Hercules Germanicus (Luther's Fortress, by James Reston, Jr.) (original) (raw)

From Faith to the Text and Back Again: Martin Luther on the Trinity in the Old Testament

Pro Ecclesia

In the fourth volume of his study of the Christian tradition, Jaroslav Pelikan observed somewhat cryptically that the Reformation doctrine of justification should be understood as a development not only from Augustinian theological anthropology, but from the dogma of the Holy Trinity as well. 1 That markedly Catholic reading of Reformation theology as a whole stands in rather sharp contrast to the judgment made by the great Adolph von Harnack just a century ago. Having drunk perhaps a bit too deeply from the wells of Ritschlian theology, Harnack labeled Martin Luther's Trinitarian doctrine an "unspeakable confusion." On Harnack's account, Luther's confusion resulted quite naturally from the fact that he did not actually believe in the Trinitarian God of the Catholic tradition. 1. Jaroslav Pelikan, Reformation of Church and Dogma, vol. 4 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 156-58. For a somewhat fuller development of this point, see his Obedient Rebels: Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle in Luther's Reformation (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 47-48. For a more traditionally Lutheran angle on the relationship between Luther's doctrine of justification and his doctrine of God, see Paul Althaus, "Gottes Gottheit als Sinn der Rechtfertigungslehre Luthers," Luther)ahrbuài 13 (1931): 1-28. Althaus does not attempt to ground Luther's doctrine of justification in his Trinitarian theology but instead attempts to show that it rests on his prior insistence that the theologian "let God be God"-i.e., that Christians should understand themselves as creatures utterly determined by God's word of grace and promise.

The Impact of Martin Luther's German Bible Translation

The Impact of Martin Luther's German Bible Translation, 2018

This seminar paper was written in partial fulfillment of the requirements for CH 9551-2 - The Protestant Reformation. The paper describes the contribution of Martin Luther for Bible translation.

The King James Version and Luther’s Bible Translation

2011

Graham Tomlin here examines perhaps two of the most influential Reformation texts: Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible (1534) and the King James Version (1611). He shows how their different emphases reflect different strands in tension within the Reformation as well as their different historical contexts. For Luther, translation should be idiomatic and so accessible, theological and the work of a faith-ful translator who has been humbled by God’s grace. His is a translation of immanence and incarnation into his culture. In contrast, the KJV is not concerned to propound a particular theological standpoint but seeks simplicity and the integrity of precise translation of the original languages. It thus preserves the Scripture’s strangeness and trusts the reader with the text’s uncertainties.

The Luther Bible

David Whitford (ed.), Martin Luther in Context, Cambridge: CUP, 2018

Martin Luther's New Testament Translation: Influence on German Society

2018

Martin Luther, the father of the Christian Reformation Movement, translated the New Testament from Greek into the German language in 1522 CE. Luther's primary goal in doing the translation work was to educate German people and make the Bible more easily accessible to the lower echelons of society. He was not happy with the Roman Catholic tradition of keeping the understanding and interpretation of the Bible to a select few within the vehicle of a language that was not widely understood.

Martin Luther’s German Translation of the Bible – a Popular or Populist Approach?

Religious dialogue and cooperation

The German Catholic monk Martin Luther (1483−1546), reformer and rebel, who created a schism in the Roman Catholic and Protestant/Evangelical churches, is also well known for his translation of the Bible from Hebrew (original: Old Testament) and Greek (original: New Testament) into German. In conflict with the then-head of the Roman Catholic Church, later even causing a dispute with the Pope and the Vatican because of its reform topics, he was guided by the premise that the Bible should be understood predominantly by the people, and not only by the clergy and the authorities. Luther's idea results in a German Bible translation that departs from the sacral Hebrew, Greek, and also Latin (Vulgate) language dogmas moving toward a linguistic interpretation that "looks into the people's mouths" ("Dem Volke aufs Maul schauen"). This kind of specific rendering leads Luther to break with tradition twice: firstly by using primarily the original linguistic codes and registers and secondly by breaking free from the sacramental function of the original Bible text by not translating literally (word-for-word), which was the case with previous German Bible translations. The paper highlights the fact that Luther's rendering of the Bible united the Germans linguistically and laid the foundations for the so-called German unitary language. In addition, the paper discusses whether the popularization of the German language in the Bible establishes greater proximity to the believers and may be viewed as a popular or even populist instrument.

The Word of God in Martin Luther's Theology

and Keywords Luther develops a new concept of the Word of God that concentrates on the word and image of Christ. He uses performative images and presence metaphors not only in the field of Christology, but also in the field of creation and consummation. The Word of God and the image of Christ are the only medial possibilities for proclaiming the presence of God with the prevalence of the oral word over the written word (scripture). Christ is understood as the personal Word of God, which can be communicated only through interpersonal mediality and polysemy. The cultural technique of communication makes faith possible (e.g., through the sermon, Lord's Supper, or baptism). Rhetoric is the effective and affective way to communicate this Word of God. The rhetoric of the crucified as the imaginative Word of God is the medium that liberates the believer from being entangled with sin, hell, and death. Yet speech cannot be functionalized to become a guaranteed presence of this word—although Christ understands himself as a communicator. At the same time, his word is a rhetorical strategy for coping with the absence of God. The cry at the cross, " My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? " (Mark 15:34) is a verbal expression of the complete Godforsakenness of the crucified. The words on the cross express the radical absence of God. The rhapsodic cry is centered on abandonment. It cannot be whitewashed by ontology or logic. With these words Luther accentuates the negativity of the dead body as a communicative practice. The Word of God (and the word of the Christian) is characterized by polysemy: the word of the resurrection of Christ is gospel. Only this oral word enables the perception of resurrection. In many other dogmatic fields, such as creation, theological anthropology, incarnation, the sacraments, ecclesiology, and eschatology, faith and words belong together because God's companionship with us is verbal. The iconic and metaphoric character of the word is not a representation of the fourfold sense of scripture, but a unique way to accentuate the performativity and at the same time the polysemy of the Word of God.