Sola: Christ, Grace, Faith, and Scripture Alone in Martin Luther’s Theology
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
Leppin explores the four “solas” of Reformation theology--Christ, grace, faith, and scripture--as both anchored in the culture of late-medieval devotion and representing new, firmly demarcated formulae. Luther’s four pillars became clarion calls in the fight against the medieval church. Leppin helps readers understand, however, that in the journey toward these new theological understandings, continuity and discontinuity were inextricably linked. Luther built upon the foundations of his late-medieval world, even as he articulated the sola Christus, sola gratia, sola fide, and sola scriptura foundations that would change Christianity forever. Along the way, these principles functioned as integrative, continuous ideas and exclusive, demarcating ones at the same time.
Luther’s world was a new and fundamentally different theological realm, but Sola: Christ, Grace, Faith, and Scripture Alone in Martin Luther’s Theology also shows us the ways Luther and his thought were products of the personalities and intellectual origins from which they came.
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- Explores the Reformation’s four “solas” in their medieval context and as new theological formulae
- Helps readers understand the link between continuity and discontinuity in Luther’s journey to these ideas
- Shows how Luther’s background shaped his fundamentally different theological realm
- Introduction: From Inclusiveness to Exclusiveness. How Luther Transformed Medieval Ideas and Shaped Reformation
- 1. Critique of Indulgences in the Late Middle Ages
- 2. “Solus Christus” from Late Medieval Passion Piety to Reformation Faith
- 3. “Sola Gratia.” Penitence and Grace in Luther’s Early Theology
- 4. Sola fide and Monastic Existence. The Amalgamation of Paul and Mysticism in Luther’s Romans Lectures
- 5. Sola scriptura. The Genesis of the Reformation’s Scriptural Principle. Observations Concerning Luther’s Conflict with John Eck until the Leipzig Disputation
- 6. How Does Luther See Scripture Explaining Scripture? A Look at Luther’s Pneumatic Hermeneutics
- 7. “For the Letter Kills, but the Spirit Gives Life.” Interpreting 2 Corinthians 3:6 in the Middle Ages and the Reformation Era
- Bibliography
- Index
- Lutheran Quarterly Books
- Sources
The great “solas” of Reformation theology have taken on a life of their own, but to be more than slogans they have always needed explication and contextualization. With Volker Leppin’s usual combination of erudition and boldness, his new book does just that, both setting out the complex origins of these simple slogans and showing us the richness of the theological and devotional context in which Luther works his way toward them. Again, Leppin shows us a lively, active, creative Luther pushing forward to a deeper and more powerful understanding of God’s Word made flesh as the heart of Christian faith.
—Dr. R. Guy Erwin, president and Ministerium of Pennsylvania Professor of Reformation Studies, United Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg and Philadelphia; former bishop of Southwest California Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Volker Leppin’s careful scholarship on Luther’s theology is full of historical insight and ecumenical promise, but until now it has largely been available only to German readers. Thankfully, with Sola, Leppin’s nuanced approach to Luther’s thought is introduced to the broader English-speaking world. The Luther that emerges from Leppin’s attentive analysis is one deeply embedded in the mystical-monastic theology of his late-medieval context. As such, his thought develops and maintains these broader continuities even as it transforms them into a potent evangelical theology. A welcome and necessary work for all serious students of the Reformation.
—Dr. Erik H. Herrmann, author of The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 1520: The Annotated Luther Study Edition
In a historical moment of social polarization and division, Sola takes on the conceptual monoliths that define Protestant identity and continue to construct a polemical thought-world that separates “us” (Protestants) from “them” (Roman Catholics): sola gratia, sola fides, sola Christi, and sola scriptura. With the incisive historical and theological analysis that we’ve come to expect from Volker Leppin, he shows that these so-called “principles” of the Reformation are actually “vessels for content from the Middle Ages.” They demonstrate that Luther and the Wittenberg reformers were engaging theological movements taking shape across Europe in the preceding centuries; the “solas” developed slowly as both distinctive flavors of the emerging Reformation theology and its intended contributions back into those medieval traditions. In this regard, Leppin shows that the “solas” do not define Protestants as intrinsically different than Catholics, but rather point to our “common stock” and reinforce current ecumenical impulses that seek to overcome divide and bring formerly opposing sides back to a common table.
—Dr. Candace L. Kohli, assistant professor of Lutheran systematic theology and global Lutheranism, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago