9780062696106
Play Sample

Fatal Discord audiobook

(412 ratings)
33% Cheaper than Audible
Get for $0.00
  • $9.99 per book vs $14.95 at Audible
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Listen at up to 4.5x speed
    Good for any title to download and keep
  • Fall asleep to your favorite books
    Set a sleep timer while you listen
  • Unlimited listening to our Classics.
    Listen to thousands of classics for no extra cost. Ever
Loading ...
Regular Price: 4.99 USD

Fatal Discord Audiobook Summary

A New York Times Notable Book

A deeply textured dual biography and fascinating intellectual history that examines two of the greatest minds of European history–Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther–whose heated rivalry gave rise to two enduring, fundamental, and often colliding traditions of philosophical and religious thought.

“A masterly work. Massing manages to juggle the complicated biographies and life work of both Erasmus and Luther while giving the reader a well-written, comprehensive background of pre-Reformation theology.”– Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Erasmus of Rotterdam was the leading figure of the Northern Renaissance. At a time when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael were revolutionizing Western art and culture, Erasmus was helping to transform Europe’s intellectual and religious life, developing a new design for living for a continent rebelling against the hierarchical constraints of the Roman Church. When in 1516 he came out with a revised edition of the New Testament based on the original Greek, he was hailed as the prophet of a new enlightened age. Today, however, Erasmus is largely forgotten, and the reason can be summed up in two words: Martin Luther. As a young friar in remote Wittenberg, Luther was initially a great admirer of Erasmus and his critique of the Catholic Church, but while Erasmus sought to reform that institution from within, Luther wanted a more radical transformation. Eventually, the differences between them flared into a bitter rivalry, with each trying to win over Europe to his vision.

In Fatal Discord, Michael Massing seeks to restore Erasmus to his proper place in the Western tradition. The conflict between him and Luther, he argues, forms a fault line in Western thinking–the moment when two enduring schools of thought, Christian humanism and evangelical Christianity, took shape. A seasoned journalist who has reported from many countries, Massing here travels back to the early sixteenth century to recover a long-neglected chapter of Western intellectual life, in which the introduction of new ways of reading the Bible set loose social and cultural forces that helped shatter the millennial unity of Christendom and whose echoes can still be heard today. Massing concludes that Europe has adopted a form of Erasmian humanism while America has been shaped by Luther-inspired individualism.

Other Top Audiobooks

Fatal Discord Audiobook Narrator

Tom Parks is the narrator of Fatal Discord audiobook that was written by Michael Massing

Michael Massing is a former executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, the Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of The Fix, a critical study of the U.S. war on drugs, and Now They Tell Us: The American Press and Iraq. He is a co-founder of the Committee to Protect Journalists and sits on its board. He received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 1992, he was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2010-2011 he was fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at CUNY. A native of Baltimore, he lives in New York City.

About the Author(s) of Fatal Discord

Michael Massing is the author of Fatal Discord

More From the Same

Fatal Discord Full Details

Narrator Tom Parks
Length 34 hours 52 minutes
Author Michael Massing
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date February 27, 2018
ISBN 9780062696106

Subjects

The publisher of the Fatal Discord is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Biography & Autobiography, General

Additional info

The publisher of the Fatal Discord is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780062696106.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Marks54

April 25, 2018

I recently read the Luther biography by Eric Metaxas and really enjoyed it. That is what prompted me to read this dual biography of Erasmus and Luther by Michael Massing. It is a wonderful book that is well written, clearly organized, and thoughtful. Considering the task that the author sets out to accomplish, the book is a real achievement.Massing has written a dual biography of Erasmus, the Renaissance humanist whom many know from history book references but fewer have actually read, with Luther who needs little introduction after last year’s 500th anniversary of the 95 theses. Dual biographies are especially valuable when there is a clear point of distinction or comparison between the two individuals being profiled - Wilson versus Lenin; Kennan versus Nitze; Churchill versus Orwell. Such is the case with Massing’s book in extreme. This is no less than a history of the tension between faith and good works that set the agenda for how Christianity and church-state relations moved out of the Middle Ages and into the modern age. It is a tension that continues today and a strength of the book is Massing’s efforts at showing how the issues between Erasmus and Luther developed in Europe and then moved into North America through the various great awakenings. The book does a great service in explaining how the different strands of Protestantism developed and spread - and by implication influenced subsequent European history. Massing also provides lots of references to the works of Luther and Erasmus (and others) in case one is interested in following up and reading more. Many of these works, by the way, are still available online for little or no cost to download.Along the way, Massing provides the stories of these two lives and ties them together with the broader Reformation. For example, the book helps to clarify why the English Reformation under Henry VIII took such a different turn from what happened in Europe. He does a good job on the peasant revolts and in my opinion judiciously moves past the first 30 Years War without getting too bogged down - it is a separate story on its own terms. Massing’s book was particularly helpful to me because of how he covered the linguistic and philological aspects of the conflicts between Luther and Erasmus. I am past the time when I could think of learning Greek, so his explanations are helpful.This is a long long book, but there is little in it that is unnecessary and much that is worthwhile.

Ryan

August 16, 2018

I’ll start by saying, if you’re a fan of intellectual history, buy the book—you will not be disappointed. Michael Massing is a fantastic writer and this work, despite being over 800 pages, is always interesting and never dull. The Amazon description presents the book as a dual biography of Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, but it also contains several biographical sketches of prominent figures like St. Augustine, St. Paul, Thomas More, St. Jerome, St. Thomas Aquinas, Petrarch, Lorenzo Valla, William Tyndale, and more. In chronicling the lives of Luther, Erasmus, and others, Massing provides a complete intellectual history of the Reformation and immerses the reader in the life and culture of 15th and early 16th century Europe. The main drive of the book is the contrast between and development of two strains of thought: Christian Humanism and Christian Evangelicalism. Erasmus, the leading Christian Humanist of the era, emphasized individual moral autonomy, unencumbered rational inquiry, and the primacy of deeds over faith. Luther, the leading Evangelicalist, emphasized the primacy of faith over deeds, the Bible as the inerrant word of God, and the path to salvation through faith in Christ alone. You can think of the difference this way: assuming you believe in God, what do you think would most please Him:1. A life spent praising God, reading the Bible, maintaining piety, confessing sins, and participation in liturgical services, or2. A life spent helping others in the example of Christ, embracing pluralism and toleration, and interpreting scripture through the power of your own reason.The Evangelical Christian would choose the first, the Christian Humanist the second. As a non-religious humanist myself, I have an obvious bias for the second choice, but it would seem somewhat strange for God to prefer mere thoughts, ceremony, and praise over a life spent actually helping others and engaging in benevolent deeds.There is, in fact, scriptural justification for the humanist position. For example, James 2:14-26:“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”Jesus himself gave the commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Luke 10:27), and prioritized caring for the sick and helping the poor.Admittedly, due to the inconsistencies of the Bible, you can find scriptural precedence for just about anything, and Luther did just that, especially in Paul. Much of Paul’s writings portray an Evangelical bent; Here is Romans 5:1-2:"Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God."This is why Paul exalted the story of Abraham and Isaac; Abraham’s willingness to murder his own son is the ultimate expression of faith over works, whereas the humanist would draw the opposite conclusion: that Abraham should have been punished for his willingness to harm his child (works over faith). This tension between Paul and James, works and faith, would play out in the thinking of Luther and Erasmus and would produce the Christian Humanism/Evangelicalism divide we still see today. My personal preference would be to see religion replaced with a more rational ethical system like secular humanism, but this is unlikely. Humanity has a strong disposition to believe in the supernatural, and in terms of our ultimate origins to prefer any explanation to no explanation at all. Since religion in this sense is probably here to stay, the best form it can hope to take is expressed in the views originally proposed by Erasmus, where the drive of religion is in works and deeds and individual autonomy, and where the more absurd and barbaric and fundamentalist parts of the Bible are ignored or rejected. If Massing’s work helps to spread that message, then this book may turn out to be more useful and powerful than even those of the New Atheists.

