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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

Faith Alone, written in 1943, is a prequel to Bo Giertz's better-known novel, The Hammer of God.This is Bo Giertz's masterpiece-written with the doctrinal clarity and purpose of G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, the historical acumen of Bernard Cornwell, and the psychological insight of Kafka. The result is a Scandinavian Noir that cuts open the soul and lays it at the foot of the cross.The novel begins in 1540 and ends in 1543, during which...

For what does it profit the church if she wins the whole world but loses her own soul?Today, the news is replete with stories of scandal and burnout within the church as giants fall and leave wreckage in their wake. Huge churches pop up and explode with popularity before imploding upon themselves, revealing a lack of the solid foundation, leaving their followers cold, confused, and empty.Magnus Persson, once a popular charismatic preacher, today an Evangelical-Lutheran pasto...