They say that behind every successful man there is a woman; the point being that the man would have been less a man without his wife. This piece of earthly wisdom is rarely applied to Martin Luther. The German Reformer is invariably depicted as “The Monk Who Changed the World”; the idea being that ingredients of Reform are to be found in cloistered, celibate seclusion. Such a conception might suit Rome but it is foreign to Biblical thinking. The alarming fact is that Luther’s critics, of whatever category, often appear to be blissfully unaware that Luther did his best work as a happily married man. Nick-names often reveal traces of character hidden by lexical nomenclature. Any student of Luther needs to notice how he addressed…