of Vienna, as they were in 1529. Now, terrorists are within the gates. Most European children no longer die before the age of 5 years. Many die in the womb before the gestational age of 5 months.

My goal here is twofold. First, which biography of Martin Luther, from among the many published since January 2015, will give you a sense of the whole person and his key ideas? Second, which books will help you go deeper than the specific flashpoint of “indulgences” that pushed Martin Luther to publish his 95 Theses? This main story highlights 12 biographies, and I’ll explore quickly in sidebars a baker’s dozen of dives into Reformation history and its relevance today.

One of my three favorites among new biographies is Scott Hendrix’s Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer (Yale, 2015), which shows how “separating religion from moralism was Luther’s revolutionary innovation.” Moralistic religion meant designating holy ground, building temples as places to make sacrifices, creating ceremonies, and going through procedures that, when checked off, would guarantee eternal rewards. But Luther said, “True religion demands the heart and the soul, not deeds and other externals, although these follow if you have the right heart. For where the heart is, everything else is also there.”

Hendrix shows that Luther did not want us to feel holy through extra-Biblical ritual. In 1530 he listed 94 practices and customs in a “pretended” church, and particularly criticized feast and fasting days celebrated with special masses, processions, abstentions from food or other activities, and the wearing of ornate vestments. Hendrix shows how Luther’s marriage to former nun Katharina von Bora was a great blessing to both, but did not guarantee happiness for their children: Martin Luther Jr. studied theology but apparently became an alcoholic, boozed with his buddies, and died at age 34.

Hendrix sometimes gets abstract, but Luther’s earthiness does not let him stay above ground level for long. Once, to a friend marrying a woman also named Katharina, Luther wrote, “When you have embraced your Katharina in bed with the sweetest kisses, think also to yourself: ‘My Christ has given me this person, this very best creature of my God; to him be praise and glory.’ I will predict the day on which you receive this letter, and that night in the same way I will love my Katharina in memory of you.”

Another good biography, Heinz Schilling’s Martin Luther: Rebel in an Age of Upheaval (Oxford, 2017), spotlights the importance of a change in Luther’s name. After November 1517 he began signing letters to close friends “Eleutherior,” which means “the free one”—one who had been liberated and would liberate. Like Saul becoming Paul, Martin Luder (the family name) became Martin Luther.

Schilling explains Luther’s most famous two words, “Sin boldly.” Essentially, the more sin, the more trouble and “the sooner one will be ready to place all hopes in Christ alone. … Without awareness of sin there can be no salvation, for without awareness of sin there is no knowledge of grace.” Schilling also makes Luther human: In 1521, as he arrived in Worms and faced the most crucial debate of his life, Luther informed friends back in Wittenberg, “The Lord has afflicted me with painful constipation. The elimination is so hard that I am forced to press with all my strength, even to the point of perspiration, and the longer I delay the worse it gets.”

Schilling’s one flaw is a tendency to mind-read. Regarding Luther in 1517: “The idea that he might be taking on the authority of the pope would not even have crossed his mind.” Regarding Archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg: “It would never have crossed Albrecht’s mind to respond to the theological content.” Later, “The thought of leading a popular movement … would not have crossed Luther’s mind.” Maybe yes, maybe no, but historians are not mind readers.

Eric Metaxas has just come out with the third of my favorites, Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World (Viking, 2017). It also suffers from mind reading in regard to both Luther and modern readers—“It’s impossible to think that Luther didn’t wonder” or “we can hardly doubt”—but more than makes up for that with delightfully rollicking sentences: “a series of six popes at once so comically bungling and tragically scandalous that it was almost as though this sextet had deliberately placed their collective corruptions in a paper-mache monster, hung it from a tree, and begged an Augustinian monk to take a dozen or so good whacks at it.”

Metaxas also employs metaphors that summarize well the position of Luther’s opponents: They were “unmoored from the rock of the Scriptures … blithely floating down the river toward a great cataract and didn’t seem to notice that they had ever moved. Luther sincerely hoped that somehow he might waken them from their reveries and get them to see their danger so they might paddle to shore before it was too late.” Metaxas is the best storyteller among the Luther biographers.  Continue reading…