Martin Luther: Catholic Dissident

by Peter Stanford

'A compelling biography of one of the greatest men of the modern age. Stanford is particularly brilliant on the tensions inside Luther's private and spiritual life. This is a very fine book, written with a flourish.' Melvyn Bragg

The 31st of October 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther pinning his 95 'Theses' - or reform proposals - to the door of his local university church in Wittenberg. Most scholars now agree that the details of this eye-catching gesture are more legend than hammer and nails, but what is certainly true is that on this day (probably in a letter to his local Archbishop in Mainz), the Augustinian Friar and theologian issued an outspokenly blunt challenge to his own Catholic Church to reform itself from within - especially over the sale of 'indulgences' - which ultimately precipitated a huge religious and political upheaval right across Europe and divided mainstream Christianity ever after.

A new, popular biography from journalist Peter Stanford, looking at Martin Luther from within his Catholic context, examining his actual aims for Catholicism as well as his enduring legacy - and where he might fit within the church today.

'Peter Stanford makes the life of Luther into a thrilling narrative, told from a modern Catholic perspective' Antonia Fraser

Genres: History, Biography, Religion, Nonfiction, Catholic, Christianity, Christian

448 pages, Hardcover

First published March 16, 2017

Reviews

[Graham Connors · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting read about a very complex individual.

It was a struggle in places as, while saying it's an interesting read, doesn't mean that it is a gripping one. I'm glad I read it, though.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, I would, but it's not a non-fiction page turner.

[George Odera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb biography of a man whose influence greatly exceeds his fame and readership.

Martin Luther (after whom Martin Luther King was to be named over 400 years later) was a 16th century German theologian and iconoclast. He lived in medieval Europe, at a time when the Roman Catholic Church dominated every aspect of an individual's life - political, economic, and social. Church and state were joined at the hip. The Pope and Church were supreme and did not brook dissent. Any challenge to the Church and papal authority was invariably deemed to be heresy, an offence whose punishment was burning at the stake. When 21-year Luther joined a monastery in search of eternal salvation, he subsequently came to learn of the Catholic Church's excesses, corruption, licentiousness, and perversion of religious practices. Aggrieved by this, Luther authored Ninety-Five Theses challenging the practices of the Catholic Church and papal authority, thereby setting in motion what would come to be known in history as the Protestant Reformation. In the advent of Johann Gutenberg's revolutionary printing press, the Ninety Five Theses and Luther's subsequent writings were widely circulated and generated a frenzy. What was in Luther's mind a religious struggle became a political issue - about the commercial activities of the Church and more widely about authority, taxation, serfdom, and economic inequality. Thus the challenge Luther posed was not just to the administration of the Church, but rather to the Church's integral role in every aspect of daily life at all levels of society, and indeed to that very society.

Luther was by no means a pioneer for reformation of the Catholic Church. His propositions mirrored those of English theologian John Wycliffe (1320-1384) and Bohemian priest Jan Hus (1369-1415). Both had been condemned as heretics and burnt at the stake (Wycliffe's remains were disintered 30 years after his death and burnt posthumously). What distinguished Luther and propelled his influence was that his call for reform came at a time when both the high and low in German society were acutely resentful of the financial demands being placed upon them by Rome, without enjoying the corresponding benefits. Despite being declared a heretic and receiving the ultimate sanction of excommunication from the Church, Luther remained firm in his conviction while facing the dangerous prospect of being burnt at the stake like his predecessors.

Through the ideas he espoused, on the basis of reading the Scriptures, Luther made the case for individual conscience, personal responsibility and accountability, and gave rise to modern notions of the separation of church and state, liberty, human rights, and secularism.

Great read. 4.5/5

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good, up-to-date re-telling of the life of Martin Luther, written in a fairly easy style by a self-confessed lifelong Catholic, Peter Stanford. That fact, and the subtitle of the book, give the reader the hint that this biography is going to look closely at Luther the man, and his battle with God and the Church.

Because for Luther it was a battle. He never felt secure in the love of God, and much of his questioning was due to this insecurity. His depressive nature meant that to him God was always the unknowable, and in many ways the un-get-to-knowable being. His reading of the Bible, and the Letters of Paul in particular, led him to his doctrine of "justification by faith" which means in simple terms, that absolute faith was enough for a person to ascend into heaven. This realization (for realization it was, after much reading, thought, and discussion) led him to conclude that much of what was undertaken by the Roman Catholic Church in the early sixteenth century had little to do with Jesus, the word of the Bible, or even with the idea of faith: it was a money making scam for the princes of the Church, as well as those earthly princes who chose to be in on it.

