Abstract:
Disputations were a fixture of Martin Luther’s academic career. Luther participated regularly
in disputations. It was an important communicative vehicle through which he developed and
expressed his theology. The well-known 95 theses are a case in point. Luther’s career as a
disputator was impressive. Several of his most influential disputations were explicitly intended
for consideration by his academic and ecclesiastical colleagues, but the majority of his
disputations took place as a curricular exercise at the University of Wittenberg. The purpose of
these disputations was pedagogical and polemical. Luther deployed the same tools for his
defence of proper doctrine that were at the centre of the Protestant reformation in the face of
objections. The disputatio de homine is a systematic summary of Luther’s anthropology. It
incorporates the doctrine of justification as the theological definition of man. It treats the
subject within the context of the relationship between theology and philosophy, and reflects
upon the new language of theology. The disputatio de homine provides an essential resource for
the study of Luther’s anthropology and the doctrine of justification.
