Martin Luther’s Understanding of Faith and Reality (1513–1521). The Influence of Augustinian Platonism and Illumination on Luther’s Thought by Ilmari Karimies (review)

Abstract

LUTHERAN QUARTERLY Volume 37 (2023): 337–339 © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc. Mark Tranvik examines how Luther’s teachings on baptism were reflected in several significant Lutheran catechisms of the sixteenth century. Mary Jane Haemig offers a fascinating reconstruction of Henry Melchior Mühlenberg’s catechetical efforts in colonial America between 1742 and 1752 through a careful study of his correspondence. Tranvik’s chapter especially keeps the church audience in view; he concludes that “many in Luther’s circle unwittingly diluted baptism and turned it into a mere ‘sign’ that provides information about our status before God,” thus losing the gospel “framework” of “death and resurrection” and opening the door to “a legal scheme to enter into the way we think about our relationship with God” (211). Martin Lohrmann is also concerned to keep legalism at bay, proposing that a dialectic of “faith and love” can be used to read Luther’s Small Catechism. Kirsi Stjerna, meanwhile, finds in the “twin concepts of freedom and service” a “Lutheran offering” for the present moment. She encourages “the theologically rooted willingness to promote change when the gospel principles of justice, mercy, and freedom are compromised or at risk” (242). Finally, Gordon Lathrop recalls how Wengert once found the marks of the church at a Roman Catholic Easter vigil and reflects on his own discovery of these marks in the architecture of La Sagrada Família. This volume has something to offer professional historians and church and lay leaders alike. Perhaps the general reader will take the invitation to wander into the specialist’s territory and vice versa— which would be a fitting tribute to Timothy Wengert. United Lutheran Seminary Vincent Evener Gettysburg and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania