Single-volume histories of the Reformation are plentiful, but this is one of the best. Kaufmann is a premier church historian and one of the world's leading authorities on Luther. The breadth—and depth—of his mastery of the sixteenth-century Reformation period and beyond is superbly and engagingly presented in his six chapters on the history of the Reformation, its aftermath, and its modern reception.
From Wittenberg, Germany, “on the edge of civilization,” a “little German university town of no historic significance, the Protestant Reformation very quickly became an event of European import” (1). The Reformation, in what became its various expressions, was European in character and “an international event from its very inception” (3). The historical concept of the Reformation began as early as the end of the sixteenth century. It had “a definite beginning—namely, Luther and his conflict with the papal church” (7).
Events and movements emerged from this conflict. Luther's own contexts must be understood. Especially notable, for Kaufmann's account, is that “special emphasis is placed on the role played by the reformers’ use of the printed word as a polemical medium. Luther wrote as if his life depended on it; indeed he saved his life through his publications, through his writing” (8). Many factors swirled throughout the period. But, maintains Kaufmann, there was “the one Reformation that marked an epoch in the history of Latin European Christendom” (9). Further: “Luther is the only person without whom the ‘story’ of the Reformation cannot be told at all” (9).
Chapter 2, “European Christendom circa 1500,” sets the stage for Luther and the changes that emerged into what became developing Protestantism. New horizons of discovery by explorers such as Christopher Columbus led to awareness of new lands and cultures. New economic spheres opened along with new societal political structures revolving around the “hub of Europe”: the “political system of the Holy Roman Empire” (27). New universities were founded, forms of piety developed, while “the theological landscape around 1500 was extraordinarily varied” (42) within scholastic theology. Granting indulgences was the prerogative of the pope, including (newly) indulgences for the dead. The “print revolution” featured the Latin Bible as “the first printed book in Europe” (47). Book production was enhanced by emerging humanism which sought the “rebirth” of classical antiquity (49).
Chapter 3, “The Early Reformation in the Empire, 1517–30,” tells the story of Luther's life and work—and the sense of his divine calling as “an interpreter of holy scripture”—a “prophet” (57). Luther, writes Kaufmann, “saw the substance of his theological profession as thumping the Bible to make the word of God jump out” (67). Notable was Luther's growing insight on justification—“how a human being becomes righteous in the eyes of God through the gift of grace—and the consequences for ‘good works’” (68). Luther “soon became the most-read author in the German language” (69).
Kaufmann notes the importance of Philip Melanchthon in stabilizing what became “Luther's reformation” (91). Contemporary Reformation movements associated with Huldrych (Ulrich) Zwingli and later John Calvin, as well as Anabaptism, are also presented with Kaufmann's thoroughness and perception. Kaufmann rightly notes that in relation to the Calvinism of Reformed Protestantism, Calvin's insights were “all but inseparably intertwined with influences of Zwingli, Bucer, Bullinger, Melanchthon, and other reformed theologians,” so “to take Calvin's teaching as the sole standard of Reformed theology would hardly do justice to the intra-denominational plurality and the relative breadth of that theological current, especially in the sixteenth century” (166).
Reformation spread throughout Europe into the New World, and the varieties of Protestantism took shape and developed their histories. Kaufmann tells these stories in chapter 4, “Post-Reformation Europe, 1530–1600.” Chapter 5, “The Modern Reception of the Reformation,” focuses on Reformation Jubilees commemorating the Reformation and forming “an indispensable part of the European continent's memorial culture,” which have become “a global phenomenon” (235). Kaufmann's appraisal of “The Reformation and the Present” in chapter 6 highlights, among other things, some impacts of the Reformation on the modern West. He discusses impacts on economics and law, rationalism, and individualism, and finally, “global Protestantism” (282–86).
Kaufmann's richly textured book is a wide-ranging, panoramic study. This excellent work is an important contribution to Reformation studies and brims with significant insights from which all will benefit.
