Reading Notes: Faith Alone

Editor’s note: Zondervan Academic recently invited Concordia Seminary Professor Erik Herrmann to contribute to their Common Places blog, as they gather reflections on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation:

In September 1530, while Philip Melanchthon was at the Diet of Augsburg engaged in a struggle with Johann Eck about the role of faith in justification, Martin Luther wrote an open letter on his translation of Romans 3:28 and his decision to insert the word “alone”—i.e. “we maintain that man is justified without the works of the law, by faith alone,” (allein durch den Glauben; per solum fidem). This was hardly the beginning of what became one of the hallmarks of Reformation theology, but Luther’s German translation is the most famous and influential moment of the Reformation solas. . . .

(read the rest of the post here)