Evangelism in “Christian” Societies

The globalization of the economy and the unthinkable development of mass media and transportation and communication have transformed the oldest Christian societies of the northern hemisphere and especially of Europe into multicultural societies. Re‐evangelization is the answer to the question of what must be done. Faith originates from hearing; the missionary preaching that is directed toward the people who are ignorant of the world‐saving work of Christ needs to be articulated, keeping in mind the scheme of communication and the special significance of the following factors: transmitter, receiver, topic, message, channel and code. The gospel is addressed to all ages. Youth and intellectuals exhibit more difficulties in acceptance, which calls for the adoption of a special code of communication. Of the utmost necessity is the flame of the transmitter. Electronic channels of communication offer unthinkable possibilities for the transmission of the message of the gospel to innumerable receivers by the use of a variety of codes.     

Toward law–gospel harmony in Lutheran theology and ethics

Lutheran antipathy toward the law is harmful to Christian ethics. This antipathy arises from the false notion that law and gospel are opposed. However, the Lutheran Confessions show that law–gospel distinction does not necessarily imply law–gospel opposition. When law and gospel are properly defined, they interrelate harmoniously within a multiperspectival model of Christian ethics. Moreover, the third use of the law then emerges as the basic and primary use.     

Doctrine of Scripture in Lutheran Theology—Its Missional Thrust: A Response to Lamin Sanneh's Hein‐Fry Lecture 20081

Abstract : In this article, I argue that Lutheran doctrine of Scripture is rooted in a christological centre, a centre that is coherent with Lamin Sanneh's thesis that the missionary experience must encompass both the work of the missionary who comes from ‘outside’ and, more especially, the reflections of the ‘indigenous’ peoples on Scripture in its witness to God's coming in Jesus Christ. This essential mutuality of ‘receiving’ and ‘giving’ in reading Scripture christologically undercuts imperial biblical hermeneutical practices that privilege certain cultures, languages, ethnic, racial, and class groupings as bearers of the gospel of Jesus Christ.     

Law and Gospel,or the Law of the Gospel? Karl Barth’s Political Theology Compared with Luther and Calvin

This essay is an attempt to understand the significance of Barth's redefinition of the "law/gospel" rubric for political theology. Barth's thought is exposited at length, and illumined by comparison with Luther and Calvin. Luther emphasizes the distance between gospel and the law, distinguishing between serving God in the secular regiment, and serving Christ in the spiritual regiment. He thereby challenges the improper relation of state and church, but does so in a manner that can lead to a passive dualism. Calvin holds that preaching the law to the state includes preaching the gospel; thus, the church has a positive vision against which it can evaluate the state's service to God in Christ. This leads, however, to the danger of a 'clerical guardianship' of the state.
Barth finds a positive connection between the two governments in the fact that both communities are based in Christ, in whom the gospel is their law. This grounds his high view of the state as predecessor to the heavenly kingdom, as well as a prophetic mission of the church to the state. This does not lead to a new Christendom, however, first, because Barth hopes not for a kingdom wrought by human hands, but for the Theocracy of God, and second, because Barth sees the fallen reality of both church and state, the state pagan and violent, and the church a poor witness. In the end, though Barth makes a strong case for supporting theological critique of the state, while avoiding Constantinianism, he is unable to solve the problem of how to connect the gospel and the law in the civil community.     

Laying Claim to Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Legacy

This essay assesses the oft-made link between Walter Rauschenbusch and Martin Luther King Jr. Denying neither Rauschenbusch’s influence on King nor King’s social gospel status, it nevertheless questions the way historians locate Rauschenbusch’s legacy in King and the civil rights movement. This strategy, however unintentionally, reproduces the white social gospel’s “astigmatism” on race and undermines the contributions of black social gospel (and other neglected) leaders even as revised histories affirm them. After exploring King’s references to Rauschenbusch and Rauschenbusch’s reflections on race, the paper compares their theologies. This comparison reveals key differences on race and economic justice that ramify across Rauschenbusch’s and King’s distinctive articulations of social gospel categories, further complicating historians’ claims on King. Oversimplifying the connection between these important figures in religious ethics distorts theological understanding of social gospel legacies and compromises their power for future generations.     

