Psalm 46: 9 (45:10 Vulg.), the Psalm that inspired "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," says: "He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire." In his commentary on the Psalms, the...

For this week's "Melanchthon Monday," we're back to poetry. Below is an epigram consisting of a single elegiac couplet, which I have rendered (with a couple of liberties) into four lines of blank verse. Hope you enjoy it. Subditus esto Deo et ora eum.Subditus esto...

Advent starts tomorrow. In his House Postil sermon on Matthew 21:1-9 for the First Sunday in Advent, Martin Luther contrasts the kingship of Christ, counterintuitively manifested (and therefore hidden) in the lowliness of his carriage into Jerusalem to be betrayed...

Conservative Roman Catholic intellectuals are never more likely to make a misstep than when they comment on Protestants or Protestantism. Such comments frequently mar otherwise worthwhile works, like the birth-mark in Hawthorne's story. Examples abound, to such an...

Did you know that it used to be the common belief that church orders (/agenda/) were matters of public concern and human law, and were not matters of "worship," actually? It's true! Take Johann Gerhard, for instance. In his discussion of "law" in the Loci theologici...

Welcome back to "Melanchthon Monday"! Today we have a passage on the divine sanction protecting the right to own property and the tyranny involved in the magistrate laying hold of it unjustly. The passage comes from my forthcoming translation of Melanchthon's Summary...

Today, November 10, is the anniversary of Martin Luther's birthday in 1483. Luther is best remembered as the impetus and architect of the Reformation. But according to Luther himself, he did nothing; the Word did everything. Here he is, in the second Invocavit sermon...

Without a proper definition of terms, talking is useless, if not worse. If we or our hearers do not know what we are saying, then we are not saying it. Philip Melanchthon seems to have recognized this. Thus in the third stage of the Loci communes/Loci theologici,...

Last year, I wrote an essay for the print edition of Ad Fontes on, as it were (and to paraphrase Tertullian), "creation naturally Christian," suggesting a theology and an eschatology that is built into the season of spring, the season of Cross and Resurrection. In the...

Martin Luther's series of Invocavit sermons has an extremely metal beginning: The summons of death comes to us all, and no one can die for another. Every one must fight his own battle with death by himself, alone. We can shout into another’s ears, but every one must...