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Dette er en akademisk respons på en akademisk anmeldelse af min bog The Alternative Luther: Lutheran Theology from the Subaltern (Fortress Academic/Rowman and Littlefield 2019). Den amerikanske professor, Jennifer Hockenbery Dragseth, har skrevet en meget detaljeret anmeldelse af bogen i det internationale tidsskrift, Dialog, hvor hun diskuterer bogens teologiske tilgang. Hun er positiv over for det postkoloniale perspektiv på Luther som "precarious" og "subaltern", samt på luthersk teologi, der herved giver mange flere aktører en stemme og ser klassiske lutherske begreber på en ny og frisk måde. I mit svar lægger jeg vægt på Luthers opgør med det imperiale (kejser Karl V over det tysk-romerske rige, inkl. Spanien) og romersk-koloniale overherredømme (den pave-kirkelige hierarkiske struktur og udnyttelse af almindelige mennesker), som den tysktalende befolkning led under, både økonomisk og samfundsstrukturelt. Dertil kommer det opgør, vi i bogen har med den parallelle anglo-amerikanske kolonisering af store dele af verden, sprogligt og kulturelt.

In this article, I reflect on Luther's doctrine on justification as it came out in different ways in some of his seminal writings between 1518 and 1538, all represented in volume 2 of The Annotated Luther. Discovering the righteousness of God as something already given to humans opened fundamentally new perspectives to Luther.

Luther develops his idea of the grace of God in tandem with his idea of economy, and a society characterized by ethical and social values such as love of neighbor and caring for the weak and poor. Hence, the reformer's search for a gracious God is developed along with his criticism of the current indulgence doctrine and the emerging oeconomia moderna. Thus, building on a simul gratia et oeconomia, Luther's reformation theology can be perceived as the intersection of an economy of grace and a horizontal social economy (works of love) in quotidian life that together constitute human capital.

This article engages the understanding of love and grace in Bernard's and Luther's theologies. Taking as a point of departure Anders Nygren's dichotomy of love in agape and eros, Wiberg Pedersen outlines some of the issues raised by Nygren's thesis. Arguing against Nygren's caricature of Bernard's theology, Wiberg Pedersen shows the similarities between Bernard's and Luther's understandings of love and grace, which lead her to hypothesize that Luther was inspired by Bernard in a theologia caritatis that is simultaneously a theologia cordis (creation and inspiration) and a theologia crucis (incarnation and justification), all led by grace.

Martin Luther's view of women is as complex as his authorship is vast, encompassing a diversity of genres and purposes. Luther seems ambivalent toward women like the tradition before and after him. In his reformation enterprise he appears torn between his good theology and the bad anthropology that obscures his purportedly universal principles. This article uncovers some of the ambiguities in Luther's approaches to women, theoretically teaching men's authority over women yet simultaneously teaching the mutuality and equality of women and men; and practicing such mutuality and equality in his everyday life, not least in his marriage to Katharina von Bora. His good theology also comes to the fore in his Mariology, especially in his commentary to the Magnificat, in which Mary is not just a ‘woman’ but the human being par excellence in her truly faithful relation to God.