Christine Helmer. The Trinity and Martin Luther: Revised Edition. Lexham, 2017. See here to purchase the book.
Christine Helmer teaches religious studies at Northwestern University. She has a Ph.D. from Yale University.
As the title indicates, this book is about Martin Luther’s view on
the Trinity. Helmer attempts to refute previous scholarly ideas about
this. These ideas have posited that Luther was a subordinationist, a
modalist, a tritheist, or in some way different from medievalists.
Helmer, in contrast, proposes that Luther was classically orthodox.
Because Luther never actually wrote a treatise about the Trinity, Helmer
consults various sources, including hymns, sermons, and Luther’s
academic disputations against non-Trinitarians and the view that the
Trinity had ecclesiastical but not biblical authority.
There are two aspects to Luther’s understanding of the Trinity that I
gleaned from this book. First, Luther maintained that there were
serious limitations on the ability of human rationality to understand
God, particularly the Trinity. Luther did not dispense entirely with
reason, for he utilized it in academic disputations, but he held that
what humans know about the Trinity is the result of revelation from God:
the Holy Spirit, through the Bible and the preached word, testifies to
the Trinity. Helmer contends that, on this point, Luther largely
overlapped with medieval thinkers. Second, Luther emphasized the
relationships within the Trinity. When God speaks to God’s son in the
Book of Psalms, Luther interprets that as the Father speaking to God the
Son, who became Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit observes. Love
exists among the three members of the Trinity. The three members of the
Trinity also relate to each other within the economic Trinity, which
concerns God’s salvation of human beings. Christ intercedes for
believers, who, by being in Christ, are incorporated into the loving
fellowship that exists within the Trinity.
To be honest, I cannot say that there was much in this book that
piqued my interest. There was an occasional detail that did so, such as
Luther’s justification for academic disputation against those who reject
the truth, which differs from Christ’s meek treatment of people who
wavered in the truth. The book is very abstract, and whatever I did
understand in it struck me as rather obvious. I was wondering if my
problem was the subject matter, since Trinitarian disputes do strike me
as abstract technicalities that people are willing to die over, as if
something about God’s character is at stake. But I am reading another
book on the Trinity, and I actually enjoy it on account of the
intriguing questions that it engages.
My impression is subjective, and others may appreciate the book more.
While there was not much chemistry between me and Helmer’s book, I
respect that she explored this subject in a fresh way and made a
significant contribution to scholarship.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. My review is honest.