Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. We are making our way

through Luther's life and we are once again on location in Vittenberg. We are in Luther's

town and I have a very special guest with me. I have Dr. W Robert Godfrey and we are here for a conference

together actually in Vittenberg and Dr Godfrey we've been talking about Luther's writings in particular this week on five minutes.

And a very important set of those writings would be Luther's commentaries.

Now among the many biblical books, what were some of the key biblical books for

Luther that he lectured on and wrote commentaries on? Well particularly in his

formative years he looked at the Psalms at Romans at Galatians at Hebrews and you can imagine what a wonderful preparation

that is to be a reformer. What better books could you spend time with? And then later in his life he wrote a very long commentary on Genesis.

So Luther's moving through the whole Bible, but those are books that were of particular importance

to him.

Let's hone in on one of his treatises within one of those commentaries.

This would be his commentary on Psalm 118.

Luther wrote this in 1530.

Would you mind giving us a little bit of the context of what's going on in Luther's life

while he's writing his commentary or his treatise on Psalm 118?

Well, he writes that commentary commentary which he calls his own beloved

Psalm, it's so dear to his heart in a period of his life which was very difficult

for him. He was for six months somewhat isolated in the castle

Coburg and he was there because he wanted to be as close to the

city of Augsburg as possible in 1530 where the imperial diet was

meeting to decide really the fate of the

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