Scriptor Ignotus

February 12, 2022

Fatal Discord is not only a dual biography of the two most prominent intellectuals of the Reformation period; it is an entire theological and political history of the Reformation—as well as its Biblical and medieval antecedents—recapitulated in the comparative lives of Luther and Erasmus, and in their fateful literary confrontation. In one corner stood Erasmus: Christian humanist, heir of Jerome, James, and Cicero; the illegitimate son of a priest who revolutionized Biblical exegesis and midwifed modern textual criticism with his groundbreaking (though flawed) translation of the New Testament, which drew from older Greek manuscripts and thus subverted the Latin Vulgate and its centuries of editorial accretions; a near-total pacifist—he transmitted to modern readers Pindar’s observation that “war is sweet to those who have no experience of it”—and an internationalist, who was the first to describe himself, in a letter to Huldrych Zwingli, as a “citizen of the world”; satirizer of Papal pomposity and champion of the simple, humane teachings of Jesus. In the other stood Luther: the crude, abrasive, and astonishingly prolific miner’s son and Augustinian friar who spawned one of the great cultural revolutions of Western history; devotee of Augustine and Paul; proclaimer of sola scriptura (under a distinct Erasmian influence) and justification through faith alone (though Luther and Augustine misread Paul by conflating justification and salvation); translator of the New Testament into an earthy German (which arguably took more liberties with the scriptures than did the Vulgate, which both Luther and Erasmus came to reject); forefather of German nationalism; evangelist for the liberating power of Christ crucified. Both men were fierce critics of the opulence and corruption of the Church. Both sought a return to first principles and advocated a model of Christian life that was simple, modest, and true to the example of Christ and the Apostles; a life motivated by true inner devotion rather than the mere outward performance of ritual. One illustration of this is the inspiration that Erasmus and Luther both drew from the Dutch scholar’s rediscovery of the Greek word for “repentance”: metanoia. The word refers to a “turning around”, a redirection of one’s attention, a total inner and outer conversion of the one who repents; quite a different connotation from the poenitentia of the Vulgate, which was traditionally interpreted to refer to the sacrament of penance—i.e., going to confession. Luther was a great admirer of Erasmus, who was about seventeen years his senior, and relied heavily upon his New Testament as he formulated his own criticisms of Church practices. Indeed, the very first two of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, his famous attack on the sale of indulgences, refer to Erasmus’s aforementioned “Greek” understanding of repentance:"1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.2. This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.”In the early days of the Lutheran controversy, Luther and Erasmus were widely understood, by their admirers and critics alike, to be closely aligned. A common expression of the time held that “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched,” suggesting that Luther’s Reformation was merely the natural outgrowth of the Erasmian project of applying humanist textual criticism to Scripture with the aim of resurrecting primitive Christianity. Erasmus, for his part, initially returned Luther’s admiration, but became increasingly alarmed at his radicalism and the militancy of his followers. Erasmus wanted to reform the Church from within in a kind of elite-driven, international, cosmopolitan project; but Luther and his detractors were constantly pushing one another into taking ever more extreme positions in a process that brings to mind the radicalizing tendencies of social media today. Reading this book has convinced me that the internet is, in some sense, much older than we typically think. Many of the disturbing features of today’s online world—the vitriol, the cliquishness, the jockeying for attention, the “outrage mobs”, the demand that everyone have an opinion about everything, and the interpretation of silence as a sign that one is on “the other team”—were fully present in the discourse of the Reformation, in which the European intelligentsia engaged in ever more acrimonious and polarizing debate through the medium of the printing press. There’s something almost uncanny about imagining Luther alone in the Wartburg dashing off sixteenth-century hot takes. We’re all in the Wartburg now. There’s also something uncanny about the monumental efforts undertaken by the baroque Church to suppress Luther’s movement and gain control over the burgeoning communications revolution. It was perhaps the first time in history when a single institution sought to completely seal off the flow of information—but as we’re seeing today, it would not be the last. “The Cathedral” is alive and well. In this age of extremes, poor Erasmus stood in the middle of the road and got run over. The last great humanist, Erasmus opposed both the pre-humanism of the medievals, who sought to subject human freedom to the power of the institutional Church, and the post-humanism of the evangelicals, who sought to subject it to their understanding of the sovereignty of God. As such, he resisted enormous pressure to declare himself for or against Luther until he was left with no other choice. Their great debate on the subject of free will reflected a theological tension that stretches back into the New Testament itself: that between faith and works; between Jesus as the teacher of the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus as the scapegoat of Calvary. The modern world erupted through the chasm between Jesus the teacher and Christ the savior. It would be difficult to read this book without coming away with a profound, if sometimes begrudging, respect for both of these men and the legacies they created. Though I suppose in both intellectual and temperamental terms I’m more of an Erasmian than a Lutheran, it’s hard to be unmoved by Luther’s courage and bravado, or to avoid cringing at Erasmus’s vacillations during one of the West’s most critical intellectual crises. On the other hand, Erasmus perhaps displayed a quieter courage of his own when he sought to maintain his independence and integrity in an environment that allowed little room for either. In the short term, Luther won the day. His Reformation swept through Northern Europe while Erasmus faded into obscurity, denounced as a lackey of the Catholic Church by Protestants and as a proto-Protestant by the Catholic Church (his debate with Luther did not stop his entire corpus from being placed on the Vatican’s Index of Prohibited Books). Nonetheless, Erasmus has made a comeback in Europe since the Second World War, admired for his pacifism, his cosmopolitanism, and his belief in human freedom and reasoned dialogue. Luther’s star has faded in Europe, but Massing believes that his legacy has thrived in America after being brought to her shores by the likes of John Wesley. Though there are relatively few Lutherans in the United States, the Pope of Wittenberg has made his presence felt in the American evangelical community, and especially among the Southern Baptists, who carry on Luther’s emphasis on the saving power of the individual’s faith and the sacrality of his own personal encounter with Scripture. Though much has been made of the Calvinist legacy in America, Massing holds that Luther is the true theological forebear of the most politically-potent forces in American Christianity due to his emphasis on individual conscience over the communal piety exemplified by the Calvinists of colonial New England. So Luther and Erasmus live on—now with an ocean between them.

