Extract from Luther’s Jenseitige Eschatology – To read the full text, click “Download” below.
Jenseitig! Unlike the theologically-impoverished English language, German has a fine word to describe “the life hereafter” alias “the life after death.”
Jenseitig — “on the other side of”; or “hereafter in the next life.” And that, notwithstanding the paucity of German compared to Dutch and English books thereon in modern theological literature after Kant and the Aufklärung or so-called ‘Enlightenment.’
Indeed, even the great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther is sometimes wrongly regarded as an advocate of soul-sleep, and occasionally even of postmortal annihilationism — just like conditional immortalists such as the Anabaptists, the Seventh-day Adventists, and the so-called Jehovah’s witnesses. Yet a careful study of his writings teaches exactly the opposite — viz., Luther’s keen awareness of ongoing human conciousness also between death and resurrection — and beyond, unto all eternity.
