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Book Review: Armand-Jean De Rancé, Abbot of La Trappe: His Influence in the Cloister and the World

the picture, love is classed with the temporal res (that is, res sacramenti) from which authentic faith turns away. It is well known that Luther—for quite understandable reasons—was unable to absorb much of the medieval theology of love, but this does not exempt the historian, even the historian of Luther's innovations, from trying to grasp on its own terms the tradition with which Luther is to be contrasted. As a work of Luther scholarship, H.'s book is well constructed in what it presents but is marred by significant omissions of relevant material. His account of the new authenticity by way of trust in promised goods gives a quite selective picture of what authentic faith grasps. It is a false modernization to make of Luther a theologian of hope in 1515. He has extensive passages in the Dictata in which faith's object is the opus Dei now unfolding, but in the paradoxical manner of hiddenness under contrary appearances. Wise and spiritual persons are taught wisdom by the Spirit and perceive that by these strange counsels God governs His Church (see, e.g., Luther's exposition of Ps 91:7, 13 [WA 4, 81-83]). Another omission would affect the connection H. makes between the ecclesiology of the Dictata and an eventual separation from the hierarchy. Luther's text contains more than one strong condemnation of just such a course of action. On Ps 121:5, in the last extended scholion of the lectures, Luther treats the respective roles of superior and subject in the Church. Surprisingly, he portrays Christian righteousness as consisting precisely in obedience to ecclesiastical superiors: "iustitia pertinet ad inferiorem . , . , quia est humilitas, obedientia, et resignata subiectio propriae voluntatis superiori" (WA 4, 405). Where H. argues that the inner circle of genuine believers is a populus spirituali^ of future-oriented faith, the text would justify equal attention to the populus humilis of obedience, an obedience which Luther portrays as essential to the peace of Christ's Church which heretics only disturb and divide (WA 4, 406). One does not have to believe that obedience is the central ecclesial virtue in order to be fascinated by Luther's early insistence on it, but this insistence is part of the record of 1513-15 and should be included in the account of the elite inner circle of believers in whose existence the Church of Christ is authentically realized.