Gary

April 24, 2019

You ever wonder why 80% of white Evangelical Christians support Donald Trump. Erasmus is a humanist and Luther (and Trump’s Evangelical base) are anti-humanist. This book shows why the reformation is still relevant to today and connects the dots from then to today by considering the past that made up the then through the relevance of today.Luther starts what he called the Evangelical Church in Germany (German: Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland) and allows for a strain of anti-intellectualism to take root, denounces the peasants and their peasant revolt since power from above trumps the individual, makes every man a priest thus no one a priest, and devalues the individual’s dignity by polluting it with original sin and usurping it with God’s Grace above all else, appeals to ‘scripture alone’ as long as it is understood narrowly through his own myth interpretation lens and allows for no deviation from his privileged norm, and most of all sees the world through Augustinian terms especially that ‘man is born in sin’ and human nature is corrupt ever since ‘the fall of Adam and Eve’ and original sin is a stain that we all have since birth. Those are all characteristics of Luther’s anti-humanism and are a variation of beliefs shared by most of Trump’s white Evangelical Christian supporters. To understand the racism of today as espoused by Trump it’s often best to understand the anti-humanist of yesterday. Erasmus supported moderation, tolerance, dignity of the individual, good works matter, and free will of the individual, and believed that understanding needs grammar, semantics, syntax, context and philology especially in understanding scripture. All these items would go towards characterizing a humanist. In addition, all of them would be antithetical to what the anti-humanist, or typical (80%) white Evangelical would tend to believe one way or another today.Luther believed that we are not the ‘master of our will but its slave’ and our salvation comes from God’s Grace (or ‘God’s favor’ as Tyndale would translate it and is quoted in this book to have said). Aristotle (and Erasmus) would say that the builder learns to build good houses by striving to build a good house and practicing and learning and fine tuning his art, while Luther will say that good houses are built by good builders who become good only through God’s grace. This book will connect the dots and contextualize the main characters with the background of the reformation always front and center and the author will nicely connect the foundation necessary in order to understand the story he is telling. For example, he brings the scholastics into his story and will give a summary of the key players by connecting them to the reformation events. Not to ruin the story for you, Luther wants a return to Augustine and doesn’t really care much for the scholastics and thinks that Aristotle is only okay for those who want to go to hell, and Erasmus in general loves the scholastics except he believes they value contemplation too much and wants to put the emphasis back on good works, good practices and good thoughts. Those ‘damn Pelagians’, they always think they are so much smarter than the anti-humanist as exemplified by Luther or Trump. Luther’s most favored insult at Erasmus was to call him a ‘Pelagian’, and I would highly recommend ‘Bondage of the Will’ by Luther which I had read shortly before reading this book in order to understand today’s modern Evangelicals, anti-humanist, conservatives and Trump’s fascist supporters. Of the two recent books I’ve read on the Reformation, this one and ‘Reformations: The Early Modern World’ by Eire, I would recommend Eire’s book. It’s not fair to this author, Massing, to compare the two books because Eire wrote a flawless book with deep understandings and is most certainly a superior teller of history. At times I felt like Massing would be telling me things that he only had understood from reading what other people had said about what they had read as when he would talk about Kant, for example. Eire was always a master of his subject. In addition, I felt that Massing was not telling me anything that I had not read elsewhere since there didn’t seem to be any originality to this text. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and Massing does tell a good story but just not with much historical originality.

Socraticgadfly

April 04, 2018

There's not a lot of new stuff here for me, especially on the Luther side, but the dual biography concept, when done well, can stimulate some 'aha' and Massing generally does well.The two biggies on differences are first, one of personality and temperament. Erasmus' irenic style never could have led a Reformation and Luther never could have calmed his down enough even to be the best of organizers of what a Reformation needed in terms of management.As a result, Erasmus in general was more kindly disposed to human fraility and at least occasionally meeting people halfway. Had he been in Luther's shoes, he never would have treated Melanchthon as shoddily as Luther sometimes did.As an aside, Massing also gives a good base-level explanation of how differences between Luther and Zwingli, in terms of how they developed their reformations differently, were sociological as much as theological.I did learn a few tidbits, one of which I could have learned in Lutheran seminary, had it been taught there. And that is that Luther's polemics against the Jews weren't just a late-life, poor-health issue. They started with his lectures on the Psalms years before the 95 Theses. He later tamped them down, after the Reformation took off, in hopes of converting Jews. Until they didn't.And, it was Karlstadt, not Zwingli, who first questioned the "Real Presence" in the Eucharist, and he did so on the basis of Greek grammer and not metaphoric speech common to Greek, German and English. Karlstadt pointed out that the "this" in "This is my body," can NOT refer backward to "bread" because it's a different gender in Greek. That, too was never mentioned in Lutheran seminary, probably because, although Luther railed against Karlstadt for this, he never refuted it — because, of course, he couldn't.There is one notable error here that doesn't affect the flow, and a matter of framing that kind of does.Given that the second big difference between Luther and Erasmus was on free will, and that BOTH had an Augustinian background, it would have been nice for Massing to include a little bit more about just how "minor" of a saint Augustine is seen as being in the East. He does talk a small bit about Orthodoxy's take on Augustine, but not a lot.The outright error? Paul never claimed to be a Roman citizen, contra Massing. The unknown author of Acts claimed it for him.