A Broken Engagement: Reassessing Barth's Relationship to Kierkegaard on the Grounds of Subjectivity and Preaching

Despite Barth's initial appropriations of Kierkegaard, he famously discarded the Dane from the theological ‘canon’ due to the latter's alleged anthropocentric subjectivism. Yet Kierkegaard was himself a preacher and polemical homiletician, seeking merely to appropriate the objective truth of the proclaimed word. Barth's Basel prison sermons reveal this same endeavour to render the eternally significant message temporally significant for his hearers. In Kierkegaard's Christendom, a corrective focus on subjectivity was the only way to remain faithful to the ‘objective’ truth of the gospel. Barth and Kierkegaard are juxtaposed here not in contrast (as Barth might have preferred) but in affinity, in that both sought to evoke the dialectical subjectivity of objectivity through preaching.     

The Second Vatican Council 50th anniversary: visions and re-visions

On 21 November 2014, the 50th anniversary of the solemn promulgation of Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio was celebrated. Between ‘aggiornamento’ and ‘ressourcement’ the Catholic Church had been striving to understand itself and its Tradition more precisely, in order to be newly relevant, lastingly true and authoritative in the future ? an indispensible task, if the gospel were to be proclaimed to the contemporary world, but not an easy one. It is little wonder that this completion of the Council's endeavours was preceded by its so-called ‘black week’. Questions remain as to the outcome of it all, and the articles assembled in this issue assess the reception of these two conciliar texts after 50 years. Where do the achievements lie? Where are the shortcomings? Where do questions need to be asked today that reach beyond the horizon of Vatican II?     

Law‐Gospel theologies of a state of exception

We address contemporary concerns with fascism by critically assessing the classic law/gospel relation in Lutheran theology. Karl Holl, founder of the Luther Renaissance in the early twentieth century, develops Luther's experience of the self under the divine wrath in terms that have affinity to what Carl Schmitt calls the “state of exception.” We examine similar non‐dialectical ways of relating law/gospel that nourish fascist tendencies on the right or left in North America.     

Christian protesters for democracy in Taiwan: a study of two American missionaries under Taiwanese martial law

Christians played a significant role in the course of Taiwan’s self-determination movements and the pro-democratic Tangwai movement during the 1960s and 1970s. While most researchers laid their focus on the Presbyterian Church ministers, the stories of Methodist pastor Milo Thornberry and Catholic priest Ronald Boccieri have rarely been mentioned. Thornberry helped Peng Ming-min to escape the country and Boccieri sheltered Chen Chu in his parish church. Consequently, the two American missionaries were listed as personae non gratae and expelled from the island by the Kuomintang (nationalist) regime. Although they were involved in the respective political incidents to different degrees, they had some things in common: compassion for native Taiwanese, concern for social justice and human rights, and conviction in witnessing to the gospel by non-violent action and fighting against injustice. This article uses interviews, autobiographies, memoirs, Foreign Ministry archives and newspapers to recount their stories that have not appeared in the historiography of their churches. It discusses how the Catholic and Methodist Churches maintained harmonious relations with the government for the benefit of their evangelistic work during the period of martial law. Finally it looks into the reasons why the two missionaries dared to disobey their churches’ official positions and the Washington government’s instruction that expatriates in Taiwan should not interfere in local politics.     

Reign of God,Trinity, or Promise? Alternative Missiological Keys for Engaging Religious Pluralism

The fact of religious pluralism demands a theological response. Recent models for engaging religious pluralism overcome the shortcomings of traditional models. However, they inadequately address the categories of sin and divine hiddenness, while struggling to articulate a coherent relationship between dialogue and proclamation. The classic Lutheran tradition offers three fruitful resources (the gospel as promise, the law/gospel distinction, and the hiddenness of God) for engaging religious pluralism and balancing interreligious dialogue and gospel proclamation.     

Simone Weil: The Ethics of Affliction and the Aesthetics of Attention

ABSTRACT

For Simone Weil the invocation of ‘rights’ to address extreme human suffering–what she calls ‘affliction’–is ‘ludicrously inadequate’. Rights, Weil argues, invite a response, whereas what the afflicted require is not dialogue but simply to be heard. For Weil, hearing the ‘cry’ of the afflicted is the basis of all justice. The task of such a hearing is given over to Weil’s concept of attention, which demands an ethics of creative silence. This paper will argue that central to Weil’s ethics of attention, and thus the way she thinks we should show compassion and act justly, is the Kantian aesthetic concept of disinterestedness. I will argue that whilst Weil is influenced by Kant in multiple ways, it is his aesthetics, rather than his normative moral theory, that is most at play in her own ethical theory of attention.     

