St. Anne help us, there are so many Luthers to choose from! One Luther is the enlightener of the benighted Middle Ages, defender of the sovereign conscience and originator of modern individualism. Another Luther is the Volk hero whose linguistic and political achievements were used to forge a new image for imperial Germany in the late 19th century. Yet another Luther is the first great anti-Catholic, darling of partisan Protestants; on the flip side is the heretic anathematized by the Council of Trent. A fifth Luther might be the anti-Semite of the Shirer myth, lately demythologized but still blotting the conscience of post-Holocaust Christians. And then there is the Luther of Lutherans' own table talk, all beer and bowels, profanity and profundity, known chiefly by his Small Catechism and a great many aphorisms taken out of context.

Among these aphorisms is the infamous "Sin boldly," and this, apparently, was the guiding principle of the screenwriter and director of the recent film named for its protagonist. One could hardly do otherwise with such a colorful and controversial figure. Rather like the New Testament scholars who—according to Albert Schweitzer's famous Quest for the Historical Jesus—find in Christ a reflection of their own faces, Hollywood has uncovered a usable Luther for the silver screen.

This is not, wholesale, a bad thing. Director Eric Till has gone out of his way to tell the story of the decadent late medieval church while causing minimal offense to contemporary Catholics. The whole business of indulgences (selling get-out-of-purgatory-cheap tickets) is presented more as an Italian foible than anything else, political rather than theological, a regrettable episode in the history of a largely well-meaning church. This is an unsurprising way to handle what otherwise counts as a grave embarrassment all around: to Lutherans for having to tell it, to Catholics for having to remember it.

After all, the past century has been one of unprecedented ecumenical convergence, especially between the historically hostile Roman Catholic and Lutheran communions. The most remarkable symbol of this change is the Joint Declaration on Justification which was signed by the respective churches on Reformation Day—that is, October 31, the anniversary of Luther's posting of the 95 Theses—just four years ago. If the history of what the Joint Declaration regards as an unfortunate misunderstanding is going to be told at all, it can be told tactfully, can't it? Hence the decision to conclude the movie's narrative at a rather deceptive moment of peace with the presentation of the Augsburg Confession. The following century of religious wars, resulting in the unraveling skepticism of modernity, hangs like a cloud over the credits—unmentioned but looming like another thunderstorm in the distance. And this is to say nothing of the ugly side of Luther that emerged with illness and age, culminating in his horrifying hostility to the Jews.

This ecumenical Luther is a greatly appealing character, to be sure—and accurately depicted in that appeal. His sincerity is unwavering, his compassion is deep, his humility quite unlike that of Protestant triumphalism, and much the better for it. But screenwriter Camille Thomasson seems not to have trusted Luther for being who he was, and so introduced a few characters who make a point rather than re-create history; that is where the film goes most awry. In particular the extrahistorical episodes of a poor mother with her crippled daughter and a suicide victim try a little too hard (and a little too sentimentally) to illustrate the pastoral concerns that only over time blossomed into outright theological criticisms of his church.

Overwhelmingly, though, Joseph Fiennes as Luther far exceeds the limitations of the script, brilliantly moving from battles with the Devil to keen classroom wit to humble protests before the emperor. (The Fiennes version, we may hope, will finally lay to rest the anemic Luther of the 1953 black-and-white film which has been inflicted on countless confirmation students over the past half century.) If only we had a bit more of Luther the husband; Katharina von Bora's role is so limited that the strong and saucy Katie of Lutheran memory is little more than a forward nun with no subtlety of character.

But there could hardly be more room for Katie, given the ambitious scope of this project. The movie begins in 1505 with Luther's thunderstorm vow to become a monk and ends two and a half decades later in 1530 with the Augsburg Confession at the emperor's behest. In between we have Luther's struggles with God, the Devil, and himself in the monastery, and his fearful first celebration of the mass; his trip to Rome and teaching post at Wittenberg; his challenge of Tetzel's hellfire-and-damnation preaching for the sale of indulgences; his growing fame through the printing press and the patronage of Frederick the Wise (delightfully portrayed by Sir Peter Ustinov); the election of Leo X as Pope; discipline from Rome resulting in the Diet of Worms, culminating in the famous, and fittingly modest declaration of "Here I stand"; the capture in the forest and hiding at the Wartburg Castle; Carlstadt's iconoclastic misunderstanding of Luther's teaching and the outbreak of the peasant rebellion; and the beginning of the end of a united Western Christendom. (For new Luther enthusiasts and for old ones who can never get enough—not to mention all those left bewildered by the parade of historical personages—James A. Nestingen's short biography Martin Luther: A Life, complete with movie stills, is a lovely treatment of the reformer.)

It almost would have made more sense as a miniseries than a single film: there is too much here to cram into two hours. But alongside this vice is also found the movie's virtue (a proposition which Luther himself, who coined the theological expression "simultaneously sinner and saint," would surely have approved): this roller-coaster view of the man and his time gives a sense of the sweeping tide of events and the enormous cast of characters that precise book accounts simply cannot match.

Yet Luther's own self-image, we'd best not forget, was of a maggot, a beggar, a snow-covered heap of dung, one whose name was unworthy to be applied to those baptized into Christ. (European heirs of his Reformation, for instance in Germany, aptly call themselves Evangelische, of the gospel, while the English-speaking have done the very thing their reformer hated in calling themselves Lutherans.)

The story of Luther is in fact unfaithful to Luther if Luther is the object of glory—however glorious and inspiring his story may be. For Luther, it was always and only sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus. His conscience was captive to the Word of God, and on that he stood. His doctrine of justification meant a blessed abandonment of sin, death, and the Devil in a joyful exchange with Jesus Christ, whose life, love, and forgiveness became the sinner's own. His theology of the Cross was a death to all the glories of this world, rising to a new life in which a Christian becomes a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none, and a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.

And remarkably, for all its flaws and foolish dazzle, Luther the movie bears the same witness as its hero. That is only fitting. If God is at work while we drink beer, as Luther said, then certainly he can also be at work while we watch (and make) movies.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, recently married, is a doctoral student in systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. She owns red socks that say "Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders."

Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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