Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and Its Scripture-Centered Proclamation by Robert Kolb

Abstract

Reviewed by: Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and Its Scripture-Centered Proclamation by Robert Kolb Jeffrey Silcock Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God: The Wittenberg School and Its Scripture-Centered Proclamation. By Robert Kolb. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016. 517 pp. This book brings together Robert Kolb's research over the last quarter century into the scriptural exegesis and hermeneutical endeavors of Luther and the Wittenberg circle as well as the literary work of the second generation of Lutheran theologians who were taught by them. While Kolb is primarily a scholar of the late Reformation, this book shows that he is equally adept in the world of Luther and the first generation of reformers. The fourteen chapters cover a vast range of topics, making the book a veritable treasure trove of historical and theological scholarship, meticulously researched and persuasively presented. The copious use of subheadings makes the book very accessible and allows the reader to dip into it at different places within a chapter. Kolb begins his study by describing Luther's single-minded love for the scriptures (17–34), not only in his student days but also in his time as a university lecturer. In fact, he was so convinced that the study of the scriptures should be the centerpiece of the theology curriculum that, as a newly minted Doctor in Biblia, he departed from the tradition of first lecturing on Lombard's Sentences (the dogmatics textbook of the day) and instead proceeded immediately to lecture on the Psalms. The importance that Luther placed on the authority of the Word and scriptural exegesis shaped and guided his whole career, whether in the lecture hall and pulpit or his writing and conversation. Although Luther's theology can be described in many different ways, Kolb stresses that first and last it is a theology of the Word (100), where the "Word" refers both to the incarnate Word and to the written Word, which not only testifies to the Word become flesh but is itself God's authoritative Word in the words of human beings. [End Page 208] The author shows that for Luther, God's Word is a creative, performative Word, which always does what it says. One of Luther's key reformational insights is that God in fact speaks two words: a word of law (demand) and a word of gospel (gift). The proper distinction between these two words forms the hermeneutical framework of Luther's entire theology (98–131). Kolb nicely shows how the promise, which constitutes the heart of God's Word, is communicated physically in a threefold way: orally, in writing, and sacramentally. The promise is received by faith, which comes from hearing the Word (174–208), and it is precisely faith, which for Luther is essentially trust, that fundamentally defines the human being (35–74). This is linked with another of Luther's key reformational insights, that humans are basically receptive (passive) beings before they are active beings—in doing good works (1–6). The main aim of Luther's preaching was the cultivation of faith in Christ, but he also aimed at fostering a life of love and good works in his hearers (435–465). Luther placed the sermon at the center of the worship service, without playing it off against the Sacrament, and Kolb gives examples of the forms and methods of late Reformation preaching in the Wittenberg circle (395–434) as well as of the commentaries that support it (347–394). By placing the sermon at the center of the service, Luther changed the role of worshipers from being observers of the priest presiding at the Mass to being recipients of God's Word in the sermon, who then responded with prayer and praise. Kolb rightly notes that "medieval piety rested on the priest's consecration of the sacramental elements in the Mass, which brought the very presence of God the Son into the village" (395). The sermon also brought Christ into the village, but in a very different way, where the ears now became the central organ of reception rather than the eyes. In the theology of Luther and his colleagues, both these means...