Fortress Press

Luther’s Outlaw God confronts the realities of life’s often harsh and cruel mysteries through an open confrontation with the actual texts of Martin Luther’s proclamation of God’s word as preacher and professor. Paulson leads readers into Luther’s use of sermon and lecture, where no safe haven is to be found in God’s law and demands for human obedience. Instead, Paulson accompanies readers into Luther’s pulpit and lectern as the battlefields, where God goes to war against Satan’s manifest deceptions with the cross of Christ in order to usher in the peace that God’s gift of trust in Christ reestablishes.

Paulson rightly stresses that key to understanding Luther’s argument is his distinction between the God not preached (the hidden God) and the God preached (the revealed God), which in turn is related to Luther’s fundamental Reformation discovery: the proper distinction between law and gospel. Paulson’s style is clear, direct, and engaging. This makes the book accessible to readers at all levels, but students and teachers of theology will find it especially helpful as they ponder Luther’s treatment of the Deus absconditus.

As suffering injustice, “outrageous fortune,” and pain, humans encounter a God who seems not only indifferent to their plight but even pitted against them.  Masterfully expositing both scripture and Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will, Paulson shows that in the face of such disempowerment and destabilization human security is achieved neither through theodicies (defenses of God) nor self-improvement programs but instead through unguarded trust that, for Jesus’ sake, God will grant sinners new life.  Since preachers are at the forefront of proclaiming this promise, they especially will find this book most helpful in discerning when, where, and how to offer Christ as the “preached God.”

“Seek the Lord while”—and where, adds Luther—“he may be found.” In this book, Steven Paulson follows Luther’s finger as it points to this time and place: God is given to sinners while they are sinners through a sermon. The distinction between God not preached and God preached is, for Paulson, the difference between fear and faith, between death and life. Anchored in Scripture and in conversation with Luther’s writings, Luther’s Outlaw God practices what it preaches—it preaches! Preaching is the saying of God’s promise in which God stops hiding from us and we find ourselves hidden in God. To read this book is not only to hear about this promise; it is to hear this promise—it is to be addressed by the Lord where and when he may be found: now, for you, in “the word of the cross” that gives God to the dead and makes them alive.

Too many theologians are embarrassed by Luther’s The Bondage of the Will and seek to find a way around it. This is certainly not the case with Steven Paulson! Recognizing the potency of the Reformer’s argument against every form of speculative theology that leaves God not preached and humanity under wrath, Paulson deftly follows Luther’s lead. In doing so, he offers readers a robust exercise in theology that serves the proclamation of Christ the end of the law for righteousness for all who believe. A careful reading of Luther’s Outlaw God will challenge and provoke; it will also yield rich fruit in preaching and pastoral care.