This semester I am taking a course on Martin Luther. This involves reading a lot of Luther’s writings for the first time, which I have really enjoyed. When reading, rather than merely analyzing the text for class, I often find myself worshiping God or contemplating the horror of my sin or the greatness of the gospel. I recently came across a paragraph that puts into words what I have been thinking and feeling about Luther’s writings:
“No doubt, Luther was not only able to speak of God in uncommonly lively fashion but quite clearly had his own, deep experience of God. What is unique about his speaking of God is that it is never theoretical. It is always clear that where God is concerned we have to do with the Lord of world and history, thus of our own life. There is thus an incomparable concreteness and directness about Luther’s speaking of God. There is no mere doctrine of God, but a statement of faith in ever-new variations to the effect that God calls to life, that he judges and pardons his creatures, and takes them again to himself.”
–Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development, p. 209
