Luther S Lectures On Genesis And The Formation Of Evangelical Identity

Martin Luther's lectures on Genesis, delivered at the University of Wittenberg during the last decade of his life and later published by his students, allow modern readers to view a sixteenth-century professor engaging his students with the text of scripture and using that text to form them spiritually. The lectures show how Luther attempted to form in his students a new identity, an Evangelical identity, enabling them to make sense of the rapidly changing society and church in which they were being prepared to serve, primarily as pastors in the developing territorial churches of the Reformation. This study uses the text of the lectures to outline the contours of the new identity that Luther laid out through his exposition of Genesis. They include how Luther approached and taught his students to perceive the text of holy scripture; how that text unveiled for Luther the nature of Christian life in the world; and how Luther taught his students to view the past, the present, and the future of the church and the world through the book of Genesis. Whether in the published editions of the lectures the historic Luther was actually misunderstood or was transformed in some way into the prophetic Luther of later memory, the text reveals the Luther that his students heard and subsequent generations read.

"This study uses the text of the lectures to outline the contours of the new identity that Luther laid out through his exposition of Genesis. They include how Luther approached and taught his students to perceive the text of holy scripture; how that text unveiled for Luther the nature of Christian life in the world; and how Luther taught his students to view the past, the present, and the future of the church and the world through the book of Genesis."--BOOK JACKET.

The story of the binding of Isaac both challenges and inspires people who seek to live faithfully in relationship with a God who surpasses our understanding. Combinding the history of exegesis with a theological exploration of the meaning of faith in the face of suffering, this book examines Luther‘s and Kierkegaard‘s lively--and very different--interpretations of Genesis 22 to demonstrate how the way we read the Bible is crucial to the life of faith.

In this historical study, Jonathon D. Beeke considers the various sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed expressions regarding the duplex regnum Christi, or, as especially denominated in the Lutheran context, the “doctrine of the two kingdoms.”

Embracing a multiconfessional and transnational approach that stretches from central Europe, to Scotland and England, from Iberia to Africa and Asia, this volume explores the lives, work, and experiences of women and men during the tumultuous fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. The authors, all leading experts in their fields, utilize a broad range of methodologies from cultural history to women’s history, from masculinity studies to digital mapping, to explore the dynamics and power of constructed gender roles. Ranging from intellectual representations of virginity to the plight of refugees, from the sea journeys of Jesuit missionaries to the impact of Transatlantic economies on women’s work, from nuns discovering new ways to tolerate different religious expressions to bleeding corpses used in criminal trials, these essays address the wide diversity and historical complexity of identity, gender, and the body in the early modern age. With its diversity of topics, fields, and interests of its authors, this volume is a valuable source for students and scholars of the history of women, gender, and sexuality as well as social and cultural history in the early modern world.

Oswald Bayer is one of the most important contemporary interpreters of Martin Luther and confessional Lutheran theologians. As a Luther scholar, Bayer has identified the precise reformational turning point in Luther's life and theology, which is also the central point for a truly Lutheran theology: the promise of a forgiving and justifying God preached in Jesus Christ. As a Lutheran theologian, Bayer stresses that this promise of God is the ultimate subject matter of all theology, and that all other theological topics have the justifying promise of God as their basis and boundary. Hanging by a Promise investigates how Bayer addresses Luther's topic of the hidden God--a God of wrath who accomplishes everything--from the standpoint of the justifying promise of God. Luther's doctrine of the hidden God has been taken up, discussed, and interpreted by many in the modern Protestant theological tradition. Yet, Bayer addresses it in a way in which others before him have not. Going beyond interpretation and evaluation, Bayer actually makes use of Luther's hidden God in his own theology. For Bayer, the hidden God is the counterpoint to God's gracious promise given in the preached Christ, a counterpoint that brings serious tension into the very heart of theology.

The Luther@500 anniversary may be behind us, but Luther stands ahead of us in many ways. The essays in this volume by an international group of scholars begin with a contextual discussion of Luther's definitive contribution to the Wittenberg Reformation and its significance for us today. New light is shed on old issues across a range of topics. But these essays do not stay in the past. Many also engage critically with contemporary issues in Luther interpretation and a few boldly trace the trajectory of Luther's reformational theology into the future.