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Source: (consider it) Thread: Good short modern introduction to Luther and Lutheranism
venbede
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Can any of the lovely Lutherans out there make a recommendation?

I know there is more to Luther than just sola scriptura and justification by faith alone, and he was influenced much by late medieval German mysticism, which would interest me.

I'm not going to be converted, but I would like too be better informed.

I'm not so interested at the moment in subsequent Lutheran history.

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Gramps49
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Not sure what you are wanting to know. Are you asking about how medieval mysticism influenced Luther and, subsequently, Lutheranism; or are you asking about Lutheran history?

If you are asking about the influence of mysticism on Luther, I think this Oxford paper is a good starting point. It contains an excellent bibliography on the subject for further study.

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venbede
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Thank you.

What I really want is a basic introduction to Luther's theology, including his sacramental and liturgical ideas.

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Lamb Chopped
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You might try the Large Catechism on the sacraments and other theology. I'll leave liturgy to those so inclined. Oh, and have a look at the volumes of Luther's Works (in English, I mean). There were about 60 of them last I looked, and they tend to have primary works of all sorts grouped by subject (for example, Christian in Society or Career of the Reformer). Try here:

Link is:
http://search.cph.org/search#?
p=Q&lbc=cph&uid=309796430&ts=
ajax&w=luther%27s%20works&isort=
score&method=and&view=grid&af=type
:product&cnt=48

(Remove carriage returns)

(Sorry about link, machine won't do the elegant one) (edited - Eliab)

ETA: Very sorry, you wanted short and modern. While these are in modern English, they are translations of Luther himself, not secondary works.

[ 22. March 2017, 07:23: Message edited by: Eliab ]

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Forthview
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You might like to read the article on Luther in last week's Tablet.
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quote:
Originally posted by Forthview:
You might like to read the article on Luther in last week's Tablet.

Might not that be a bit like commending Norman Tebbit as the authoritative verdict on Martin McGuinness?

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chris stiles
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quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Thank you.

What I really want is a basic introduction to Luther's theology, including his sacramental and liturgical ideas.

Oswald Bayer's The Theology of Martin Luther
Geharde Forde's On Being a Theologian of the Cross
Hermann Sasse's This is My Body

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venbede
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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Forthview:
You might like to read the article on Luther in last week's Tablet.

Might not that be a bit like commending Norman Tebbit as the authoritative verdict on Martin McGuinness?
You can't have read The Tablet much. The late IngoB, who called it The Bitter Pill, loathed it as selling the pass on scholastic Catholicism.

I would be interested since The Tablet would be critically sympathetic rather than purely condemnatory and it is coming far more from my position than any evangelicals.

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And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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venbede
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The Tablet's article is headed "MANY OF MARTIN LUTHER'S DEMANDS HAVE COME TO PASS IN THE 500 YEARS SINCE HE PUBLISHED HIS DEMANDS".

The problem comes with the theories with which he supported those demands - Justification by faith ALONE and SOLA scripture, privileging the internal over the external and holistic. Or so it seems to me but I don't want to be ignorantly prejudiced.

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Aravis
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Roland Bainton's "Here I Stand" is a good read (I read it in my late teens) but quite long. It takes you through the main events of Luther's life and explains the basics of his theology along the way.
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Aravis
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I should probably add that it may not still count as "modern" (just checked my copy and it's dated 1978)
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leo
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quote:
Originally posted by Aravis:
Roland Bainton's "Here I Stand" is a good read (I read it in my late teens) but quite long. It takes you through the main events of Luther's life and explains the basics of his theology along the way.

I think recent scholarship has shown Bainton to be writing hagiography with very little basis in fact, not least that Luther never said the words 'Here I stand....'

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Callan
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Obermann - Luther: Man between God and the Devil
Ozment - The Serpent and the Lamb
Ozment - Protestantism

For a general introduction to the period, albeit one in which Martin Luther looms large, G. R. Elton's 'Reformation Europe' is dated, but is short, readable and gets you some sense as to how the great man fitted in with the politics of the time. Bainton is well aware, btw, that the words 'Here I Stand' may have been apocryphal. I read bits of it some years ago, for an MA, and whilst it is undoubtedly pro-Luther he was by no means a fool or a rogue. Lyndal Roper's book has been well received, judging by the book reviews.

