'Abba! Father!' (Galatians 4:6): Justification and Assurance in Martin Luther's Lectures on Galatians (1535)
Joseph Lortz and Jared Wicks, the two greatest twentieth-century Roman Catholic scholars of Luther, reach opposite conclusions about Luther’s attitude toward religious experience. For Lortz, Luther was a subjectivist through and through, but for Wicks, Luther was an opponent of religiosities of subj...
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
[2018]
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| In: |
Biblical research
Year: 2018, Volume: 63, Pages: 15-28 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Bible. Galaterbrief 4,6
/ abba
/ Abba
/ Luther, Martin 1483-1546
/ Justification
/ Reformation
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| IxTheo Classification: | CB Christian life; spirituality HC New Testament KAG Church history 1500-1648; Reformation; humanism; Renaissance KDD Protestant Church NBK Soteriology NBM Doctrine of Justification |
| Further subjects: | B
Bible. Galatians; Theology
B Experience (Religion); Christianity B Justification; Biblical teaching B Bible. Galaterbrief 4,6 B Assurance (Theology) B Abba (Word) B Luther, Martin, 1483-1546 |
| Summary: | Joseph Lortz and Jared Wicks, the two greatest twentieth-century Roman Catholic scholars of Luther, reach opposite conclusions about Luther’s attitude toward religious experience. For Lortz, Luther was a subjectivist through and through, but for Wicks, Luther was an opponent of religiosities of subjective experience. I argue that these different judgments are rooted in a polarity within Luther’s attitudes themselves. In his exegesis of Gal 4:6, Luther expounds justification by faith in powerfully experiential terms, but the experience involved is that of trusting in the divine promises contained in Scripture and therefore knowing an assurance of salvation, oftenin defiance of all other human experiences and the feelings they evoke. Justification is for Luther a kind of “anti-experience” by which everything else in human experience is to be evaluated, and not vice versa. The implications of this are assessed for interpretation of Luther in the liberal Protestant tradition and in contemporary historical scholarship. |
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| ISSN: | 0067-6535 |
| Reference: | Kritik in "Response (2018)"
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Biblical research
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