Unabridged Audiobook
Informative, interesting, well worth my time.
Martin Luther is a name every person knows and knows very little about. His impact on the way we do things I never realized before. The right man with the right mind at the right time. The power of logic plus the power of The Lord changes the world.
Very interesting listen. Luther was such a great inspiration for the true message of Christ and Metaxas does an excellent job of bringing it to life.
SPOILER ALERT!!! I consider myself an expert(for a lay person) on Martin Luther. I've read and studied many books and materials on the great man. This book gives a lot of detail on persons and timelines of many events in Luther's life. The author's explanations of Luther's thought processes seem sound and consistent with he's life, work and theology. The author does a better than average job on trying to understand Luther's position on the trouble with "the Jews". Most author's simply claim anti-Semitism and say Luther was prejudice, grumpy and old when he spoke against the Jews. The author simply leaves it as a mystery. I have studied this matter a great deal and it isn't that hard to get to the bottom of it all. The Roman church didn't allow usery(loaning money at interest) in the middle ages. The Jews in Europe practiced usery pretty much exclusively. A Jewish family in German established itself as the money lenders of a vast area, the Fuggel family. Even Rome borrowed money to build St. Peter's Cathedral from them. In time all of Europe resented the Jews as money grubbers and started exiling them. First England in 1297, France in 1324 Russia soon after that and on and on. For Luther he was sympathetic toward them at first. He knew the Roman church was despicable and no thinking person could convert to it. However, after the rediscovery of the Gospel, the Reformation was preaching the true faith, Luther was crestfallen that the Jews were not converting. A certain Jew who had converted under Luther's tutelage informed Luther of the passages in the Talmud that blaspheme Christ, dishonor Mary and many other slanderous statements. This was not common knowledge then. The printing press had just been invented and these books were taught orally. Luther was furious at this and started his attack on Judaism. Christ himself attacked the Pharisees and Sadducees for their unbelief, now Luther was doing the same. At any rate, there were reasons the Jews were persecuted in Europe at that time. Rome's moratorium on usery being the fundamental source. I found the author's writing style at times to be...as if he was trying to impress himself, self indulgent. However, there is very good research here and details that I have found nowhere else. I very much enjoyed this book, overall.
I knew very little about Martin Luther prior to reading this book. After reading it, I feel much more informed about the evolution of Catholicism, how by the 16th century it became corrupted, and the eventual response of those who protested this corruption. The explanations surrounding the history and intellectual debates regarding theological theory were also very informative. The book, though not necessarily intending to do so, when taken into account with detailed histories of the founding of the US, also sheds a light upon how the Protestant Reformation has affected out own nation's past and present as well as the evolution of diversity of Protestant religious thought. Metaxas is an excellent writer who, using interesting vocabulary, consistently holds your interest and unwinds complex philosophical arguments in ways that are interesting and informative. The narrator, though somewhat unconventional in tone, was enthusiastic and easy to listen to.
This is a tremendous book and I really loved it. Going into it, I knew Martin Luther was hugely impactful but what I knew about him I learned in school at a surface level years ago...this book does a great job of clarifying the picture of who was this man, the fascinating and disturbing details of what the church had become in the 16th century and his impact not only on the church but democracy and western values as we know them today. I found the book to be a “quick read”, entertaining and spirituality edifying. Great job to Mr. Metaxas and his team in putting this work together.
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