Explorations in Martin Luther's Theology by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Explorations in Martin Luther's Theology by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Aihe (Luke) Zheng 超越五百年的影響力：馬丁路德今天仍舊説話. Explorations in Martin Luther's Theology. By Sarah Hinlicky Wilson; translated by Yuan-Wei Liao and Yu-Qin Wei. Taipei: Taosheng Publishing House, 2017. 202 pp. 2017 marked the 500th anniversary of the Reformation movement. Thanks to the tireless efforts of countless scholars, Martin Luther has stepped into more countries than he himself ever knew. How this book came about is a clear testimony to this phenomenon. When Dr. Sarah Wilson, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, served as an assistant research professor at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, she travelled to Wittenberg twice a year to teach a course to Lutheran pastors from all over the world. In 2014, one Chinese-speaking pastor was impressed by Wilson's insights and invited her to lecture at his seminary in Taiwan. Later on, this pastor, Dr. Yuan-Wei Liao, served as interpreter during the lectures in 2016 and became the main translator of this book. This truly is a wonderful fruit of the global interest in Luther. The book is divided into three parts, in accordance with Wilson's nine hours of lectures over three days at the China Evangelical Seminary. First, she takes the audience back to the historical context in which Luther launched the Reformation. To describe the magnitude of the breakthrough, Wilson presents two sets of theses by Luther from 1517 and 1518, that is, the Ninety-Five Theses and the Theses on Remission of Sin. The latter, unfamiliar to many, are arguably the more profound. Hence, she takes more time to [End Page 370] introduce them. She then closes the first part with a discussion of Lutheran-Catholic dialogues in recent decades. The second part is clustered around a discussion of Luther's teachings on the distinction between law and gospel. She discusses what it meant theologically, how it should shape Christian exegesis, how it should be taught and lived in the Christian household as seen in Luther's Large Catechism, and the differences between Luther's view of law and the Jewish understanding of the law. The final part focuses on Luther's sacramental theology, particularly his teachings on holy baptism. To Luther, baptism, especially infant baptism, reflects the essence of his well-known Sola teachings, because it is clearly a God-centered act, not dependent on human conditions. Of course, no discussion of the topic of baptism during the Reformation can be complete without reference to the Anabaptists. Thus, she ends with reflections on the Lutheran-Mennonite reconciliation at the Lutheran World Federation assembly in 2010. Although it does not break much new ground within English-speaking scholarship, Wilson's book certainly deserves accolades from its Chinese-speaking audience. Indeed, the substance of the book is scholarly, and yet the presentation is very plain-spoken. That being said, it is a pity that the book is not adequately footnoted due to its lecture-to-book nature. In the infancy of Luther studies among the Chinese, this book is a welcome addition. Through this introductory work, readers can catch a glimpse of the vastness of Luther's teachings. What could prove most helpful to Chinese readers is the concluding section in each part, in which she reviews the relationships between Luther's ideas and those of Catholicism, Judaism, and Anabaptism then and now. Chinese readers, and maybe even English readers, will be enabled better to understand Luther's theology in ecumenical perspective. Wilson's bright insights are now accessible to all Chinese readers. [End Page 371] Aihe (Luke) Zheng International Chinese Biblical Seminary in Europe Barcelona, Spain Copyright © 2019 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.