Much mainstream Luther scholarship (and Lutheran theology) holds that Martin Luther downplayed
denied derided or just plain ignored the holiness without which no one shall see the Lord
(Heb. 12:14). Phil Anderas advances a revisionist thesis: from the first inklings of his
Augustinian turn c. 1514 to his death in 1546 Luther held and taught a robust theology of
progressive renewal in holiness carefully calibrated to the sober reality of residual sin and
the astonishing gospel of grace in Jesus Christ. As it is set forth in the works that embody
Luther's most considered judgments (c. 1535-46) this gospel-centered and irreducibly
trinitarian dogmatics of real renewal in holiness is Augustinian and evangelical in equal
parts. As such it commands the regard of theologians who stand in the tradition of the
Church's doctor gratiae. The argument proceeds in three steps: first an exposition of the
mature Luther's dogmatics of sin grace and holiness second an investigation of the roots of
this dogmatics in the theology of the 420s Augustine with whom a younger Luther was busily
engaged c. 1514-16 third an account of the continuities and discontinuities that characterize
the development of Luther's theology from its embryonic state in the mid-1510s through the
breakthroughs of the 1518-21 period to the settled position of the old Doctor.
