A Commentary on

St. Paul’s Epistle

to the Galatians

Based on Lectures delivered

by

MARTIN LUTHER

at

The University of Wittenberg

in the year 1531

and

First Published in 1535

A revised and completed translation based on the

’Middleton’ edition of the English version of 1575

CONTENTS

EDITOR’S PREFACE

LUTHER’S PREFACE

INTRODUCTORY

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

EDITOR’S PREFACE

OLDER ENGLISH editions of Luther’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians usually describe it as having been “collected and gathered word by word out of his preaching.” In point of fact, it was based on a course of lectures which he delivered in 1531 at the University of Wittenberg, where for over thirty years he was Professor of Biblical Exegesis. He was not himself responsible for its publication, though he contributed a Preface to it, in which he acknowledges that it truly represents his thought. He was not in the habit of writing out his lectures, but spoke freely from a carefully prepared but brief outline, as he did also when he preached. We owe this Commentary, therefore, as we owe much else of his extant work, to friends and admirers who were busy with their pencils while they listened to him in classroom or in church.

The original edition of this Commentary—in Latin, like the lectures on which it was based—was prepared for the press by George Rörer, 1 one of Luther’s most assiduous and reliable reporters, with some assistance from Veit Dietrich 2 and more from Caspar Cruciger. 3 These are the “brethren” to whom Luther refers in his Preface. All three had attended the lectures in 1531, and Rörer, at any rate, had taken very full notes (in an abbreviated script of his own) on the whole course. These notes are printed above the published text of the Commentary in the Weimar edition of Luther’s works, 1 and they are occasionally cited in the footnotes of the present volume, where they are referred to as “Rörer’s MS.” They show, incidentally, that the course began on July 3rd and ended on December 12th, and that there were forty-one lectures in all. The whole of the published text is based on these notes, except for the exposition of Galatians v. 6, which derives from a manuscript of Luther’s own that was made available to Rörer, although it was not written specifically for this Commentary. At the end of July 1532, Rörer began to write out the lectures, consulting Dietrich and Cruciger from time to time to check his accuracy. Early in 1534 the work was in the hands of the printer, and a year later it was published. A second, revised edition followed in 1538, and a German version in 1539.

More than thirty years later, in 1575, the first English edition was published, the translation being based on the second Latin edition. In 1577 it was “diligently revised, corrected, and newly imprinted again,” and two more printings followed before the century was out. All subsequent English editions, ...