Ad Fontes Witebergenses

$19.95 (358 pages; Paperback), $29.95 (358 pages; Hardback)

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This volume features revised and edited versions of 19 papers originally presented at “Lutheranism and the Classics II: Reading the Church Fathers,” a conference held at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, September 28-29, 2012. Each article represents an attempt to return ad fontes Witebergenses, “to the fountainheads of Wittenberg,” in order to reclaim the ancient sources to which not only Renaissance humanists but also the Lutheran reformers turned for inspiration. These sources include not only the Scriptures in their original languages, but also the Greek and Latin writings of the church’s most formative “fathers.” This last term is defined broadly for the purposes of this volume to include earlier and more catholic doctores ecclesiae, like Jerome and Chrysostom, as well as later and specifically Lutheran teachers of the church who wrote extensively in Latin, including, most prominently, Luther himself, but also Melanchthon, Chemnitz, and others. Included, too, among these fontes are the traditional hymns, liturgy, and music of the church through the ages (think Ambrose and Bach), to say nothing of the enduring literary masterpieces of the world’s great poets and thinkers — from Homer and Virgil to Cicero and Augustine — that have served for centuries as the mainstays of a well-rounded liberal arts curriculum. This volume should appeal to a wide range of readers in the Lutheran church, students of the classics, and others. Some of the papers are specialized and break new ground; these will be of interest primarily to established scholars, graduate students, and the like. But the volume also includes contributions that are intended to reach “amateurs” (in the original sense of the word), who simply would love to learn more about the critical importance of the “classics,” broadly defined, for the preservation of theological integrity, the renewal of confessional identity, and genuine church growth. By seeking to recover, even at this late date, the rich and distinctive identity they have inherited from the past, Lutherans may, paradoxically enough, discover how best to be freely and fully Lutheran in the future.

This volume should appeal to a wide range of readers in the Lutheran church, students of the classics, and others. Some of the papers are specialized and break new ground; these will be of interest primarily to established scholars, graduate students, and the like. But the volume also includes contributions that are intended to reach “amateurs” (in the original sense of the word), who simply would love to learn more about the critical importance of the “classics,” broadly defined, for the preservation of theological integrity, the renewal of confessional identity, and genuine church growth. By seeking to recover, even at this late date, the rich and distinctive identity they have inherited from the past, Lutherans may, paradoxically enough, discover how best to be freely and fully Lutheran in the future.

Contents

• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Christianity and the Classics
• 1. What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?
  Steven A. Hein
• 2. Virgil and Augustine in Luther’s De servo arbitrio
  E. Christian Kopff
• 3. The Virtuous Anger of God: Lactantius’ De ira dei in Conversation with the Philosophy of Antiquity
  William C. Weinrich
• From North Africa to Saxony
• 4. The Disputation between Athanasius and Arius: Luther’s First Reading Assignment while a Novice in the Augustinian Friary of Erfurt in 1505
  Franz Posset
• 5. Martin Luther and the Pre-Augustinian African Fathers
  Mark Ellingsen
• 6. Translating Cyril of Alexandria into Life and Ministry
  David R. Maxwell
• Jerome, the Bible, and the Reformers
• 7. Jerome, His Biblical Scholarship, and Luther
  Dr. Walter A. Maier III
• 8. In faciem ei restiti: Argument and Authority in Galatians 2, the Fathers, and the Reformers
  E. J. Hutchinson
• The Latin Language and Lutheran Theology
• 9. Luther and the Latin Language
  Cameron A. MacKenzie
• 10. A Case for Latin: A Linguistic Note on Large Catechism II, 66
  Larry W. Myers
• Literary Studies and the Gospel
• 11. Interpreting the Speaker of the Text: Homeric Scholarship and the Fathers and Luther on Psalms
  Jason Soenksen
• 12. The Muses Play David’s Cithara: Helius Eobanus Hessus’s Latin Versification of the Psalter
  Joshua J. Hayes
• 13. Comedy, Epic, and Genre Criticism in Christoph Corner’s Oeconomia Evangeliorum
  Christian Preus
• 14. Classical Allusions in a Piece by Philip Melanchthon
  John Nordling
• The Catalog of Testimonies
• 15. Cyril of Alexandria’s Christology in the Catalog of Testimonies and the Confessions
  Joel C. Elowsky
• 16. Chemnitz’s Use of the Latin and Greek Fathers in his Loci Theologici and the Catalogus Testimoniorum
  Martin R. Noland
• Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs
• 17. The Retention of the Latin Sequence in the Early Lutheran Church
  Jason Luke Thompson
• 18. Liturgy as Pedagogy in Lutheran Service Books, 1540–1590: Marginalia, Meter, and Music
  Esther Criscuola de Laix
• 19. Bach’s Latin
  Carl P.E. Springer
• Works Cited
• Index
• List of Figures