Gideon

April 09, 2021

Wonderfully told. Compares the impact of Erasmus on Western thought with the impact of Luther. I don't think I've ever read a historical work that employed such rich use of language (metaphor, imagery, turn of phrase, etc). I think the author had a clear bias toward Erasmus, but he wove in so much original writing from both men that it was hard to disagree. Luther was so anti-semitic you literally have to fast forward some parts (if you're listening to the audiobook, that is, which is 34 hours long, just so you know).

Ray

February 06, 2019

This is a very thorough dual biography of the lives and teachings of Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther. At over a 1000 pages it interweaves all the historical antecedents to the Protestant Reformation and the consequences up to the present time. It's very thorough and easy to read. Massing does a great job with this complicated history. If you want to know about this important period in Western civilization...read this book.

Johnny

May 08, 2018

Excellent book (a 4.5 rating). It is a very comprehensive, detailed, all encompassing look at irenic Luther and diplomatic Erasmus and the whole era, how the Reformation flowed out of the monastic culture (education, markets, etc), stimulated modernism and eventually many of today's ideologies, politically and religiously, that result. The alternating chapters on each person highlights their similarities and more numerous differences (especially in temperament, personality, style) and the contrasting view of The Western Mind (including distinct views of conscience, change, church and state, Greek philosophy, religious authority, dealing with conflict or differences, & much more). The details of their individual faiths and formations are key. Far from demonizing the Roman Church or culture of the Middle Ages as a whole, the author nonetheless elaborately describes the rampant political and ecclesial corruption and oppression, all of which are deeply disturbing (how the common people were treated, the 98% of mortals), and thus part and parcel to the upheaval and titanic change that would impact history forever. In particular, I was struck by the massive (up to 20,000 in one) bands of roving people in the Peasants Revolts, as well as Luther's acidic and merciless call for their "slaying" and more (see below), and his theology behind it as well as his equally violent hate for Jews (starting from the very beginning with his very first writings on the Psalms with only a few spared any anti-Semitism, as well as in his second book on Romans). Massing's description of how Luther (and others) interacted (often in contention) with Zwingli, Calvin, (future) Anglicans (Henry the VII), the Anabaptists/Mennonites/etc. (maligned and slaughtered by Protestants & Catholics), Moravians (Count Zinzendorf ), and other sects was very helpful in explaining how various branches of Protestantism formed. Going through the extensive linguistic (original scriptural languages as well as Latin translations) and philological and philosophical differences between the Luther and Erasmus was revelatory, but it like other topics covered so in depth made the book extremely long (more than 800 pages). I wish he had done a much more thorough job of connecting the current contemporary religious and political climate (of the last 50 years) with the two men and their impact on that era and the rest of history, especially in the West. LUTHER: "Let there be no half measures! Crush them! Cut their throats! Transfix them. Leave no stone unturned! No mercy, no toleration is due to the peasants [attacking castles, churches, & monasteries]; on them should fall the wrath of God and of man...Let whoever can--stab, strangle, and kill the peasants like mad dogs...I advocate the slaughter of the poor captured peasants without mercy...I, Martin Luther, have during the rebellion slain all the peasants, for it was I who ordered them to be struck dead. All their blood is upon my head. But I put it all on our Lord God: for he commanded me to speak thus.." [in 1525, many tens of thousands of German peasants in giant roving bands revolted against longstanding poverty, injustice, & governmental and ecclesial corruption]

Daniel

January 18, 2022

I really enjoyed this! It was clear, accessible, and put Luther and Erasmus in truckloads of context, from the Thomists to Tyndale. The major thematic tension was (as the title indicates) between Christian humanism (where the emphasis of the Christian experience is living the good life, reason, the will, and human dignity) and Christian evangelicalism (where the emphasis of the Christian experience is divine grace, piety, devotion, and human depravity). I must say that as the book presented Luther and Erasmus, Erasmus seemed to display real Christianity much better than Luther. If their lives have anything to say, they were both deeply flawed. Truly, man cannot save himself or merit salvation, as Luther says. But at the end of the day, it seems Christians should be focused on truly intending to live the good life with God's help, rather than proclaiming one's devotion without the life accompanying it.