Luther's own writings are worth a look and you can get a lot of them free on Amazon, if you possess a Kindle or Kindle App. Continuum Impacts put together his controversy with Erasmus on the freedom/ bondage of the will which Luther thought was the central issue at stake between himself and the Papacy. Be warned, though, that Luther is definitely a marmite theologian. IIRC, the sadly-missed shipmate ken once opined that if Luther was on the Ship today he would be repeatedly called to Hell until the Admins lost patience and planked him.

His writings on the Jewish Question, it should be added, should not be set aside lightly, they should be flung away with great force although, to be fair, he is hardly the only medieval* figure who held views on the subject which would consign him to the nuttersphere today. To be fair, they were written at the end of his life and were only influential after the Nazis decided to reinvent him as a proto-German nationalist. People who go "Woo Anti-Semitism and Authoritarianism!" as some kind of 'gotcha!' are generally ignorant of the fact that he dialled down the legitimism during the wars of the Protestant Princes against the Empire and seem unaware of the official religion of Denmark.

*Yes, purists, I know that chronologically he was Early Modern but his ideas are incomprehensible without the medieval thought that went before him and he certainly thought of himself as a 'small c' conservative. He is certainly more medieval in his outlook than, say, Machiavelli or the Renaissance Humanists.

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Sipech
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Given the wording of the thread title, this title seems to fit the bill. Have read a lot of OUP's Very Short Introduction series and have the quality to be very good, on the whole.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Callan:
His writings on the Jewish Question, it should be added, should not be set aside lightly, they should be flung away with great force although, to be fair, he is hardly the only medieval* figure who held views on the subject which would consign him to the nuttersphere today. To be fair, they were written at the end of his life and were only influential after the Nazis decided to reinvent him as a proto-German nationalist.

I'm not sure that's Luther's anti-Semitism is something that's that easy to simply "fling away with great force" leaving the rest of his teachings behind. These sorts of things aren't always easy to find the edges of.

quote:
Protestant Christians today still revere much of Martin Luther’s theology, even as we (mostly) reject his truly vicious anti-Semitism. [Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al] Mohler is arguing, or perhaps simply hoping, that we can do the same with Boyce and Broadus and Manly — preserving and venerating most of their theology while rejecting their white supremacy as an unfortunate, unnecessary, tangent.

But I don’t think the example of Martin Luther argues in the direction that Mohler thinks it does.

It seems simple enough to regard Luther’s theology like a dim sum buffet. We’ll keep this, but not that. We’ll embrace his doctrine of justification by faith alone but reject his suggestions about burning Jewish schools and synagogues or prohibiting rabbis to teach. The former is a Good Idea and the latter is a Bad Idea, so we take the one but not the other. Easy peasy.

Alas, though, these two things are not quite as distinct and easy to separate as we might like to think. It turns out that Luther’s idea of justification by faith alone informed his anti-Semitism and, at the same time, that anti-Semitism informed his doctrine of sola fide. Both were tangled up with, among other things, Luther’s misunderstanding of the first-century Judaism of Saul of Tarsus and thus of his misunderstanding of the theology he taught after becoming the Apostle Paul. Untangling all of that turns out to be a very complicated business. It is no simple matter to reconstruct a “pure” theology of Martin Luther minus the anti-Semitism.



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Lamb Chopped
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I disagree with the author you quote, Fred Clark, and wish he had explained what he meant by saying that Luther's anti-semitism forms a foundation for his sola fide theology and vice versa. I have (for obvious reasons) been neck deep in Luther's theology via primary sources for decades, and I have never seen anything in his theology that was dependent on hating or harming Jewish people. Anti-semitism is most certainly a great sin, and the fact that it is Luther saying it merely makes it worse. However, I see no proof that this nasty sin forms a foundation for Luther's theology.

[ 24. March 2017, 03:48: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]

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Lyda*Rose

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I've been watching a YouTube channel with lectures by the theologian Ryan Reeves on various topics in church history with a number of them on Martin Luther and early Lutheranism. I've found them quite interesting. Plus when you get done with those you can move on to other topics like Tolkien and Lewis and their bailey-wicks, or the whole swath of Greco-Roman, medieval, and church history in easy to absorb talks. Here's a link.

