Oliver K. Olson. Matthias Flacius and the Survival of Luther's Reform.

(Wolfenbutteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, 20.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2002. 428 pp. index, illus, map. bibl. 99 [euro]. ISBN: 3-447-04404-7. Johann Anselm Steiger. Funf Zentralthemen der Theologie Luthers und seiner Erben: Communicatio-Imago-Figura-Maria-Exempla. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002. xx + 452 pp. index, append, bibl. $112. ISBN: 90-04-12529-9.

Although both books ostensibly deal with Luther's theology and its survival, the comparison stops there. Matthias Flacius Illyricus (1520-75) was born in what is now the Croatian town of Labin and attended the school of San Marco in Venice. He was sent to Germany on the advice of the Franciscan Provincial, Baldo Lupetina, his uncle (later executed for sympathizing with the Reformation). He soon became an outstanding Hebraist. He is known for his extreme Lutheran positions on the Leipzig Interim, which he saw as a betrayal of Luther's doctrines by Melanchthon and his followers. He is also known as the author of the first-ever treatise of biblical hermeneutics (Clavis sacrae Scripturae), as commentator of the New Testament (Glossa compendiaria), as the author of the Catalogus testium veritatis, where he sets out to show that Luther's criticism of the papacy had the backing of most medieval theologians and institutions, and as coordinator of the Centuries of Magdeburg, the multi-volume history of the church, which broke with the traditional methods of history writing. By ordering the material in periods of hundred years, each period being then subdivided into commonplaces such as "the location of the Church," "heresies," etc., it focused on the history of doctrine, showing it to have been in progressive decline between the Apostolic period and Luther's Reformation.

Olson's book, which is intended as a comprehensive survey of Flacius' career and theology, barely takes us beyond what is common knowledge already. This is a great pity as neither Flacius' biblical exegesis nor his contribution to Protestant historiography has so far been the object of exhaustive studies. Indeed Olson does not even include Flacius' Glossa compendiaria on the New Testament in what aims to be an exhaustive bibliography (337-51) of the reformer's works. As for the Catalogus, the chapter devoted to it seems no more than a collection of quotations from the works of other historians (233-41) ranging from Fumaroli to Lessing. No attempt is made to order these very disparate standpoints; all are cited to support Olson's view that Flacius had a particularly enlightened approach to history. The Centuries (256-79) receive an equally summary treatment with Olson indiscriminately chastising all those who have ever dared to criticize them, from Bellarmine to JeanFrancois Gilmont.

The book is riddled with misprints, grammatical and factual errors, and incomprehensible sentences. I shall confine myself to one or two examples of each: "emphazized" (for: "emphasized," 55), "accedatur" (for: "accendatur," 66), Thesaurus eruditioni scholastici (for: Thesaurus eruditionis scholasticae, 263), "pseudoIsadorian" (for: "pseudo-Isidorian," 265). Father Deleheye (misspelt as "Delahaye," 256) is credited with belonging to the nonexistent "Bollandist Order." We are told that "Flacius enjoyed the friendship of Melanchthon than whom no other German professor has ever been so famous" (instead off "the most famous of all German professors," 42). Olson's work represents the fruit of many years' work on Flacius but fulfills neither the criteria of an original, scholarly contribution, nor those of a readable work of popularization. Too superficial and partisan to fall into the former category, it is too poorly written and contains too many quotations from secondary literature (with no attempt at analysis) to be recommended to students or to the wider public.

In his work on Fiinf Zentralthemen der Theologie Luthers Johann Steiger opposes the longstanding tendency among historians of theology to draw a neat dividing line between Luther's Reformation and Lutheran orthodoxy. He chooses five themes already present in Luther's teaching, which he sees as hallmarks of Lutheran orthodoxy. The most important and wide-ranging of these is the communicatio idiomatum or the exchange of properties (the doctrine going back to the fifth century stating that while the human and divine natures in Christ were distinct, the attributes of one may be predicated of the other in view of their union in one person). Steiger shows it to be fundamental not just to Luther's Christology and eucharistic teaching (where it is especially important as guaranteeing the ubiquity of the eucharistic body and blood of Christ) but to his anthropology, doctrine of justification, exegesis, pastoral theology, and theology of creation. The same concept also underlies the thought of Luther's disciples. To them as to Luther, Christ is physically present not just in the elements but in the whole of Creation. This enables Luther and his followers to place the "Book of Nature" alongside the Bible and link the two so that the Bible is oriented towards Nature while Nature becomes transformed through the word of God into a locus for faith. This is why the early seventeenth-century Hamburg preacher Philip Nicolai argued that justification and the eucharist constituted the specific points of contact between man and God while Peter Lossius in the 1650s contended that the real presence of Christ in the works of creation is the starting point for his presence in the hearts of the faithful.

The concept of communicatio also underlies Luther's doctrine of creation and Fall, which issued in the total destruction of God's image in man. The image for Luther can only be restored through justification by faith, which in turn entails the exchange of properties between God and man (God takes on man's guilt while man takes on God's glory) and will not be complete until the Last Judgement. While on this earth, however, man is progressively educated to put on Christ, a process that takes place, at least partly, through images. This accounts for the coexistence of image and God's word in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Lutheran education. Both bring about and reinforce faith, a typical example here being Lutheran altar illustrations, which take the shape of visual representations of the eucharist together with the words of the Institution.

The concept of image naturally leads to that of figure, including figurative or allegorical interpretations of the Bible. Steiger's section on this is most instructive, showing how Luther admits allegorical exegesis while imposing strict limits on it. According to Luther, we cannot interpret God's promises allegorically but we may have recourse to allegory in explaining their circumstances so long as the literal sense has been understood correctly and so long as any allegory we resort to has Christ as its focal point and is compatible with the doctrine of justification by faith. Although Luther does not distinguish very clearly between typology and allegory, the distinction crystallizes in the work of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Lutherans such as Johann Gerhard or Solomon Glassius.

The section on Luther's Mariology unfortunately does not include a discussion of its reception by Lutheran orthodoxy. The basic point made by the author is that whereas Luther rejected all notion of Mary as intercessor, he nonetheless attributed to her the special function of one who directs the faithful to Christ. The final section deals with Luther's and his followers' use of extracts, including expurgated Lives of the saints, as moral examples. This too often neglected crucial feature of Lutheran spirituality can be traced back to the reformer's project of publishing (with the help of Major and Spalatin) the expurgated editions (1544) of Vitae patrum and of the Legenda aurea. The persistence of the exempla genre can be documented through innumerable collections of moral examples drawn from diverse sources, which will continue to be published throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The two hitherto unpublished Christological treatises by Johann Gerhard which reflect Luther's own Christological interests, constitute a fitting appendix to Steiger's work.

The book's weakest point is its unevenness. Steiger's treatment of the Lutheran reception of the five themes is, as he admits himself, sketchy and as such cannot be considered conclusive although it can serve as an incitement to further research. Some of the cases of reception cited do not seem to bear out Steiger's thesis. Hutter's disputation theses for example (85-103) limit communicatio idiomatum to Christ's two natures and, in marked contrast with Luther's use of the concept, do not extend it to cover other aspects of theology. Moreover, Steiger tends to treat Luther's theology as a block without distinguishing between young and old Luther. This means that he does not tell the reader that the reformer's interest in allegory and moral exempla is a mark of his later years. However, despite a certain unfinished quality, this is one of the most stimulating books on Luther published in recent years. We can only hope that it will bring similar research in its wake.

IRENA BACKUS University of Geneva