Paul Mendes-Flohr

How Luther Became the Reformer

History & Biography

“With an elegant weave of intellectual history and constructive theological reflection, Christine Helmer retrieves the Catholic Luther to challenge the regnant Protestant image of the former Augustinian monk as advocating a radical break with the Roman Church. By contextualizing the construction of the reigning Reformation narrative within early twentieth-century German political and cultural discourse, she exposes its anti-Catholic and anti-Judaic presuppositions to be primed by a political theological agenda that was defiantly supersessionist. In her deft deconstruction of the Reformation Luther, Helmer compellingly calls for a revision of the conception of religion and modernity promoted by the Protestant narrative.”

Paradise Is Now

Science & Faith

“Spiritually compelling . . . [a] wonderful book . . . the publisher may certainly cite my admiration of your scholarship.”

The Evolution of Love

World Religions

“For Sheldon W. Liebman, Judaism’s very lack of an established, coherent account of theological doctrine is a virtue. With commanding erudition and rare expository grace, he argues that the often inchoate and contradictory meditations of the meaning of Israel’s covenantal relation to God as recorded in the Tanak and intertestamental and rabbinic literature attest to a vibrant religious and spiritual sensibility that resisted doctrinal closure. Guided by an overarching concern to understand what is Israel’s responsibility toward God, these meditations increasingly affirmed human agency in the realization of divine love as focused on a compassionate and morally alert attention to one’s neighbor and the stranger. Thus was set the foundational principle of Judaism and Christianity.”