By Volker Leppin. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2024. 244 pp.

“Si Lyra non lyrasset, Lutherus non saltasset.”  This sixteenth-century jingle, which humorously linked Martin Luther’s “dancing” to the tunes played by Nicholas of Lyra’s exegetical approach, could have been the title for this book. Leppin’s main premise is that we should no longer starkly distinguish medieval and reformatory thinking in Luther for “there was no abrupt break with the Middle Ages but an incremental transition from the early medieval beginning to the late reformer, never losing all ties to his roots” (187). Yet the title of the book is Sola, an allusion to the four “exclusive particles” that came to characterize the novelty of the Reformation: Solus Christus, Sola gratia, Sola fide, Sola Scriptura. In an irenic ecumenical spirit, Leppin’s approach seeks to avoid sloganeering, seeing instead these concepts as entry points (“shafts”) that get us to the late medieval roots of Luther’s early theology and thus to a more ecumenical, Catholic-friendly Luther.

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