Miscellany #2

What I've been reading and thinking about lately

Greetings from Wittenberg, Germany. Apologies: I had hoped to get this subscribers-only post out earlier this month, but it has been a busy few weeks: my wife Sarah and I are here participating in a summer course held by the Wittenberg Center for Reformation Studies. Fear not; I will avoid turning this post into too much of a travelogue. But I do want to say how moving it has been to study and pray and live in the mother city of the Reformation – the very place where Luther came to his world-changing realization that salvation is wholly God’s free gift, given to us through faith rather than earned by our own merits. Indeed, I write this about 100 m from the spot where in 1520 Luther burned Exsurge Domine, the papal bull threatening him with excommunication.

Once again, this will be something of a miscellany, with a few quick notes about some of the things I have been thinking about lately.

On Reformation Romans Commentaries

I recently read through Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Romans commentary – or, to be precise, Sir Henry Billingsley’s 1568 English translation of Vermigli’s Latin. I will have more to say about the details of the commentary in the future – perhaps here, and certainly in other, more formally scholarly venues. But I want to make a few brief points now.