ONLINE FIRST
published on June 23, 2020
Casey Spinks
https://doi.org/10.5840/philtheol2020620129
Thinking Through the Cross
On Luther¡¯s Heidelberg Disputations and Its Contributions to Philosophy
Martin Luther has given little explicit influence on philosophy, and in 1950 Jaroslav Pelikan called for further work into investigating a ¡®Lutheran philosophy.¡¯ The beginning of this work lies in Luther¡¯s Heidelberg Disputations, in which he attacks the method of scholasticism and counters with the method of truly Christian theology, a theologia crucis. Such counter, this article argues, entails a shift in Christian philosophizing, a shift that sharply distinguishes between God and man and yet, through this distinction, as Luther asserts, allows one to ¡°call the thing what it actually is¡±¡ªand thus leads to a truly Christian philosophy.