In the past decade there has been significant work on the Lutheran clergy of the German lands in the early modern period. Thomas Kaufmann, Luise Schorn-Schütte and Martin Brecht have expanded our understanding of this new social class and its impact on society. Marcel Nieden's Die Erfindung des Theologen continues this line of research as the author seeks to understand the evolution of a Lutheran self-consciousness among the German clergy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The geographic focus of the study is the University of Wittenberg: Nieden turns his attention to a body of texts produced by its professors to guide and shape the theological training of the region's future pastors. After a useful overview reviewing medieval ideals for the training of clergy, the study begins in earnest with the 1520s and Nieden's assessment of Luther, Melanchthon, Cruciger and Chytraeus. Along the way Nieden contrasts the Lutheran Bildungsideal with models developed by the Reformed (that of Johann Heinrich Alsted) and the Jesuits (their famous Ratio studiorum of 1599). He concludes his study in the middle decades of the seventeenth century with the claim that a significant shift occurred in the self-understanding of the Lutheran clergy. An older ideal of the sixteenth century, which saw the pastor embodying the joint role of pious Christian and resident theologian, had given way to one where the professional theologian, sensitive to confessional nuance and doctrinal distinction, had come to the fore. Nieden's conclusions are in the main very much in line with recent work on early modern Lutheran clergy. In the introduction to this volume Nieden describes his scholarship as a bridge between historical theology and social history. As a historical theologian, he has done an important service by carefully elaborating the ideals that Wittenberg theologians had for their students. In my estimation he is somewhat less successful as a social historian. The study lacks a comparative angle. How did developments in Leipzig or other Lutheran schools compare with the Wittenberg model? But, more important, there is a critical gap that is not directly addressed in this study. Nieden focuses on the educational ideals of the professors, not on their reception by their students. Without a closer examination of Lutheran pastors and their response to their training, it is difficult to determine the extent to which the pedagogical ideals of the masters were passed on and actually shaped the self-understanding of the students.