What are the Best Reformation Biographies?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | This month at DesiringGod.org,
00:00:05.820 | we are celebrating 31 personalities
00:00:08.520 | behind the Protestant Reformation
00:00:10.240 | in a series called Here We Stand,
00:00:12.960 | 31 Heroes of the Reformation.
00:00:15.680 | Each day through the month of October,
00:00:16.940 | we're publishing a brief character sketch
00:00:18.600 | of a personality in the Reformation,
00:00:20.360 | a little five to seven minute episode of audio.
00:00:22.740 | It's real easy to catch up
00:00:24.160 | if you're just hearing about it now.
00:00:25.920 | You can find more details on the site
00:00:27.500 | at DesiringGod.org/stand.
00:00:31.260 | Well, today on the podcast,
00:00:33.080 | we talk about longer book length biographies.
00:00:36.560 | And the question comes to us from a listener named Dylan.
00:00:39.640 | Pastor John, in light of 2017 being the 500th anniversary
00:00:43.160 | of the Protestant Reformation,
00:00:44.680 | and you being a biographer of several of the Reformers,
00:00:48.240 | what book length Reformation biographies
00:00:50.600 | would be great to read, and why would you read them?
00:00:54.440 | - This morning, I got up early before my wife was awake,
00:00:58.540 | and to keep from waking her up,
00:01:01.460 | I grabbed all my clothes and went into the next room.
00:01:06.460 | And that's the room where all my biographies are shelved.
00:01:12.100 | I have a separate room.
00:01:14.220 | And there, I didn't know this question was coming.
00:01:17.700 | I just sat there amazed at the wonderful gift from God
00:01:23.700 | of biographies.
00:01:26.620 | I think there are probably 40 feet of shelf space
00:01:32.500 | filled with biographies in that room.
00:01:36.100 | So I love this question.
00:01:38.260 | I think good biographies are spiritually, historically,
00:01:43.260 | theologically, psychologically,
00:01:48.640 | the best way to expose ourselves to times and people
00:01:53.640 | and thinking outside our own head.
00:01:58.800 | And it seems to me the Bible virtually commands us
00:02:03.600 | to give ourselves to biography,
00:02:05.360 | at least to the lives of the living, if not the dead,
00:02:10.360 | because not only do we have
00:02:12.220 | the great 11th chapter of Hebrews,
00:02:14.760 | which inspires us with all the heroes of the faith,
00:02:19.240 | but we have that amazing statement
00:02:21.480 | in Philippians 3, 17, "Brothers, join in imitating me
00:02:26.480 | "and fix your eyes on those who walk
00:02:34.160 | "according to the example you have in us."
00:02:40.540 | That's amazing.
00:02:41.920 | Fix your eyes on people whose lives are shaped
00:02:46.920 | by the apostolic example.
00:02:50.480 | Wow, what a happy command.
00:02:53.040 | I love it.
00:02:53.920 | I'm so glad I've been commanded to do that.
00:02:57.160 | So amen to this question.
00:02:59.640 | Here goes.
00:03:00.480 | I have not read, everybody knows I'm not a fast reader,
00:03:04.320 | I've not read a lot of biographies of the Reformers,
00:03:08.360 | but I'll mention the few that I've loved
00:03:10.480 | and been helped by.
00:03:12.200 | Martin Luther, Roland Bainton's old biography,
00:03:16.640 | "Here I Stand," is still in print,
00:03:19.440 | still riveting in the way it tells the story.
00:03:22.440 | I read it 40 years ago,
00:03:24.160 | and so I can't remember the details,
00:03:26.240 | but I commend it as a good balance
00:03:29.440 | between scholarship and popular understandability and appeal.
00:03:34.440 | A great story from Roland Bainton,
00:03:38.220 | B-A-I-N-T-O-N.
00:03:41.840 | The biography I leaned on most in my lecture on Luther
00:03:45.520 | was Heiko Obermann.
00:03:47.320 | The title is "Luther, Man Between God and the Devil,"
00:03:53.440 | published in German in 1982, and now in English.
00:03:58.360 | And one of the things that makes a great biography
00:04:03.560 | is that the author has the spiritual sensitivities
00:04:08.560 | that enable him to grasp the heart
00:04:12.940 | of what a man or a woman stood for.
00:04:15.880 | Here's an example.
00:04:18.380 | It's a quote from Heiko Obermann.
00:04:22.180 | "A sense of the mysterium tremendum
00:04:26.980 | "of the holiness of God was to be characteristic
00:04:31.180 | "of Luther throughout his life.
00:04:33.980 | "It prevented pious routine
00:04:36.940 | "from creeping into his relations with God,
00:04:40.100 | "and kept his Bible studies, prayers,
00:04:43.260 | "and reading of the Mass from declining
00:04:46.400 | "into a mechanical matter of course.
00:04:49.540 | "His ultimate concern in all these
00:04:53.840 | "is the encounter with the living God."
00:04:58.840 | And I said, "That's it.
00:05:00.880 | "That's it.
00:05:01.720 | "That's what makes a life worthy of focusing on.
00:05:06.720 | "I want to find a man who's devoted
00:05:10.720 | "to encountering the living God
00:05:13.180 | "through his peculiar personality,
00:05:16.040 | "and a biographer who can smell that
00:05:19.180 | "and draw that out and make us tremble with Luther.
00:05:23.900 | "That's a good biography."
00:05:26.120 | John Calvin, I'm just gonna commend
00:05:29.220 | that excellent little short introductory biography
00:05:32.540 | by T.H.L. Parker, who recently passed away.
00:05:36.260 | Before he did, we at Desiring God contacted him in Britain
00:05:41.260 | and asked permission to take his little 120-page biography
00:05:46.460 | called "Portrait of Calvin"
00:05:49.820 | and reissue it through Desiring God
00:05:53.100 | with our own imprint on it attributed to him.