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venbede
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quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
Given the wording of the thread title, this title seems to fit the bill. Have read a lot of OUP's Very Short Introduction series and have the quality to be very good, on the whole.

Yes, after I started this thread I thought of that. I don’t want Lutheran polemic and that should fit the bill. Do any Lutherans here know anything about Scott H Hendrix the author?

I already have Jasper and Cumings Prayers of the Eucharist Early and Reformed with a relevant chapter with texts on Luther, which deals with his sacramental and liturgical theology (and as I thought, I am not impressed.)

I have also dug up The Theological Germanica of Martin Luther in the Classics of Western Spirituality series with a long introduction, which should inform me about the place of mysticism.

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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Lamb Chopped
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Okay, though he didn't write the thing, just read and republished it AFAIK.

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SvitlanaV2
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quote:
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
I've been watching a YouTube channel with lectures by the theologian Ryan Reeves on various topics in church history.

I can recommend his videos too. Very good indeed.

[ 24. March 2017, 13:59: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]

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Callan
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I disagree with the author you quote, Fred Clark, and wish he had explained what he meant by saying that Luther's anti-semitism forms a foundation for his sola fide theology and vice versa. I have (for obvious reasons) been neck deep in Luther's theology via primary sources for decades, and I have never seen anything in his theology that was dependent on hating or harming Jewish people. Anti-semitism is most certainly a great sin, and the fact that it is Luther saying it merely makes it worse. However, I see no proof that this nasty sin forms a foundation for Luther's theology.

I think the thing about Luther is that, for whatever reason, he decided to adopt an animus against the Jews comparatively late in life. So it's quite difficult to say that opinions he held in 1517 were inspired by the opinions he would adopt in the 1540s. Luther's attitude to Jews was a bit like Wittgenstein's attitude to philosophy, inasmuch as there is a definite breach between versions 1.0 and 2.0. Saying that you can only understand Luther's theology in the light of his anti-semitism is like saying you can only understand the Tractatus in the light of the Philosophical Investigations or like saying that you can only understand C. S. Lewis' early atheism in the light of his subsequent Christianity or Christopher Hitchens' leftism in the light of his subsequent neoconservatism und so weiter. The difference between Luther and the various white supremacists cited by Fred Clark is that the white supremacists lived and died white supremacists whereas Luther's theology evolved and changed, sometimes for the better, and in this instance not.

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I disagree with the author you quote, Fred Clark, and wish he had explained what he meant by saying that Luther's anti-semitism forms a foundation for his sola fide theology and vice versa.

Clark didn't say (or write) that. He made the less overarching claim that "Luther’s idea of justification by faith alone informed his anti-Semitism and, at the same time, that anti-Semitism informed his doctrine of sola fide", which I took to mean that his thinking on each necessarily influenced his thinking on the other, not that one "forms a foundation" on which the other is built.

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I have (for obvious reasons) been neck deep in Luther's theology via primary sources for decades, and I have never seen anything in his theology that was dependent on hating or harming Jewish people.

Luther once wrote a book called "Von den Jüden und iren Lügen" (On the Jews and Their Lies). I'm surprised you've never come across it in your neck-deep wade through primary sources. It contains a number of theological claims about hating and harming Jewish people, such as:

quote:
First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly - and I myself was unaware of it - will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.
I'm not going to answer for Mr. Clark and his interpretation, but this seems very much like a theological position requiring Christians to be anti-semites.

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Anti-semitism is most certainly a great sin, and the fact that it is Luther saying it merely makes it worse. However, I see no proof that this nasty sin forms a foundation for Luther's theology.

This is one of Clark's big bugaboos, the conceit that huge and influential sins are easily compartmentalized and neither effect nor are affected by a person's theology. He goes into greater depth in an analysis of a similar case. He starts with a quote from Jack Forstman’s book Christian Faith in Dark Times on Emanuel Hirsch.

quote:
quote:
Emanuel Hirsch was one of the most brilliant persons in the field of theology of his or any other generation. During the 27 years between the end of the Second World War and his death, blind and in poor health, he published a massive, five-volume history of modern Protestant theology, translations of Kierkegaard from the Danish with historical commentary, eleven novels and collections of stories, and eight theological books. In addition to his brilliance, he was a rigorously moral person, and the question of social ethics was a cardinal feature of his theological work. Even so, he not only hailed the assumption of power by the Nazis in 1933, he also continued to believe in Hitler’s mission for Germany throughout the years of the Third Reich and afterwards — so far as we know, as long as he lived.
And Emanuel Hirsch lived until 1972.

Now let’s consider that five-volume history of modern Protestant theology written by Hirsch. Do you want to read that? Do you think it would be accurate? Or would you, perhaps, prefer to read the history of modern Protestant theology from the perspective of someone who did not still believe, four years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., that “Hitler’s mission for Germany” was a Good Thing?

Please don’t invoke Godwin’s Law here. We’re not making a Nazi analogy here. We are, rather, discussing an actual, card-carrying Nazi.

And that fact indelibly taints Hirsch’s writing and his theology.

How, precisely, does it do that? Well, that’s the difficult thing. It’s not compartmentalized, not a distinct, discrete ingredient that can be easily separated from the rest of Hirsch’s theology. It’s pervasive, a leaven that leaveneth the whole lump. We can’t simply read Hirsch’s theology, subtract the Nazi bits, and cheerfully keep the rest.

It won’t do to say, “Well, he was wrong about that one thing, but perhaps on everything else he was right.” Hirsch failed a hugely consequential test. The enormity and gravity of that one thing he was wrong about makes everything else he said or did suspect. That one thing is one thing you cannot get wrong unless you also get a whole bunch of other things very wrong as well. You have to get a host of other things wrong in order to arrive at the place where you get that one thing wrong. And then, as a consequence of getting that one thing wrong, you will thereafter unavoidably be very wrong about a whole other host of things.

So we cannot trust Emanuel Hirsch. We may concede his brilliance, but we cannot trust it, because we know it accommodated a pervasive rot. We can acknowledge that he was a “rigorously moral person,” but we cannot trust his morals because they allowed him to embrace a monumental immorality. He was brilliant, but his brilliance went askew. He was rigorously moral, but that morality stands irredeemably condemned. Brilliance, piety and rectitude are not sufficient to earn our blind trust once someone has failed the test.

We simply cannot and should not trust Emanuel Hirsch. We know this.

All italics from the original. Bolding added by me. Again, I can't answer for Mr. Clark but the same reasoning would seem to apply here. If "[a]nti-semitism is most certainly a great sin" as you suggest, and Luther was able to accommodate that great sin in his theology, then he and his theology have failed "a hugely consequential test", one that "you cannot get wrong unless you also get a whole bunch of other things very wrong as well". In other words, Luther may indeed be a brilliant theologian, but we cannot uncritically trust his theology. As they say, read the rest. The bit I excerpted is from part 4 of a series.

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venbede
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Okay, though he didn't write the thing, just read and republished it AFAIK.

Sorry, I'm confused. Can you clarify. Please?

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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Lamb Chopped
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Of course he wasn't able to accommodate that in his theology. Any more than i could accommodate my (hopefully rare) fits of unChristlike behavior in mine.

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Lamb Chopped
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Okay, though he didn't write the thing, just read and republished it AFAIK.

This was in referent to the Theologia Germanica, which is "unknown author" if I recall correctly.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Of course he wasn't able to accommodate that [great sin of anti-Semitism] in his theology. Any more than i could accommodate my (hopefully rare) fits of unChristlike behavior in mine.

The fact that Luther was able to put together a fairly lengthy theological treatise on his anti-Semitism would indicate otherwise. This wasn't a few random words spilling out in a heated moment, but a considered volume of work Luther obviously considered consistent with the rest of his theological beliefs.

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Dafyd
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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
In other words, Luther may indeed be a brilliant theologian, but we cannot uncritically trust his theology.

I find the idea that we can uncritically trust anyone's theology or philosophy or anything else remarkable.

I'm also postmodernist enough - and I don't think that needs to be very postmodernist at all - to think that the consistency of all of anyone's positions among themselves is hardly a given. Especially when dealing with a thinker as unsystematic as Luther.

(Since we're mentioning people who never publically renounced Nazism: consider that much of Pixar's output, most transparently Toy Story 2 and Wall-E, are adaptations of Heidegger.)

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Lamb Chopped
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Is that what you call a theological treatise? Because I'm working my way through it again, and so far what I'm seeing is diatribe with occasional slings from the OT.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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venbede
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# 16669

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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Okay, though he didn't write the thing, just read and republished it AFAIK.

