October 31, 1517

October 31, 1517
Author: Martin E. Marty
Publisher: Paraclete Press
Total Pages: 67
Release: 2016-05-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1612618081

This new book by religion scholar Martin Marty, released in time for the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, shows how Martin Luther’s insights still speak to the church today about reconciliation, repentance and the need for "a change of heart." Included are the 95 Theses of Martin Luther. "The ’one thing’ that opens these pages relates to and, in fact, is the first of ninety-five theses that were proposed five hundred years ago by Martin Luther.... Here is that first thesis, as it was voiced by that influential monk in Germany half a millennium ago: "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ’Repent’ (Matthew 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. So, simply put, this book is about ’repentance’ as a worthy theme for believers to keep in mind if and as they commemorate events of five hundred years ago, events that still shape many features of their lives." — Martin Marty "Martin Marty’s attention to October 31, 1517, the day that Martin Luther promulgated his 95 Theses, provides valuable insights for the past, the present, and the future—why Luther’s articulation of ’repentance’ meant so much then, why his commitment to ’justification’ has now built a bridge for Catholics and Lutherans to work with each other, and why this great event of 500 years ago might herald a hopeful future for Christian believers and all others. There is an awful lot packed readably into this one small book." — Mark Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame "I would not dream of preparing my mind and heart for the celebration of Luther’s role in the Reformation without finding out what Martin Marty has to say on the subject. And he says it here in this wonderful little book. The gifted historian that he is, Marty gives us much solid information. But he also writes eloquently about how best to prepare our souls for the kind of commemoration that also includes some prayers of repentance." —Richard Mouw "This pithy book offers valuable insight on how Luther’s 95 theses have had a profound influence on the ecumenical movement, and can help Christians today understand what it means to be a member of a truly ’catholic’ church." —Kathleen Norris "Martin Marty is the most widely respected historian of Christianity in the United States today. In this little book he with clarity, compassion, and a good dose of common sense shows how Luther’s story is meaningful today." — Rev. John O’Malley, S.J., University Professor, Georgetown University "From one of the world’s most preeminent scholars of religion comes a book about repentance; ...It is a gem."— James Martin, SJ

A World Ablaze

A World Ablaze
Author: Craig Harline
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2017
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0190275189

It's not always easy to find the human Martin Luther underneath the centuries of accumulated myth. A World Ablaze focuses on the drama and uncertainty of the first few critical years of Luther's rise, when his personal struggles with salvation were transformed into a crisis of Christendom.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther
Author: Eric Metaxas
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2017-10-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 110198001X

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Metaxas is a scrupulous chronicler and has an eye for a good story. . . . full, instructive, and pacey.” —The Washington Post From #1 New York Times bestselling author Eric Metaxas comes a brilliant and inspiring biography of the most influential man in modern history, Martin Luther, in time for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation On All Hallow’s Eve in 1517, a young monk named Martin Luther posted a document he hoped would spark an academic debate, but that instead ignited a conflagration that would forever destroy the world he knew. Five hundred years after Luther’s now famous Ninety-five Theses appeared, Eric Metaxas, acclaimed biographer of the bestselling Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, paints a startling portrait of the wild figure whose adamantine faith cracked the edifice of Western Christendom and dragged medieval Europe into the future. Written in riveting prose and impeccably researched, Martin Luther tells the searing tale of a humble man who, by bringing ugly truths to the highest seats of power, caused the explosion whose sound is still ringing in our ears. Luther’s monumental faith and courage gave birth to the ideals of liberty, equality, and individualism that today lie at the heart of all modern life.

Rebel in the Ranks

Rebel in the Ranks
Author: Brad S. Gregory
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2017-09-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0062471201

When Martin Luther published his 95 Theses in October 1517, he had no intention of starting a revolution. But very quickly his criticism of indulgences became a rejection of the papacy and the Catholic Church emphasizing the Bible as the sole authority for Christian faith, radicalizing a continent, fracturing the Holy Roman Empire, and dividing Western civilization in ways Luther—a deeply devout professor and spiritually-anxious Augustinian friar—could have never foreseen, nor would he have ever endorsed. From Germany to England, Luther’s ideas inspired spontaneous but sustained uprisings and insurrections against civic and religious leaders alike, pitted Catholics against Protestants, and because the Reformation movement extended far beyond the man who inspired it, Protestants against Protestants. The ensuing disruptions prompted responses that gave shape to the modern world, and the unintended and unanticipated consequences of the Reformation continue to influence the very communities, religions, and beliefs that surround us today. How Luther inadvertently fractured the Catholic Church and reconfigured Western civilization is at the heart of renowned historian Brad Gregory’s Rebel in the Ranks. While recasting the portrait of Luther as a deliberate revolutionary, Gregory describes the cultural, political, and intellectual trends that informed him and helped give rise to the Reformation, which led to conflicting interpretations of the Bible, as well as the rise of competing churches, political conflicts, and social upheavals across Europe. Over the next five hundred years, as Gregory’s account shows, these conflicts eventually contributed to further epochal changes—from the Enlightenment and self-determination to moral relativism, modern capitalism, and consumerism, and in a cruel twist to Luther’s legacy, the freedom of every man and woman to practice no religion at all. With the scholarship of a world-class historian and the keen eye of a biographer, Gregory offers readers an in-depth portrait of Martin Luther, a reluctant rebel in the ranks, and a detailed examination of the Reformation to explain how the events that transpired five centuries ago still resonate—and influence us—today.

