An honest and informative look at the life of Martin Luther, who launched the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago.

There are times that it is difficult to listen to a biography on Audible, and retain what you have heard. I feel as if I struggled with that on this volume. Martin Luther was a fascinating personality, during a very volatile time in world history. The author and the reader did the best they could to make the material as interesting as the life, but that is hard to do.. My listening was spread out over 7 days, and I wish that I could remember more of what I heard, but there was a lot.

It's hard to imagine a historical figure more significant than Luther. This was an excellent biography to gain a familiarity with the man and his times.

I was a bit frustrated with it though. Bainton seemed to try so hard to present an objective narrative that I felt he failed to speak to his reader. I wanted to hear from Bainton. Tell me why, Bainton, I should be reading about Luther. What do you like about him? Is there anything you find unsavory? Yes, as an historian, I should think you'd want to get out of the way and just present your material. But, history is never truly told that way. Everyone has their perspective. Everyone has their opinion. And when they don't disclose it, I spend my time wondering what it is. I wanted to hear from Bainton. But, don't feel like I ever did. His objectivity, bordered on dispassionate. And it made the thoroughness of his account a bit cold and sterile.

Please don't just inform me; move me. And I felt an account of this magnitude should've moved me a bit more.

Having just read a book on German history, I decided I needed to know more about Martin Luther -- this book didn't disappoint, although there was a bit too much theology for me (but I guess that's almost inevitable), I especially enjoyed the long quotes from Luther's own writing.

My expectations for this may have been too high. It came across as so-so. I thought he spent too much of the book parsing the theological differences between Luther and the Catholics. Of course those are crucial details in the story of Luther but I felt it was overdone.

I thought Luther’s method for translating the Greek New Testament was fascinating:

"He would first make a literal translation in the word order of the original. Then he would take each word separately and gush forth a freshet of synonyms. From these he would select those which not only best suited the sense but also contributed to balance and rhythm. All of this would then be set aside in favor of a free rendering to catch the spirit. Finally the meticulous and the free would be brought together. Sometimes he was at a loss for terms and would set out in quest of words. In order to name the precious stones in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation he examined the court jewels of the elector of Saxony. For the coins of the Bible he consulted the numismatic collections in Wittenberg. When he came to describe the sacrifices of Leviticus and needed terms for the inward parts of goats and bullocks, he made repeated trips to the slaughterhouse and inquired of the butcher."

This was a terrific book. I think it does a great job meeting all the requirements of a good biography: creating a good context by which we can understand the times when the biographee lived (and how it differs from our world today), an honest look at the person's character, both the good and bad, and a consideration of how their lives and actions affected the world around them. Bainton obviously admires Luther, but manages to stay objective and honest about Luther's significant flaws. I believe it's been said by others much smarter than I, but great men who become larger than life, also have flaws that are larger than life. Martin Luther certainly has his flaws, but at the same time he is perhaps one of the most significant and influential human beings in the history of Western civilization, and (being a committed Protestant) I think most of that influence was for good. Bainton does a great job presenting both.

A couple minor criticisms: Bainton spends most of his time on Luther's theology, but not as much on him as a human. The chapter I enjoyed most was the chapter on his marriage and family life, but we didn't get much of that in the rest of the book. Obviously Luther's major influence on the world was his theology and his amazing courage to stand up for it, but it would've been nice to know more about him as a person. I also left the book a bit bewildered by German politics of the time: not being much informed about the history of the Holy Roman Empire or the feudal chaos that was medieval Germany at this time, I would've appreciated a bit more background on that.

Well-written bio on Martin Luther. Great place to start if you’re brand new to Luther’s life and theology.

I quite enjoyed this classic celebratory biography of Martin Luther. While this is not the place to find Luther's warts and sins exposed and dwelt upon, it is a readable and helpful overview of his life and thought, and Bainton understands why Luther's insights were so critically important for so many people, not only in the 1500's but also down to this day.

As an evangelical Christian in the broadly reformed world, Luther is one of those heroes who gets cited and highlighted quite a bit, and with good reason. It was therefore helpful for me to learn just how chaotic the reformation was for him. The personal disagreements with so many other reformers, the issue of the radical reformers, the political machinations and considerations, all of it terribly complex and costly on a personal level. This is what leadership looks and feels like (thankfully not always so intensely) in every age.

I will follow this up with a more modern biography by Herman Selderhuis: "Martin Luther: A Spiritual Biography."

