Luther's Lectures on Genesis and the Formation of Evangelical Identity / / John A. Maxfield.

• VerfasserIn: Maxfield, John A.,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2008
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies ; 80
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Figures -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Translations -- Abbreviations -- Introduction. WHY THE GENESIS LECTURES ? -- One. PROPHETS AND APOSTLES AT THE PROFESSOR 'S LECTERN -- Two. THE PROFESSOR AND HIS TEXT -- Three. THE ARENA OF GOD 'S PLAY -CHRISTIAN LIFE AND HOLINESS IN THE WORLD -- Four. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE CHRISTIAN PAST -- Five. THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD IN THE LAST DAYS -- Epilogue -- Bibliography -- Index