His famous 95 theses (which Stanford shows were almost certainly not nailed to the church door in Wittenberg) were not Luther starting a new church - he never wanted that - but an invitation to debate what he saw as the excesses of the institutional church, none of which were based in scripture. For Luther, it was the Bible that was the source of instruction in worship, not the accretion of practice of the institutional church. The main point he was making was that all the practices that the Church stated to help save souls (pilgrimage, purchase of indulgences, payment for masses for the dead and so on) did nothing of the sort. Faith saved your soul, and if you didn't have faith nothing else could help.

Luther aired his objections to Church practice at an opportune time in history. These questions had been raised before, and movements quashed, but by the early sixteenth century many German princes were unhappy with the role Rome played in their principalities, and the taxes they were expected to pay to the Holy See. Elector Friedrich III of Saxony (who ruled over Wittenberg and its university, where Luther taught) was one of those princes, and a pious man who also wanted answers to the questions Luther was asking. The protection he gave Luther, and the popularity of Luther's message, which spread rapidly via the printing press, meant that soon his "reformed" church spread across much of Northern Germany.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Charles, was too busy fighting in other parts of his empire to do much about this heresy (Luther was branded a heretic and was to be burned, but Rome did not have the military power to make it so, and Charles had bigger fish to fry). By the time Charles could turn his attention to Germany, the Lutheran movement had become too big to repress, and so an accommodation had to be made with those who followed it.

Stanford writes well on Luther's personality - how he was loath to take a step backwards ("here I stand"), and was only too ready to return the scorn that Rome heaped on him (the initial response to him was to treat him as a drunken German fool, which was a huge mistake). Luther not only battled the Roman Catholic Church, but other protestant sects as well, most famously Zwingli, and others who's beliefs developed along different lines to his own.

Of course, by his stand, this activity was exactly what Luther had released on the world. By convincingly stating that each person should find God via the scriptures, he opened the world up to many differing views of what a church should and could look like on earth. The idea of an individual having a relationship with God was envisioned by him, and the result of that is to be seen today all around the world. His stance also led to changes (eventually) in the way Catholics saw religion and how they should relate to God.

Stanford writes about all of this in a way that is easily understandable to those with little history of the period, without being overly descriptive, which makes this a good book to read as an introduction to Luther and what he achieved. I would state though, that if you are a person of no religion at all, there may be a little Bible catch-up required to help you through Luther's thinking. Thankfully, the Letters of Paul and John's Gospel (what Luther recommended people read, from his own translations of the Bible, the first into German) are good reading.

As an introduction to Luther the man, and to why and how he changed Christianity forever, this book is worth picking up, and is certainly easier to read than many other biographies of him.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/

[Rebekah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m no stranger to a Luther biography, and like other Luther biographies, it covers the obvious territory such as Luther’s personal life and his role in the Protestant Reformation. But the author also expands this to talk about the significance of the wider political and religious context in which Luther’s life and theology developed. In this way, I appreciated how he was able to show the impact theology had on the political situation of the time and tie this into a thoughtful examination of Luther’s life. What I enjoyed about this book were its insights into the significance of the Reformation’s legacy, and particularly, how Stanford explores the complexity of Luther’s legacy and his significance today for Protestants and Catholics alike. It’s an insightful blend of biography, history, and reflection for today.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martin Luther – The Original Revolutionary

2017 is the anniversary of two revolutions, one is remembered for bringing Communism to the fore in Europe, but Lenin was only following a revolutionary that had preceded him by 400 years. Here in the UK we tend to forget about how earth shattering the revolution was, as this challenged the Catholic Church, its authority across Europe that even superseded monarchies. Martin Luther is that revolutionary, who began the reformation, challenged the authority of the church and created what we recognise as Protestantism in all its various forms.

Peter Stanford has researched and written Martin Luther – Catholic Dissident which is a fantastic new appraisal of the theological firebrand Martin Luther. Like the second Russian Revolution, the 500th anniversary of Luther’s religious revolution is this October. It is the commemoration of when Luther pinned his 95 ‘Thesis’ to the door of his university church in Wittenberg. Stanford points out that the eye-catching legend of nailing his thesis to the door is more legend than truth.

What is true, is that Luther, an Augustinian Friar and theologian, in what was probably in a letter to his Archbishop, issued what even now would be considered and rather blunt challenge to the Catholic Church to reform. One of his challenges was over the sale of ‘papal indulgences’ which raised quite a lot of money for the church. What the thesis did do was to precipitate a religious and political upheaval right across Europe, and divided Christianity even to this day.

When challenged as a heretic by the church, Luther refused to back down, where at the Diet of Worms in 1521 he stated, “Here I Stand,” in defiance to the Pope and the Catholic Church as a whole. Some of ideas are now accepted even by the Catholic Church, such as giving people a Bible in their own language, so that they could build their relationship with God. Luther also sparked the notion of individual conscience, something that was revolutionary then. As Stanford points, that Luther can be numbered as one of the makers of modern Europe, and what happened then is still relevant today.

