Luther's Works, Volume 67 (Annotations on Matthew: Chapters

About the Volume This volume contains Annotations on Matthew 1–18 (1534–35/1538), and the first chapter of Sermons on Matthew 18–24 (1537–40/1796–1847). In December 1533, a new cycle of preaching on Matthew began in the Wittenberg Castle Church. Luther himself inaugurated the series with three sermons on Matthew 1. Then the preaching on Matthew was assigned to the Wittenberg doctoral student Hieronymus Weller (1499–1572). Behind Weller’s sermons, however, stood Luther, who prepared notes to help his student preach. The notes touched both on the interpretation of the scriptural passages and on homiletical strategies for preaching them. In annotating Matthew’s text for another doctor of theology, Luther grappled with questions of the exegesis of the Synoptic Gospels at a high level of technical detail. Luther drew especially on the discipline of rhetoric—the use of language to persuade and move human beings—to interpret Matthew’s narrative and Jesus’ speech presented there and to identify strategies for the effective homiletical presentation of those texts to Weller’s contemporary audience. As a modern reader, you will want to explore Luther’s treatment of the application of rhetoric to the tasks of exegesis and preaching, as well as for its exegesis of controverted passages. For Luther, trained as a Nominalist and later embracing humanist studies, a rhetorical understanding of Christ’s speech—and the rhetorical application of His Word in the present—is vitally important for Christians. The crucial knowledge about God is not philosophical knowledge about the divine nature in relation to the creation, which could be obtained by reason or meditation or observation. Rather, it is the knowledge of God’s “counsel and will,” which must be revealed in Christ’s Word and proclaimed through the continuing ministry preached by His disciples. This was the task Luther sought to model for his timid student in the Annotations on Matthew.

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