The library

Martin Luther · 1517 · Latin · 25 min · Disputation

The document everyone has heard of and few have read. It is not a manifesto and it does not mention justification by faith. It is a set of debating points about indulgences, written in Latin for academics, and it is far more cautious than its reputation.

WA 1:233 LW 31

Martin Luther · 1518 · Latin · 40 min · Disputation

Where the theology of the cross gets its name. Twenty-eight theses, of which numbers 19 to 21 are the ones that matter: God is not found where you would look for God, and the theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil.

WA 1:353 LW 31

Martin Luther · 1519 · German · 45 min · Sermon

Written for a layman, Mark Schart, who had asked for help with distressing thoughts about death. Luther's advice is to look at death, sin and hell only through Christ, and never on their own — because considered by themselves they will destroy you. Still the best thing he wrote for a bedside.

WA 2:685–697 LW 42:99–115

The standard English translation is Martin H. Bertram's, published in Luther's Works vol. 42 and in copyright to Fortress Press. Copies circulating freely online reproduce it without permission. We have found no public-domain English translation; it is not in the Holman edition. Catalogue only until a licensed or public-domain text is secured.

Martin Luther · 1520 · Latin · 2 hr · Treatise

Written for Frederick the Wise when he was ill, as a deliberate replacement for the medieval cult of the fourteen helper saints. Seven images of evil and seven of good, arranged so that a sick person can hold on to one at a time.

WA 6:104 LW 42

Martin Luther · 1520 · German · 3 hr · Treatise

Luther's answer to the charge that grace makes people lazy, structured as a walk through the Ten Commandments. The first good work, he argues, is faith — and everything else follows from it rather than earning it.

WA 6:196 LW 44

Martin Luther · 1520 · German · 3 hr · Treatise

The first of the three great treatises of 1520. Luther tears down what he calls the three walls of the Romanists, and in doing so states the priesthood of all the baptised in its sharpest form.

WA 6:404 LW 44

Martin Luther · 1520 · Latin · 3 hr · Treatise

The sacramental treatise, and the one that made reconciliation impossible. Seven sacraments reduced to two, on the ground that a sacrament needs a divine promise attached to a physical sign. Everything Lutherans say about the Supper starts here.

WA 6:497 LW 36

Martin Luther · 1520 · German · 1 hr · Treatise

If someone reads only one thing Luther wrote, this is it. A perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to everyone. Both at once, and neither one without the other.

WA 7:49 LW 31:327–377

Martin Luther · 1521 · German · 2 hr · Biblical commentary

Luther on Mary's song, written partly at the Wartburg. Warmer about Mary than most Protestants expect, and the clearest short statement of his conviction that God works by lifting up the lowly and emptying the full.

WA 7:538 LW 21

Martin Luther · 1522 · German · 2 hr · Sermon

Luther comes down from the Wartburg to find his own reformation being pushed faster than consciences can follow, and preaches eight sermons in eight days arguing for patience with the weak. The Reformation's great statement on pastoral pace.

LW 51

Martin Luther · 1522 · German · 1 hr · Liturgical writing

Luther's replacement for the late-medieval devotional books he thought were doing more harm than good. Commandments, Creed and Lord's Prayer as the whole furniture of a Christian's prayer life, seven years before the Small Catechism.

LW 43

Martin Luther · 1522 · German · 30 min · Biblical commentary

Thirty minutes on what faith actually is, and the most consequential short piece Luther wrote. This is the text being read aloud in Aldersgate Street in 1738 when Wesley's heart was strangely warmed.

LW 35

Martin Luther · 1522 · German · 1 hr · Treatise

Marriage as a divine calling rather than a second-best concession, written three years before Luther married. Contains the famous passage on a father washing nappies, and the argument that God smiles at it.

LW 45

Martin Luther · 1523 · German · 2 hr · Treatise

The two kingdoms, set out at length. Government has real authority over the body and none whatever over the conscience, and a ruler who tries to command belief should be disobeyed. Much misused since, in both directions.

WA 11:245 LW 45

Martin Luther · 1523 · German · 1 hr · Treatise

The early Luther on the Jewish people: sharply critical of how Christians had treated them, and hopeful of conversion through kindness. Catalogued deliberately alongside the 1543 treatise, because the distance between the two is part of the historical record.

LW 45

Read alongside On the Jews and Their Lies (1543). The change between them is not a matter of tone but of substance, and neither text should be used to explain away the other.

Martin Luther · 1523 · German · 5 min · Hymn

Luther's first great hymn, and the gospel told as a story in the first person: the sinner trapped, God resolving to act, the Son sent, and the exchange made. Catechesis you can sing.

Argula von Grumbach · 1523 · German · 30 min · Letter

A Bavarian noblewoman writes to an entire theology faculty, challenging them to debate her in German on the basis of Scripture. It went through fourteen editions in two months and outsold most of what the men were writing.

