Luther's Works - Volume 78: (Church Postil IV)

About the Volume

This volume brings forth Luther's sermons on Epistle and Gospel texts in the historic one-year lectionary series from the Festival of the Holy Trinity through the Tenth Sunday after Trinity. Additionally, this collection features Luther's sermons on 1 John 4:16-21, never before translated and previously omitted from the Church Postil. Readers will gain new insight from Luther's topics for preaching, including:

• the time between death and resurrection in his sermon on the Gospel for Trinity 1
• warnings about impenitence in the Gospel on the destruction of Jerusalem for Trinity 10
• insightful teaching about the role of God's Law in the lives of believers in the Gospels for Trinity 3 and Trinity 5
• clear teaching on how to distinguish Law and Gospel in the Gospel for Trinity 5

Few other books communicated the Gospel to Luther's contemporaries so powerfully as Luther's Church Postil (sermons for the church year). Now for the first time, Luther's authorized, final edition of the Church Postil, edited originally by Caspar Cruciger for the summer half of the year, is presented here in clear English.

In 1535, Luther wrote to a friend, "Concerning the [earlier version of the] postil, you have more respect for it than I do. I would like the whole book to be destroyed. And this is what I am doing: I am entrusting to Dr. Caspar Cruciger the work of re-editing the whole into a new and better form, which would be of benefit to the whole Church everywhere. He is the sort of man, unless love deceives me, who will correspond to Elisha, if I were Elijah (if one may compare small things with great), a man of peace and quiet, to whom I shall commend the church after [I depart] ..."

About the Series

The 28 planned new volumes are intended to reflect both modern and sixteenth-century interests and to expand the coverage of genres underrepresented in the existing volumes, such as Luther's sermons and disputations. The primary basis for the translation is the comprehensive Weimar edition.