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Products>Luther's Treatise On Christian Freedom and Its Legacy

Luther's Treatise On Christian Freedom and Its Legacy

Publisher:
, 2019
ISBN: 9781978710665
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This book analyzes Luther’s treatise On Christian Freedom and its revolutionary re-definition of what it means to be Christian as one freed by Christ from sin, the accusation of God’s law, and death in order to be bound or bonded to the neighbor. Robert Kolb puts the treatise in its historical context, tracing its key ideas as they developed out of his medieval background, and as they continued to mature throughout his life. A contextual analysis of the text accompanies an overview of how this treatise was used or ignored throughout subsequent centuries, including the more extensive impact it has had in the last half century.

Refreshingly abandoning the twentieth-century quest for the ‘moment’ of Luther’s ‘breakthrough,’ Robert Kolb explores the ‘evangelical maturation’ of an actual human being, rooted in history, searching for the favor of a holy God. As a result of the gospel: A lord of all and servant of all? Luther’s ‘On Christian Freedom’ has been rarely understood from within the Reformer’s own categories and experience. Anyone who thinks that Luther has nothing practical to say about the Christian life must read this informative and pleasurable work.

Robert Kolb offers an illuminating exploration of Luther’s 1520 treatise, On Christian Freedom. His account of Luther’s life as “A life lived freely” provides an almost lyrical account of the Reformer’s life. His discussion of the development of Luther’s understanding of freedom is insightful, not only presenting a careful reading of Luther in his context, but also shedding critical light on the individual focus of much modern rhetoric of freedom. The reception history of On Christian Freedom, after intense engagement during the sixteenth century, shows a long period of relative neglect, transformed in the twenty-first century by the rediscovery of On Christian Freedom as "Luther’s Most Beloved Writing.”

For those wearied by the spate of Luther books produced for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, Kolb’s succinct description of Luther’s life and his trenchant analysis of the Reformer’s tract, Freedom of a Christian come as a welcomed relief. Sharpened through a lifetime of reading Reformation sources, Kolb outlines how Luther’s concept of freedom reveals an entirely other face of the gospel and Christian life. The third section of the book, tracing the later influence of the tract (or lack thereof), is a tour-de-force for sketching the influence of Luther’s thought. This is a “must read” for pastors, students, and interested lay persons—anyone who wishes to recapture the heart and soul of Luther’s reform of the church.

Robert Kolb is professor of systematic theology emeritus at Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis. He is the coeditor of the translation of the Book of Concord (2000) and of the Oxford Handbook of Martin Luther’s Theology (2014). He has authored Luther’s Wittenberg World (2018), Martin Luther and the Enduring Word of God (2016), Luther and the Stories of God (2012), and Martin Luther: Confessor of the Faith (2009).

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    $45.00