Mozart Among the Theologians

The essay compares and contrasts the philosophical, theological, and aesthetic approaches to Mozart in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard's aesthete A (Either/Or, I), Karl Barth (primarily Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), and Hans Küng (Mozart: Traces of Transcendence). Whereas Kierkegaard's A outlines a non‐religious ‘daemonic Mozart’, Barth and Küng depict two contrasting theological understandings of Mozart's music. Barth's Mozart reflects a Reformed aesthetic, with Mozart as a ‘parable’ of gospel, whereas Küng's Mozart reflects a Roman Catholic ‘sacramental’ vision of music and religious faith. The essay explores how these different visions of Mozart are shaped by both their theological and aesthetic commitments.     

Luther's Understanding of Imputatio in the Context of his Doctrine of Justification and Its Consequences for the Preaching of the Gospel

This article deals with the problem of how to understand the notion of imputatio within Martin Luther's doctrine of justification, which for Luther is both necessary and sufficient. The author shows that Luther interprets imputatio in a threefold way: by outlining (1) the non‐imputation of sin, (2) the imputation of faith as righteousness, and (3) the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the sinner. Interpreting imputatio in this particular way, Luther maintains his view of Christian faith as a communicative, dynamic and changeable reality which is crucially dependent on communication. For that reason, Luther's understanding of justification cannot be considered without his understanding of preaching the gospel, in which the gospel of Christ is communicated to individuals. Thus in the preaching and the hearing of God's word, imputation is taking place in the communication of the gospel, mirroring the communicative structure of faith's reality itself.     

Youth Ministry in and beyond the Church? The sacrament of confirmation in the Roman Catholic Church as a testcase[1]

This article deals with the dilemma in which the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe is involved, concerning the initiation of young people into the life and faith of Christian communities. Some people argue that only a solid and profound mystagogical catechesis can revitalise the congregation, other people are in favour of the idea that the church should remain open for every particular quest for meaning of young people today. Two different opinions on the meaning of the gospel for postmodern youth cultures are at stake. In the field of confirmation catechesis this discussion culminates in strong tensions and conflicts. In this article a third vision on confirmation catechesis is presented which focuses on the hermeneutical qualities of the Christian gospel and on the possibility of young people to explore these qualities by ‘following the church at some distance’.

     

Was Hirschi Right?: A National-Level Longitudinal Examination of Religion as a Social Bond

The current research re-examines Hirschi’s (1969) omission of religion as a social bond by examining the impact of religious commitment and religious salience on substance use in National Youth Survey Family Study respondents, both in adolescence/early adulthood, and again in middle adulthood. This approach allows for a longitudinal examination of a large, nationally representative sample of respondents. Results challenge Hirschi’s decision, and suggest that, particularly in adolescence, a person’s religious service attendance, and belief in religion, do affect their likelihood of substance use. Further research is suggested.     

New Mutations of the Protestant Ethic among Latin American Pentecostals

This article argues that there is a partial consonance between the ‘inner-worldly asceticism’ of the fast-growing Protestant movement in Latin America and the economic imperatives of the global capitalism into which Latin America has been progessively incorporated since the 1960s.This consonance stops short of being an unequivocal ‘elective affinity’ since there are also points of tension between the new Protestant ethic and the spirit of contemporary capitalism. It is argued that such consonance as exists arises out of a complex symbiosis rather than a simple one-way causal relationship. The article outlines the range of views among Latin American Pentecostal Protestants about the implications of their faith for economic behaviour, and relates these views to current economic conditions. It suggests that certain Protestant habits and values minimally assist economic survival and can even lead to modest success. Particular attention is paid to recent developments in the Pentecostal movement in Latin America which diverge from the classic Protestant ethic of the West, notably the emergence of an indigenous prosperity gospel and a selective acceptance of consumerism.     

What goes into a Paradigm? Some reflections on gender‐issue ‘differences’ between Sunni law schools,and the problematic of their historical attribution

Traditional Islamic law developed within a number of paradigmatic blueprints that were later ascribed to the ‘founders’ of ‘law schools’. This law was neither code‐driven ‘civil law’ in the sense of the Napoleonic code, nor was it ‘common law’ in the English and American sense. Speaking mainly in the language of traditions, medieval scholars formulated legal rules whose admissibility depended on communal consensus regarding their validity. Many of the rules remained imbedded in ‘examples’, Hadith‐reported case studies, and/or qur'anic exegesis, while the underlying principles formed part of the developing legal tradition. That they were not codified provided the latter with an inherent flexibility, enabling judges and jurisconsults not just to apply, but to develop the law. The following article is a study of a legal concept, tahlil marriage, and the ways in which the four extant Sunni law schools have dealt with this notion, including the development of legal categories that were brought to, and derived from, the concept in question.