A note of vehemence permeates this book. These fourteen church historians came together at a conference entitled ‘Beyond Oberman: Luther and the Middle Ages’ and evidently agreed that Heiko Oberman's effect on Luther scholarship after the 1960s, when he demonstrated that the Reformer's theological roots lay in the late-medieval context that had shaped him, had not been accepted either universally in this field or enduringly. Several essays contained in this volume of proceedings refer to a still-prevailing point of view that would make of Luther a radical innovator and thus not heavily indebted to what Oberman called ‘forerunners of the Reformation’. The editor, Christine Helmer, sums up at the outset: ‘This volume's goal is to explicitly situate Luther's doctrines of Christ, salvation, and the priesthood in continuity with medieval and late medieval ideas’ (pp. 2–3).

Each of the authors has taken a particular point of Luther's belief or approach and traced it back to at least its major antecedents. Indeed, the late Marilyn McCord Adams (‘Eucharistic real presence: some scholastic background to Luther's debate with Zwingli’), Candace Kohli (‘The medieval Luther on Poenitentia: good works as the completion of faith in the Christian life’) and G. Sujin Pak (‘The Protestant reformers and the Analogia fidei’) offer condensed surveys that could well be useful to any of us – perhaps especially so to cultural historians who are less informed on theological interplay – in graduate seminars. But all fourteen segments are of praiseworthy quality, and all hew to the unifying theme to an extent that few volumes of proceedings do. It is no surprise that all contributors find Martin Luther well rooted in the complex soil in which his thought germinated.

The chapters are clustered around the foci of Christology, soteriology and priesthood.

In opposition to Reinhard Schwarz in his article, ‘Gott ist Mensch’ (1966), David J. Luy sees Luther in 1539 as retaining at least partly from William of Ockham the explanation of the incarnation as ‘suppositional carrying’, distinguishing in the process between the truths of philosophy and theology. Richard Cross agrees that ‘Luther's Christology . . . bears a remarkable resemblance to that of his medieval predecessors’ (p. 27). In 1540 Luther follows William of Ware and Gabriel Biel in permitting the professional use of the statement, ‘Christ is a creature’. Aaron Moldenhauer finds Ulrich Zwingli, not Luther, to be the person who insisted, ‘against scholastic consensus’, that ‘human speech cannot be effective in theology’. Zwingli's perspective, related to modern theories of language, has had a powerful impact (p. 47). At issue is, of course, ‘This is my body’. Adams surveys Aquinas through Luther on this point.

In the second part, Graham White lays out Luther's use of late medieval modal logic in arguing his tract ‘The will enslaved’. Erasmus, by contrast, employs humanist rhetoric. For Luther, things related to God are necessary, whereas finite things are not. Alice Chapman traces the image of Christ the Physician beginning in twelfth-century thought and its adoption by Luther. The Incarnate Word extends spiritual healing, helping the Christian to resist sin. Kohli places Luther's discussion of poenitentia within the context of pertinent late-medieval writings on the subject, beginning with Anselm. Luther seeks an outcome of behaviour toward one's neighbour based in love rather than fear of God's anger. Jennifer Hockenbery Dragseth roots Luther's epistemology firmly in the Augustinian illuminative tradition rather than an Aristotelian unmoved mover. ‘Christ is the light who enlightens through word and sacrament’ (p. 158). Else Marie Pedersen traces the nuptial motif in Luther's teaching, finding significant background in Bernard of Clairvaux. She refers to the ambisexuality of Christ's bride as ‘queering the erotic’. Christ nourishes his Church with milk from his breasts. Volker Leppin had already established long credentials in extending Luther's mystical genealogy beyond Oberman's beginning at the task. He gives us a brief compendium here.

Dean Phillip Bell opens the final section, on ministry, with the question whether a clergyman may flee from the plague. Luther does not simply rehash his predecessors’ arguments. He omits prayers to and deeds in honour of saints and develops further the obligations of civic and clerical office as part of the holders’ vocatio. Christopher Voigt-Goy examines the development of Luther's concept of priestly potestas and the implications for it of the priesthood of all believers. Departing from Jean Gerson and Gabriel Biel, the Reformer attributes to the clerical office-holder a special donum enabling him to wield the power of the keys and to rule. This is not common to all believers. Sujin Pak enriches Oberman's and Anthony Lane's conceptions of analogia fidei in exploring the Reformers’ efforts to determine the true meaning of Scripture. As individual interpretations spread and gained followings, Luther insisted that ‘the public task of interpreting Scripture . . . belongs to one holding an established ministerial office and not to just any layperson’ (p. 238). Helmer concludes this section, and the book, with Luther's assertion that proper bishops and priests are solely those who communicate true doctrine. She calls Luther ‘a good Catholic’ (p. 258) who himself trembled in enunciating controversial theses, such as the Catholic Church's will to power. He took inspiration from Ockham.

Above all else, Luther's attribution to Scripture of the highest, indeed the exclusive, authority in defining the Christian faith compelled the Reformer to alter the Catholic tradition that looked equally to other sources of religious truth. Nevertheless, he was well apprised of prior thinkers on his matters and must be seen as indebted to their theories, indeed in part as continuing in their train. To this social and cultural historian, it sometimes seems strange that these superior scholars nevertheless are unaware of the clash of Luther's ideas with the reality of his daily life and the concrete churches involving simple laity that the Reformer was working to establish. Only in the abstract did he attribute elevated authority to pastors, for example, but in the concrete, and having quickly discovered the predominant clerical incapacity, strove in conjunction with his prince and his colleagues to oversee and guarantee doctrinal discipline, his doctrinal discipline, his moral discipline, within every parish. Thought is intangible, and it may not bear a close relation to life as lived.