Filip Outrata

The present volume has been prepared in occurence with the 500th anniversary of the declaration of Luther’s famous 95 theses in Wittenberg in 1517. This event has often been regarded as the birth-day of the Lutheran Reformation.
The purpose of the anthology is to give a relatively broad over-view of Martin Luther’s work, thematically as well as chronologi-cally. The anthology presents a selection of shorter writings which can be held, historically or because of their topic, as important moments in the life and thought of the German reformer. It was our aim to present the works in their full size, so length was an important limiting factor. That is also why some significant works had to be set aside, though they would otherwise certainly deserve to be included.
Our florilegy starts with Luther’s forewords to the later famous and influential Theologia Deutsch (German Theology), a work about which he was very enthusiastic and which he published in 1516 and again in 1518. Though it was our wish to embrace the whole span of Luther’s active life as an author, the emphasis was put, quite natu-rally for such a general and limited anthology, on his early years. The years in which his “theology of the cross” and his theological principles sola fide and sola gratia were taking a clear shape and were declared on various occasions in texts aimed at both lear-ned (e.g. the disputation theses) as well as lay audience (as the German “sermons”). This early period, covered in the anthology by more than a dozen texts, lasted until 1525, the year regarded often as a turning point in the history of the Reformation. In this year, Luther published his appeal Against the Robbing and Murde-ring Hordes of Peasants, included in our volume. This proclamation was preceded by earlier theological expositions and warnings, also recorded in our volume, and can be rightly understood only if seen in a broader context. Later works selected for our antho-logy include important “confession” of Martin Luther (1528), his disputation on man (important i.a. for understanding Luther’s evaluation of reason) and two other academic disputations. The volume is concluded by the prayer against Turks from 1541, thus adding another topic (as well as genre).
Such a choice of texts may seem, of course, arbitrary and painfully incomplete. To make a better sense of the selected texts and to put them in a general historical and theological context, the volume opens with a comprehensive introductory study written by a leading Reformation scholar, Martin Wernisch. After explaining the principles for the selection of texts, he briefly analyses each text of the anthology while situating it against the historical bac-kdrop and showing its place in the evolution of Luther’s thought. This way, the volume has received a much more compact form, and the texts are seen in their appropriate mutual relations. In fact, the book can be read both ways: as an anthology accompanied by a historical and systematic introduction, or as a small monograph on Martin Luther illustrated copiously by the reformer’s texts.