As for Marty's Martin Luther: I am going to have to read the book. As Woodward describes it, it is a graceful synthesis of scholarship since the mid-1960's. I am most interested in how Marty as a (liberal) Lutheran deals with Dr. Luther's continuing presence within his own ecclesiastical body. These days, Luther is more often a skeleton at the feast then the convivial fellow he was while alive...at least in Marty's brand of Lutheranism.

At the same time, Luther is not as welcome as you might think among the conservative Lutherans. They take their nourishment, whether they know it or not, from the Lutheran scholastic theologians of the 17th century. Luther is for them someone to be affirmed, to be held up as a badge of honor, but not necessarily to be read.

Where do I fit in on this? Well, I am pretty unabashed in my admiration for Luther, which increases the more I read him. The reason so many are abashed is because of his profound honesty. Erasmus, much more popular amongst academics, was much more given to deviousness and intellectual subterfuge. Which is perhaps why he is more popular among academics. If you want to live the spiritual and intellectual life with your chin up, eyes front, and heart on your sleeve, then you can do much worse than choosing Luther as your exemplar.

I await with mild interest the ex cathedra, ex polka response of Bunnie Diehl to all this.