In this revised dissertation, written under the direction of Scott Hendrix at Princeton Theological Seminary, Anna Marie Johnson seeks to address an important problem in the interpretation of the early Luther. Johnson argues that until very recently scholars have largely ignored Luther's pastoral and practical works as they have examined crucial years of his theological development, 1518–20. Luther the academic theologian and controversialist has received a great deal of attention, but not Luther the ‘practical theologian’, whose primary mission was ‘to foster authentic faith’ (p. 3). Most treatments of the early Luther focus on his conflicts with the papacy, not on his work as a pastor. Yet we know that he published many more pastoral writings than controversial works and that the public consumed significantly more of the former than the latter (pp. 2, 3). Johnson wants to correct this significant oversight. She explains her perspective:

Or, as she puts it more succinctly, ‘The task of this book is to tell the story of his [Luther's] early development in a way that takes account of the full range of his reforming activities’ (p. 9). But Johnson is not simply adding new evidence to this story in order to complement it; she also wants to revise this story in important ways. She concedes that most scholars today acknowledge that Luther was a pastoral theologian, but she rightly notes that no one has sought to reintegrate the pastoral dimension into his overall theological development in the years under consideration (p. 23).

Johnson sets out to examine twenty-five pastoral writings that appeared between Lent 1518 and summer 1520. In these writings, Luther treats themes such as confession, prayer, baptism, the Lord's Supper, death, marriage, Christ's Passion, the saints, the Ten Commandments and good works. She proceeds chronologically, analysing each work in its historical context and in conversation with Luther's controversial works. At times the reader wishes for more interpretation of the overall significance of the texts under consideration, as the book's six chapters are comprised largely of close textual and contextual analysis. On the whole, this analysis is done skilfully and in conversation with the most important recent scholarship. (One exception would be in ch. ii, where Johnson accepts as authentic the 1517 Treatise on indulgences. Franz Posset has recently made a plausible case that this work should be attributed to Johann von Staupitz and Wenceslaus Linck, perhaps with Luther acting as an editor (The front-runner of the Catholic Reformation, Aldershot 2003, 216–17). Still, the desired interpretation is definitely present and it is important.

Johnson shows that Luther had an early and abiding interest in pastoral matters, which preceded and informed his first critiques of indulgences. Here Johnson might have examined some of Luther's unpublished sermons from the early 1510s to support her argument – the earliest such sermon in her book comes from January 1517. But her case is still convincing: it was Luther's long-standing concern about ‘proper repentance’ that motivated his concern about indulgences, not some objection to papal authority (p. 57). This concern for sincere contrition, and sincerity in the Christian life in general, was but one of a number of abiding pastoral concerns that informed both Luther's devotional and controversial works. The other concerns include absolute trust in God's grace, love of neighbour and the acceptance of suffering as an essential feature of the Christian life. (Unfortunately, Johnson makes little of how justification by faith influenced Luther's view of suffering.) Johnson also observes that when the friar-professor was not required to defend himself against his various opponents, he consistently returned to practical works: he chose to write such works, whereas he was compelled to write controversial ones.

Beyond indulgences makes a valuable contribution to the scholarship on Luther's ‘Reformation discovery’. Johnson shows that the perspective of Ernst Bizer and Oswald Bayer does not accord with the fuller story of Luther's early theological development that her sources reveal. Bizer and Bayer have argued that Luther underwent a decisive breakthrough experience in the late spring or early summer of 1518, at the centre of which was a new-found certainty of salvation based on faith in the divine promises of the Word. According to Johnson, Luther's pastoral and devotional writings evince ‘no such seismic shift’ (p. 110); rather, they demonstrate a fairly stable development in which themes that Luther allegedly discovered ‘late’ (i.e. spring/summer 1518) and suddenly were actually present earlier, being part of a gradual theological evolution. Johnson thus adds important evidence to the arguments of Berndt Hamm and Volker Leppin for a gradual Reformation discovery. Johnson also shows that, contra Jared Wicks, certainty did not become the centrepiece of Luther's theology from 1518 on – certainty was only one feature among many others of an authentic Christian life for the friar-professor (p. 19). In addition, Beyond indulgences makes clear that Luther had an abiding concern for humility (p. 111) and good works (p. 179) in the entire period under consideration. Justification by faith did not exclude or negate either, although it did provide a new theological underpinning for both.

Johnson goes on to examine how Luther gradually expanded his treatment of practical piety, seeking to reform various traditional practices in keeping with his emerging evangelical theology, especially as papal opposition increased and his hopes for reform were disappointed. It was his conviction that the Church was sadly deficient in the care of souls that lay at the heart of his escalating conflict with the papacy. As Johnson concludes, ‘Luther's attempt to reform Christian practice is not an experiential aside to his theological cause, but rather its heart’ (p. 192). Beyond indulgences reveals this heart rather clearly.