Luther

Given a life spent in scholarship and controversy, it is easy to forget how much energy Martin Luther devoted to helping the common person understand and take comfort from God's word. This commitment extended to even the most challenging of biblical texts, and nowhere is this more apparent than Luther's work on the lament Psalms. Difficult to understand, and perhaps even more difficult to implement in life and devotion, the lament Psalms played a key role in Luther's thought. More importantly, the lament Psalms were for Luther an essential part of the Christian's understanding of the life of faith.

In this volume, Dennis Ngien helps contemporary readers engage Luther's commentary on the lament Psalms. What Luther intended for the education and encouragement of everyday Christians, Ngien unpacks and illuminates for life in the twenty-first century.

Introduced and commended by Robert Kolb, the volume will be appreciated by teacher and student alike.

From the author of the acclaimed biography Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, new perspectives on how Luther and others crafted his larger-than-life image

Martin Luther was a controversial figure during his lifetime, eliciting strong emotions in friends and enemies alike, and his outsized persona has left an indelible mark on the world today. Living I Was Your Plague explores how Luther carefully crafted his own image and how he has been portrayed in his own times and ours, painting a unique portrait of the man who set in motion a revolution that sundered Western Christendom.

Renowned Luther biographer Lyndal Roper examines how the painter Lucas Cranach produced images that made the reformer an instantly recognizable character whose biography became part of Lutheran devotional culture. She reveals what Luther's dreams have to say about his relationships and discusses how his masculinity was on the line in his devastatingly crude and often funny polemical attacks. Roper shows how Luther's hostility to the papacy was unshaken to the day he died, how his deep-rooted anti-Semitism infused his theology, and how his memorialization has given rise to a remarkable flood of kitsch, from Here I Stand socks to Playmobil Luther.

Lavishly illustrated, Living I Was Your Plague is a splendid work of cultural history that sheds new light on the complex and enduring legacy of Luther and his image.

Luther's impact on theology and history was monumental, his writing was prodigious, his character was complex. The need for a critical overview of Luther's life and work, particularly concerning his writings and theology, is now met in Bernhard Lohse's comprehensive introduction.

Beginning with an overview of Luther's world, Lohse summarizes the course of the reformer's life, highlighting the findings of Luther research and the question that still surround the figure about whom we know more . . . than we do about anyone else in the sixteenth or any earlier century.Attention is given to al of the major writings, their relative importance, genre, and historical context. Lohse expertly guides the reader through significant issues in Luther's theology and discusses landmark contributions to the interpretation of Luther. Editions, translations, and other aids for the study of Luther are clearly described and a select bibliography of related works in English is appended.

The third volume of Brecht's magnificent biography describes the final fourteen years of Luther's life, beginning with the accession of Elector John Frederick in 1532. The period is often treated briefly because some Reformation developments continued without him, his Catholic opponents paid only partial attention to him, his personality displayed great tensions, and his judgment, errors. Yet the preservation of the churchthose confessing the Reformation gospel being identical, according to Luther, with the truechurchdominated Luther's concerns.

A work of immense and engaging scholarship, gracefully translated by James Schaaf, this volume offers comprehensive and original interpretations of Luther's private life, his congregation and the church in Saxony, his professorial lectures and theological controversies, Bible translation, Luther and the council of Trent, and his later writings about the Jews and Turks. With 34 illustrations.