Werden und Wertung der Reformation: Vom Wegestreit zum Glaubenskampf. by HeikoAugustinus ObermanReview by: Carter LindbergThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring, 1980), pp. 117-118Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539489 .

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Book Reviews 117

Werden und Wertung der Reformation: Vom Wegestreit zum Glaubenskampf. Heiko Augustinus Oberman. Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1977. xx + 500 pp., DM68--

Professor Oberman has written a unique study of the origins of the Reformation by evaluating its genesis in late medieval scholasticism from the viewpoint of the contem- porary academic perspectives, specifically the conflict between the via antiqua and the via moderna. The time period is that encompassed between Gabriel Biel (+ 1495) and the Reformation beginnings in Wittenberg, Zurich, and South Germany; thus the subtitle: "Vom Wegestreit zum Glaubenskampf."

The book is divided into four parts. The first two parts analyse and illumine the development from the conflicting late medieval academic paths of the two viae to the initial ecclesiastical and religious struggles of the early Reformation. The third part pursues the genesis of the South German Reformation and concludes with a typological comparison of it and Luther's Reformation. The fourth part is a collection of hitherto relatively inaccessible documents which inform the bases and perspectives of the text. The most extensive document in this part is the tract on tithing by Biel's Tubingen colleague, Conrad Summenhart, Tractatus de Decimis. The volume also includes a chrono- logical table (1340-1547); extensive bibliography (33 pp.); name, place, modern author, and subject indices; and a few plates of persons and texts.

The first chapter is titled, "Der Elfenbein- als Aussichtsturm." Presupposing the university as both the kernal and crown of the society's hierarchy of values, this view- point enables us to unlock and comprehend the events of the period not from an alien perspective but rather from their own.

This perspective which specifically explores the struggle between the via antiqua and the via moderna is a geistesgeschichtliche concern. In the Forward Oberman acknowl- edges the validity of many of the postwar social and economic historical attacks on Geistesgeschichte but goes on to distinguish Ideengeschichte from Geistesgeschichte arguing that the latter is neither irrelevant nor pretentious for it is concerned with the life accomplishments of persons and groups; it is the history of intellectual efforts to cope with life. Historical study which desires to be more than records and statistics cannot avoid analysing accomplishments and life-relationships. At the same time this approach recognizes that the "epochs" of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation are not designations of different time periods but of different intellectual perspectives and questions (Sinnbezage and Fragerichtungen) directed to the same sources.

The validation of Oberman's approach is revealed as we see the via moderna's struggle against the ideology and metaphysics of the via antiqua result in a new serious- ness toward history and experience. In terms of social history there is the achievement of new economic perspectives on money and taxes which was influential on early German capitalism; there are also the juridical and political dimensions which were influential on the Reformation struggles between princes and cities, Luther and the South German Reformers. In short, Oberman argues that the late medieval academic Wegestreit provides insights which neither the history of theology (regardless of its subtlety) nor social history (regardless of its prosopographical and quantitative comprehensiveness) can achieve (p. 377). This is a claim which is certain to occasion considerable debate from scholars of various disciplines and "epochs."

The University of Tubingen is given a central role in the book because of the presence there of both the via moderna and the devotio moderna and their coalition in the persons of Biel and Summenhart. Both men were concerned to illumine and remedy social and economic abuses and in the process provided far-reaching consequences for a new social and economic ethic (cf. chapters 3, 7, & 8). Utilizing primary sources Ober-

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118 Sixteenth CenturyJournal

man clearly presents the via moderna's concern for linguistic and methodological clarity (cf. pp. 50ff.) which, e.g., meant that Aristotle should be allowed to speak for himself rather than for Christian philosophy. This epistemological concern had significance not only for the emancipation of humanism but also jurisprudence (cf. pp. 75ff.). Thus Summenhart's desire to demythologize the so-called Divine Law was well-received in Melanchthon's Wittenberg in terms of Scripture becoming the criterion of all truth in the areas of faith and the world; and Biel's nominalism received importance in Luther's Wittenberg through the new piety released through the Pauline doctrine of justification, which unlike the regulating arrangement of the devotio moderna, became in the wake of the Augustinian renaissance the medium and yield of theology (pp. 80f.).

The importance of the late medieval Augustine-renaissance is explored in chapter 6 where the significance of Staupitz's overcoming of Augustine by Augustine is pointed out, as is also Luther's raising of the Augustinian anti-pelagian modus loquendi from a time-conditioned exegesis to a modus loquendi of theology in general (pp. 116f., 139f.).

Of particular interest is the application of the first two parts of the book to the relationship between Luther and the South German Reformation (pp. 371-378) in six points: 1. Luther was valued in South Germany not as an apostle but as prophet among other confederates. 2. Although Luther's writings were available up and down the Rhine, he was not "canonical" but rather from the very beginning shared the stage with other eruditi such as Erasmus, Zwingli, Bucer, and Melanchthon. 3. The South German cities were concerned with the generative power of new beginnings rather than Luther's eschaton. 4. There was a difference in mentality between Luther and the South German cities related to the late medieval via moderna - via antiqua struggle which was expressed in the area of worship (e.g., stances toward images) and ecclesiology (Luther was anti- papal whereas the cities with their history of communalizing efforts were anti-episcopal and even anti-Catholic). 5. This in turn provides a key to understanding the eucharistic controversies for the South German cities tended to transfer the Mass from a priestly estate to the gathered community. 6. Luther's concern for recovering the right proclama- tion of the gospel is contrasted with the South German linking of renewal of the Church with a new formation of the community and the accomplishing of the horizontal rela- tions of the gospel in bonum commune.

Thus Oberman indicates continuity from the late Middle Ages into the urban Reformation which took place through an intensification and acceleration of the late medieval emancipation from clerical jurisdiction and episcopal authority. Here Oberman points out that the leading South German Reformers were without exception descended from the via antiqua with the result being a struggle for the true form of the corpus christianum - a struggle we might add foreshadowed by the conflict between Luther and Karlstadt in Wittenberg. Thus we become aware that the late medieval Wegestreit was not resolved in the Middle Ages but continued into the Glaubenskampf of the Reformation era.

We look forward to volume three of Spdtscholastik und Reformation. Hopefully we will not have to wait another fourteen years!

Carter Lindberg Boston University School of Theology

Religion og Politik. "Studier i Christian Ills forhold til det tyske rige i tiden 1544-1559." Martin Schwarz Lausten. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1977. 374 pp.

Christian III is known in Scandinavian history as the devout evangelical prince who introduced Lutheranism into Denmark, Norway and Iceland. Having gained control of

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