The opposition between God and humanity’s corruption is a common theme in Paul’s anthropology, and so it is unsurprising that it becomes central to the anthropologies of many of the reformers as well. In his commentary on Romans 8, Lutheran Johannes Brenz (1499-1570) uses the illustration of a wolf among sheep to demonstrate the enmity…

Genesis 2:7 states, “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” But what does “the breath of life” refer to? Is it the Holy Spirit? Is it a life force? Is it a human soul?…

The shepherd boy didn’t begin his week expecting to face down a blood-thirsty giant anymore than you may be facing an unexpected challenge in your life. How should one cope? According to the Puritan pastor Henry Airay (c.1560–1616), the people of God should face challenges the same way that David faced Goliath—without fear and drawing…

Preaching on Peter’s explanation of why “we must obey God rather than human beings,” the Swiss reformer Rudolf Gwalther (1519–1586) recognizes the gospel tersely stated. Here Peter teaches that Christ pays for us a debt that we cannot pay and bestows on us a righteousness that we cannot achieve. The Benefits of Christ Are Repentance…

Contrary to popular misconception, the Reformation did not halt the use of allegorical interpretation. Alongside many of his contemporaries, Martin Luther (1483–1546) sought meaning beyond the literal-historical sense; however, he required that these spiritual interpretations be aligned with the rule of faith, thus adapted to Christ, the church, and the catechism (that is, the Ten…

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…

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…

Huldrych Zwingli on Luke 24:13-18 That same day on which the Lord had risen, two of those seventy disciples whom the Lord had chosen while he was living went forth. It appears that these disciples fled out of fear of the persecution which they believed to be at hand. This history also teaches that what…

Martin Luther on Luke 24:1-8 You have heard about Christ’s resurrection, how it happened and why, and how we ourselves should benefit from it. This Gospel also teaches about such an application of the resurrection. For in the first place it is a great thing that the beloved angels are the first messengers who bring…

John Boys on Luke 24:1-8 Mary and the other women sought Christ on the first day of the week, and in the first hour of the day, but many put off seeking the Lord until the last week of their life, the last day of the week, the last hour of the day, the last minute…

Before we look at the most vocal and serious revisionist account of Pauline theology, it will be helpful to get our bearings by providing a sketch of the so-called traditional interpretation of Paul. Douglas Moo provides one of the clearest, most nuanced, and exegetically rigorous accounts of this take on Paul’s theology. Paul’s theology, on…

How can sinners find a gracious God? How can the unrighteous be made or declared righteous in the presence of a holy and perfect God? These questions, of course, presume that humanity has—to put it mildly—a problem, an incredible and desperate plight that can only be rectified by God. Traditional Protestant interpretations of Paul generally…