00:05:58.260 | It's not under copyright anymore from anybody.
00:06:02.980 | And put our own foreword in it
00:06:05.460 | and make it available free online.
00:06:08.660 | And he was thrilled.
00:06:09.620 | He let us do it.
00:06:11.340 | And so at Desiring God's website, in the book section,
00:06:15.360 | you can find "A Portrait of Calvin."
00:06:18.220 | You just click on it and download the PDF
00:06:20.700 | and you'll have 120 pages for your own introduction.
00:06:25.940 | And I wanted it to, I wanted to get it back in print
00:06:30.940 | because it was the first introduction I had to Calvin.
00:06:35.900 | And I remember how moving it was and how manageable.
00:06:38.660 | And I think there's just hundreds of people
00:06:41.220 | who would like a three-hour introduction to Calvin
00:06:44.860 | instead of a 40-hour commitment with some 500-page book.
00:06:49.620 | And so there it is.
00:06:50.660 | And I think it's still at Amazon for a couple of dollars
00:06:53.220 | if you'd like to read the paper.
00:06:55.140 | My favorite biography of all the Reformers
00:07:00.100 | is David Daniel's biography of William Tyndale.
00:07:03.080 | 400 pages long, sounds big.
00:07:06.240 | I know, I just made a case for a little one.
00:07:08.660 | This one's big and it's thorough,
00:07:10.940 | but it's absolutely not dull and not over your head.
00:07:15.940 | Tyndale was the English Reformer
00:07:19.260 | who put the New Testament into English
00:07:21.820 | from the Greek for the first time.
00:07:24.460 | And he paid for it with his life.
00:07:27.700 | In fact, one of the terrible revelations of this book
00:07:31.940 | that made it so valuable was the firsthand grisly evidence
00:07:36.940 | of how church leaders professing Christians
00:07:40.700 | from the Roman church actually killed people
00:07:45.420 | for reading the Bible in English.
00:07:48.940 | I mean, just think of it.
00:07:50.540 | That was considered so evil,
00:07:52.940 | it was worthy of being burned alive.
00:07:56.740 | I mean, it's incomprehensible.
00:07:59.060 | We need to be taken back into moments like that in history.
00:08:04.060 | Now, let me end by cheating.
00:08:06.420 | I'm gonna go way back before the Reformation
00:08:09.740 | and 200 years after and mention two more.
00:08:12.440 | Peter Brown's biography of St. Augustine,
00:08:16.380 | I guess you should say it,
00:08:19.860 | because Augustine was quoted by the Reformers
00:08:24.540 | more than anybody outside the Bible.
00:08:26.860 | Brown tells a great story.
00:08:30.340 | And I would put his biography right up there
00:08:33.900 | with Danielle's on Tyndale.
00:08:36.140 | So Peter Brown on Augustine.
00:08:38.580 | And the last thing would be Jonathan Edwards,
00:08:40.780 | gotta do it, 200 years after the Reformation.
00:08:45.020 | And yet Edwards was, most people would agree,
00:08:48.580 | who know was the greatest Reformation representative
00:08:53.580 | that America has ever produced.
00:08:56.460 | So George Marsden's big or little distilled biography,
00:09:01.460 | Marsden, M-A-R-S-D-E-N,
00:09:04.860 | George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards.
00:09:09.540 | And there are, of course, so many more,
00:09:12.800 | many that I have not read, some that I have,
00:09:16.260 | but to quote the voice of Augustine
00:09:20.700 | that he heard in his ear,
00:09:23.100 | I guess the voice of the God or the little children
00:09:26.620 | who were calling out over the wall, "Take up and read."
00:09:31.540 | - Amen.
00:09:32.380 | Reformation history is not merely a seasonal reading thing,
00:09:35.780 | but a really lifelong study.
00:09:37.380 | And this list will get any reader off to a very good start
00:09:40.380 | as they put together their own 40 feet of book space
00:09:43.660 | dedicated to biographies.
00:09:44.820 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:09:45.700 | And thank you for listening
00:09:46.900 | and making the podcast a part of your day.
00:09:49.940 | And speaking of Reformation biographies,
00:09:52.700 | we have been celebrating many of these voices
00:09:54.580 | at Desiring God in a daily series titled,
00:09:57.300 | "Here We Stand, 31 Heroes of the Reformation."
00:10:01.300 | It's a series of articles and also a podcast
00:10:03.400 | of five to seven minutes each.
00:10:05.420 | Each day through the month of October,
00:10:07.140 | we are publishing these very brief daily character sketches
00:10:09.980 | of a personality in the Reformation.
00:10:11.300 | You can find out more details.
00:10:13.340 | You can find the written piece
00:10:14.420 | and you can find links to the podcast
00:10:16.460 | at desiringgod.org/stand.
00:10:20.180 | You'll wanna check it out.
00:10:21.020 | There's plenty of time to catch up.
00:10:22.180 | We started on the first of this month
00:10:23.860 | and it'd be easy to catch up on the audio.
00:10:27.260 | Well, speaking of stories worth telling,
00:10:28.740 | you have got to hear the story
00:10:30.740 | of how Martin Luther shaped the publishing industry
00:10:33.100 | as we know it.
00:10:34.740 | It is one of the key factors behind the Reformation
00:10:38.100 | and it's a story that we will hear on Friday
00:10:40.760 | in a rare 35-minute conversation here
00:10:42.940 | with a Reformation historian.
00:10:44.940 | I am Tony Reinke and we will see you on Friday.
00:10:47.860 | (upbeat music)
00:10:50.440 | (upbeat music)
00:10:53.020 | [BLANK_AUDIO]