On Thursday, 19th October 2017 ...

Revd Profesor Salvino Caruana OSA, Director Augustinian Institute - Pieta' will address the audience on the theme of Dr Martin Luther's Use of Augustine on Grace and Free Will in On the Bondage of the Will  at the auditorium of the Millennium Chapel, Church Street, Paceville, St. Julian's at 7.00pm.

Parking available on prior request. Drinks will be served after the lecture. The lecture is under the auspices of the Friends of Augustine of the Millennium Chapel. After the lecture, Revd Professor Salvino Caruana OSA will comment on his new publication ...

"Jiena s'hawn nista'" (Martinu Luteru) Riforma jew riforma?

to be launched at the event.  The publication will be for sale at the discounted price of €10 (after €13) and copies will be signed by the author.

Martin Luther was born to Hans Luder, and his wife Margarethe (née Lindemann) on 10th November 1483 in Eisleben, Saxony. His family moved to Mansfeld in 1484, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and smelters. He was determined to see Luther a lawyer. In 1501, at the age of 19, he entered the University of Erfurt, which he later described as a beerhouse and whorehouse. He was made to wake at four every morning for what has been described as: "a day of rote learning and often wearying spiritual exercises". He received his master's degree in 1505. In accordance with his father's wishes, Luther enrolled in law school at the same university that year but dropped out almost immediately, believing that law represented uncertainty.

He later attributed his decision to an event: on 2 July 1505, he was returning to university on horseback after a trip home. During a thunderstorm, a lightning bolt struck near him. Later telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out: "Help! Saint Anne, I will become a monk!" He came to view his cry for help as a vow he could never break. He left law school, sold his books, and entered a closed Augustinian cloister in Erfurt on 17 July 1505. He received a bachelor's degree in Biblical studies on the 9th March 1508, and another bachelor's degree in the Sentences by Peter Lombard in 1509. In 1516, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican, and papal commissioner for indulgences, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The most important for Luther was the doctrine of justification. Luther came to understand justification as entirely the work of God. This teaching by Luther was clearly expressed in his 1525 publication On the Bondage of the Will, which was written in response to On Free Will by Dewsiderius Erasmus (1524). On 18th April 1521, Luther appeared as ordered before the Diet of Worms. It was conducted from 28th January to 25th May 1521, with Emperor Charles Vth presiding. Martin Luther married Katarina von Bora, one of 12 nuns he had helped escape from the Nimbschen Cistercian convent in April 1523, when he arranged for them to be smuggled out in herring barrels. At the time of their marriage, Katharina was 26 years old and Luther was 41 years old. Luther died on the 18th February 1546.

Professor Theodor Dieter from the University of Strasbourg will be delivering the 21st Annual Saint Augustine Lecture - 2018.

Prof Theodor Dieter is very well known for his insights into the intellectual profile of the young Luther, for which Augustine of Hippo played an import role in the development of his theology of grace and freedom of the will. Prof Dieter is the main architect of almost all of the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue texts of the past twenty years. He is research professor and head of the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg.

Prof Dieter has been invited to Malta deliver lectures on: Martin Luther's Use of Augustine in the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518.

The University of Malta lecture will be on Tuesday, 5th December 2017 at GateWay Hall E whereas the Augustinian Institute lecture will be held on: Wednesday, 6th December 2017  at the Main Lecture Hall of the Augustinian Institute at Pietà.

The lecture is co-sponsored by The Maltese Augustinian Province, the University of Malta and the Archdiocesan Foundation for Theology Studies.

The lectures are for the general public and entrance is free. Drinks will be served after lecture.

For further info:

Revd Professor Salvino Caruana OSA

PO Box 61 Msida PO MSD 1000

2124 9407 - 9940 2102 - 7728 1249

caruana.salvino@gmail.com

salvino.caruana@um.edu.mt