Hopes for Better Spouses: Protestant Marriage and Church Renewal in Early Modern Europe, India, and North America . By A. Gregory Roeber. Emory University Studies in Law and Religion. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013. 317 pp. $29.00.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Hopes for Better Spouses: Protestant Marriage and Church Renewal in Early Modern Europe, India, and North America . By A. Gregory Roeber . Emory University Studies in Law and Religion. Grand Rapids, Mich. : Eerdmans , 2013. 317 pp. $29.00.Book Reviews and NotesGregory Roeber's history of protestant marriage in early modern Europe, India, and North America is deeply researched and wide sweeping. With knowledge drawn from primary source material in several early modern languages across several centuries and continents, Roeber's grasp of the heart-centered evangelicalism derived from Martin Luther is masterful and full of implication. Engaging with historiographies of marriage in theology, law, and social history, Roeber makes advances in all three fields that many scholars will draw from.Roeber charts the complicated development of protestant marriage, beginning with its theological roots of Luther's attempt to define wedded life in terms of the spousal relationship between Christ and his church celebrated in the fifth chapter of the pseudo-Pauline Letter to the Ephesians . Attentive to every glimmer of respect for real mutuality in marriage among Luther's followers, Roeber investigates his sources with the sense of purpose paralleling that of his subjects, as captured in the title of his book, "Hopes for Better Spouses." Searching for evidence that early modern protestants prized mutuality through selfless love, Roeber draws attention to a forgotten theology of Christian marriage that Luther's followers failed to fully support and articulate. Roeber's recovery of this theology constitutes an important contribution to the intellectual tradition of protestant evangelicalism.Roeber highlights Luther's quasi-sacramental vision of marriage as the first major advance in Christian thought on marriage since Augustine. Referencing Ephesians 5, Augustine had identified one of the "goods" of marriage as its representation of the sacramental union between Christ and his church. Inspired by Johann Tauler and other thirteenth-century mystics who represented nature and grace as bound together in a relational dynamic, Luther applied that relational dynamic to marriage, building on Augustine's recognition of the sacramental aspect of marriage. Luther highlighted the potential for grace to become directly infused into the natural bond of marital union. But the shadow of natural depravity loomed over all, as Roeber explains, and Luther failed to say enough about grace in marriage to propel his insight into the future without foundering. Tracing the history of ideas about marriage expressed by early modern Christians who ascribed to Lutheran theology, Roeber shows how the hope of finding grace through marriage resurfaced among pietists yet failed at every turn to reach full articulation as the basis of Christian community. If ordinary couples inspired Christian fellowship in the people around them, they did so without full theological support from Christian writers.Roeber is just as interested in analyzing the forces that worked to undermine this quasi-sacramental vision of marriage as he is in locating the wisps of its presence after Luther. Luther's own emphasis on the total depravity of nature dampened his vision, as did his increasing stress on civil obedience and the need social order after the peasants' rebellion that some blamed on Luther and his denunciation of priestly authority. Philipp Melanchthon's insistence that the body of Christ remained firmly ensconced in heaven, uncorrupted by nature, further undermined Luther's vision of marriage. Ambivalence over whether marriage was a civil or religious institution led to more trouble, allowing proponents of marriage as a civil contract to gain momentum for their approach, especially in countries where the covenantal language of Reformed protestantism took hold. Even more destructively, in Roeber's view, fear of sexual license led pietists to abandon Luther's quasi-sacramental view of marriage. …