Fruit for the Soul: Luther on the Lament Psalms

by Dennis Ngien

Publisher:

Fortress Press

, 2015

Overview

Given a life spent in scholarship and controversy, it is easy to forget how much energy Martin Luther devoted to helping the common person understand and take comfort from God’s word. This commitment extended to even the most challenging of biblical texts, and nowhere is this more apparent than Luther’s work on the lament psalms. Difficult to understand, and perhaps even more difficult to implement in life and devotion, the lament psalms played a key role in Luther’s thought. More importantly, the lament psalms were for Luther an essential part of the Christian’s understanding of the life of faith.

In Fruit for the Soul: Luther on the Lament Psalms Dennis Ngien helps contemporary readers engage Luther’s commentary on the lament psalms. What Luther intended for the education and encouragement of everyday Christians, Ngien unpacks and illuminates for life in the twenty-first century.

Key Features

• Shows how Luther learned to take comfort in God from the Psalms
• Explains how Luther understood suffering as a key component of the Christian Life
• Provides detailed analysis of Luther‘s exegesis

• Psalm 6: Consolation Hidden in its Opposite: Profoundly Terrified but Profoundly Comforted
• Psalm 51: No Other Theme but This: Wrapped in the Bosom of God Who Is Grace
• Psalm 77: Meditation on All God’s Works: Reaping Justification by Faith as the Fruit
• Psalm 90: Moses Being “Most Mosaic”: A Minister of Law, Sin, and Death
• Psalm 94: Praying against the Enemies: Negative Capability and Positive Agency
• Psalm 118: Soaring above Distress: The Efficacy of God’s Right Hand

Top Highlights

“In the midst of such trials and troubles, believers often find it difficult to know whether Satan is the enemy or whether God has either become an active adversary or simply abandoned and forgotten them. The testing of tribulation can seem to invite God’s faithful people to return to the doubt of Eden.” (Page xi)

“‘So we are not sinners because we commit this or that sin, but we commit them because we are sinners first.’^{38” (Page 35)}

“Luther wrote in favor of Bernard: ‘For just as, according to Bernard, knowledge of self without the knowledge of God leads to despair, so knowledge of God without the knowledge of self leads to presumption.’” (Page 28)

“To read the Bible aright, Luther stressed in his lectures on Psalm 51, one must observe ‘the proper subject of theology’—‘man guilty of sin and condemned and God the justifier and Saviour of man the sinner.’⁴⁹ ‘Whoever follows this aim in reading Holy Scriptures will read holy things fruitfully.’⁵⁰ The specific task of theology is to be preoccupied with the fruitful reading of the ‘holy things,’ namely the twofold theological knowledge—man guilty and God the justifier.” (Page xxxii)

“God offers the psalmist an eschatological foretaste of the pain of God-forsakenness in hell in order that he might grasp God as the Savior of his life.” (Page 9)

Product Details

• Title: Fruit for the Soul: Luther on the Lament Psalms
• Author: Dennis Ngien
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Print Publication Date: 2015
• Logos Release Date: 2016
• Pages: 373
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Luther, Martin, 1483-1546; Bible. O.T. Psalms › Criticism, interpretation, etc; Laments in the Bible
• ISBNs: 9781451485219, 9781506402895, 1451485212, 1506402895
• Resource ID: LLS:FRUITFORTHESOUL
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:07:22Z

About Dennis Ngien

Formerly the Alister E. McGrath Chair of Christian Thought & Spirituality and Professor of Systematic Theology, Dr. Ngien now serves as the Research Professor of Theology (Tyndale University), and as Distinguished Professor at the Christ School of Theology in South Dakota He is the author of several monographs including the most recent Grace and Law in Galatians: Justification in Luther and Calvin (Cascade Books, 2023), and Paragon of Excellence: Luther's Sermons on I Peter (Fortress Press, 2023), and his forthcoming God's Most Earnest Purpose and Luther's Trinitarian Grammar of Faith in Luther (Fortress Press, 2025). His articles have appeared in scholarly journals such as the International Journal of Systematic Theology, Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology, etc. His article, "The God Who Suffers", appeared on Christianity Today's 50th-anniversary webpage, and is considered one of the significant works. He continues to work on several book projects.