My colleague at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Dr. Robert Kolb, has ably offered readers of Phrase by Phrase a helpful introduction to the chief options of Lutheran theology. I might suggest his article earlier than I like to recommend any e-book.
Nonetheless, enable me a phrase a couple of slice of my very own custom that binds itself to the confessional paperwork of the Lutheran Church. (Spoiler alert: The Lutheran confessions shall be my high Lutheran e-book.) What follows may assist readers perceive why I embrace the books I do.
What’s Lutheranism?
The Lutheran theological custom is an enigma to many. When Lutherans discuss concerning the Bible and the authority of Scripture, some get the impression that we’re fundamentalists. Lutherans should not—or, no less than, we’ve by no means supposed to be—fundamentalists. Quite, we search to be biblical and confessional.
Lutherans are additionally not Catholics—although American evangelicals suspect we’re due to our view of the sacraments and our dedication to our liturgical heritage. Nonetheless, we do regard ourselves as catholic—that’s, a part of the common, holy, and apostolic church.
Lutherans should not American Protestants, however we had been, in reality, the primary Protestants. On the Weight loss plan of Speyer in 1529, 4 Lutheran princes and fourteen of the imperial free cities issued a “protestation” on April 19, 1529, towards the Holy Roman Emperor that rejected any effort by the secular authorities to legislate religion with threats of punishment. Therefore, the identify “Protestant.”
Within the strictest sense, Lutherans are evangelicals. Our interpretation of Scripture, doctrine, worship, preaching, and pastoral care middle on the particular person and work of Jesus Christ. We consider that, by his good life, atoning loss of life, and resurrection, Jesus alone has gained for us salvation, has reconciled sinners to God, and made us righteous, not by any work that we’ve executed, however as a free reward that’s obtained by faith alone.
Not like most fashionable American evangelicals and Protestants, Lutherans keep that the sacraments of baptism, holy absolution, and the Lord’s Supper are God’s efficient means to ship grace and forgiveness to his folks. We see the sacraments as God’s work and never a human work or an outward signal of inward religion. Due to this fact, we consider in baptismal regeneration. We additionally consider the true physique and blood of Christ are supplied to us in Holy Communion to forgive the sins of penitent sinners. We retain the follow of each personal and company confession and absolution as a terrific consolation and blessing for Christians who day by day wrestle with sin after baptism. In abstract, we consider the Phrase and the sacraments are the Holy Spirit’s technique of distributing the forgiveness that Christ gained on the cross right here and now by his church.
In distinction to Rome, Lutherans keep that Scripture alone and never human ordinances or establishments (which Lutherans regard the papacy and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church to be) is the premise for Christian doctrine and life. We keep that we’re saved by grace alone with none human selection or efforts, that religion alone with out human works justifies, and that every one of this God does for us on account of Christ.
Notable books from the Lutheran custom
My listing of the highest Lutheran books is aimed to introduce somebody outdoors of the Lutheran custom to the riches of its theology. This listing might go quite a few methods, however I selected these issues which have personally helped me finest perceive my very own custom.
1. The E book of Harmony
For anybody who needs to know what Lutherans have believed, taught, and confessed from the Reformation to at the moment, they will discover it within the Lutheran confessions in The E book of Harmony. In its accomplished type in 1580, The E book of Harmony included the ecumenical creeds, the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and its Apology (1531), the Smalcald Articles of Martin Luther, the Treatise on the Energy and Primacy of the Pope (by which Lutherans established their place on the papacy), the Small and Massive Catechism, and the System of Harmony (which introduced doctrinal readability to quite a few doctrinal disputes that arose after Luther’s loss of life).
Pastors, academics, and all church staff in confessional Lutheran church our bodies pledge themselves to those confessions and promise to show them publicly.
The Small Catechism is a very powerful doc for many Lutheran congregations as a result of it’s the foundation for instructing the religion to younger and previous. It contains the texts, with temporary explanations, of the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and biblical texts regarding baptism, confession and absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar.
2. Martin Luther, by Martin Brecht
The historical past of the Lutheran Church, like all historical past, is advanced. However that historical past actually begins with Martin Luther’s life and work. There are a lot of wonderful Luther biographies, however essentially the most complete is Martin Brecht’s Martin Luther. Brecht’s analysis in these three volumes is the gold normal.
If you happen to don’t have time for 3 volumes, Roland Bainton’s traditional biography, Right here I Stand, is a wonderful introduction to Luther. It’s the one I’ve my teenage kids learn.
3. The Bondage of the Will, by Martin Luther
Since we’re with reference to Luther, some main studying past what’s discovered within the Lutheran confessions can be instructive.
On the finish of his life, Luther stated that every one of his books must be destroyed save the catechisms and The Bondage of the Will (De Servo Arbitrio), his nice treatise written in response to Erasmus of Rotterdam’s The Freedom of the Will. This work is “heavy lifting” for these not versed in theology, however it places on show the power of Luther’s evangelical theology and his readability concerning the distinction between God’s Legislation and Gospel. A really useful model, which incorporates Erasmus’s textual content, is accessible here.
4. The Church Postils, by Martin Luther
The Lutheran Reformation superior into cities and cities in Germany and all through Europe by preaching. Many preachers in smaller cities weren’t geared up to constantly write their very own sermons. To assist them, Luther, with the assistance of his colleagues and college students, put collectively sermon collections. These collections, often called postils, had been used to teach each clergy and laity, and so they served as a strong medium to unfold Lutheran instructing on the entire council of God.
Luther’s postils had been a few of his most influential work, if one considers the frequency of republications. In addition to his translation of the Bible, Luther’s sermon collections had been his most generally learn books. The Lutheran custom can’t be very properly understood with out these, as a result of they exhibit how Luther taught others to interpret Holy Scripture. These sermons comply with the standard lectionary or set readings for the liturgical calendar of the Western church.
5. Letters of Non secular Counsel, by Martin Luther
Luther is well-known as a firebrand: the good Reformer who dismantled opponents and inaugurated a brand new epoch of the church centered on grace alone. To know him properly, nonetheless, one should meet Luther the pastor and the Seelsorger, the caretaker of souls. His Letters of Spiritual Counsel, edited by Theodore Tappert, are a superb assortment of Luther’s letters to the despondent and depressed. They permit folks to get to know the actual Luther, who’s tremendously humorous and singularly smart in giving counsel from Holy Scripture.
6. Examination of the Council of Trent, by Martin Chemnitz
As a result of Lutheran theology emerged out of the theological battle with Rome, there is no such thing as a higher solution to know the main points of that battle (which stays nonetheless at the moment) than to learn the Lutheran response to the Council of Trent. Martin Chemnitz, one of many architects of the System of Harmony and a member of the second era of Lutherans within the sixteenth century, wrote in these 4 volumes arguably the best presentation of Lutheran theology in distinction to Rome.
7. Commonplaces of Theology, by Johann Gerhard
One other nice gentle of the Lutheran Church and arguably the best theologian within the Age of Orthodoxy is Johann Gerhard (1582–1637). On the age of twenty one, he wrote the bestselling devotional e-book of the seventeenth century, titled Sacred Meditations. (I’ll say extra about that beneath.) Within the dogmatic custom, Gerhard’s Loci Theologici or Commonplaces of Theology are a normal in Lutheran polemical theology.
Polemical theology was actually an try by theologians to grasp their very own theology over and towards different confessions. Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists had been all concerned on this venture. Gerhard, with excessive studying, exhibits the ways in which Lutherans confess the religion in distinction to different confessions.
I contemplate his Loci Theologici to be a “high Lutheran e-book” as a result of it’s obscure Lutherans with out a full appreciation for his or her insistence on doctrinal readability and the authority of Holy Scripture. Concordia Publishing Home has just lately made this assortment out there in English. If it’s important to learn only one, I recommend Gerhard’s quantity On the Nature of Theology and on Holy Scripture.
8. Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Meditations and Hymns, edited by Eric Lund
Many have thought that seventeenth-century orthodoxy was a stuffy expression of Christianity: dry, doctrinaire, and boring. If you happen to get by Gerhard’s Loci, one might even see how the erudition of Lutheran theology may very well be perceived as overly actual.
Eric Lund’s assortment of main texts from Johann Gerhard, Heinrich Müller (1631–1675), and Christian Scriver (1629–1693) proves in any other case. Gerhard’s Meditations are stunning, wealthy expressions of Lutheran theology. In them, he weds doctrinal readability and heartfelt piety that discovered reception not solely in Germany and continental Europe, but in addition in England. Lund additionally contains samples from Müller and Scriver, who characterize, like Gerhard, a mixture of doctrinal readability and concern for true religion and private piety.
9. Legislation and Gospel: Easy methods to Learn and Apply the Bible, by C. F. W. Walther
It is a assortment of C. F. W. Walther’s Friday-evening lectures to his college students at Concordia Seminary. Walther exhibits how Lutheran theology is to be communicated within the proclamation of Legislation and Gospel from the pulpit and within the care of souls. Walther clearly goals at coaching his seminarians to be trustworthy and winsome preachers. However the broad scope of his lectures addresses practically all facets of Lutheran theology.
10. The Lonely Approach, by Hermann Sasse
One in every of my professors at seminary advised me that for those who learn extra Sasse, you’ll change into extra Lutheran. He was proper.
Sasse was a tireless defender of the Lutheran confessions in ecumenical dialogue and in world Lutheranism. These essays and letters to pastors (volume 1, volume 2) cope with quite a lot of subjects in New Testomony research, Lutheran confessional theology, church fellowship questions, and the Lutheran liturgical heritage. His deep understanding of the Lutheran custom and its historical past made him a most competent commentator and information to confessional Lutheran theology on this previous century.
11. Hammer of God, by Bo Giertz
Swedish Bishop Bo Giertz exhibits how Lutheran theology is each intellectually demanding and relevant to on a regular basis life.
In his superbly written assortment of three novellas a couple of nation parish in Sweden, he exhibits how God’s Phrase endures in all ages. His e-book collection follows a Lutheran parish throughout the key actions that influenced the Lutheran Church of Sweden and the remainder of Europe (i.e., Rationalism, Pietism, and Liberalism). Giertz’s e-book is a traditional of Lutheran fiction that exhibits God’s faithfulness to his folks and his pastors, and the ability of his Phrase to supply repentance in sinners by the hammer of the Legislation and to create in them religion in Christ by the candy promise of the Gospel.
12. Life Collectively, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Written throughout Bonhoeffer’s management of an underground seminary through the Nazi regime, Bonhoeffer instructs readers in what it means for a neighborhood to dwell beneath the Phrase of God.
Lutherans are generally related to a form of individualism, as if the one factor that issues is the believing particular person earlier than God. Bonhoeffer exhibits how Lutheran doctrine impacts God’s folks in neighborhood, which to be a Christian neighborhood should dwell by each phrase that comes from the mouth of God.
13. The Spirituality of the Cross, by Gene Edward Veith
Following the mannequin of C. S. Lewis, Gene Edward Veith, a Lutheran professor of English literature, provides readers a really accessible introduction to Lutheran theology. I might give this e-book, together with the Small Catechism, to anybody who’s on the lookout for a primer to the Lutheran religion. If readers knew subsequent to nothing about what Lutherans consider, I might urge them to start right here. (Observe: Logos solely carries the audio of this useful resource. You can buy the book from CPH.)
14. The Care of Souls, by Harold L. Senkbeil
This e-book is de facto for pastors. Time will inform if it turns into a Lutheran traditional. But it surely expresses so properly what’s on the middle of pastoral care and the lifetime of a Lutheran congregation. Senkbeil offers with laborious and actual pastoral conditions that come up within the care of souls and applies the balm of God’s Phrase to them.
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