How Did Luther Read Adam & Eve | Mickey Mattox
Channel: Henry Center
Date: 2019-07-22

Lecture Title - Goodness that Abides? Martin Luther's Adam, for Today

Scholars frequently note Martin Luther’s powerful imaginative capacity for entering into the world of the Bible, which was nowhere more vividly displayed than in his interpretation of “the dear Genesis.” This lecture will introduce Luther’s dramatic reading of the story of Adam and Eve, exploring the powerful connections he finds between God’s goodness, human goodness (imago Dei), and the good creation. Our universe, however, is not Luther’s cosmos. And his narration of the fall was just as dramatic as the creation. Can Luther’s readings of the lost promise of our “first parents” still be useful to theology today?

Mickey L. Mattox (PhD Duke University) is the Flack Family Foundation Chair and Professor of Theology at Hillsdale College and serves as Associate Editor for the 1.4 million-word Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion: Martin Luther. His books include “Defender of the Most Holy Matriarchs”: Martin Luther’s Interpretation of the Women of Genesis in the Enarrationes in Genesis, 1535-1545 (Brill, 2003) and An Exposition of Genesis 1-3 (Marquette University Press, 2013).