Written in the 1840’s, this book was long recognized as the finest biography of Martin Luther available. As well as containing remarkable insights into the man, Martin Luther, this volume also presents a survey of the ecclesiastical, political, and social events leading up to the Reformation, the atmosphere in which it took place, and the part played by men like Luther. The Life and Times of Martin Luther is a masterly portrayal of the motives, beliefs, and actions of one of the men God used to break the chains of Rome in the sixteenth century. His words and life still speak to us today.

Few figures in history have defined their time as dramatically as Martin Luther. And few books have captured the spirit of such a figure as truly as this robust and eloquent life of Luther. A highly regarded historian and biographer and a gifted novelist and playwright, Richard Marius gives us a dazzling portrait of the German reformer--his inner compulsions, his struggle with himself and his God, the gestation of his theology, his relations with contemporaries, and his responses to opponents. Focusing in particular on the productive years 1516-1525, Marius' detailed account of Luther's writings yields a rich picture of the development of Luther's thought on the great questions that came to define the Reformation. Marius follows Luther from his birth in Saxony in 1483, during the reign of Frederick III, through his schooling in Erfurt, his flight to an Augustinian monastery and ordination to the outbreak of his revolt against Rome in 1517, the Wittenberg years, his progress to Worms, his exile in the Wartburg, and his triumphant return to Wittenberg. Throughout, Marius pauses to acquaint us with pertinent issues: the question of authority in the church, the theology of penance, the timing of Luther's Reformation breakthrough, the German peasantry in 1525, Muntzer's revolutionaries, the whys and hows of Luther's attack on Erasmus. In this personal, occasionally irreverent, always humane reconstruction, Luther emerges as a skeptic who hated skepticism and whose titanic wrestling with the dilemma of the desire for faith and the omnipresence of doubt and fear became an augury for the development of the modern religious consciousness of the West. In all of this, he also represents tragedy, with the goodness of his works overmatched by their calamitous effects on religion and society.

Martin Luther’s historical significance can hardly be overstated. Known as the father of the Protestant Reformation, no single figure has had a greater impact on Western Christianity except perhaps Augustine. In Luther on the Christian Life, historian Carl Trueman introduces readers to the lively Reformer, taking them on a tour of his historical context, theological system, and approach to the Christian life. Whether exploring Luther’s theology of protest, ever-present sense of humor, or misunderstood view of sanctification, this addition to Crossway’s Theologians on the Christian Life series highlights the ways in which Luther’s eventful life shaped his understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Ultimately, this book will help modern readers go deeper in their spiritual walk by learning from one of the great teachers of the faith. Part of the Theologians on the Christian Life series.

Martin Luther had one goal: peace with God. He didn't find it in the holy relics and indulgences of the church or in life as an obedient monk. Luther discovered God's treasure of truth buried under human laws and regulations. He discovered the Gospel in the Word of God. Luther took his stand on that Word, defying the highest authorities in the church and state. In so doing, he started the oldest continuing evangelical movement in history. This is Luther's dramatic story. Book jacket.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This volume brings together two important contemporary accounts of the life of Martin Luther in a confrontation that had been postponed for more than four hundred and fifty years. The first of these is written after Luther’s death, when it was rumoured that demons had seized the Reformer on his deathbed and dragged him off to Hell. In response to these rumours, Luther’s friend and colleague, Philip Melanchthon wrote and published a brief encomium of the Reformer in 1548. A completely new translation of this text appears in this book. It was in response to Melanchthon’s work that Johannes Cochlaeus completed and published his own monumental life of Luther in 1549, which is translated and made available in English for the first time in this volume. Such is the detail and importance of Cochlaeus’s life of Luther that for an eyewitness account of the Reformation – and the beginnings of the Catholic Counter-Reformation – there is simply no other historical document to compare.