2025 Luther Lecture: "Teaching Certainty: A New Look at Martin Luther's Vernacular Catechesis"

Looking at Luther’s early catechetical works (1522-1529), Dr. Marcella K. Perett will argue that Luther’s catechetical effort can be best understood as an attempt at conveying certainty about God’s merciful acceptance, certainty that Luther himself had found. To that end, Luther devised his catechetical instruction so that his followers would undergo the same emotional journey that he himself underwent when he found certainty of God’s forgiveness: from a sense of “inconsolable hopelessness” to an astonished relief at God’s saving work on their behalf.

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