Any opinions of those who own this?
Thanks,
Jim
I have found it helpful as a reference work, consulting it for commentary on Biblical books and the occasional reference I have found in other resources. I have had it for many years, bought it on CD. There may be a copy out there for much less than directly from Logos.
If you don't a have a strong connection to Luther, I'm not sure I would purchase it. Also note that there are several expensive (comparatively) upgrades for this set as well.
Thank you
If you are into Luther studies, it is a no-brainer. It is not exhaustive (the Weimar edition is over twice as many volumes, and the volumes are bigger) but still has fairly good coverage.
As far as how it fits into Logos, there are two things that could be better. 1) the index volume is barely usable with all the bad links - at least it was when I last tried to use it within Logos. Using built in Logos search functions works much better in my experience. 2) The OCR is not always the best quality, although this seems to be slowing improving with time. 3) The American edition only has a few volumes of sermons as samples. With the Logos sermon features, this is a bit unfortunate. The editors just were not thinking of future Logos features when they made their choices in the middle of the 20th century.
In general, the American Edition does present many different moods of Luther, and the notes are a start for seeing Luther's situation to understand what he is saying. For better or worse, Luther is quite quotable. The good side of this is that he is entertaining to actually read and wrestle with. The bad side is that he is easy to "cherry pick" quotes that, while memorable, can get in the way of the encounter with God that Luther is actually aiming for - and Logos search makes this terribly easy. I remember being at a Lutheran theological conference, and the frustration of a Lutheran pastor expressed to me from when he had had to deal with someone who was doing this...
May I suggest maybe starting with the edition of The Freedom of a Christian that is on sale now? If you find yourself enjoying your encounter with Luther, there is plenty of time to get the 55 volume edition.
This was the main reason I purchased Logos a few years back
I am reading my way through them - currently up to Vol 17 - plus Logos has been adding the newer volumes as CPH publishes them.
I find these translations of Luther quite readable - and enjoyable.
However alternatives have been appearing in Community Publishing - and I've been bidding on those - so that is something to think about as well
Unfortunately, volume 55 appears to be missing the Scripture index that is present in the print edition. It has the topic/literature index, but not the Scripture index that runs like p.390-440 in the print version. Sad!
