The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology.

David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology.

Cambridge Companions to Religion. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. x + 289 pp. index. bibl. $70 (cl), $24.99 (pbk). ISBN: 0-521-77224-9 (cl), 0-521-77662-7 (pbk.).

Donald K. McKim, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther.

Cambridge Companions to Religion. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Reprint. xviii + 320 pp. index. chron. bibl. $22.99. ISBN: 0-521-01673-8.

Historians of late medieval and early modern Europe should welcome two of the most recent contributions to a new series on religion: The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, ed. Donald K. McKim (henceforth CCML), and The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology, ed. David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz (henceforth CCRT).

Donald McKim has gathered an impressive number of English- and German-speaking scholars in CCML, whose eighteen chapters address Luther's life and context, his theology and writings, his reception, and his continuing legacy for both the modern church and contemporary theology. Albrecht Beutel opens with a biography of Luther, in which his intellectual development is presented chrono-logically and contextually. Repeating standard accounts, Beutel emphasizes Luther's life until the Peasants' War without giving equal attention to the two following decades, in which he was forced to clarify his positions not merely as a theologian, but as a scholar, pastor, and advisor to governments. Helmar Junghans's essay on "Luther's Wittenberg" explores the extent to which the city and its university informed and, indeed, influenced Luther and provided him with the colleagues and contexts to develop and pursue his program. His presence, however, also affected the local population and economy, especially the thriving printing industry.

The second section, "Luther's Work," includes ten of CCML's chapters, and thus represents the core of the volume. Timothy Lull's essay on "Luther's Writings" explains the state of the sources and breaks them down into some eighteen categories; here even the specialist will find a convenient and useful presentation of the themes and genres that the reformer took up. One should note, however, that Lull mistakenly assigns only the Hauspostille to the recently reprinted and affordable (and not always reliable) translation of Luther's sermons by J. N. Lenker (50), when in fact these eight volumes also contain translations of his massive Kirchenpostille, the collection that generations of (not only!) Lutheran ministers used to prepare their sermons.

Eric Gritsch's "Luther as Bible Translator" is equally well done, and is illustrated by numerous examples of Luther's superb skill and creativity in order to demonstrate his insistence that the translator must ask, "What would a German say in this situation?" (69). Gritsch also provides details of the inner workings of Luther's translation team and the appropriation of his German Bible by Catholic opponents. Less successful is the piece on Luther as an interpreter of scripture by Oswald Bayer, whose massive and erudite Promissio (2nd ed., 1989) remains a standard, but whose chapter here is too complicated for a "companion" volume. He argues that Luther abandoned an entire tradition when he designated the language of the Bible as the present reality of the divine and not as a system of signs representing objects and emotions (that is, an absent reality). But his focus on speech acts, language as being, and a variety of semiotic concepts neglects completely the extent to which Luther's core doctrines shaped his entire approach to scripture and led him to emphasize certain biblical books at the expense of others.

Several additional chapters focus on specific theological themes, introduced by the fine interpretation of "Luther's Theology" by Markus Wriedt. Luther was not a systematic theologian, a problem Wriedt seizes as an opportunity to explore Luther's delight in exploiting tensions and contradictions between positions, termed here a "relational theology" (103) that was hyperconscious of conflict. Wriedt's piece may be warmly recommended as one that captures much in Luther by way of a limited number of clear and concise concepts.

The rest of CCML's core has been written by the experts one would expect and want, with chapters on Luther's moral theology, the reformer as preacher, the relation between his intensely personal experience and the religious needs of some of his contemporaries, his social ethics, his political engagements, and an especially useful essay on polemical battles in which Mark Edwards distills his previous studies. Given the current emphasis on orthodoxy and confessionalization, Robert Kolb should have been given more space for his chapter on Luther's "function" after 1546. Still, the piece is an excellent starting point.

CCML concludes with five chapters on Luther's legacy into the modern age. Especially useful are the presentations of the historiographical debates done by Hans Hillerbrand and James Kittelson. The concluding essays by Robert Jenson and Gunter Gassman provide a wealth of materials explaining the reformer's significance and place in current contexts.

