Luther's Lectures on Genesis and the Formation of Evangelical Identity. This item is unavailable.Luther's Lectures on Genesis and the Formation of Evangelical Identity

Martin Luther's lectures on Genesis, delivered at the University of Wittenberg during the last decade of his life and later published by his students, allow modern readers to view a sixteenth-century professor engaging his students with the text of scripture and using that text to form them spiritually. The lectures show how Luther attempted to form in his students a new identity, an Evangelical identity, enabling them to make sense of the rapidly changing society and church in which they were being prepared to serve, primarily as pastors in the developing territorial churches of the Reformation.

This study uses the text of the lectures to outline the contours of the new identity that Luther laid out through his exposition of Genesis. They include how Luther approached and taught his students to perceive the text of holy scripture; how that text unveiled for Luther the nature of Christian life in the world; and how Luther taught his students to view the past, the present, and the future of the church and the world through the book of Genesis.

Whether in the published editions of the lectures the historic Luther was actually misunderstood or was transformed in some way into the prophetic Luther of later memory, the text reveals the Luther that his students heard and subsequent generations read.

John A. Maxfield is Professor of History and Religious Studies at Concordia University of Edmonton, in Alberta, Canada. He received his PhD in history from Princeton Theological Seminary and completed his theological studies at Concordia Theological Seminary. He continues research in the German Reformation and the theology and life of Dr. Martin Luther, focusing especially on the cultural contexts and influences of religion in the history of Western civilization. His published articles include studies of Saint Augustine’s understanding of history and Luther’s expositions of the Bible in his university lectures and their publication by his students. Maxfield's current research focuses on the development and implementation of the Reformation in the town of Brunswick (Braunschweig) in Lower Saxony.