What are the differences between Lutherans and Calvinists, and do they really matter? In Wittenberg vs. Geneva, Brian Thomas provides a biblical defense of the key doctrines that have divided the Lutheran and Reformed traditions for nearly five centuries. It is especially written to help those who may have an interest in the Lutheran church, but are concerned that her stance on doctrines like predestination or the sacraments may not have biblical support. To get to the heart of the matter, Pastor Thomas focuses solely upon those crucial scriptural texts that have led Lutheran and Reformed scholars down different paths to disparate conclusions as he spars with popular Calvinist theologians from the past and the present.

Whatever happened to America's small, private, residential, undergraduate, Liberal Arts Colleges? Will they survive the present contest with pragmatic publicly supported community colleges and the secular mega universities? The story of Wittenberg, one of the best of Ohio's many good Liberal Arts Colleges, provides answers to such questions. It looks at this critical period in their history giving hope that the very best of them will prosper. They are an endangered national resource that should be preserved and no more of them are being started. The book is written both for the casual reader and for historians and professional educators.

Join the jury as two of history’s most stubborn intellectuals go head-to-head in a highly entertaining battle of reason versus faith. Set in late 1517, this smart, sprightly and audacious comedy centres on a fictitious meeting between university colleagues Dr. Faustus (a man of appetites), Martin Luther (a man of faith), and their student Hamlet (a young Prince struggling not only with his beliefs but also with his tennis game).This sparkling celebration of history, language, academia and religion by award-winning American playwright David Davalos will appeal to anyone looking for the answers to life’s big questions.

This “stimulating contribution to literary theory” reveals the deeply philosophical concerns and developments behind popular time travel sci-fi (London Review of Books). In Time Travel, literary theorist David Wittenberg argues that time travel fiction is not mere escapism, but a narrative “laboratory” where theoretical questions about storytelling—and, by extension, about the philosophy of temporality, history, and subjectivity—are presented in story form. Drawing on physics, philosophy, narrative theory, psychoanalysis, and film theory, Wittenberg links innovations in time travel fiction to specific shifts in the popularization of science, from nineteenth-century evolutionary biology to twentieth-century quantum physics and more recent “multiverse” cosmologies. Wittenberg shows how popular awareness of new science led to surprising innovations in the literary “time machine,” which evolved from a vehicle used for sociopolitical commentary into a psychological device capable of exploring the temporal structure and significance of subjects, viewpoints, and historical events. Time Travel draws on classic works of science fiction by H. G. Wells, Edward Bellamy, Robert Heinlein, Samuel Delany, and Harlan Ellison, television shows such as “The Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek,” and other popular entertainments. These are read alongside theoretical work ranging from Einstein, Schrödinger, Stephen Hawking to Gérard Genette, David Lewis, and Gilles Deleuze. Wittenberg argues that even the most mainstream audiences of popular time travel fiction and cinema are vigorously engaged with many of the same questions about temporality, identity, and history that concern literary theorists, media and film scholars, and philosophers.

"Half of all the colleges founded before the Civil War did not survive. Wittenberg did. This is the story of a college on the Ohio frontier that sought to Americanize millions of German immigrants and to Americanize the German Lutheran Church. In spite of that, Wittenberg was caught in the anti-foreign prejudice of “Nativists” who feared the influence of immigrants on American institutions. The school prospered after the Civil War as America embraced German culture from classical music to the Christmas tree. The school again faced prejudice in the anti-German furor of World War I. Simultaneously, this is the story of students and faculty coping with the pressures of a nation going from the poverty of the rural frontier to the wealth of an urban-industrial society and how they and Wittenberg changed."

Homer in Wittenberg draws on manuscript and printed materials to demonstrate Homer's foundational significance for educational and theological reform during the Reformation in Wittenberg. In the first study of Melanchthon's Homer annotations from three different periods spanning his career, and the first book-length study of his reading of a classical author, William Weaver offers a new perspective on the liberal arts and textual authority in the Renaissance and Reformation. Melanchthon's significance in the teaching of the liberal arts has long been recognized, but Homer's prominent place in his educational reforms is not widely known. Homer was instrumental in Melanchthon's attempt to transform the university curriculum, and his reforms of the liberal arts are clarified by his engagements with Homeric speech, a subject of interest in recent Homer scholarship. Beginning with his Greek grammar published just as he arrived in Wittenberg in 1518, and proceeding through his 1547 work on dialectic, Homer in Wittenberg shows that teaching Homer decisively shaped Melanchthon's redesign of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Melanchthon embarked on reforming the liberal arts with the ultimate objective of reforming theological education. His teaching of Homer illustrates the philosophical principles behind his use of well-known theological terms including sola scriptura, law and gospel, and loci communes. Homer's significance extended even to a practical theology of prayer, and Wittenberg scholia on Homer from the 1550s illustrate how the Homeric poem could be used to exercise faith as well as literary judgment and eloquence.

In conversations about the Reformation, the name Martin Luther towers above all others. And rightly so. His work, vision, and writings set Christianity on a course of events that would forever change the way that most believers live and understand their faith. And yet, the Reformation was far more than Martin Luther. Around Luther were hundreds of people - fellow teachers and priests, politicians, artists, printers, and spouses - without whose activity and work the Reformation would have progressed much differently. These women and men make up Luther's Wittenberg world, and there is much to be learned from engaging their work. In this monumental work, Robert Kolb introduces us to those individuals. Engaging and informative essays on the social, political, and economic realities of the sixteenth century frame brief introductions to over two hundred supporting "cast members" whose lives played out around Martin Luther. Comprehensively illustrated, with maps, bibliographies, and other resources, Luther's Wittenberg World is a treasure.