by Roland H. Bainton (review by Robert L. Franck)
We all learned to hate history by taking classes in school that forced us to consume fact-crammed textbooks and then regurgitate their bland content on test papers. This was distasteful. But now it’s time to move on. Rinse out your mouth and try something savory.
I’ve got just the thing.
But first, let’s discuss method. The best way to learn history and its lessons is to approach them biographically. Marx would disagree, of course. He would say that impersonal, evolutionary, scientific forces march through history regardless of the personalities involved. Well, Marx is dead. And even if his descendants are busily writing textbooks, he was also dead wrong.
I have this from the highest authority—God’s history, the Bible. Biblical history is told through the compelling and intensely personal stories of individuals—Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Ruth, Samuel, David, Elijah, Esther, Nehemiah, Jeremiah, Jonah, Peter, Paul, John, and many others. And this history, from beginning to end, centers on the most compelling person of all—the God/Man Jesus Christ. The old saying is true: history is His-story. And He is not dead.
Mastering biblical history requires our first effort, but there is much profit in studying the rest of history. The rest of history, including our own, is also Christ-centered and reveals the working of God.
A biographical approach to history focuses on pivotal people. Imagine that you have filled your garage with stuff. It is piled high. No room for cars. You know that there are things in the pile that would be useful to you, but you can’t remember everything that’s there, and even if you could recall a particular item that you need, you can’t find it. Now imagine that you install large pegboards on the walls. For every peg you push into a board, you can hang up some of your stuff. This organizes it and makes it accessible and useful. In history, great and influential people are the pegs on which you can hang important dates, movements and events. And in addition to learning what happened and why it happened, you will gain wisdom and inspiration by observing the lives of these people.
A critical peg to place in your history board is Martin Luther (1483-1546), the great reformer. Luther stood at the intersections between feudal and modern society, between the Roman Catholics and the breakaway Protestants, between the humanists and Protestants, and between the Protestants themselves. Luther powerfully influenced these intersections and, therefore, profoundly shaped our lives.
I have read a few books on Luther and the best by far is Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand. This was first published in 1950 and is still in print. Bainton presents Luther’s life and thought chronologically. This is essential for Luther, since his personal experience is so tightly wound into his theological struggles. Bainton’s writing is very engaging, avoiding the eggheadedness of some biographers, who try to display their own brilliance by psychoanalyzing their subjects or focusing on scholarly debates. Luther’s brilliance is what you want to see, and Bainton reveals it by simply telling his story, often in Luther’s own words or the words of his adversaries and allies.
You’ve got to peg Martin Luther.
Read Bainton. Read well.
Excerpts:
“The first endeavor must be to understand the man. One will not move far in this direction unless one recognizes at the outset that Luther was above all else a man of religion. The great outward crises of his life which bedazzle the eyes of dramatic biographers were to Luther himself trivial in comparison with the inner upheavals of his questing after God.” (p. 22)
“He fasted, sometimes three days on end without a crumb. …He laid on himself vigils and prayers in excess of those stipulated by the rule. He cast off the blankets permitted him and well-nigh froze to death. …He believed in later life that his austerities had done permanent damage to his digestion.” (p. 45)
“Luther had come into a new view of Christ and a new view of God. He had come to love the suffering Redeemer and the God unveiled on Calvary. But were they after all powerful enough to deliver him from the hosts of hell? The cross had resolved the conflict between the wrath and the mercy of God, and Paul had reconciled for him the inconsistency of the justice and forgiveness of God….” (p. 65-66)
“He did not respond seriously to the suggestion [that he marry Katherine Von Bora] until he went home to visit his parents. What he related, probably as a huge joke, was taken by his father as a realistic proposal. …He summed up by giving three reasons for his marriage: to please his father, to spite the pope and the Devil, and to seal his witness before martyrdom.” (p. 288)
“When Luther looked at his family in 1538, he remarked, ‘Christ said we must become as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven. Dear God, this is too much. Have we got to become such idiots?’ One wonders whether the children were ever minded to wonder who was the idiot when Luther cut up Hans’s pants to mend his own.” (p. 302-303)