Book excerpt: It would appear, if one judges from the writing of Martin Luther, that the Reformation was not intended to promote and settle the affairs of this temporal life. If the Reformer himself insisted upon the independence and autonomy of religion -- its indifference to the affairs of civilization and culture -- how does it follow that Max Weber and other major thinkers were to attribute the rise of capitalism to impulses stemming from the Reformation? It is this question -- the relation of the Reformation to European culture -- that the author addresses in this work. In the process of formulating his answer, he relates Reformation thought and the writings of Luther to the problems of ethics, politics, philosophy, literature, and the arts.