Caleb

September 05, 2019

While the author is not a historian but a journalist, he does a decent job. The first 95% of the book is gripping and informative. But as the book draws to a close, Massing displays typical anti-calvinism of the "but Servetus!!!" tier. He also ends with an assessment of the 20th and 21st century context of American Christianity, by trying to link Luther or Erasmus to different movements of contemporary society; this last part seems to have been written with less rigour than the rest.

Lynn

September 08, 2019

Superb history.

John

August 06, 2020

Much better than I expected. Sure, it's long, but a lot's at stake. Massing is at his best not only when comparing and contrasting the two minds at work, but in recounting the horrors of the Peasants' War. He gives a great feel for life in that time across Europe, and he clearly narrates an immense amount of research. While it may not uncover any fresh finds, Massing as a popularizer of this complicated era uses his own curiousity to fuel his search into the academic historians' records; he proves well how mistranslations, which could not get the sense in Greek of the Hebrew, and then were compounded in error in Jerome's Vulgate, led early on to Luther's distrust of the Jewish people, and how this rigidity influenced him years before 1517. Erasmus comes across as a canny and cautious scholar, but given his predicament, not taking the side of the firebrands may have well saved his life. And Zwingli's rise to power in Switzerland makes for useful correctives to those who regard him as a minor character then.

Mark

January 04, 2020

Clear and concise (even at 800 + pages) this dual biography and history of Erasmus, Luther, and the Reformation is an excellent introduction to the religious, political, and social drama surrounding the ruptures in Europe that dislodged the old order and initiated the Modern Age. Recommended.For a fuller review, go here: https://theproximaleye.com/2019/12/31...

Tim

January 01, 2022

I enjoyed this excellent book. It took some perseverance to get through at times due to detail and length, but it certainly expanded my knowledge concerning Erasmus influence on Luther and the reformation. Erasmus is someone who I was not familiar with at all before I read this book. After reading this book, it became apparent that he is one of the fathers of the reformation.Personal takeaways- There is so much to admire about Erasmus. I agree with the author's contention that there was much to learn from his version of Christianity. At a very minimum, he seems a peacemaker who held up the ideal of the simple love of Christ in day-to-day life. This is a trait of Christ that seems entirely lost amid the strong personalities of the reformation and counter reformation. - Unfortunately, some of Erasmus' tendencies toward moderation seem less inspired by high minded ideals and more influenced by old fashioned politics and cowardice. - You can also see in this book why and how Luther ultimately stole the limelight. If nothing else, boldness and extremity is more newsworthy then caution, complexity and moderation.- What if Erasmus would have come out in support of Luther on the things that he agreed with instead of being such a coward. ​How different things could have been though if Luther had a bit more of Erasmus restraint in both his writing and spirit. Maybe he could have restrained some Luther's bad tendencies. And Luther could have given him courage to stick to his convictions. - Luther deserves his important role in Western Civilization, but he made some incredible blunders as well. Some of these:1. His support of the doctrine of transubstantiation seems a terrible reason to break with his fellow Protestants and also very strange given his willingness to throw aside thousands of years of Catholic doctrine on other issues.2. You can make a strong case that Luther's horrible racism and hatred of the Jews, his strong support for separation of Church and State, his strong support for the state political powers over the conscience of the individual were the direct parents of the German Nazi party or at least enabling factors.3. His commitment to law and order is understandable given what actually ended up happening, but it feels like he went way overboard in his tracts on the instructions to nobles concerning the peasant revolts. These early workers movements were squashed just as they began. Luther deserves the condemnation he has received in siding with the Nobles entirely at the expense of the murder and rape of peasants.4. Luther's absolute commitment to grace above works may have been needed at the time due to terrible abuse and imbalance. Yet 500 years later, I think many Christians feel that jettisoning works as much as Luther did is problematic and not as scriptural as he intended to be. This is just a tension that must be maintained. It's not resolved in scripture so why should we think we can resolve it.5. I detest John Calvin. Much in the same fashion, when Calvin perfected Luther's doctrine of predestination something important was lost. When Christianity turns into fatalism, it has become a different religion entirely...just a different type of Paganism or Scientific Materialism. When I read his biography, I see a person with a compulsive, almost psychopathic need for order and perfection at the expense of everything else. He was horrified by his own doctrine of predestination and yet persisted. His actions to maintain his control over the people and doctrine approach the infamy of the Spanish Inquisition in the finality of its judgements and brutality of their punishments.6. One person can only take things so far, but in my opinion, Luther only scratched the surface of reformation when it comes to the actual practice of Church. As Frank Viola has written very sharply in several of his books, the actual practice of church is so polluted by the Roman influence it is almost irrecoverable and unrecognizable, but Luther started again the practice of examining all things through the lens of scripture and reformers along the way have made great strides to recovering a New Testament church by focusing on informal small groups of believers where the "priesthood of all believers" is upheld. The section describing how Luther's influence can be felt in American Protestant traditions as diverse as Billy Graham crusades, Southern Baptist, Methodists, and Quakers was spot on: the freedom of the individual conscience before God, the equality of all people before God, the ability of the common person to interpret scripture correctly. These are bedrock principles of both American spirituality and the American experiment itself.

Anonymouse

December 22, 2022

I found this book riveting, even though I could not manage to read it straight through. I got it from the library months ago and have been reading it in large chunks. I have now finished it and re-read parts, and I'm thinking about buying a copy and considering giving copies as gifts. Before starting to write this review I looked at some of the *, and ** reviews and, as often happens, I think some people weren't reading the same book was. The oddest of these negative reviews (aside from the one saying the book can't be interesting to anyone who isn't religious, to whom I offer my own heathen *****) is the review complaining that Michael Massing doesn't have a central thesis. I think Massing tells us very clearly what he is getting at with the book's subtitle and then at length in the Introduction and even greater length in the final chapter: Origins and Acknowledgements. Massing sees the Fatal Discord between Erasmus and Luther is a lens through which the divergence between the Renaissance and Reformation worldview. From early days, the followers of Christ preached, discussed, argued, harangued, and fought over doctrine and practice. The scope and heat of these disputes expanded and contracted over the centuries during which what becomes the Roman Catholic Church with a pope seated in Rome, used the sword, superstition, and terror of damnation to consolidate power and material wealth ever more tightly. Beginning in about 1350, another expansion of loud criticism of the Church and its practices began. These critics were brutally suppressed, yet the arguments persisted, growing more harsh and more open in the next century. Erasmus, born 1466, and Luther, born 1483, rose to prominence among the great clamor for change, through their exquisite use of disputation techniques in an era of formalized disputation. Massing focuses on several key figures in the early church who influenced Erasmus and Luther, and shows how these historical writings are interpreted by successive generations of theologians, most of whom could not read the works in the original languages. Luther and especially Erasmus, were linguists and Massing, a modern journalist, honors their use of original sources. In addition to theological history, "Fatal Discord" can be read as an exploration of the rapidly changing world in which these men lived. I was particularly fascinated by the role publishing houses – large and small – played in shaping the world. Thousands of copies of books were shipped every. Books were favored gifts and, along with letters and tracts, crossed Europe in weeks. As always, I am astounded by how often people travelled around, often on foot. Scholars and students wandered everywhere. To place Erasmus and Luther among their forebears and peers, Massing offers mini-biographies of a vast number of the real people. In the case of early Church luminaries, we learn a bit about their historical-cultural world, and why their works persist into the modern world, often overcoming disdain and neglect of prior ages. Massing includes some wonderful tidbits along the line. I am delighted to learn that Paul's clarification that followers of Christ don't have to follow Jewish law was largely to reassure converts that they didn't have to get circumcised. Well OK then, no snip. There is no question that reading a book of this size and density requires an investment of time and attention. If you are undecided, read the Introduction and Origins and Acknowledgements. Massing's discussion there is an invitation to read. I was hooked by the 2018 NYT book review and by Massing's lecture on the book on YouTube at watch?v=bOC5WVCnw_k NB: I think this book would be difficult to finish as an ebook. It's just too long. But the ebook form would be useful because the index (in the hardback, anyway) is not great. Because I was reading in chunks and because there is such a huge amount of information, sometimes I could not remember a phrase or reference. The index was unhelpful in the 3 or 4 instances I needed to use it. Fortunately Dr. Google and my own ability to link a phrase to something else, got me through.