For a handbook that is meant to be useful not only for scholars but also for beginners, CCML suffers from editing that is neither aggressive nor careful enough. Surely three of the four translations were done by a nonnative speaker and not cleaned up thereafter. The oddities, mistakes, and occasions where one must know German to understand the English are too many to list. Junghans's essay covering eight centuries of urban history is rendered entirely in the present tense. Names are sometimes left in German ("Lowen," 11). Crucial sources are inconsistently titled: Luther's "Invocavit Sermons" (13) reappear as "Eight Sermons at Wittenberg" (29, 51). Wriedt engages an article by Berndt Hamm available in English but not noted as such (see C. Scott Dixon, The German Reformation [1999]). Other translated essays by, for example, Oberman also appear only in the original German. Why do the names of Luther's five children appear twice (15, 31--with birthdays) when not relevant to the material presented? English translations of Luther's works are not always included in the notes. The cross-references by Aland and Vogel, which allow English readers to correlate citations from critical editions with available translations, appear too late and buried (254, nn. 25, 29). Concepts and events such as indulgences, treaties, wars, and electorships sometimes appear without any explanation. All too often a confessional triumphalism breaks through that should have been transcended by now: one reads of the "monstrosity of indulgences" (75); that, unlike his predecessors, Luther had a sort of unadulterated encounter with Scripture, interpreting it from its own (God's) perspective (7) "free from pre-understanding and anticipated results being read into the text" (91); or that Luther's personal struggle over justification represented the "anxiety of a whole epoch" (79). This points to the most disturbing weakness in CCML: there is no separate chapter on later medieval theology, an omission that ignores completely some of the best in Luther scholarship since the 1950s. This book will be reprinted, as indeed it should be. One can only hope that it will be reedited as well.

Nothing bears out this last critique of CCML better than Bagchi and Steinmetz's Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology: of a total of fifteen chapters, the first four focus on the later Middle Ages. Here, too, the editors have assembled top scholars with an added benefit--without exception their careers have been at English-speaking institutions, rendering the prose and approaches well-suited to the audience. The bibliographies are inconsistently presented but otherwise the careful hands of the editors have produced a coherent volume. Unlike their counterpart in CCML, they provide introductory and concluding chapters that introduce the issues and suggest directions for further research. By shaping the volume this way, the editors have highlighted the central role that theology can play in current Reformation studies.

After chapters on scholastic theology, Hussites, Lollards, and Erasmus, CCRT includes eleven essays on Protestantism and two on pre- and post-Tridentine Catholicism. Excellent pieces appear, as one would expect, by Kusukawa on Melanchthon, Stephens on Zwingli, Hazlett on Bucer, and Steinmetz on Calvin. Whereas several presentations of Luther's thought by Martin Brecht are available in such handbooks, the editors made a refreshing choice here by enlisting Scott Hendrix, whose brief essay is one of the best of its kind. Kolb's piece on confessional Lutheran theology is as well done as his contribution to CCML. Laudable, too, is the presentation of the Northern perspective with separate entries on Thomas Cranmer (P. N. Brooks), the English reformers in general (C. R. Trueman), and Scotland (D. F. Wright). Especially welcome is Bagchi's chapter on Catholicism before Trent, given the dearth of literature in English (to his bibliography one should add the translation of Eck's constantly reprinted Enchiridion of Commonplaces by F. L. Battles [1979]). Bagchi explores three phases of activity--polemical, political, and propagandistic--and then provides a discussion of nine important topics that is unique in English and, as such, an invaluable resource.

My only complaint is that, unlike McKim in CCML (31 1f.), the editors have not included any of the growing number of electronic sources in their bibliography. And lacking in both works are references to the recent explosion of sources available on microform that will add hundreds of humanists, doctors, politicians, astrologers, and theologians to current studies. One should note, too, that non-specialists may be referred to the hundreds of translations of German, French, and Italian reformers available on microfilm and online in the series Early English Books to 1640. Specialists, of course, should and will avoid such (often unreliable) crutches, but others reading CCML and CCRT should be aware that sources are available to take them well beyond the major figures such as Luther or Calvin.

JOHN M. FRYMIRE

University of Missouri