This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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This article is part of Stephen Paulson’s series on the Psalms.
The one who delights in the law of the Lord learns to fear his own good works and trust God outside of them.
Despite the fact that this could sound strange to modern ears, Luther has an important reason for saying what he does about the Commandments.
Erasmus and the Unintended Reformation
This great victory, the true defeat of death, I receive not by my thinking, willing, or working, but simply by believing.
This is an excerpt from chapter 6 of Scandalous Stories by Daniel Emery Price and Erick Sorensen (1517 Publishing 2018).
This is an excerpt from “Confession and Absolution” by John T. Pless in Common Places in Theology: A Curated Collection of Essays from Lutheran Quarterly, edited by Mark Mattes, (1517 Publishing 2023).
This is a companion article to “Johann Spangenberg on Dying Well”
God does not give us an undebatable answer to suffering. Instead, God suffers, too.
What we do much less of, even in Christian circles, is recognize just how pervasive sin is, such that it has thoroughly corrupted us.
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these early Lutheran hymns – and their physical availability in hymnals – in the piety of common people living in Lutheran towns and territories.
The Battle of Frankenhausen stands as a warning for what can happen when we abandon the Word God has given us and chase after some vision of our own imaginations.