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15Бунтарь в эпоху потрясений
западного христианства в динамическую религию, способную переустроить мир, он тем не менее, напоминает о том, что рожденная во время Реформации конфессиональная нетерпимость стала существенным фактором борьбы за власть и кровопролитных войн в Европе.
Учитывая широчайшую источниковедческую базу исследования, проведенный автором основательный исторический анализ европейского общества позднего средневековья, происходивших в нем религиозных, социально-экономических и политических процессов, тщательную реконструкцию всех этапов богословского становления и реформационной деятельности немецкого реформатора, книгу Х.Шиллинга можно безусловно рекомендовать читателям как лучшее в данное время биографическое изыскание о М. Лютере.
Роман Соловий Исследовательский центр ЕААА г. Львов, Украина
Martin Luther: Rebel in an Age of Upheaval. Heinz Schilling, trans. from German (Series "Church History"). Moscow: Izdatel'stvo BBI, 2017. xvi + 710 pp.; ISBN 978-5-89647-358-9; 1180.00 RUB, 540.00 UAH
The five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation has summoned an entire avalanche of both popular and scholarly publications dedicated to the historical-theological understanding of this most significant event in European history. Considering the leading role of Martin Luther in the formation of the Reformation's theological contours, it is no surprise that there should be new research on the life and legacy of the German reformer. Some of these books pay tribute to the anniversary celebration, retelling familiar stories and their traditional interpretations in a new way. At the same time, there is a significant number of fresh publications whose authors attempt to keep in mind the newest discoveries in historical study, as well as the demands of the contemporary reading public. They realize that it is no longer possible to assume that students, clergy, or members of the wider society have any idea of the significance of the Reformation and its role in the formation of contemporary Christianity. In their works, they do not merely propose looking with fresh eyes at the most important religious events of the sixteenth century, but also explain their relationship to relevant issues of faith and culture in our day. Another common feature of these publications is their ability to immerse the reader in the completely unfamiliar world of the late Middle Ages, the world of Luther, his colleagues, and his enemies.2 Among
2 See, for example, Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (New York: Random House, 2017); Scott H. Hendrix, Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer (Yale University Press, 2015); Andrew Pettegree, Brand Luther: How an Unheralded Monk Turned his Small Town into a Center of Publishing, Made Himself the Most Famous Man in Europe, and Started the Protestant Reformation (New York: Penguin Press, 2015); Diarmaid MacCulloch, All Things Made New: The Reformation and its Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
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these scholarly works, a special place is held by the research of Heinz Schilling, Martin Luther: Rebel in an Age of Upheaval. The author is one of the leading German specialists in the history of Early Modern Europe, its confessional processes, and modernization. The book was first published in German in 2012, but now in 2017 St. Andrew Biblical-Theological Publishers (Izdatel'stvo BBI) has offered a Russian translation to its readers.
The main feature of the book, which favorably distinguishes it among numerous biographical treatments of Luther, is that the author examines the revolutionary breakthrough of the German reformer within the broad context of social and political transformation taking place in the Holy Roman Empire, as well as in the area ofinternational relations during the late Middle Ages. The fate of the Reformation is connected not only with Wittenberg, Zürich, and Geneva, but also with the battle for political dominance between the Islamic Ottoman Empire and the Catholic empire of the Hapsburgs, with the conflict between the universalist aspirations of Charles V and the rise of narrow national-political self-understanding among the early type of national states generating in Europe, particularly France, but also the German territorial states. The author also emphasizes that the success of the Reformation in Europe, especially following the defeat of the Lutherans in the Schmalkaldic War of 1547, was connected with the merits of the burghers who took power in the city-states of central and northern Germany, based on social-urban civic religion and the Lutheran project of church restructuring.
Analyzing the life journey and reforming activity of Luther, Schilling offers a bold deconstruction of a whole array of accepted concepts concerning the reformer, reconstructing his personality step by step, and scraping away five-hundred years' worth of mythology. His goal is to demonstrate the untenability of many standard views of Luther, striving to present to the reader not the traditional portrait of the unshakeable reformer, but a "stranger-Luther," "whose thoughts and actions correspond poorly to the interests of later generations, no matter how often they have been used to legitimate the behavior of contemporaries" (5). The author destroys the Luther "memory cult" and reveals the German reformer and his contemporaries to the reader "first of all the way they would appear to modern people," that is, as witnesses of "the world we have lost" (4), that is, the pre-modern world, in which earthly events took on their true significance only in relationship to higher, transcendent reality.
For example, Schilling reveals the baselessness of the legend that Luther was the "son of a poor miner," explaining that Martin's father was a successful entrepreneur with a high social reputation. He rejects the widespread psychoanalytic interpretation of Luther's reforming activity as the result of his childhood anxiety and complex relationship with his father. Moving to Luther's time in the Augustinian monastery, Schilling studies his monastic and educational activity in detail, concluding that it "would be a mistake to imagine the monk Luther as an eccentric possessed by the gnawing of his conscience, who could not organize life either in the monastery or outside it" (89). Also, as a counterweight to the traditional view of Luther as a prophet who almost singlehandedly initiated and sustained the renewal of Christianity, Schilling, while not denying Luther's leading role, clearly emphasizes that the actual condition for the Reformation's success was the collegiality of the scholars who gathered at Wittenberg University and "with unprecedented
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Rebel in an Age of Upheaval
intensity and single-mindedness sensed their responsibility for the renewal of theology and the church" (132). No less interest is summoned by Schilling's interpretation of the ferocity of Luther's polemics with all who did not concur with his vision of true religion (papists, "dreamers," Jews, Muslims) as the result of the eschatological perspective of his theology and the certainty of the Wittenberg reformer in his own calling as God's prophet, summoned "to proclaim to all people the only truth that brings blessing and to take care that it should be accepted by all" (641).
It should be added to the undeniable merits of the book that it is written from a religious-historical perspective that gives adequate attention not only to the Lutheran version of Protestantism, but also to other religious currents of the epoch, such as the papal church and its various reforming projects, as well as to alternative directions of the Protestant Reformation (Swiss reformers, radical Anabaptist groups, anti-Trinitarians). Note also, that the author does not limit himself to the theological aspect of Reformation history, painstakingly disclosing the radical changes called forth by the reform movement in civil society, its cultural, political, and economic life. For all this, Schilling deliberately avoids Protestant triumphalism; while recognizing the contributions of Luther in the transformation of Western Christianity into a dynamic religion capable of rebuilding the world, he nevertheless reminds us of the confessional intolerance that was born during the Reformation, which became a major factor in the struggle for power and bloody warfare in Europe.
Taking into account the immense historical resource base for the research carried out by the author, the foundational historical analysis of European society in the late Middle Ages, the religious, socio-economic and political processes taking place within it, the detailed reconstruction of all phases of the theological formation and reformation activity of the German reformer, Heinz Schilling's book is unreservedly recommended to readers as the finest biographical study available of Martin Luther.
Roman Soloviy EAAA Research Center L'viv, Ukraine
русский баптизм и православие (Серия "Диалог"). Константин Прохоров. М.: Издательство ББИ, 2017; х + 450 е.; ISBN 978-5-89647-362-6; 590 RUB
Книга Константина Прохорова раскрывает неизвестную для многих область православного влияния на русский баптизм. Общепринято считать, что баптисты противопоставляют себя православию и сознательно дистанцируются от всего того, что можно назвать отличительными особенностями православной культуры. Автор удачно разрушает этот стереотип и обращает внимание на множество признаков влияния православия на русский баптизм, которые имели место на
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