55 Volumes of Pure Bliss

Well, just a few days ago I celebrated my 19th birthday. Hurray for me! My mom made me a chocolate cake and my family sang "Happy Birthday" to me. Then they had me sit down and “unwrap” (more like “pull a blanket off”) a large box. A mini-fridge! It will certainly come in handy next year at Moody and until then, I think I might put it up in my room. Because my dad has this phobia against air conditioning (I’ve tried to get him to seek help), I have devised an ingenious way to cool down my scorching room. I will plug in my new mini-fridge, open its door and then put my window fan in front of the opening, sucking out the cold air and blowing it into my oven of a room. Genius!

My sister kind of forgot to get me something by Wednesday (my birthday), but soon recovered by getting me the movie Kingdom of Heaven. It’s a sweet movie! I especially like the historical commentary feature, which lets you watch the movie while relevant historical facts about people and places pop up at the bottom of the screen. It’s actually quite interesting!

And then my birthday was over….or so I thought. Just yesterday, I was looking through the mail and saw a small cardboard package addressed to my dad. I didn’t really think anything of it (he gets a lot of books). But then he gave it to me, saying, “Happy Birthday!” Well, it turns out that they also got me The Complete Works of Martin Luther on CD and it is nothing short of amazing! I am not joking when I say it is one of the best presents I have ever received!

Fiftey-five volumes of pure bliss. That’s right – the CD contains fifty-five volumes of Luther’s works, ranging from commentaries on Genesis, to many of his Reformation writings, to the supremely interesting book entitled Table Talk (a collection of random thoughts and quotes by Luther, recorded by the many guests who stayed with him and ate at his table over the years). In all honesty, it is quite overwhelming. It will take years to work through all the material contained on that one little CD. Over the past few months I have really grown to like Luther a lot, and was planning on buying a few of his classics (like The Bon.dage of the Will), but after reading Here I Stand, a biography on Luther which included many quotes from Luther’s sermons and letters, I realized that there is much more to Luther than just his major, published works. I am especially looking forward to reading Luther’s commentary on Genesis. I read a small section from this commentary (it was about Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac) in Here I Stand and found Luther’s insights and thoughts to be wonderful (I will try to find this again and post it)!

There are also comprehensive introductions by the editors at the beginning of every volume. The introductions are all rather long, giving a lot of good historical and contextual information. They explain the circumstances surrounding the writing of the work, who the original audience was, etc. They also give information on how the pieces were translated from German (and sometimes Latin) into English.

Probably the feature that I find most helpful is the integrated footnote system. All one must do is hover their mouse over any footnote, and the information for that footnote will appear in a pop-up bubble. Many names and places are “footnoted” as well, displaying additional biographical and contextual information. And as if that wasn't enough, every single Bible reference, in ALL 55 volumes, is “footnoted” – just move your cursor over the reference and a pop-up will appear showing you the whole verse. I like.

There are many other great things about this program (bookmarks, advanced searching, extensive note taking system, citation system etc) but they are just icing on the cake. I do have one complaint, however. It was a pain to install. Because you are actually only buying book licenses, the core software is free and can be downloaded online. At first I used the CD, but it contained outdated software and just made the whole process take forever (update after update after update). However, once I got the stupid thing installed, it all worked perfectly.

I would definitely recommend this awesome resource to anyone who finds themselves attracted to Luther’s writing. Yes, it is rather pricey (about $150 on Amazon), but I think it will be worth it, and it is WAY cheaper than buying all 55 of those volumes in book form. Here you get 55 indexed, searchable, compact (you don’t even need the CD!), footnoted, copy/pasteable, and backupable books written by one of the greatest Christian thinkers in history.

Like I said…pure bliss.