This book is more than fifty years old but still accessible and full of insight into Martin Luther’s life and times. Early on, it is evident Bainton admires Luther very much – maybe a bit too much to take an honest and well-rounded approach to Luther, the man, in toto. My first significant exposure to Martin Luther was in Will Durant’s volume, “The Reformation”, (From his magnum opus, “The Story of Civilization”) a comprehensive look into the religious and secular conflicts that occurred during Luther’s time as well as before and after. From about 1376, when John Wycliffe – The so-called ‘Morningstar of the Reformation’ – posited his 18 theses urging the church to renounce temporal dominion: Rigid control of doctrinal issues, as dictated by the Pope and his bishops, over the populace to the point of absurdity. Wycliffe went on to translate the Vulgate Bible into English. All this was happening even as the Roman Catholic Church had two popes; one in Rome and one (antipope) in Avignon (The Western Schism, 1378-1418). As in Luther’s time, Wycliffe’s complaints led to a peasant’s revolt which Wycliffe strongly opposed. This all happened more than 130 years before Luther posted his 95 theses on the castle church door in Wittenberg. Wycliffe died before he could be tried and convicted but the Roman church fathers were not happy with his work; he and his body of work were eventually condemned by the church, post-mortem. While Wycliffe was a scholar, Luther was just a smart and stubborn monk. Beginning about 1402 – nearly 20 years after Wycliffe’s death, John Hus, a Czech clergyman, began to denounce church abuses and hubris. Unlike Wycliffe, Hus was tried, convicted and burned at the stake in 1415. His followers continued the fight by way of the Hussite wars and by the time Martin Luther came onto the scene, more than one hundred years later, up to 90% of the Czech populace were already de facto Protestants. October 31, 1517 is a popular starting point for many protestant Christians as the beginning of the Reformation. Wycliffe was, arguably, the first serious threat to Roman Catholic supremacy in Europe; although the Cathars began to break away from Catholic rule in the 12th century. The Roman Catholic Church annihilated the Cathars. Tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of men, women and children were slaughtered by French troops at the direction of the Vatican. The Cathars weren’t really Protestants, per se, they were more of a breakaway church tending to a more Manichean-style dualist sect.
Bainton does a fair job of describing Luther and his trials but he leaves a lot out – or he downplays Luther’s negatives. To be completely honest, Martin Luther hated the Jews. He despised them with such fervor that, in 1543, he wrote a book, “The Jews and Their Lies”, excoriating ALL Jews and strongly suggesting they all be deported from greater Germany and that their homes and properties be burned or otherwise destroyed – not a very forgiving kind of sentiment: “They should be shown no mercy or kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these ‘poisonous envenomed worms’ should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing ‘[w]e are at fault in not slaying them’.
A key Renaissance figure, Desiderius Erasmus (a Dutch Humanist), was an on-again, off-again admirer of Luther but the two of them argued – primarily by way of correspondence – incessantly. Their arguments led Luther to come to despise Reason. His diatribes against Reason are shocking to 21st century thinkers: “Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason”. In another statement, Luther is unintentionally ironic: “This fool [Copernicus] wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth”. So, Martin Luther, the great reformer, was also a foremost denier of science – not atypical of churchmen in his time. His blind adherence to literal interpretation of scripture completely clouded his innate ability to cogitate and evaluate secular ideas and theories. He was an unflinchingly hidebound theologian. Only John Calvin, who murdered more than two dozen people during his reign in Geneva, was more brutally rigid.
Most of the bios of Martin Luther (the ones I have read) seem to skip over Luther’s powerful prejudices and adherence to faith to the exclusion of anything and everything else. I think this is intentional; most of these books are written by theologians or Christian authors for Christian audiences. Yes, Luther stuck his neck out – he truly expected he would be killed by the Roman church (they didn't do the actual killing, they farmed it out to the local authorities). He changed our world, no doubt. Any damage done by his hatred of Jews or science very likely had little impact on his world. Whether his writings impacted Nazi Germany, as Julius Streicher claimed, is arguable. And yet he was what he was. I think it’s only fair that Luther and Calvin be shown for what they are, warts and all. I don’t think it will have a deleterious effect on the faith of the Christian masses or seminarians.
I rated this book 3 of 5 possible stars. The takeaways were: Too much focus on doctrinal issues and arguments and not enough focus on Luther, the man, as a loving husband and father as well as a bigoted and intolerant cleric. I am reminded of a song by “The Who”, “Won’t get fooled again”. The lyric goes like this:
“Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss”

Great read. I appreciate Roland Bainton's lively and highly readable style. I particularly enjoyed the parts about Luther's family life.

Really well done biography; great starting point to familiarize oneself to the Reformer and the cultural and religious context.

Very good!