Church History

The name “Martin Luther” tends to conjure up solitary images. Whether he was pinning his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, making speeches before an Imperial court at Worms, or hiding out in Wartburg Castle translating the Bible, we often picture Luther alone. But then there are the...

There is an episode from Luther’s life in which he played a prominent role. It is not a story with a happy ending, but we should be familiar with the Marburg Colloquy because it holds important lessons for the Reformed community today. In the middle of the 1520s, key Protestants desired a political...

“Whenever I pray, I pray for a curse upon Erasmus.” That quote appears in Martin Luther’s Table Talk, the same place where he called the Prince of the Humanists “the vilest miscreant that ever disgraced the earth” and quipped that those who do not hate Satan ought to love Erasmus. How did...

Michelangelo’s last sculpture is puzzling – two imprecise figures of Jesus and Mary melting into one, with a fragment of Jesus’s right arm detached from his body. It’s the Pietà Rondanini, the third and last pietà sculpted by the artist, very far from his first and meticulously detailed Vatican...

This week on Theology on the Go, our host, Dr. Jonathan Master is joined by Dr. Robert Kolb. Dr. Kolb was born and raised in Fort Dodge, Iowa, and attended Concordia College, St. Paul, Minn. (1959-1961); Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne, Ind. (1961-1963); and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo...

The Jesuit Jean Pelletier, called by Duke Ercole II of Este to put a stop to the dangerous “Lutheran” practices of his wife Renée, was not impressed by his conversation with the duchess. “The poor woman has no education,” he wrote to his Father Superior, Ignatius of Loyola. “She only knows a few...

The Minister has been in the forefront of Protestant church leadership since the Reformers recovered the primacy of preaching as the means of creating and deepening faith, having dethroned the priest, who was seen by Rome as the central actor in sacrificing Christ anew. But the Reformation...

Today, the title First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women evokes images of an approaching army of terrifying woman-like creatures. Its author, John Knox, meant something quite different. It was the title of a short treatise on government (regiment = rule) held by women, a...

In the summer of 1542, Peter Martyr Vermigli reached the northern side of the Alps with mixed emotions: thankfulness, excitement, relief, but also homesickness, concern, and occasional doubts. Born to Teach Born in Florence, Italy, in 1499, he had entered the Augustinian order at the young age of...

When Martin Luther took his stand at the Diet of Worms, proclaiming, “Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason…, I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God,” [i] he affirmed that divine revelation is the only...