Johann Spangenberg (1484–1550), a Lutheran pastor, authored one of the best selling postils1 of the sixteenth century, the Postilla Teütsch, which helped to prepare children to understand the lectionary readings. In this post on Luke 5:1-11 for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity, Spangenberg asserts that Christ’s words penetrated the hearts of the disciples—not merely their…

John Colet (1467–1519) was an English Catholic priest and humanist, who was close to Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536). Colet promoted catechesis as the key to reforming the church. In this comment, Colet weaves together several passages where Paul cries out in astonishment that while we were still sinners, in God’s wisdom, Christ became incarnate, died and…

Katharina Schütz Zell (d. 1562) was an important reformer in the city of Strasbourg. She became infamous for marrying a priest, Matthias Zell (1477–1548), and publishing a defense of him. She wrote several meditations on Scripture, letters of consolation, and polemical treatises on marriage. In this commentary on Philippians 2:5-11, Schütz contemplates the experience of poverty…

Henry Airay (c. 1560–1616) was an English Puritan pastor and professor who strongly opposed schismatic Puritans and what he saw as the Catholicization of the Church of England by William Laud (1573–1645). In this passage from his lectures on Philippians, Airay marvels that the Son of God, true God from true God, condescended to become…

Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575), Zwingli’s successor in Zurich, was a linchpin of Protestant communication ranging from England to Italy, Hungary to France. His correspondence may have consisted of twenty-thousand letters, of which only twelve-thousand are extant. His Second Helvetic Confession (1566) became the definitive Reformed statement of faith, adopted by the Reformed churches of Scotland, Hungary,…

Jesus is the center and substance of Scripture. For our forebears in faith this is an uncontroversial and essential assumption for exegesis. Apart from faith in Christ—itself a gift from the Spirit—Scripture will not open itself. And so, as Christopher Hall puts it, the church fathers and reformers “read Scripture through the prism of Christ’s…

Johann Baumgart (1514–1578) was a pastor who studied under Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon at the University of Wittenberg. This excerpt comes from his postil—a very popular early modern genre that began as a vernacular commentary on the one-year lectionary for simple, untrained or undertrained pastors. Eventually many postil writers intended the postils to be…

Wolfgang Musculus on Ephesians 4:5 Baptism is initiation and consecration in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and it is incorporation into the church and the communion of saints. This is why there is not one baptism for one person and another for another, but all are baptized in the…

John Mayer on Daniel 3:24-25 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the most valiant champions of God, cast into the extremely hot fiery furnace, were seen walking in the furnace with a fourth man being among them like the Son of God… This appearance was certainly a prelude of his future incarnation and after that of his…

In the old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine, A wondrous beauty I see For ‘twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died, To pardon and sanctify me. “The Old Rugged Cross,” George Bennard   For people in the United States, the details of the massacre at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in…

Dirk Philips on Acts 2:5-13 Christ has stepped forward as the peaceful Solomon, our peace and hope before God the Father. Through his apostles who were clothed with power from on high on the day of Pentecost, he has built the temple in Jerusalem, that is, the Christian congregation, and has adorned it with manifold…

Martin Luther on John 6:35 Out of the mass of powerful words in the holy Scripture there is almost no stronger word than that Christ is a bread and meal given by God, and that whoever eats this bread lives forever and becomes content, no longer hungering or thirsting… It is a settled point that…