Among the many resources produced around the “Luther year” in 2017, this collection of forty-seven essays is one of the most helpful and engaging.

The goal is to contextualize Luther, exploring his world so Luther the person and the movement his efforts initiated can become more understandable. On this, the volume succeeds admirably. Editor Whitford has expertly assembled an international team of Luther specialists who produced essays divided into seven parts: “Life and Education;” “Religious and Intellectual Context;” “Social and Cultural Context;” “People;” “Themes in Luther's Thought;” “Works”; and “Reception.” The pieces provide not only up-to-date results of Luther research but are also skillfully edited for clarity and consistency, making this a volume not only to consult in a reference capacity but also to read narratively, because the wide and comprehensive accounts of general and specific elements open Luther and his movement to increased understanding. This makes the book a compact, reliable, readable, and accessible account of Luther in his contexts. As Whitford writes: “It is the hope of this volume that by better understanding Luther's context, the world in which he lived and worked and wrote and prayed, one will come to see Luther in a clearer light so that a more realistic portrait of the man and his significance can then emerge” (2).

The wide-ranging canvas on which Luther lived and worked set him in engagement with many people and forces. Adam L. Wirrig's initial essay sets a tone for the entire volume: “Luther: A Life of Successful Struggle.” His life included “the good and the bad, the simple and the incredible” and “might be thoroughly contextualized in the narrative of struggle” (7). There were joys and sorrows along the way but—anticipating the following essays—Wirrig says “in Luther's life, struggle led to benefit, struggle led to change, and, ultimately, struggle led to God” (13).

The world in which Luther lived and worked is sketched by Kenneth Woo in “Western Christianity in 1500.” This world “reflects the complex relationship between church and culture” (49). Especially, the church in 1500 was “in a process of change and discovery, the magnitude of which few people appreciated at that time” (49). Woo details church changes and cultural transformations—including the impact of Renaissance humanism with its emphasis on ad fontes for the study of ancient texts. The printing press gave a fuller reach to published ideas than had ever been possible before. These elements took place alongside popular discontent on economic and religious factors as the church experienced “vigorous calls for renewal” which were “already challenging the ecclesiastical status quo in 1500” (55). These and other factors put western Christianity in 1500 at a “crossroads.” The church was “embedded in a culture experiencing tremendous political and intellectual changes amid widespread personal adversity, economic calamity, and mounting popular frustration” (56).

Direct social and cultural contexts in which Luther existed are explored in the ten essays in part three of the book. Here the magnitude—and complexity—of topics including the German Peasant's War, the Turks, Women and Gender, Apocalypticism, and Jews and Judaism are explored. Collectively, these pieces provide an immersion in the whirling forces that would lead to violence and persecution for Luther and his followers, as well as for other Protestants such as the Anabaptists and Calvinists (210).

Luther was drawn into contact with a cast of characters throughout his life and we are introduced to some of them in chapters on his “Magisterial Defenders,” “Catholic Opponents,” and the important Charles V, Luther's Wittenberg Circle, as well as Luther's Reformed antagonist, the Zurich reformer, Huldrych Zwingli.

The six essays that explore themes in Luther's theology could—of course—be expanded in scope. But here we find important pieces on “The Solas of the Reformation,” “Law and Gospel,” “Luther's Theology of the Cross,” “Erasmus,” “Two Kingdoms/Political Theology,” and “Implementing Reform.” These provide substantial indications of the weight of Luther's theological ideas and ways these ideas developed and impacted Luther's reforming activities.

Seven chapters on Luther's Works are especially valuable, showing the breath of Luther's writings and their key roles in propagating his thought. These include his treatises and polemical writings, lectures and biblical commentaries, sermons, catechisms and worship aids as well as Luther's Table Talk—that source of personal revelations—as well as the magnificent Luther Bible that shaped biblical understanding as well as the developing German language in ongoing and momentous ways. Luther's collected works—in German and Latin editions to the Weimar Edition—are surveyed as well as English editions of Luther's works. The legacy represented by these writings is vast; and these chapters help us understand and gauge ongoing ways Luther lives on in the written word.

The final section on “Reception” shows various streams which interacted with Luther and used his works—in ways of affirmation or rejection. Here are the Anabaptists, John Calvin and Calvinism, and the English Reformation. The final chapters consider Luther's direct followers and ways they continued and promoted his legacy: “Discord and Concord: From the Wittenberg Reformation to Lutheranism” and “Luther as a German Hero.”

Images of Luther as Prophet, Teacher, and Hero have been used to reveal Luther's significance, different aspects predominating in diverse times and places. Particularly in the German nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Luther was celebrated for his “Germanness” and appropriated, as John A. Maxfield notes, as “‘German savior’ by the influential theologians who reacted in varying ways against this tradition—these theologians utilizing Luther for their own political commitments”—diverse as they were (415).

Luther's influence lives on. As we encounter aspects of his living legacy, we find Luther as a person with many “faces”—each an appropriation of this complex theologian living in the midst of complex contexts. Yet Luther capsulized his own contributions simply. He said, “I did nothing; I let the Word do its work” (414; LW 51.78).