Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel

by Theodore Tappert (Editor)

Martin Luther is often thought of as a world-shaking figure who defied papacy and empire to introduce a reformation in the teaching, worship, organization, and life of the church. Sometimes it is forgotten that he was also a pastor and shepherd of souls. Collected in this volume are Luther's letters of spiritual counsel, which he offered to his contemporaries in the midst of sickness, death, persecution, imprisonment, famine, and political instability. Freshly translated from the original German and Latin, the letters shed light on the fascinating relationship between his pastoral counsel and his theology. Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and indexes, the Library of Christian Classics provides scholars and students with modern English translations of some of the most significant Christian theological texts in history. Through these works--each written prior to the end of the sixteenth century--contemporary readers are able to engage the ideas that have shaped Christian theology and the church through the centuries.

Genres: Theology

364 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was immensely helpful to me in many ways, as it really revealed Martin Luther's pastoral heart and his concern for God's people. The chapters that dealt with issues including melancholy, solitude, the necessity of marriage for ordinary human well-being were particularly good. Some letters, however, did not have that much in them - even the larger-than-life and fun-loving Luther could be boring sometimes. The extracts from his Table Talk were generally good, but I am not sure why they were included in a volume of letters. The real black spot was the letter wherein he branded Ulrich Zwingli as a wicked enemy of the gospel. You just cannot excuse this kind of rhetoric against another minister of the gospel.