Reviews for The making of Martin Luther

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Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

Another book about Martin Luther? Rex (Reformation history, Univ. of Cambridge, UK) tries a different approach to the life and work of Luther (1483-1546): placing Luther within the intellectual and theological contexts of his day, Rex attempts to show what was distinctive about Luther and his work. Though this is not primarily a biography, Rex uses the circumstances of Luther's life to flesh out the new and distinctive approach to Christian theology and the Christian church that he finds in Luther's Reformation. Rex focuses much of his narrative on how Luther's quest for theological certainty shaped his new and revolutionary theological system, a system neither his friends nor his enemies seemed at the time to fully understand. Though Luther is at the center of the narrative, he is not completely a hero: Rex shows him as a very human person in the midst of a whirlwind of change. The author takes the narrative up to the middle of the 1520s; he seems less interested in the last 20 years of Luther's life. Those interested in this book would do well to first read a standard Luther biography. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates; graduate students; professionals. --Mark Alan Granquist, Luther Seminary

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