Martin Luther · 1524 · German · 1 hr · Treatise

An argument for universal, publicly funded education, including for girls, on explicitly theological grounds. One of the more startling documents of the sixteenth century.

LW 45

Martin Luther · 1524 · German · 5 min · Hymn

Psalm 130 as a hymn, and one of Luther's earliest. Sung at his funeral. The stanza on waiting for the Lord is the whole doctrine of justification compressed into four lines.

Martin Luther · 1524 · German · 5 min · Hymn

Luther's Easter hymn, on the strange war in which death and life contended and death was swallowed by death. Bach built a cantata on it.

Elisabeth Cruciger · 1524 · German · 5 min · Hymn

The first hymn by a woman in the Lutheran tradition, printed in the earliest Wittenberg hymnals alongside Luther's own. A former nun, married to one of Luther's colleagues, writing Christology that has stayed in the books for five centuries.

Katharina Schütz Zell · 1524 · German · 25 min · Letter

Written to women whose husbands had been driven out of their town for the evangelical faith. A layperson doing frank pastoral care in print, at a moment when women were not supposed to be doing either.

Desiderius Erasmus · 1524 · Latin · 4 hr · Treatise

Not a Lutheran, and here on purpose. You cannot understand what Luther was answering in The Bondage of the Will without reading the thing he was answering, and Erasmus is more careful than Luther's reply suggests.

Martin Luther · 1525 · Latin · 15 hr · Treatise

Luther's answer to Erasmus, and one of only two of his own books he thought worth keeping. Long, furious, and not a beginner's text — but the place where he says most plainly that salvation cannot be a cooperation.

WA 18:600 LW 33

Martin Luther · 1525 · German · 4 hr · Treatise

Luther against Karlstadt, and the origin of his category of Schwärmerei — enthusiasm, the claim to have the Spirit apart from the external Word. The argument that shaped Lutheran suspicion of unmediated religious experience.

LW 40

Martin Luther · 1525 · German · 2 hr · Treatise

Two texts, catalogued together because separating them flatters Luther. The first is a genuine attempt at mediation. The second, written as the revolt collapsed, urged the princes to kill without mercy, and he never withdrew it.

LW 46

The second treatise contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of peasants. Luther defended it afterwards. It is catalogued in full because a library that only shows the admonition is not telling the truth.

Martin Luther · 1526 · German · 1 hr · Liturgical writing

Worship in the language of the people, with the reasoning shown. Conservative where it could be and radical where it had to be, and the direct ancestor of every Lutheran service since.

WA 19:72 LW 53

The Holman translation is in volume 6 (1932), whose US copyright status is unresolved until 2028 unless renewal lapsed. Not hosted pending advice.

Martin Luther · 1527 · German · 35 min · Letter

Written during an outbreak in Wittenberg while Luther stayed behind to nurse the sick. Startlingly practical about risk, duty, fear and what you owe your neighbour, and unwilling to make either fleeing or staying into the holy option.

WA 23:323 LW 43

Martin Luther · 1528 · German · 7 hr · Treatise

The full Lutheran case for the Real Presence, against Zwingli. Contains the Christology — the communication of attributes, and the capacity of the finite to bear the infinite — that separates Lutherans from the Reformed to this day.

LW 37

Martin Luther · 1529 · German · 45 min · Catechism

The whole faith in forty-five minutes, in plain words for anyone just starting out. Luther wrote it after a 1528 visitation showed him how little ordinary people knew — it works read alone or read with someone. Still the best place to start.

Book of Concord

Martin Luther · 1529 · German · 7 hr · Catechism

Luther preaching the catechism to adults rather than children. Warmer, longer and considerably funnier than you would expect, and the place to go when the Small Catechism's answers feel too compressed.

Book of Concord

Martin Luther · 1529 · German · 5 min · Hymn

A paraphrase of Psalm 46, and the hymn that became the Reformation's signature. Note what it is not: a battle song about the church's strength. It is about a fortress that is not us.

Philipp Melanchthon · 1530 · German and Latin · 2 hr · Confession

The founding document of Lutheran identity, presented to an emperor who did not want to hear it. Articles I to XXI settle most arguments in about an hour, and Article IV is the hinge everything else turns on.

Book of Concord

Philipp Melanchthon · 1531 · Latin · 8 hr · Confession

Melanchthon's defence after the Confession was rejected, and much longer than the thing it defends. Article IV, on justification, is the fullest statement the Lutheran confessions contain.

Book of Concord

Martin Luther · 1535 · Latin · 20 hr · Biblical commentary

Luther's own favourite among his books — he called Galatians his Katharina von Bora. The mature statement of justification, and far more pastoral than its length suggests, because he keeps stopping to address the terrified conscience directly.