This was in referent to the Theologia Germanica, which is "unknown author" if I recall correctly.
I understand. The Classics of Western Sprirituality series makes a point of translating Luther's version.

Is Scott H Hendrix OK? He wrote the Very Short Introduction and also I see a longer one volume work?

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528

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I'm sorry, I don't know. I vaguely remember reading the TG some years ago, but have no memory of even what it was about [Hot and Hormonal] , much less good editions. Let me know if you find a really good one?

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Barnabas62
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# 9110

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I suppose one might argue, quite simply, that Luther's early obsessions about being 'in or out' and the consequential obsessions with confessing anything that might be even the slightest sin, probably influenced his later thinking about what it meant to be 'God's chosen people'. Maybe the simplicity that God does the choosing and may surprise us all (Matthew 25) was not something he found easy to embrace?

On the authorship of 'On the Jews and their lies' although I've read arguments casting doubt on Lutheran authorship, I think the overwhelming majority historical opinion is that it did come from Luther and represented his views. An historical finding which cannot be easy for Lutherans.

A statement to that effect.

[ 25. March 2017, 09:51: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]

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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

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chris stiles
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# 12641

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quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I have (for obvious reasons) been neck deep in Luther's theology via primary sources for decades, and I have never seen anything in his theology that was dependent on hating or harming Jewish people.

Luther once wrote a book called "Von den Jüden und iren Lügen" (On the Jews and Their Lies). I'm surprised you've never come across it in your neck-deep wade through primary sources.

But the original claim is that "at the same time, that anti-Semitism informed his doctrine of sola fide", which is the sense in which I assume Lamb Chopped used 'Luther's theology'.
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Lamb Chopped
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# 5528

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What I'm saying is that there is difference between saying "So and so sinned greatly when he wrote X" and "So and so's sin is foundational to his theology."

To try a thought experiment, what if Luther had dropped dead the day before he put pen to paper on "The Jews" etc.? Would there be some gaping hole in his theology? Would we be reading the whole thing in a completely new way?

No, certainly not. That whole structure stands coherent on its own.

Luther's sin is his sin is his sin is his sin. Nobody's trying to excuse it here. But it is not a part of his theology.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Crœsos
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quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
In other words, Luther may indeed be a brilliant theologian, but we cannot uncritically trust his theology.

I find the idea that we can uncritically trust anyone's theology or philosophy or anything else remarkable.
Indeed. But in order to catch motivated reasoning (for instance) you have to have some ideas about the motives of the theologist. In Hirsch's case, anything that hinted at something like Führerprinzip (to take one example) would draw our attention more than it would from someone not similarly motivated by sympathy for the Third Reich. With Luther, we have to pay close attention to anti-Semitism.

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Is that what you call a theological treatise? Because I'm working my way through it again, and so far what I'm seeing is diatribe with occasional slings from the OT.

Well, Von den Jüden contains both claims about the nature of God ("For such ruthless wrath of God is sufficient evidence that they assuredly have erred and gone astray") and how God expects Christians to act (the aforementioned claim that if you're a good Christian you would be eager to burn down Synagogues). That would seem to qualify it as a theological treatise. The only reason not to do so is because we don't like its theology.

quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
But the original claim is that "at the same time, that anti-Semitism informed his doctrine of sola fide", which is the sense in which I assume Lamb Chopped used 'Luther's theology'.

I don't want to speak for Mr. Clark's interpretation of this position, but it seems to me that if someone truly despised the most prominent group of non-Christians of his day, a theology that automatically puts all non-Christians in the category of "the damned" would have a lot of appeal. This would be particularly so in the case of the Jews, where a rejection of salvation by "works" (such as adhering to the everlasting covenant between God and his chosen people) would be very convenient indeed. The outlines of motivated reasoning are pretty clear here.

I won't say it's absolutely dispositive, but the alternative is to claim that Luther's theology came to him ex nihilo, having nothing whatsoever to do with any of the events of his life and times. That seems like a much harder case to make. It seems akin to arguing that American slaveholders just coincidentally held a theological belief justifying African slavery. Sure, it's theoretically possible that this is just a coincidence, but it seems very unlikely.

