Deals with Amsdorf's role in developing the understanding of Luther in the years after his death.

This volume introduces the main theological topics of Reformation theology in a language that is clear and concise. Theology in the Reformation era can be complicated and contentious. This volume aims to cut through the theological jargon and explain what people believed and why. The book begins with an essay that explains to students how one can approach the study of sixteenth century theology. It includes a guide to major events, persons, doctrines, and movements.

Studies in Theology and Religion,11 Polemics, as “the art or practice of disputation or controversy”, is a living issue in matters of religion, and is a major object of research for scholars in religious studies and theology. The second international conference of the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religions (LISOR), held at Leiden in April 2000, was devoted to the subject of Religious Polemics in Context, aiming at a further exploration of the notion of religious polemics, together with the unfolding of a wide variety of case-studies from various religious traditions. The volume contains most of the papers read at the conference, and offers contributions on general issues (e.g., by M. Dascal), as well as on particular topics in the fields of history of religion (e.g., Islam), ancient Israel and early Christianity, the history of Christianity, and the social sciences of religion. An annotated bibliography is added to this collection, which may stimulate a further study of the topic.

In the five hundred years since the publication of Martin Luther's Ninety- Five Theses, a rich set of traditions have grown up around that action and the subsequent events of the Reformation. This up-to-date dictionary by leading theologians and church historians covers Luther's life and thought, key figures of his time, and the various traditions he continues to influence. Prominent scholars of the history of Lutheran traditions have brought together experts in church history representing a variety of Christian perspectives to offer a major, cutting-edge reference work. Containing nearly six hundred articles, this dictionary provides a comprehensive overview of Luther's life and work and the traditions emanating from the Wittenberg Reformation. It traces the history, theology, and practices of the global Lutheran movement, covering significant figures, events, theological writings and ideas, denominational subgroups, and congregational practices that have constituted the Lutheran tradition from the Reformation to the present day.

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.

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.

In this important new volume, Arand, Kolb, and Nestingen bring the fruit of an entire generation of scholarship to bear on these documents, making it an essential and up-to-date class text. The Lutheran Confessions places the documents solidly within their political, social, ecclesiastical and theological contexts, relating them to the world in which they took place. Though the book is not a theology of the Confessions, readers will clearly understand the issues at stake in the narratives, both in their own time, and in ours.

Since its first appearance in 1991, The European Reformation has offered a clear, integrated, and coherent analysis and explanation of how Christianity in Western and Central Europe from Iceland to Hungary, from the Baltic to the Pyrenees splintered into separate Protestant and Catholic identities and movements. Catholic Christianity at the end of the Middle Ages was not at all a uniformly 'decadent' or corrupt institution: it showed clear signs of cultural vigour and inventiveness. However, it was vulnerable to a particular kind of criticism, if ever its claims to mediate the grace of God to believers were challenged. Martin Luther proposed a radically new insight into how God forgives human sin. In this new theological vision, rituals did not 'purify' people; priests did not need to be set apart from the ordinary community; the church needed no longer to be an international body. For a critical 'Reformation moment', this idea caught fire in the spiritual, political, and community life of much of Europe. Lay people seized hold of the instruments of spiritual authority, and transformed religion into something simpler, more local, more rooted in their own community. So were born the many cultures, liturgies, musical traditions and prayer lives of the countries of Protestant Europe. This new edition embraces and responds to developments in scholarship over the past twenty years. Substantially re-written and updated, with both a thorough revision of the text and fully updated references and bibliography, it nevertheless preserves the distinctive features of the original, including its clearly thought-out integration of theological ideas and political cultures, helping to bridge the gap between theological and social history, and the use of helpful charts and tables that made the original so easy to use.

Galvanized by Erasmus' teaching on free will, Martin Luther wrote "De servo arbitrio", or "The Bondage of the Will", insisting that the sinful human will could not turn itself to God. In this first study to investigate the sixteenth-century reception of "De servo", Robert Kolb unpacks Luther's theology and recounts his followers' ensuing disputes until their resolution in the Lutheran churches' 1577 "Formula of Concord".

This book offers portraits of twenty of the secondary theologians of the Reformation period. In addition to describing a particular theologian, each portrait explores one problem in 16th-century Christian thought. Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and Radical thinkers are all represented in this volume, which serves as both an introduction to the field and a handy reference for scholars.