Robert Kolb is professor emeritus of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, and a world-renowned authority on Martin Luther and the history of the Reformation. [1]
Robert Kolb was born on June 17, 1941, in Fort Dodge, Iowa. He married Pauline J. Ansorge on August 14, 1965. [2]
He attended Concordia Senior College, Fort Wayne, Indiana, from which he earned the B.A. in 1963. He graduated from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri with a Master of Divinity in 1967 and a Master of Sacred Theology in 1968. He attended the University of Wisconsin—Madison from which he obtained an M.A. in 1969 and a Ph.D. in 1973, studying under the prominent Reformation scholar Robert M. Kingdon. [2]
Kolb served as director of the Center for Reformation Research at Concordia Seminary from 1973 to 1977. He then taught at Concordia College in St. Paul, Minnesota, in various roles from 1977 to 1993, including serving as acting president from 1989 to 1990. From there he joined Concordia Seminary as missions professor of Systematic Theology, a position he held until his retirement in 2009. While at Concordia Seminary, he also served as director of the Institute for Mission Studies. From 1994 to 2010, he spent three months each year teaching at educational institutes in other parts of the world. [3]
Kolb has served as associate editor and coeditor of The Sixteenth Century Journal and as co-editor of Lutheran Mission Matters. He has served as president of two academic societies: the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference (1981-1982) and the Society for Reformation Research (1994-1996). [3] He has been a member of the Continuation Committee of the International Congress for Luther Research since 1993, and is a member of the Society for Reformation Research. [4]
Robert Kolb is internationally recognized as one of "the most respected scholars of the Reformation" [1] and "one of the best historians of Luther at work today". [5] His work has garnered multiple accolades and awards, including honorary doctorates from Valparaiso University in 2000; Concordia University in Irvine, California, in 2005; Concordia University in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2008; and Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 2017. [2] [6] In 2013, he was awarded the Hermann Sasse Prize for theological literature by the Lutherische Theologische Hochschule in Oberursel, Germany—the first American to ever receive the award. [7]
A Festschrift in Kolb's honor was published in 2018, entitled From Wittenberg to the World: Essays on the Reformation and its Legacy in Honor of Robert Kolb. In addition to his historical research on the Reformation, the Festschrift highlights several of Kolb's particular contributions to the study of theology, including the recovery of Luther's distinction of the Two Kinds of Righteousness, his emphasis on the Word of God's conversational and performative aspects, and the significance of the created world in all aspects of Christian theology. [2]
Notable among Kolb's numerous publications is the 2000 edition of The Book of Concord, which he edited along with Timothy J. Wengert. Its publication was hailed "a historic moment" by some, [8] although others questioned the edition's use of the September 1531 octave edition of the Augsburg Confession rather than the earlier quarto edition, which has been used in all other editions of the Book of Concord. [9]
Philip Melanchthon was a German Lutheran reformer, collaborator with Martin Luther, the first systematic theologian of the Protestant Reformation, an intellectual leader of the Lutheran Reformation, and influential designer of educational systems.
Georg Major was a Lutheran theologian of the Protestant Reformation.
The Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences is a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, then a professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany. The Theses is retrospectively considered to have launched the Protestant Reformation and the birth of Protestantism, despite various proto-Protestant groups having existed previously. It detailed Luther's opposition to what he saw as the Roman Catholic Church's abuse and corruption by Catholic clergy, who were selling plenary indulgences, which were certificates supposed to reduce the temporal punishment in purgatory for sins committed by the purchasers or their loved ones.
Katharina von Bora, after her wedding Katharina Luther, also referred to as "die Lutherin", was the wife of the German reformer Martin Luther and a seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation. Although little is known about her, she is often considered to have been important to the Reformation, her marriage setting a precedent for Protestant family life and clerical marriage.
Crypto-Calvinism is a pejorative term describing a segment of those members of the Lutheran Church in Germany who were accused of secretly subscribing to Calvinist doctrine of the Eucharist in the decades immediately after the death of Martin Luther in 1546. It denotes what was seen as a hidden Calvinist belief, i.e., the doctrines of John Calvin, by members of the Lutheran Church. The term crypto-Calvinist in Lutheranism was preceded by terms Zwinglian and Sacramentarian. Also, Jansenism has been accused of crypto-Calvinism by Roman Catholics.