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
What I'm saying is that there is difference between saying "So and so sinned greatly when he wrote X" and "So and so's sin is foundational to his theology."

To try a thought experiment, what if Luther had dropped dead the day before he put pen to paper on "The Jews" etc.? Would there be some gaping hole in his theology? Would we be reading the whole thing in a completely new way?

First off, no one is claiming anything is "foundational" to anything else, but the case is being made that ideas don't exist in isolation but very often cross-pollinate. A hatred of Jews can lead to adopting a theology that considers all Jews, because of their Judaism, to be damned and a theology that considers all Jews to be damned can lead to hatred towards Jews. This seems to be what is being argued with Clark's claims that "Luther’s idea of justification by faith alone informed his anti-Semitism and, at the same time, that anti-Semitism informed his doctrine of sola fide".

As for your thought experiment, we'd wonder a lot more about Luther stirring up anti-Semitic mobs in 1536-37 if he hadn't set quill to paper to explain the theological underpinnings of these actions in 1543. I have to reject the idea that a person's theological beliefs are some kind of abstract nothingness that doesn't impinge in any way upon their other ideas or their actions (and vice versa).

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Humani nil a me alienum puto

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venbede
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# 16669

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quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
I'm sorry, I don't know. I vaguely remember reading the TG some years ago,

I have confused Lamb Chopped and I apologise for not making myself clearer. I am talking about TWO different books.

ONE

I have had on my shelves for years The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther” (sic) translated and introduced by Bengt Haaglund in The Classics of Western Spritualty series published by the Paulist Press. If I’m seriously interested in Luther and mysticism, I should read at least the intro, which I am now doing. As I like Julian of Norwich and the Cloud of Unknowing, I thought I would be far more sympathetic to Luther if I could see him in that sort of context.

TWO

There is a Very Short Introduction to Luther by Scott H Hendrix. As Sipech suggested this is a very worthwhile series and I’m tempted. I was asking if any Lutheran for their opinion of Hendrix. If I am serious about getting to know Luther better, I think I should really try something more substantial. Hendrix has also written “Martin Luther – Visionary Reformer”. Any views?

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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venbede
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# 16669

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There's a very sympathetic review of Hendrix's biograhpy in of all places Catholic Herald.

But I don't want a biography so much as an account of his theology.

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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venbede
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# 16669

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Thank you everyone for your contributions. I will explore Luther in depth later, but now I will try to come to terms with the many spiritual classics I have on my bookshelves and I haven’t engaged with recently.

To which end I have read cover to cover Brengt Hoffmans’ translation of “The Theologica Germainica of Martin Luther” in the Classics of Western Spirituality series. I was very unimpressed by Hoffman’s introduction: he neither relates the Thelogica to Luther’s theology not the context of medieval mysticism in which it was written and read. (But I got the impression that for Hoffman the only good catholic is a proto protestant.)

As regards the text itself I felt that the theological nuggets were not integrated with the writing on prayer. I wondered if the author was just repeating bits from Tauler or the scholatics without much personal experience.

The bit I can imagine resonating with Luther is Chapter 11 about a sense of guilt for sin that is a living hell, from which the only deliverance is when “God takes (the sinner) to Himself and the result is that man does not ask for anything but the eternal Good.”

On the other hand the far more prevalent stress on the need for obedience looks to my mind like justification by works. (And it would go done well with monks who read, copied and preserved the text for 200 years before Luther.)

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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venbede
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# 16669

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Here's Pope Francis on Luther.

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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Jengie jon

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# 273

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I have not read it only the one on Aquinas that was good but might Luther for Armchair Theologians be what you are looking for?

Jengie

[decided to link to the publisher rather than a former book seller]

[ 02. April 2017, 18:04: Message edited by: Jengie jon ]

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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge

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venbede
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# 16669

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Thanks., jengie

[ 02. April 2017, 18:55: Message edited by: venbede ]

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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.

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Nick Tamen

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# 15164

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I was going to suggest the "Armchair Theologians" book on Luther. I have some others in the series and have found them to be very good. But then I looked on Amazon for the one on Luther and saw it got quite a few bad reviews FWIW.

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The first thing God says to Moses is, "Take off your shoes." We are on holy ground. Hard to believe, but the truest thing I know. — Anne Lamott

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