Good Government and Church Order: Essays on the Role of Secular Authority in the German Reformation by James M. Estes (review)

Reviewed by: Good Government and Church Order: Essays on the Role of Secular Authority in the German Reformation by James M. Estes Kurt Stadtwald Good Government and Church Order: Essays on the Role of Secular Authority in the German Reformation. By James M. Estes. Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2022. 326 pp. Comprising eleven scholarly essays largely composed between 1972 and 2007 for various periodicals, including two originally published in this journal, this collection reiterates Estes' work concerning the construction of the princely territorial churches of the Lutheran Reformation. In print for the first time is the essay "Surviving the Interim: The Case of Johannes Brenz …" and an appendix containing Estes' translation of Philip Melanchthon's Concerning the Office of the Princes … (1539)—characterized as Melanchthon's "longest, most End Page 238 detailed, and most highly esteemed discussion of the cura religionis right of oversight of the faith of Christian magistrates" (172). The figures who dominate these discussions are familiar—namely, Brenz, Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Luther—but their respective significance as authors of centralized territorial churches is reordered. Moreover, the founding of these churches in German principalities itself is more fully appreciated as the often-contentious interplay between new theological expectations, imperial opposition (that was felt differently in different moments and different states), and the fluctuating disposition of territorial princes to respond to both. Four observations must suffice to highlight important insights in the essays. First, Estes presents Brenz as the third most important evangelical reformer behind Luther and Melanchthon. This judgment rests on achievements in his roles as reformer of the city of Schwäbisch Hall, organizer of the territorial church in Württemberg (an example to other states), author of pamphlets, treatises, commentaries, and catechisms, and political observer and advisor. Brenz's views on sparing Anabaptists from execution also "unwittingly earned himself a place in the pre-history of religious toleration" (218). What Brenz probably regarded as his signal failure was his inability, despite repeated efforts, to establish a body independent of secular control for the clerical discipline of laypeople. Second, by far the most important architects of the centralized princely-supervised territorial state were Erasmus and Melanchthon. Erasmus adapted ancient political thought to Christian circumstances, making princes central players in reviving Christendom. By identifying the health of the common good with the state of Christian piety, the prince became as much an exemplar of personal piety and sponsor of education, the church's welfare, and its spiritual reform as any cleric, bishop, or pope. And, since Erasmus was Melanchthon's first intellectual inspiration, his ideas were brought over into Lutheranism without hesitation and, "that made it possible for Melanchthon and others to advocate and to justify ecclesiastical reform and church government under the aegis of secular magistrates far more easily than Luther himself was ever able to do" (115). What Melanchthon rejected was any Erasmian-styled reform requiring concessions and compromise of what was to him manifestly true Christianity. End Page 239 Third, while Luther was the first Protestant to call on secular authorities to reform the church in the face of intractable clerical enmity, Luther's attitude toward secular authority in ecclesiastical and spiritual affairs was ambivalent. Luther tended to view the reliance on secular authority in such matters as provisional or operating in an emergency. Moreover, Luther was less sanguine about secular authority's spiritual sanction or that such could make anyone righteous. He also had outspoken misgivings about the piety of princes and the judgment of jurists. In short, Luther's instincts were that Christian liberty required protection from both prying priests and princes. Yet, by 1534 when he wrote his commentary on Psalm 101, Luther had "in his own good time and by his own tortuous route" come to a "long-winded and convoluted affirmation of the cura religionis" that was "essentially the same as that in Philip Melancthon's contemporary second edition of the Loci communes" (258). In the context of the ideology of the territorial church, we come to a fourth observation concerning the relationship of Luther and Melanchthon that Estes characterizes as collegial, collaborative, mutually respectful, and intellectually independent. Kurt Stadtwald Concordia University Chicago River Forest, Illinois Copyright...