Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet

A Luther for Today

Lyndal Roper’s "Martin Luther Prophet and Renegade" is a superb study of an extraordinary remarkable and complex man whose actions in 1517 sundered the unity of the Catholic Church and set in motion a religious revolution. After his death in 1546, Luther's chief disciple, Phillip Melanchthon, summed up Luther's theology simply as, "sola gratia justificamus et sola fide justificamur " or "only scripture only grace'. Luther's stubborn insistence that ordinary men and women could and should read the Bible and must look to God for their salvation, and not the Church; changed Western history. Dr. Roper is Regius Chair at Oxford University and a respected scholar. Her previous work has concentrated on the witch craze, women and Reformation Germany. As someone who has worked and traveled in Germany, I very much enjoyed the care Roper takes to place Luther in the context of German history and social geography. Her Luther adds valuable insights to our knowledge of the early Germany. I learned a lot from her descriptions of Eisleben where Luther was born and died, Mansfield the mining town where he was brought up and Wittenberg where he studied, lived and worked most of his adult life. This volume is not a general history of the Reformation or Lutheranism but her interpretation of Luther and his era, her work, clarified and enhanced my understanding of both. I found her Luther a fascinating, well written and fresh account which hopefully will reach a wide audience. Martin Luther Renegade and Prophet tells the extraordinary story of a sixteenth monk with the courage to stand alone at Wittenberg and the Diet of Worms. While Roper focuses on Luther she never loses sight of his contemporaries’ both friends and enemies and is scrupulously fair to all including his opponents Andreas Karlstad, Johannes Maier von Eck, and Thomas Munzer. Dr. Roper does a fantastic job charting Luther's rise in the world especially, his inter development; and the growth of his personality for as she...