A study of Martin Luther's legacy explains how the view of Luther as prophet, teacher, and hero shaped the thought and action of his followers.

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.

Similarities between “Playboy” Donald Trump and “Holy Man” Martin Luther? Scandalized by such a thought? Through the rediscovery of the Gospel, the great Reformer realized he was the object of God’s love, not His anger and wrath. Both Luther and Trump understood that God’s ways are not always our ways, and that God can choose and work through sinners. Neither twin understood themselves to be saints but were free to be themselves. They are gifted yet flawed human beings driven by optimistic visions of what the Church and State should be. Drawing insights from history, Scripture, and theology, Swartz illustrates numerous similarities in his Twins’ separated by five centuries. The times, events, and circumstances they encountered exhibit uncanny parallelisms: elite establishments, social media, swamps, walls, and plagues. Even more striking is how their “political stance” and personal traits mirror each other: coarse and filthy speech, pugnacious reactions, and use of derisive nicknames. There’s also a resemblance in their spouses as they became the “Maligned Housewives of the Black Cloister and the White House!”

Martin Luther (1483-1546) stands as one of the giant figures in history. His activities, writings, and legacy have had a huge effect on the western world. This Cambridge Companion provides an accessible introduction to Martin Luther for students of theology and history and for others interested in the life, work and thought of the first great Protestant reformer. The book contains eighteen chapters by an international array of major Luther scholars. Historians and theologians join here to present a full picture of Luther's contexts, the major themes in his writings, and the ways in which his ideas spread and have continuing importance today. Each chapter serves as a guide to its topic and provides further reading for additional study. The Companion will assist those with little or no background in Luther studies, while teachers and Luther specialists will find this accessible volume an invaluable aid to their work.

Since the nineteenth century, scholars have debated the controversial relationships between humanism, the Renaissance and the Reformation. Challenging the dominant narrative on the subject, Giovanni Tortoriello reconstructs the debates that characterized the early Reformation movements. He shows that Martin Luther's theology of the cross developed in reaction to the irenic tendencies of the Renaissance. With the spread of Platonism, Hermeticism, and Kabbalah in the fifteenth century, the identity of Christianity shifted and the boundaries between the different religions thinned. In response to this attempt to minimize the differences among the various religions, Luther reiterated the centrality and uniqueness of the salvific event of the cross. Confessional biases and theological prejudices have obliterated the role that Platonism, Hermeticism, and Christian Kabbalah played in the early Reformation debates. The author reconstructs these controversies and situates Luther's theology of the cross in this historical context.

It has often been noted that the Protestant Reformation of the early sixteenth century witnessed a revived interest in the scriptural notions of prophets and prophecy. Drawing from both late medieval apocalyptic expectations of the immanent end of the world and from a humanist revival of biblical studies, the prophet appeared to many as a suitable role model for the Protestant preacher. A prominent proponent of this prophetic model was the Swiss theologian and church leader Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575). This study by Daniël Timmerman presents the first in-depth investigation of Bullinger's concept of prophecy and his understanding of the prophetic office. It also engages with the history of the Zurich institute for the study of the Scriptures, which has become widely known as the »Prophezei«.

American Theological Inquiry (ATI) was formed in 2007 by Drs. S. Gannon Murphy (PhD, St. David's College, Univ. Wales, Theology; Presbyterian/Reformed) and Stephen Patrick (PhD, Univ. Illinois, Philosophy; Eastern Orthodox) to open up space for diverse Christian academicians, who affirm the Ecumenical Creeds, to share research throughout the broader Christian scholarly community in America. ATI reaches thousands of Christian scholars throughout the United States, particularly specialists in theology. Though ATI is a new journal, scholars who publish with ATI benefit from exposure to a vast, non-insular network of one of the broadest Christian academic communities possible.

This book presents Cranach's Reformation painting to a broader audience and explains the pictorial strategies Cranach devised to clarify and interpret Lutheran thought. For specialists in Reformation history, this study offers an interpretation of Cranach's art as an agent of religious change. For historians and students of Renaissance art, this study explores the defining work of a major sixteenth-century artist.

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, God guides and saves his people through the words of his prophets. When the prophets are silenced, the people easily lose their way. What happened after the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ? Did God fall silent? The dominant position in Christian theology is that prophecy did indeed cease at some point in the past -if not with the Old Testament prophets, then with John the Baptist, with Jesus, with the last apostle, or with the closure of the canon of the New Testament. Nevertheless, throughout the history of Christianity there have always been acclaimed saints and mystics -most of them women-who displayed prophetic traits. In recent years, the charismatic revival in both Protestant and Catholic circles has once again raised the question of the place and function of prophecy in Christianity. Scholarly theological attitudes toward Christian prophecy range from modest recognition to contempt. Mainstream systematic theology, both Protestant and Catholic, has mostly marginalized or ignored the gift of prophecy. In this book, however, Niels Christian Hvidt argues that prophecy has persisted in Christianity as an inherent and continuous feature in the life of the church. Prophecy never died, he argues, but rather proved its dynamism by mutating to meet new historical conditions. He presents a comprehensive history of prophecy from ancient Israel to the present and closely examines the development of the theological discourse that surrounds it. Throughout, though, there is always an awareness of the critical discernment required when evaluating the charism of prophecy. The debate about prophecy, Hvidt shows, leads to some profound insights about the very nature of Christianity and the church. For example, some have argued that Christianity is a perfect state and that all that is required for salvation is acceptance of its doctrines. Others have emphasized how God continues to intervene and guide his people onto the right path as the full implementation of God's salvation in Christ is still far away. This is the position that Hvidt forcefully and persuasively defends and develops in this ambitious and important work.

A study of Martin Luther's legacy explains how the view of Luther as prophet, teacher, and hero shaped the thought and action of his followers.