Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings

Written by the church historian Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson, both then teaching at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, and published by Fortress Press in 1976. The publisher presents it as a critical appraisal of Lutheranism as a theological movement within the church catholic rather than as a separate denomination, organised around the Reformation principle of justification by faith apart from works of law and the way that principle was proposed as dogma for the whole church. Each topic is treated twice over, through the history of the confessional writings and through systematic theology, and the book is addressed to seminarians, pastors, teachers and interested lay readers of all traditions. It became a widely used textbook on the Lutheran Confessions. An earlier list sometimes gives the subtitle as The Theological Movement and Its Writings.