Like Leonard Smith's larger study, Religion and the Rise of History, this essay, Martin Luther's Two Ways of Viewing Life, asserts that Luther's well-known «at-the-same-time,» simul, or paradoxical way of viewing life does not capture Luther's thought as a whole, because it does not represent his deeply incarnational and dynamic, mystical and holistic, particularizing and historical way of viewing life based on the power of the Word and the Spirit of God either in his own...
As a historical inquiry and synthesis, this intellectual history is the first study to apply the ideal-type or model-building methodology of Otto Hintze (1861-1940) to Western historical thought or to what R. G. Collingwood called «The Idea of History,» for it contains succinct and useful models for seeing and teaching classical, Christian, and modern professional historiography. Religion and the Rise of History is also the first work to suggest that, in addition to his well-known paradoxical,...
