Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
When we think of the great men of the Lutheran Reformation, a host of names come to mind, including Martin Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Bugenhagen, and Martin Chemnitz. With his most recent work, Life Under the Cross, Wade Johnston brings to the fore one of the most significant and polarizing figures in the Protestant Reformation who has nevertheless received little attention in Reformation scholarship, Matthias Flacius Illyricus. This book is a welcome addition to Johnston’s growing corpus of writing in the realm of Reformation history and theology, and dovetails nicely with his previous work on the controversies that defined theological life after Luther. Life Under the Cross is especially welcome in light of the fact that there is a great dearth of historical material on Flacius that is both in English and accessible to the average layperson. Flacius’ impact on the Reformation traditions can finally be more widely appreciated, and it is indeed an enormous impact.
Without bias or exaggeration, Flacius is simultaneously the father of modern church history and Biblical interpretation. In the realm of church history, it was Flacius’ Catalogus testium veritatis that paved the way for the ascendency of church history as an essential theological discipline and charted the course for how church history would be done as a discipline. Unlike previous histories that focused on a succession of persons and institutions, Flacius’ focus was a succession of doctrine, a succession of the gospel, handed down faithfully from generation to generation and safeguarded against innovation and perversion. This was also a theme in his later work, the Ecclesiastica Historia, also known as the Magdeburg Centuries, which was the most comprehensive church historical work since Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History and made unprecedented use of primary sources in its investigation. The impact of these massive works was felt by both Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians during the Reformation and endures to this day in every work on church history.
In the realm of Biblical interpretation, it was Flacius’ Clavis Scripturae Sacra that definitively codified what a robust understanding of sola scriptura or “scripture alone” looked like in practice. The principles that we often take for granted in evangelical Biblical interpretation— Scripture interpreting Scripture, the distinction between law and gospel, the right relation between faith and reason, and the primacy of Scripture over tradition— all these were set forth and explained first by Flacius in his Clavis as the definitive way to read and understand the Bible. With this work, Flacius gave birth to what would later be called the field of Hermeneutics, or the art/science of Biblical interpretation. All hermeneutical works since have their roots in the wells of Flacius’ Clavis.
Apart from his prodigious work in the realms of history and Biblical interpretation, Flacius is perhaps most important to us today for his work in both instigating and settling theological controversy in the 16th century. In many ways, the theological controversies that we as Protestants wrestle with today are ones with which Flacius himself wrestled. For Lutherans, the majority of our Formula of Concord is written with Flacius in mind in one way or another, whether the topic is original sin, free will, justification, the third use of the law, Christology, or worship in the church. If you or your congregation have ever wrestled with questions about whether or not we can choose Christ, whether or not the law saves, whether or not justification is simply a verbal fiction, or whether or not to use contemporary or traditional forms of worship, Flacius asked those questions first, and the answers he gave are highly beneficial for our conversations today. The controversies that defined Flacius’ life are proof not only that history does repeat itself, but that those who are ignorant of history are bound to repeat it.
With all this in view, Life Under the Cross is an invaluable primer on the life and theology of Matthias Flacius Illyricus. Johnston does a spectacular job of tracing the historical lines of Flacius’ life and the theological controversies that defined his writing, and in a manner that is both winsome and profound. It is sure to spark further reading and valuable conversations.
