(upbeat music) This month at DesiringGod.org, we are celebrating 31 personalities behind the Protestant Reformation in a series called Here We Stand, 31 Heroes of the Reformation. Each day through the month of October, we're publishing a brief character sketch of a personality in the Reformation, a little five to seven minute episode of audio.

It's real easy to catch up if you're just hearing about it now. You can find more details on the site at DesiringGod.org/stand. Well, today on the podcast, we talk about longer book length biographies. And the question comes to us from a listener named Dylan. Pastor John, in light of 2017 being the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and you being a biographer of several of the Reformers, what book length Reformation biographies would be great to read, and why would you read them?

- This morning, I got up early before my wife was awake, and to keep from waking her up, I grabbed all my clothes and went into the next room. And that's the room where all my biographies are shelved. I have a separate room. And there, I didn't know this question was coming.

I just sat there amazed at the wonderful gift from God of biographies. I think there are probably 40 feet of shelf space filled with biographies in that room. So I love this question. I think good biographies are spiritually, historically, theologically, psychologically, the best way to expose ourselves to times and people and thinking outside our own head.

And it seems to me the Bible virtually commands us to give ourselves to biography, at least to the lives of the living, if not the dead, because not only do we have the great 11th chapter of Hebrews, which inspires us with all the heroes of the faith, but we have that amazing statement in Philippians 3, 17, "Brothers, join in imitating me "and fix your eyes on those who walk "according to the example you have in us." That's amazing.

Fix your eyes on people whose lives are shaped by the apostolic example. Wow, what a happy command. I love it. I'm so glad I've been commanded to do that. So amen to this question. Here goes. I have not read, everybody knows I'm not a fast reader, I've not read a lot of biographies of the Reformers, but I'll mention the few that I've loved and been helped by.

Martin Luther, Roland Bainton's old biography, "Here I Stand," is still in print, still riveting in the way it tells the story. I read it 40 years ago, and so I can't remember the details, but I commend it as a good balance between scholarship and popular understandability and appeal. A great story from Roland Bainton, B-A-I-N-T-O-N.

The biography I leaned on most in my lecture on Luther was Heiko Obermann. The title is "Luther, Man Between God and the Devil," published in German in 1982, and now in English. And one of the things that makes a great biography is that the author has the spiritual sensitivities that enable him to grasp the heart of what a man or a woman stood for.

Here's an example. It's a quote from Heiko Obermann. "A sense of the mysterium tremendum "of the holiness of God was to be characteristic "of Luther throughout his life. "It prevented pious routine "from creeping into his relations with God, "and kept his Bible studies, prayers, "and reading of the Mass from declining "into a mechanical matter of course.

"His ultimate concern in all these "is the encounter with the living God." And I said, "That's it. "That's it. "That's what makes a life worthy of focusing on. "I want to find a man who's devoted "to encountering the living God "through his peculiar personality, "and a biographer who can smell that "and draw that out and make us tremble with Luther.

"That's a good biography." John Calvin, I'm just gonna commend that excellent little short introductory biography by T.H.L. Parker, who recently passed away. Before he did, we at Desiring God contacted him in Britain and asked permission to take his little 120-page biography called "Portrait of Calvin" and reissue it through Desiring God with our own imprint on it attributed to him.

It's not under copyright anymore from anybody. And put our own foreword in it and make it available free online. And he was thrilled. He let us do it. And so at Desiring God's website, in the book section, you can find "A Portrait of Calvin." You just click on it and download the PDF and you'll have 120 pages for your own introduction.

And I wanted it to, I wanted to get it back in print because it was the first introduction I had to Calvin. And I remember how moving it was and how manageable. And I think there's just hundreds of people who would like a three-hour introduction to Calvin instead of a 40-hour commitment with some 500-page book.

And so there it is. And I think it's still at Amazon for a couple of dollars if you'd like to read the paper. My favorite biography of all the Reformers is David Daniel's biography of William Tyndale. 400 pages long, sounds big. I know, I just made a case for a little one.

This one's big and it's thorough, but it's absolutely not dull and not over your head. Tyndale was the English Reformer who put the New Testament into English from the Greek for the first time. And he paid for it with his life. In fact, one of the terrible revelations of this book that made it so valuable was the firsthand grisly evidence of how church leaders professing Christians from the Roman church actually killed people for reading the Bible in English.

I mean, just think of it. That was considered so evil, it was worthy of being burned alive. I mean, it's incomprehensible. We need to be taken back into moments like that in history. Now, let me end by cheating. I'm gonna go way back before the Reformation and 200 years after and mention two more.

Peter Brown's biography of St. Augustine, I guess you should say it, because Augustine was quoted by the Reformers more than anybody outside the Bible. Brown tells a great story. And I would put his biography right up there with Danielle's on Tyndale. So Peter Brown on Augustine. And the last thing would be Jonathan Edwards, gotta do it, 200 years after the Reformation.

And yet Edwards was, most people would agree, who know was the greatest Reformation representative that America has ever produced. So George Marsden's big or little distilled biography, Marsden, M-A-R-S-D-E-N, George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards. And there are, of course, so many more, many that I have not read, some that I have, but to quote the voice of Augustine that he heard in his ear, I guess the voice of the God or the little children who were calling out over the wall, "Take up and read." - Amen.

Reformation history is not merely a seasonal reading thing, but a really lifelong study. And this list will get any reader off to a very good start as they put together their own 40 feet of book space dedicated to biographies. Thank you, Pastor John. And thank you for listening and making the podcast a part of your day.

And speaking of Reformation biographies, we have been celebrating many of these voices at Desiring God in a daily series titled, "Here We Stand, 31 Heroes of the Reformation." It's a series of articles and also a podcast of five to seven minutes each. Each day through the month of October, we are publishing these very brief daily character sketches of a personality in the Reformation.

You can find out more details. You can find the written piece and you can find links to the podcast at desiringgod.org/stand. You'll wanna check it out. There's plenty of time to catch up. We started on the first of this month and it'd be easy to catch up on the audio.

Well, speaking of stories worth telling, you have got to hear the story of how Martin Luther shaped the publishing industry as we know it. It is one of the key factors behind the Reformation and it's a story that we will hear on Friday in a rare 35-minute conversation here with a Reformation historian.

I am Tony Reinke and we will see you on Friday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)