LW 26–27

Martin Luther · 1535 · German · 40 min · Letter

Written for Peter Beskendorf, Luther's barber, who asked how to pray. A method rather than a theory: take the Commandments and the Lord's Prayer four ways each — as instruction, thanksgiving, confession and petition. Immediately usable.

WA 38:358 LW 43

Martin Luther · 1535–1545 · Latin · 13 days of reading · Biblical commentary

Ten years of lectures and the largest single work in the Luther corpus. Discursive, autobiographical and often startling — the old Luther thinking aloud about creation, providence, family and death.

LW 1–8

Martin Luther · 1537 · German · 2 hr · Confession

Luther's own confession, written when he expected to die and wanted his position on record without Melanchthon's diplomacy. Blunter than the Augsburg Confession, and the clearest thing he wrote about what he would not concede.

Book of Concord

Philipp Melanchthon · 1537 · Latin · 1 hr · Confession

Written to accompany the Smalcald Articles, and the confessional document that deals most directly with the office of the ministry and by whom it is rightly conferred.

Book of Concord

Martin Luther · 1539 · German · 6 hr · Treatise

The late Luther on how you can tell where the church actually is. Sets out the marks of the church — Word, baptism, supper, keys, ministry, prayer, and the cross — which is the nearest thing Lutheranism has to an ecclesiology.

LW 41

Martin Luther · 1542 · German · 15 min · Letter

A short pastoral piece written to console women after miscarriage and stillbirth, arguing directly against the fear that an unbaptised child is lost. Luther tells them their prayer for the child was itself carried to God, and that they should not torment themselves.

WA 53:205 LW 43

Martin Luther · 1543 · German · 5 hr · Treatise

Catalogued with scholarly context and the church's own repudiation. We do not host this text and will not. Omitting it entirely would be its own kind of dishonesty.

LW 47

This treatise urged the burning of synagogues and the expulsion of Jews, and was reprinted by the Nazi regime four centuries later. The ELCA repudiated it in its 1994 Declaration to the Jewish Community. It is listed here as catalogue only, with context, and is never presented as devotional reading.

Johannes Bugenhagen · 1546 · German · 30 min · Sermon

Preached by Luther's own pastor and confessor at his funeral. The primary source for how the first generation understood what had just ended.

Martin Luther · recorded 1531–1546 · German and Latin · 10 hr · Table talk

Luther at dinner, written down by students who were not always careful. Not a source to build doctrine on, and unmatched for what he was actually like — funny, coarse, tender about his children, and frequently wrong.

LW 54

Recorded by others, often years later, and edited posthumously. Cite with caution; the Table Talk is testimony about Luther rather than a text by him.

Jakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, and others · 1577 · German · 10 hr · Confession

The settlement of the quarrels that broke out among Lutherans after Luther died — free will, good works, the third use of the law, the Supper, and how much may be conceded under pressure. In an Epitome and a Solid Declaration.

Book of Concord

The Lutheran confessors · 1580 · German and Latin · 5 days of reading · Confession

The complete confessional writings of the Lutheran church, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession: three ecumenical creeds, the Augsburg Confession and its Apology, the Smalcald Articles, the Treatise, both catechisms, and the Formula.

Complete

Martin Luther, ed. Theodore G. Tappert · 1955 · English · 8 hr · Letter

Luther writing to individual people in trouble: the dying, the bereaved, the depressed, the anxious, the sick. If you want the pastor rather than the polemicist, this selection is the shortest way in, and it reads nothing like the treatises.

Martin Luther, ed. Pelikan, Lehmann, and others · 1955–2020 · English · 208 days of reading · Treatise

The standard English Luther, and the edition every scholarly citation refers to. Fifty-five volumes from 1955 to 1986, with a further twenty added from 2009 onwards. Nothing else in English comes close for range, and almost none of it is free.

LW 1–75

In copyright to Fortress Press and Concordia Publishing House. Scans of these volumes circulate online, including at the Internet Archive under controlled digital lending. Borrowing there is legitimate; downloading or reposting is not, and we will not link to copies that do.

ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert · 2000 · English · 5 days of reading · Confession

The current scholarly English Book of Concord, and what seminaries assign. The historical introductions and notes are the reason to buy it rather than read the free 1921 Triglotta, which is accurate but a century out of date on context.

Complete

If cost is the obstacle, the 1921 Triglot Concordia translation is free and complete at bookofconcord.org. It is a good text. You lose the modern apparatus, not the confessions.

ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, Kirsi I. Stjerna, Timothy J. Wengert · 2015–2017 · English · 25 days of reading · Treatise

Six volumes of fresh translations with running annotation and illustration, aimed at readers rather than specialists. Volume 4, Pastoral Writings, collects most of the consolation literature in one place, including the Sermon on Preparing to Die and the consolation for women after a difficult pregnancy.