Peter Stanford has written one of the most engrossing narrative biographies of Luther I have read in a long time, and is doing this from a modern Catholic perspective. He is a skilled researcher and writer, who turns what could be considered a dry and dusty subject in to a riveting account of the tensions of Luther’s private and spiritual life. While being a thought provoking read, the reader will find this fascinating from beginning to end, while at the same time being thought provoking, this is really a fantastic piece of writing.

[Martin Empson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty interesting discussion of Luther, written by a Catholic, who sympathetically looks at his subject without descending into crude partisanship. But while placing Luther's trajectory in the context of the political realities if 16th century Germany, and ably dealing with the inevitable twists and turns (such as Luther's stabbing in the back of the Peasantry in 1524/5) Stanford doesn't have any sense of the deeper social and economic changes taking place in society that gave the Reformation fertile ground. A good, accessible, and enjoyable read.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a good biography of Martin Luther by an author I have read other books by and admired. Having said that I don't think that it is a great biography, certainly it is easy, but not compelling, reading. The fact that Mr. Stanford is a catholic was hoped, I think, at the time of publication, to create a frisson of interest, as if no Catholic could approach the figure of Martin Luther without prejudice. Which really only goes to show how little real knowledge publishers, and probably anyone else, has about the history religion, the protestant and catholic churches or christian theology and doctrine.

Although I know a little of all of the above and have an interest in them I would rather read, and would certainly recommend anyone read Diarmaid MacCulloch Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700' and Peter H. Wilson's 'Europe's Tragedy: A New History of the Thirty Years War' (1618-1648). They are both immensely, and excitingly readable, but also provide much more context for the complex politics and theology that inevitably is part of the story.

Mr. Stanford tells you about Martin Luther but as no one on either side of the religious divide would nowadays say Luther 'caused' the Reformation and his actual theology has almost no echo in most protestant churches today, least of all the most thriving ones I can't help thinking that perusing a 'life' of Martin Luther is a somewhat endeavour. I will also admit that while Luther made a marvellous protagonist in John Osborne's play, called not surprisingly 'Luther' (who can forget the birth of Protestantism in Luther's relief from constipation), I am burdened with the memory of how popular Luther was with the most unappealing of 19th century nationalist German historians which, along with his antisemitism and love for authority, made him a great hit with the Nazis.

Of course no man should be blamed for the uses his words are put to but Luther was a man of words so you can't doubt that he meant the many horrible things he said and historical context only forgives so much. Some things are horrible no matter when they are said.

If you want to read a biography of Luther this is probably OK, but I won't read another and will confine my attention to works like those histories mentioned above. I don't feel the need to know or understand more about Luther. I do want to know more about the Reformation and its aftermath. Luther was a part of the Reformation but neither its origin nor driving force. Also I can't help thinking that a night chez Luther would be one that I would have gone to considerable pains to avoid. I don't like egomaniacs - and whatever alse Luther was he was an egoist.

[Enid · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a wonderful read showing us how Luther only intended to change the Catholic church's worst excesses but ended up making a huge impacts on religion in many places, Britain included; an impact which it is argued led to our current human rights . I agree with Peter Stanford that this man should be taught in our schools, such has been his legacy .

[Moravian1297 · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I read in the author’s introduction that he was going to try and let “Martin Luther tell his own story, in his own words" as much as practicably possible, I thought, "Oh no!"
Look mate, if I wanted to read Martin Luther's actual writing, I'd have bought a book that was authored by and contained with Martin Luther’s scribblings!
But I didn't, because I'd imagine anything that was actually penned by him would be inherently boring and very much of its time.
So I bought a biography, where all I want is for someone else, hopefully more learned than myself, to sum up his life and works, and in their own words. relate that back to me!
Obviously there would be the odd quote, tract and passage from the subject’s body of work, but essentially it’s a third party eye that I want doing all the tedious academic graft and hence separating the wheat from the chaff!

And so it proved correct, this book for the large part was seriously dull, although there was just enough entertaining content for it to avoid being unceremoniously dumped into my "chores and bores" list!

