Faith in Luther: Martin Luther and the Origin of Anthropocentric Religion
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
To mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, Paul Hacker’s landmark study Faith in Luther: Martin Luther and the Origin of Anthropocentric Religion appears now in a new English edition.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, in his final memoir in 2016, remembers Paul Hacker as “a great master, someone with an unbelievably broad education, someone who knew the Fathers, knew Luther, and had mastered the whole history of Indian religion from scratch. What he wrote always had something new about it, he always went right to the bottom of things.” No doubt one of the “things” he was referring to was Martin Luther’s view of faith, which Hacker explores in this text.
A unique contribution to ecumenical studies, Faith in Luther engages the primary texts of Luther, assessing them for how they reveal Luther’s novel conception of faith and how the development of “reflexive faith” impacted Luther’s spirituality and theology—and the world.
- Contributes to ecumenical studies
- Engages the primary texts of Luther, assessing them for how they reveal Luther’s novel conception of faith
- Shows how the development of “reflexive faith” impacted Luther’s spirituality and theology—and the world
- Foreword
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chapter One—The New Conception of Faith
- 1. A Reinterpretation of the Creed
- 2. Reflexivity
- 3. Assertiveness
- 4. Reflexivity and Personal Relationship to Christ
- Chapter Two—From Humility to Opposition
- 1. A Fateful Misinterpretation
- 2. Desolation, Consolation, and Despair
- 3. Opposition
- Chapter Three—Faith and Holy Scripture
- 1. The Word of Promise or the Hermeneutic Principle
- 2. Luther’s Arguments from Scripture
- 3. Reflexive Faith and the New Testament
- Chapter Four—Faith and Love
- 1. “Love Informed by Faith”
- 2. Love, Works, and Merit
- 3. Secularization
- Chapter Five—The Sacraments and the Church
- 1. A New Theory of the Sacrament of Penance
- 2. The Dissolution of the Theology of the Cross
- 3. Sacraments as Exercises in Certitude
- 4. A Reinterpretation of the Eucharist
- 5. Reflexive Faith and the Church
- Chapter Six—Disjointed Spirituality
- 1. Dread, Defiance, and Pride
- 2. Escapism
- 3. Antithetical Correlationism
Having grown up as a Lutheran who studied and taught Lutheran theology (and Luther’s own theology), I am deeply familiar with the theology as well as the psychology of Luther’s notion of reflexive faith. I am not aware of a more penetrating and exacting analysis of what Paul Hacker takes to be the heart of Luther’s Reformation theology.
—Reinhard Hütter, The Catholic University of America
Paul Hacker was a scholar’s scholar—fluent in eighteen languages and one of Germany’s great academic luminaries in the twentieth century. In Faith in Luther he develops a critical insight into Luther’s strikingly new concept of faith, which practically redefined our understanding of faith and subjectivity in the West. Essential reading for theologians, ecumenists, and historians of religion.
—Scott Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville