Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus

About this book

A vivid biography of Matthias Flacius Illyricus--the Croatian reformer whose courage, scholarship, and costly errors shaped Lutheran theology under the cross. Matthias Flacius Illyricus defended the Gospel when political pressure urged Lutherans to compromise. A gifted linguist, professor, historian, and tireless writer, he helped lead resistance to the Leipzig Interim, shaped the Magdeburg Confession, and gave Protestant scholarship enduring tools for reading Scripture and studying church history. Yet Flacius was no uncomplicated hero. His unwavering stand for Christ's saving work gave strength to fellow confessors, but his stubborn defense of poorly chosen language about original sin isolated him from friends and allies. His life shows both the necessity of confessing biblical truth and the danger of confusing faithfulness with an unwillingness to receive correction. Author Wade Johnston tells this sixteenth-century story with clarity, theological care, and honest charity. Readers interested in Martin Luther, the Formula of Concord, the Magdeburg Confession, and Lutheran Church history encounter a neglected reformer whose work still reaches into hermeneutics, historical theology, and the church's public confession. Readers who appreciated Here I Stand gain a compelling guide to the turbulent world after Luther's death--and to a baptized child of God who lived, struggled, and died trusting Christ crucified.