This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Mola, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Stephen Osmond is an American historian.

He specializes in early modern and modern history

and is taught for many years at Harvard University

where he's the McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History.

He's the author of many influential books,

his book The Age of Reform, 1250 to 1550,

won the Shaft History Prize in 1981.

His latest work is The Serpent and the Lamb,

Kronock, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation.

Stephen Osmond, welcome to thinking in public.

Thank you.

You know, you have written so much about Germany,

so much about the Reformation,

and back when I was doing doctoral work in historical theology I first became acquainted with your research and writing and and yet this new book brings something completely new to the table in terms of the influence together of Martin Luther and Lucas Kronock, but this has to be told in terms of a story. How did you come to write this book?

Well, for many years I have had a conoc art on the jacket or on the pages of my books and I became more and more interested in who this man was. I quickly found out that it was almost

impenetrable to move in his direction because he was all we have of him really are his

pictures. I thought you know I could do a book on him where I would have all kinds of letters and stuff, but there's just absolutely

nothing there. And so I've had to become a kind of art historian, which I'm certainly not, to do this.

So my primary sources there were these paintings. And I think I've learned enough for historians to deal with it but it was I think

...