I also very much appreciate that a book about Martin Luther is going to focus quite a bit on the religious side, as it was surely his whole raison d'etre, but the book often starts out on the premise that God, Jesus, the Devil, heaven and hell etc are all true and very much in existence!
Now, I don't know if this happens because the author is himself religious (he tells us in the introduction that he's a Catholic), or whether it is just the essence of Luther shining through in his afore mentioned, "own words"?
But as a committed atheist, regardless of the reasons for it, it is rather off putting and adds to the book's already, very tiresome narrative.
Religious text is usually very flowery and mind numbingly tedious and inherently very, very boring and this book is unfortunately chock-a-block with it!
It’s brimming with, “Thou shalt nots”, “Thines art thous” and such like, which for me, renders it almost unreadable, as I’d imagine most stuff written in the sixteenth century would be. If only we had an enthusiastic academic type, who’d sift through it all and relate it back to us in twenty first century language we could understand and literally not make us want to fall asleep?!
Ah well, and hey ho, you can’t have everything I suppose!
Oh! Wait a minute………..

However, I stuck with it, and thankfully I was rewarded with some previously unknown and very interesting facts about Luther and the reformation (he suffered from chronic constipation! I’ll see if I can squeeze this out in any discussions) and it will certainly help and aid me in my armoury for arguments with the legions of current buns that infest my locality and have them scurrying back under the rocks they came from even faster than usual!

(To the tune of “Yellow Submarine”)

🎼 “We all live in a Catholic housing scheme, the walls are painted green,
F**k Martin Luther & the Queen!” 🎼
………etc, etc 😉

[Mike Beranek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Stanford has a gift of presenting potentially difficult theology and religious history in an easy and entertaining style, and Catholic Dissident is no different in this respect. He has his own gently challenging viewpoints such as his suggestion that the Catholic faith today has moved so far towards Luther's position that the brave reformer might now be wondering what the fuss was about. The clue is in the title of his book - and indeed it is a refreshing idea - that is that Protestantism has firm roots in the faith of his birth. In fact perhaps what was most revolutionary about Luther is that his reforms have now become so widely accepted and translated into secular life that he's not even perceived as radical by today's standards. Stanford wonders what might have happened if Luther stuck with his faith tradition of birth. The suggestion is that Luther initially at least only wanted an enlightenment within the papacy, but insatiable forces of German nationalism, class conflict, and the print press did much to alter his theological challenge into something much bigger and highly political. The key role of his Germanic prince protectors is made clear. With such a wealth of new books out on the 400 year anniversary of his theses there may be more historically detailed volumes out there I guess. However Stanford uses his unique psychological insight into the character of Luther and so gets us into the tenacious monk's head in a very modern way, making an agreeable read for the lay person. And what am I saying, thanks to Luther there's no more laity, we can all join a universal priesthood - Catholic and Protestant alike.

[Patricia O'Brien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visiting Denmark, Sweden and Northern Germany recently, a church is a place I always want to go into, and of course, all of these were Lutheran. Then later I went to Trento, where the Catholic church held its council in 1545 to robustly counter all that Luther had sparked off since he nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg.
This set me on a quest to find out more about the man and I could not have picked a better way to do this than to read Peter Stanford's book. What might seem a 'heavy' subject is made fascinating and enjoyable through his writing. An entertaining and (I felt) objective look at Luther's life and legacy.

[Martinus Eleets · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate that Peter Stanford is neither a theologian or indeed a Church historian and therefore I 'get' his journalistic approach. It is highly readable as a potted history of the life of Martin Luther. It lacks detail and fails to dig deeper into Luther the man. I find his sympathetic portrait of Luther refreshing. I recommend this book as a starting point for the person who has an interest in Luther but not to the serious student.

[Melody Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well written book. A complex theme made accessible and entertaining. I just awarded it 3 starts because I just could not warm to subject, as a reader of numerous biographies, Luther is probably the most self righteous person I've ever encountered on the page. Well maybe i will change my mind if I happen to read any of Calvin, but as it stands, he certainty takes the prize.

[Dr G · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent biography of an extraordinarily important figure, one of the most influential individuals in world history.
It is interesting that the author, Peter Stanford, is an active Catholic. He writes, however, with both thorough knowledge of Catholicism and its history, and impressive impartiality and fairness regarding Luther's battles with the Catholic Church.
Outstanding work.

[Mikeh5972 · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eminently readable and well informed account of the life of Martin Luther. It greatly improved my rather poor knowledge about the Reformation in Germany. I was glad that I read it and enjoyed it immensely.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aimed at the general reader, written with skill, the narrative may be familiar to church historians but has a few insightful observations that make it worth a scholarly view. Good for undergraduates as a way into Luther. Pleasing prose style.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good biography, moved along at pace and written in a friendly and approachable style.

[Jonathan Burdett · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable and insightful read, focused mostly on Luther the man, rather than his theology or the wider reformation movement. Stanford writes clearly and simply which makes it easy going.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely compelling! To stand up to the combined mught of the Roman Catholic church took some doing - even after excommunication. A gripping tale, well told.

[Binoy Chacko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome 👌 👏 👍 😍

[Jef Verstraete · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting book, but not easy to read.