The Ecumenical Luther: The Development and Use of His Doctrinal Hermeneutic.

The Ecumenical Luther: The Development and Use of His Doctrinal Hermeneutic. By Richard P. Bucher. St. Louis: Concordia Academic Press, 2003. 222 pages. Cloth. $30.99.

Oscar Wilde taught me to wonder if Life imitates Art. Do we invent style and meaning, or do styles and meanings invent us?

In The Ecumenical Luther, Bucher--whether he means to or not--offers a Lutheran hermeneutic of Life imitating Doctrine. This has much to commend it. For Luther and his followers, right understanding of Christ's good news liberates sinners; false teachings inevitably replace one bondage with another. Doctrine can be good soil in which saving faith grows or bad soil that strangles faith. Our Christian lives imitate our Christian doctrines, for better or for worse.

Luther cared passionately about right doctrine, as this book illustrates through three cases of Luther in dialogue. Bucher knows his material well and invites the reader into the details of key documents. Unfortunately, he also indulges historical stereotypes more than he explores Luther's positive contributions to the "one house" of Christian faith. Amid the real and serious struggles that Christians have with each other over matters of faith and life, The Ecumenical Luther offers more reasons for doctrinal entrenchment. A more refreshing ecumenical outlook might have included Luther's ability for self-critique, his openness to Christians outside Latin-speaking Europe, and the relativization of human understanding in light of human sin and Christ's redemption, all of which have their roots in Luther's doctrinal struggles.

Bucher finds it ironic that Luther might have something to add to ecumenism; I find it sad that in this book Luther is again being used to divide. One does not write fairly about ecumenism by naming Luther's historical opponents as "Catholic controversialists," by describing carefully wrought ecumenical documents as "accommodation," or by characterizing female contributions to the Church as "feminist bromides" ... that is, unless such is the Life one wishes to create through Art.

Martin J. Lohrmann

Epiphany Lutheran Church

Toledo, Ohio