Jimmy

June 21, 2018

This is an incredible book on the biography of both Martin Luther and Erasmus. Though I have read several different books on the Reformation it seems every time I pick up another title on Luther or the Reformation I continue to learn different aspects of the Reformation. This work is no different.What makes this work different than other works on the Reformation is that the author compared and contrasted Martin Luther with his contemporary Erasmus of Rotterdam. While most people today might not know as much about Erasmus of Rotterdam as Martin Luther nevertheless during Luther’s day Erasmus was a celebrity and at times was even more well known than Luther (especially in their earlier years). You see how both men had different personality, disposition and yet also interacted with each other in writing and it wasn’t always pleasant. Still in a strange twists they both live in the shadow of one another with Luther dependent upon Erasmus’ Greek New Testament which was the means Luther was able to study the New Testament as a primary source while for Erasmus he was also living under the shadow of Luther since he was often asked to define his theological view in relations to his view of Luther. This really annoyed Erasmus. For those who know their history Martin Luther would break from the Roman Catholic Church over the issue of justification and recovery of the Gospel while Erasmus stayed with the Roman Catholic Church.What I really enjoyed about the book is how the author described the interaction not just only between Erasmus and Luther but also these two men’s interactions with various other historical figures during that time such as how Tyndale was influenced by Erasmus, Thomas Moore’ bitter attacks on Luther (before this book I assumed Moore lived during a different time period), Zwingli’s interaction with Luther and Luther’s interaction with Calvin such as Luther’s reaction to Calvin’s view of Lord’s supper. Quite fascinating in the book’s discussion about Luther’s colleague Karlstad. While Karlstad has caused much harm to Luther’s cause especially with the Peasants revolt nevertheless I learned from this book that when Karlstad’s own life was threatened by the peasants he moved in to Luther’s home after he was married. Luther was a much more forgiving man than I could have been. Sadly the book’s discussion about the Peasants Revolt was one of the sadder part of the book.I appreciated reading various parts of Luther’s life as described in the book. The author did a good job capturing Luther’s theatrics with his debate such as his debate with Eck. The book also talked about Wittenberg and what part was more hagiographic concerning the “Here I stand” speech/quote. From this work I also learned that Luther was actually a friar and not a monk. The author was adamant about this point and he also noted that Luther wouldn’t have been able to travel, to teach and to do ministry outside the monastery if he was a full-fledged monk instead of a friar. Point taken.With all that has been said I must say that the author unfortunately had a weird view of the Bible. He is more liberal in his theological leaning. That is he didn’t necessarily have a high view of Scripture. For instance the book asserted that Paul wrote Romans awkwardly with dangling sentences and weird word order. Having studied Romans in the Greek the last few years I think Paul was quite deep in his theology in Romans and I’m more and more convinced every word he penned is theologically rich and where it is syntactically placed is significant. All that is to say I don’t think the author is an exegete so you got to keep that in mind when you read the book. Overall though the historical work on the two key figures of the sixteen century ecclesiastical and theological scene was informative, factual and interesting though with the size of the book it can be quite intimidating and a reading project that takes a while to finish.

Frequently asked questions

Listening to audiobooks not only easy, it is also very convenient. You can listen to audiobooks on almost every device. From your laptop to your smart phone or even a smart speaker like Apple HomePod or even Alexa. Here’s how you can get started listening to audiobooks.

  • 1. Download your favorite audiobook app such as Speechify.
  • 2. Sign up for an account.
  • 3. Browse the library for the best audiobooks and select the first one for free
  • 4. Download the audiobook file to your device
  • 5. Open the Speechify audiobook app and select the audiobook you want to listen to.
  • 6. Adjust the playback speed and other settings to your preference.
  • 7. Press play and enjoy!

While you can listen to the bestsellers on almost any device, and preferences may vary, generally smart phones are offer the most convenience factor. You could be working out, grocery shopping, or even watching your dog in the dog park on a Saturday morning.
However, most audiobook apps work across multiple devices so you can pick up that riveting new Stephen King book you started at the dog park, back on your laptop when you get back home.

Speechify is one of the best apps for audiobooks. The pricing structure is the most competitive in the market and the app is easy to use. It features the best sellers and award winning authors. Listen to your favorite books or discover new ones and listen to real voice actors read to you. Getting started is easy, the first book is free.

Research showcasing the brain health benefits of reading on a regular basis is wide-ranging and undeniable. However, research comparing the benefits of reading vs listening is much more sparse. According to professor of psychology and author Dr. Kristen Willeumier, though, there is good reason to believe that the reading experience provided by audiobooks offers many of the same brain benefits as reading a physical book.

Audiobooks are recordings of books that are read aloud by a professional voice actor. The recordings are typically available for purchase and download in digital formats such as MP3, WMA, or AAC. They can also be streamed from online services like Speechify, Audible, AppleBooks, or Spotify.
You simply download the app onto your smart phone, create your account, and in Speechify, you can choose your first book, from our vast library of best-sellers and classics, to read for free.

Audiobooks, like real books can add up over time. Here’s where you can listen to audiobooks for free. Speechify let’s you read your first best seller for free. Apart from that, we have a vast selection of free audiobooks that you can enjoy. Get the same rich experience no matter if the book was free or not.

It depends. Yes, there are free audiobooks and paid audiobooks. Speechify offers a blend of both!

It varies. The easiest way depends on a few things. The app and service you use, which device, and platform. Speechify is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks. Downloading the app is quick. It is not a large app and does not eat up space on your iPhone or Android device.
Listening to audiobooks on your smart phone, with Speechify, is the easiest way to listen to audiobooks.

footer-waves