Living I Was Your Plague

Living I Was Your Plague
Author: Lyndal Roper
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2021-05-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0691205302

"Martin Luther inspired strong emotions not only in his religious and political opponents, but also in those who knew him. People either loved or hated him, and even today he can elicit intense emotional reactions. Always a controversial figure, his influence is nonetheless pervasive, particularly in Germany where he has left an indelible imprint on the culture, musical, linguistic, material, and visual. This book reflects on the way Martin Luther carefully crafted an image of himself, how others portrayed him for their own purposes (both during his life and after), and the ongoing legacy of these images. Though Luther had a magnetic quality both in life and in death, Roper does not shy away from discussing and grappling with his less savory side. Luther was highly aggressive and could be foul-mouthed, especially when speaking of his enemies. He was virulently anti-Semitic and he tended toward misogyny, even for a man of his time. Moving nimbly from analysis of Luther's portraits to his dreams, his anti-Pope propaganda, and even the Playmobil Luther figures of today, Roper presents new sides of this complicated man made more complicated by his followers and detractors"--

Martin Luther

Martin Luther
Author: Richard Marius
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2000-11-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674040619

Few figures in history have defined their time as dramatically as Martin Luther. And few books have captured the spirit of such a figure as truly as this robust and eloquent life of Luther. A highly regarded historian and biographer and a gifted novelist and playwright, Richard Marius gives us a dazzling portrait of the German reformer--his inner compulsions, his struggle with himself and his God, the gestation of his theology, his relations with contemporaries, and his responses to opponents. Focusing in particular on the productive years 1516-1525, Marius' detailed account of Luther's writings yields a rich picture of the development of Luther's thought on the great questions that came to define the Reformation. Marius follows Luther from his birth in Saxony in 1483, during the reign of Frederick III, through his schooling in Erfurt, his flight to an Augustinian monastery and ordination to the outbreak of his revolt against Rome in 1517, the Wittenberg years, his progress to Worms, his exile in the Wartburg, and his triumphant return to Wittenberg. Throughout, Marius pauses to acquaint us with pertinent issues: the question of authority in the church, the theology of penance, the timing of Luther's Reformation breakthrough, the German peasantry in 1525, Muntzer's revolutionaries, the whys and hows of Luther's attack on Erasmus. In this personal, occasionally irreverent, always humane reconstruction, Luther emerges as a skeptic who hated skepticism and whose titanic wrestling with the dilemma of the desire for faith and the omnipresence of doubt and fear became an augury for the development of the modern religious consciousness of the West. In all of this, he also represents tragedy, with the goodness of his works overmatched by their calamitous effects on religion and society.

Martin Luther

Martin Luther
Author: Paul L. Maier
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780758606266

A biography of the German monk who led the Protestant Reformation in Europe from its beginning in 1517 until his death in 1546.

Luther and the Hungry Poor

Luther and the Hungry Poor
Author: Samuel Torvend
Publisher:
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2018-01-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781532608407

Martin Luther lived in a society in which malnourishment and hunger were widespread. Samuel Torvend estimates ""that at least fifty if not sixty-five percent of the population were living on the edge of subsistence, unsure each day as to where they would find an adequate supply of food to feed themselves and family members."" In the midst of astounding wealth, the present time also witnesses much hunger and malnourishment throughout the world. Torvend claims that Luther, usually considered a reformer of theology, was committed to the reform of society. His theological project issued forth in a social ethic that addressed the growing incidence of hunger and homelessness in his own time. Yet as Luther's fragmentary writings demonstrate, this theological and ethical project was, and continues to be, communicated through the practice of the reformed Mass. Torvend shows that Martin Luther was keenly aware of the needs of the poor. Along with all major interpreters, he too finds the center of Luther's theology in the concept of God's ""alien righteousness,"" the justification of the sinner by God's sheer grace through faith. But he demonstrates that this conviction had profound implications for Luther's understanding of the Christian life. The baptized were made free to live in this world as the ""sacrament"" of the living Christ, to engage this world as Christ had engaged the world of his time. ""Samuel Torvend's Luther and the Hungry Poor is a very well documented, elegantly written, and comprehensive presentation of Luther's social thought in relation to biblical texts and realities. The beauty of it is that it is not just intellectual information, but embedded in Luther's understanding of the sacraments and his view of the social, economic, and political reality of his time. As a matter of fact, the book can be regarded as a guide of how to relate the authentic Luther to today's realities."" --Prof. Dr. Ulrich Duchrow, Systematic Theology, University of Heidelberg Samuel Torvend is a member of the Department of Religion at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma. He is the author of Daily Bread, Holy Meal: Opening the Gifts of Holy Communion (2004).