Then Fell the Lord's Fire is a treasured collection of ordination sermons and pastoral theology essays by renowned bishop Bo Giertz. Since its first English translation in 2012, it has become a cherished ordination gift and a go-to resource for pastors seeking wisdom, encouragement, and theological depth.The book is divided into two parts. The first features Giertz's brief yet powerful ordination sermons—rich in both law and gospel, keeping pastors grounde...

These sermons are taken from various stages in Bo Giertz pastoral career, from his time as a parish pastor, his time as a bishop, and his time in retirement. He adapted the homiletical style of Henric Schartau (whose homiletical style informs the novel "The Hammer of God"). Schartau would preach in a manner that expounded on the text before applying it to people who might find themselves in three different spiritual conditions, sometimes this is referred to as an Ordo Salutis. These three ...

1521 has arrived. A new year in a new world with new nations, new continents, new knowledge, and new rulers. Never before had so much power been gathered in such young hands. The tenth Sultan, the twenty-six-year-old Suleiman, ascends to his father's throne in one of the world's most powerful empires. The rest of the world hopes that the eastern threat has faded. Rhodes is Christendom's closest and most defiant outpost against the East. There the Knights of St. John's Grand Master has died...

In 1933 a group of theological students in Berlin asked Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hermann Sasse to work together with other theologians to come up with a confession that could be used to challenge nazi ideology and its inroads into the church bodies of Germany through the so-called "German Christians" who wanted to reshape Christianity into a worship of German ethnicity.The result was the August Bethel Confession named after the town in which Sasse and Bonhoeffer worked together. Unf...

In the third volume of his New Testament Devotional Commentaries Volume 3: Galatians Through Revelation, Bo Giertz returns to the text with his keen insight and love for God's word and God's people. This would finish his work as an author that began in the 1930s and continued for five decades.Taking the principles of Biblical Realism he had learned from his mentor Anton Fridrichsen, with its rejection of both liberal higher criticism and fundamentalist bib...

On any given Sunday the Christian approaches Christ who is present in Word and Meal. The songs, movements, and prayers that surround this Word and Meal are called the Divine Service. It is God's (divine) service to us and our proclamation of Christ's life, death, and resurrection to ourselves and anybody that enters the church on that Sunday.One way to appreciate the traditional divine service is to see the life of Christ on display. The major events in the life of Christ are hinte...

A Shepherd's Letter is Bo Giertz distilled and served neat.He wrote this book to introduce his theological agenda for the Diocese of Gothenburg to which he was elected bishop in 1949. Here, he takes a straightforward approach to the theological themes that guided his writing of The Hammer of God, Faith Alone: The Heart of Everything, and With My Own Eyes.What he wrote for t...

Bo Giertz was a serious biblical scholar who avoided the ivory tower. He studied classics in undergrad before taking up theology in preparation for the ministry. In 1930 he spent time on an archeological dig in Palestine and travelled the country with his exegetical professor Anton Fridrichsen who insisted on "Biblical Realism," which avoided fundamentalism and yet refused to succumb to higher criticism. In these commentaries, Bo Giertz takes what he learned from a lifetime of such study a...

The author is known as a strong opponent of the so-called New Perspective on Paul. In this book, he seeks to move beyond that debate and open new vistas in Pauline research. There is a need for much revision.The author first dives into a detailed exegetical study of 2 Corinthians 3, a chapter that has a reputation of being an exegetical nightmare. He examines the interpretational problems associated with the opposition between the letter that kills and the Spirit that gives life. F...

Bo Giertz wrote this book drawing upon the exegetical insights that he received from his mentor Anton Fridrichsen before, during and after his trip to Palestine in the early 1930's.The book is a third-person retelling of the gospels that brings into account various Old Testament references and the contemporary interpretations of those passages by the Jews of Jesus' day as well as contemporary events throughout the Roman Empire, but most especially those directly affecting the Jewish...

"And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" (Luke 10:25-26)Eternal life is found within the pages of Holy Scripture, both in the Old Testament Torah referred to as "the Law" in this exchange between Jesus and the lawyer, and in the New Testament written in the wake of Christ's resurrection. But as Jesus points out, it matters how you read Holy Scr...

This publication of Sasse's RTR articles marks yet another milestone in the continued publication of the works of one of the great Lutheran theologians of the twentieth century. The RTR and Springfielder articles and the many book reviews presented in this volume have been all but inaccessible for decades. All of them bear witness to Sasse's deep knowledge of Church history, the New Testament, Luther, the Reformation, the Eastern Church, and Rome.Though writing as a very convinced c...