This volume of Grisar's monumental biography turns its scholarly attention to the moral theology of the Reformation's most consequential figure. Rather than presenting Luther as a systematic thinker, Grisar reveals a theologian wrestling with genuine paradoxes: how does justification by faith coexist with the imperative toward good works? How can the believer have certainty of salvation while simultaneously engaging in perpetual struggle against sin, the devil, and spiritual indifference? The book examines Luther's responses to emerging theological challenges, his defense against both Catholic critics and radical Protestants who took his doctrine to alarming extremes, and the deep tensions within his ethical framework. Grisar's early 20th-century scholarship, drawing on extensive primary sources, offers a portrait of Luther as a complex intellectual figure whose influence extends far beyond theology into politics, culture, and the foundations of the modern world. For serious students of the Reformation, this volume illuminates the ethical engine driving Luther's revolutionary theological system.