The Book of Concord (1580) or Concordia is the historic doctrinal standard of the Lutheran Church, consisting of ten credal documents recognized as authoritative in Lutheranism since the 16th century. They are also known as the symbolical books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
This is a sub-page for the Justification (theology) page.
The Apology of the Augsburg Confession was written by Philipp Melanchthon during and after the 1530 Diet of Augsburg as a response to the Pontifical Confutation of the Augsburg Confession, Charles V's commissioned official Roman Catholic response to the Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 25 June 1530. It was intended to be a defense of the Augsburg Confession and a refutation of the Confutation. It was signed as a confession of faith by leading Lutheran magnates and clergy at the meeting of the Smalkaldic League in February, 1537, and subsequently included in the German [1580] and Latin [1584] Book of Concord. As the longest document in the Book of Concord it offers the most detailed Lutheran response to the Roman Catholicism of that day as well as an extensive Lutheran exposition of the doctrine of Justification.
The Smalcald Articles or Schmalkald Articles are a summary of Lutheran doctrine, written by Martin Luther in 1537 for a meeting of the Schmalkaldic League in preparation for an intended ecumenical Council of the Church.
The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537), The Tractate for short, is the seventh Lutheran credal document of the Book of Concord. Philip Melanchthon, its author, completed it on 17 February 1537 during the assembly of princes and theologians in Smalcald.
Lutheranism as a religious movement originated in the early 16th century Holy Roman Empire as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church. The movement originated with the call for a public debate regarding several issues within the Catholic Church by Martin Luther, then a professor of Bible at the young University of Wittenberg. Lutheranism soon became a wider religious and political movement within the Holy Roman Empire owing to support from key electors and the widespread adoption of the printing press. This movement soon spread throughout northern Europe and became the driving force behind the wider Protestant Reformation. Today, Lutheranism has spread from Europe to all six populated continents.
The theology of Martin Luther was instrumental in influencing the Protestant Reformation, specifically topics dealing with justification by faith, the relationship between the Law and Gospel, and various other theological ideas. Although Luther never wrote a systematic theology or a "summa" in the style of St. Thomas Aquinas, many of his ideas were systematized in the Lutheran Confessions.
This is a selected list of works by and about Martin Luther, the German theologian. The emphasis is on English language materials.
The Lutheran liturgical calendar is a listing which details the primary annual festivals and events that are celebrated liturgically by various Lutheran churches. The calendars of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) are from the 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship and the calendar of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) and the Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC) use the Lutheran Book of Worship and the 1982 Lutheran Worship. Elements unique to the ELCA have been updated from the Lutheran Book of Worship to reflect changes resulting from the publication of Evangelical Lutheran Worship in 2006. The elements of the calendar unique to the LCMS have also been updated from Lutheran Worship and the Lutheran Book of Worship to reflect the 2006 publication of the Lutheran Service Book.
Tuomo Mannermaa was professor emeritus of ecumenical theology at University of Helsinki. He is known especially for his theological criticism of the Leuenberg Concord and his research on the relationship between justification and theosis in the theology of Martin Luther. His initiating and furthering this research caused him to be regarded as the father of "The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther" or "the Finnish School of Tuomo Mannermaa".
Eric W. Gritsch was an American Lutheran ecumenical theologian and Luther scholar.
The Augsburg Confession, also known as the Augustan Confession or the Augustana from its Latin name, Confessio Augustana, is the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church and one of the most important documents of the Protestant Reformation. The Augsburg Confession was written in both German and Latin and was presented by a number of German rulers and free-cities at the Diet of Augsburg on 25 June 1530.
The two kinds of righteousness is a Lutheran paradigm. It attempts to define man's identity in relation to God and to the rest of creation. The two kinds of righteousness is explicitly mentioned in Luther's 1518 sermon entitled "Two Kinds of Righteousness", in Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), in his On the Bondage of the Will, Melanchthon's Apology of the Augsburg Confession, and in the third article of the Formula of Concord. It is also the implicit presupposition governing Luther's On the Freedom of a Christian as well as other works.
Irene Dingel is a German historian and a Protestant theologian.
A Luther Monument is a monument dedicated to the reformer Martin Luther. The oldest one from 1821 is in Wittenberg. The largest one, the Luther Monument in Worms, was unveiled in 1868 as a composition of several statues, designed by Ernst Rietschel. Several monuments in the United States use a copy of Rietschel's main statue, including the Luther Monument in Washington, D.C., from 1884.
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