Luther and Liberation: A Latin American Perspective, Second Edition

Walter Altmann

Feb 2016 · Fortress Press

About this ebook

With the approach of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s inauguration of the Protestant Reformation and the burgeoning dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans opened under Pope Francis, this new edition of Walter Altmann’s Luther and Liberation is timely and relevant. Luther and Liberation recovers the liberating and revolutionary impact of Luther’s theology, read afresh from the perspective of the Latin American context. Altmann provides a much-needed reassessment of Luther’s significance today through a direct engagement of Luther’s historical situation with an eye keenly situated on the deeply contextual situation of the contemporary reader, giving a localized reading from the author’s own experience in Latin America. The work examines with fresh vigor Luther’s central theological commitments, such as his doctrine of God, Christology, justification, hermeneutics, and ecclesiology, and his forays into economics, politics, education, violence, and war. This new edition greatly expands the original text with fresh scholarship and updated sources, footnotes, and bibliography, and contains several additional new chapters on Luther’s doctrine of God, theology of the sacraments, his controversial perspective on the Jews, and a new comparative account with the Latin American liberation theology tradition.

About the author

Walter Altmann is professor of systematic theology at Escola Superior de Teologia (EST), São Leopoldo, Brazil. He is the former president of the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran Confession in Brazil (IECLB) and the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI); he is also the former moderator of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC).