Caritas et Reformatio: Essays on Church and Society in Honor of Carter Lindberg.

David M. Whitford, ed. Caritas et Reformatio: Essays on Church and Society in Honor of Carter Lindberg.

St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2002. 270 pp. append. $34.99.ISBN: 0-7586-0038-0.

This volume's sixteen essays begin with short pieces on Romanesque depictions of usury (Priscilla Baumann) and Katie Luther (Kirsi Stjerna). Gregory Miller takes up Luther's conception of a just war, particularly with regard to the Turks. Lacking a definition of what Miller means by "crusade" it is not clear what Luther rejected about it. The Turks were denied the status of legitimate lordship, defense of Germany was the defense of Christendom, and the real opponents were the powers of darkness. That the crusade had been transformed into "nationalistic" war, no matter how "defensive," is somehow not reassuring.

Four essays concern the legitimacy of state intervention in religion. Gottfried Seebass shows that Catholics, Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Radicals opposed the state's seizure of the cura religionis whenever they were excluded from power. All used the same arguments as John Locke's more successful venture. Religious freedom was thus thinkable by all groups, but rejected by the eventual winners. John Witte, Jr. examines Johannes Eisenmann's discussion of the Reformation's legal implementation as well as his early contract theory of the state. Eisenmann's application of Paul (Rom 12:4-8) to the Christian Commonwealth is particularly striking. I would question, however, if Eisenmann's reiteration of vocation constituted a right to privacy rather than a "Platonic" insistence that individuals stick to their own calling and not interfere with other professions. David Whitford describes the Magdeburg Confession's (1550) exegetical maneuvering to make Romans 13 into a duty to resist. Avoiding both Erasmus's New Testament and Luther's translation, the authors even interpolated a phrase for which there was no textual basis. I would note that the resulting interpretation bears a striking resemblance to that of Thomas Muntzer. Another aspect of the Magdeburg Confession, the obedience to lower magistrates, Oliver Olson argues, marginalized Matthias Flacius and the Lutherans in the Dutch Revolt leaving the field to the more radical Calvinists.

Scott Hendrix's article on the reform of marriage in Geneva is the first of three that examine the impact of reform upon individuals and the internal life of the Church. Hendrix argues that marriage played a crucial role in the "re-Christianization" of Europe. Hendrix contrasts Luther and Calvin on a number of points. I would only question the claim that Calvin's view was more "spiritual" than Luther's since "spiritual" is a notoriously slippery term that begs defining. Robert Kolb examines Martin Chemnitz's postils concerning the role of good works and the Law in the life of the believer. Caught between his commitment to sola fide and simul iustus et peccator on the one hand, and his claim, on the other, that God had saved the elect to do the works for which God had prepared them, Chemnitz made a good case for the Third Use of the Law, but left confused the individual's motivation to fulfill that Law. Jeannine Olson provides a useful overview of the Calvinist deaconate, its various forms, and its ultimate fate.

Holiness provides the rubric for another three pieces. Marygrace Peters offers a brief survey of preaching in the Catholic Reform. Peter Vogt takes up the holiness of the Church in the Lutheran tradition. The application of simul iustus and peccator to the Church as a whole distinguishes it from the contemporary heirs of Reformation Catholicism, Anabaptism and Spiritualism. Although the title of Bill Leonard's article on contemporary Baptist identity includes "an almost Reformation people," he describes Baptists as "clearly ... Protestant Christians." If true, it is a measure of the evolution of Protestantism, since none of the Magisterial Reformers would have agreed. Both Oswald Bayer on theology of lament and Dennis Bielfeldt on Luther's theological nova lingua are more purely theological in character, although Bielfeldt gives a profound treatment of the incommensurability of theological language with that of philosophy in late medieval Scholasticism and Luther's theology. The volume ends with James Kittelson's critique of the disuse and misuse of church history in the ecumenism of contemporary Evangelical Catholic Lutheran theologians.

R. EMMET MCLAUGHLIN

Villanova University