Scenes and Means of Grace

Abstract : The Word, Baptism, and Holy Communion—key means of grace according to the Lutheran tradition—take place in a web of earthly conditions whenever they are celebrated. Generating their own scenes of grace, the means of grace give voice, sense of place, and creativity where those are otherwise threatened. Other scenes of grace complement the means of grace, similarly bringing voice, place, and creativity in the face of environmental and social injustices. Martin Luther's affirmation of Christ's presence in creation, both in means of grace and throughout God's world, is a strategic and meaningful threshold for Christians to engage environment and justice while continuing to listen and look for the grace in Christ that feeds and shapes them.     

Grace, Doubt, and Evil: The Constructive Task Of Reformation Theology

The Lutheran vocation is to be a friend of grace; and since the 16th century Lutheran systematic theology has built upon a foundation of grace. Two apparent barriers to grace need addressing. First, doubt in the form of agnosticism and atheism provides a metaphysical argument against God's existence. Second, evil and suffering provide a moral argument against God's existence. From a Lutheran point of view the question of God's graciousness takes precedence over God's existence.     

Avoiding Cheap Grace: Luther and the Need for Moral Despair

Abstract : This article addresses two problems in the development of an adequate Lutheran ethics in our time: moral quietism in the public square and an overly narrow and individualistic moral vision. I argue that the construction of grace as “freedom” tends toward “cheap grace” and that grace needs, then, to be thought of as a compelling of moral striving. Second, I argue that our sense of moral despair today should be broadened to focus on our participation in social structures that damage humans and the nonhuman world as much as on our personal and individual failings.     

Economy and Grace: A Defense of Human Capital

Luther develops his idea of the grace of God in tandem with his idea of economy, and a society characterized by ethical and social values such as love of neighbor and caring for the weak and poor. Hence, the reformer's search for a gracious God is developed along with his criticism of the current indulgence doctrine and the emerging oeconomia moderna. Thus, building on a simul gratia et oeconomia, Luther's reformation theology can be perceived as the intersection of an economy of grace and a horizontal social economy (works of love) in quotidian life that together constitute human capital.     

Theology's Need for a New Interpretation of Nature: Correlate of the Doctrine of Grace

Abstract : Important aspects of contemporary life—from increasing dependence on technology to climate change, from changing views of human nature to global interactions among varied cultures and religions—demand that theologians consider the best understandings of the world that the sciences can offer. To help support a fully relational trinitarian concept of God, namely, one that offers a richer interpretation of God's relationship with the world, theology needs truth about the world, humans, and our place in relation to the rest of nature. Lutheran theological foci have a built‐in thirst that only dialogue with science can quench. Too narrow an approach to anthropology and justification by faith focuses on God's activity on behalf of humans as if apart from nature. We need a more comprehensive vision of God's activity in creation, redemption and sanctification by grace. To explicate this, we turn to Luther's emphasis on God's incarnation in human flesh and blood—thus also in the cells, molecules, and subatomic activity of the world; the communication of attributes; and the indwelling Christ. For a deeper understanding of God as triune and of redemption, we need a renewed emphasis on the connection between creation, incarnation and redemption, and between nature and grace. An increased knowledge of science contributes to a healthier approach to the church's mission by giving a theological basis for ethical action in relation to the (natural) world.     

Challenges To Human Equality

According to liberal egalitarian morality, all human beings are one another's moral equals. Nonhuman animals, by contrast, are not considered to be our moral equals. This essay considers two challenges to the liberal egalitarian view. One is the ``separation problem,' which is the challenge to identify a morally significant intrinsic difference between all human beings and all nonhuman animals. The other is the “equality problem,” which is to explain how all human beings can be morally equal when there are some human beings whose psychological capacities (and, in some cases, their psychological potentials as well) are no higher than those of certain nonhuman animals. The focus throughout is on the ethics of killing but the arguments are of broader relevance. The essay reaches a skeptical conclusion about our ability to meet these challenges.     

Narcissism and Grace: Inherent Incompatibility

Narcissistic conditions are highly prevalent in clinical treatment settings. However, most developmental theories include only maturational and interpersonal aspects of functioning without including spiritual and Christian-based factors. In working with narcissistic disorders, it is necessary for the patient to incorporate grace and forgiveness into their sense of self, through the transmuting internalization of vicarious introspection of the therapist. This paper asserts that grace is a necessary and vital prerequisite for developmental and spiritual growth. Specific examples are included to help therapists identify and work within the therapeutic transference to help the patient integrate grace into their identity.     

Fifty Shades of Grace: The Crafting of Sexual Wisdom

Abstract

Each of us has lived sexual experience that gives us embodied knowledge. This embodied knowledge is a primary source for the creation of practical sexual wisdom. We learn by doing, bumping up against others and mining the consequences to create a personal ethic. Grace accompanies us along the way. In this article a model of sexual-spiritual integration is proposed in which embodied knowledge is in critical-liminal conversation with other sources of knowledge to create practical sexual wisdom in a poetic and phronetic process. Such integration is an example of the moral creativity of the human being and derives from the function of sexuality in the person, the story-telling tendency of the brain to create identity, and the narrative intelligibility of human life. Implications for theological education (providing safe space, information, and invitations to critical and liminal reflection) are briefly discussed before particular graces (desire, vulnerability, honesty and wrestling) are explored and illustrated by stories and poems.     

Grace and Reconciliation as Gift

Through examples of grace and gift of reconciliation the meaning of grace is interpreted in relation to social and political transformation. Grace is understood as the unexpected kairotic moment of change, where the future opens up for new possibilities of reconciliation in situations of conflict. It is a moment you cannot plan for, but hope for to happen. Trusting in the possibility of a gracious moment can influence your work in the present. Hoping and waiting for the gracious moment of reconciliation is linked to a praxis of active nonviolence as seen in the work of Martin Luther King, Jr.     

Preaching Christ Crucified: Luther and the Revelation of God

Abstract :  The doctrine of revelation has to do with how we know God, but Luther warned against the human presumption that God can be known fully. God remains hidden and is revealed in Jesus and his death on the cross. The cross is at odds with all human notions of an omnipotent God. Preachers ought to be suspicious of human presumptions about God that inflate and puff up. The cross is the antidote for a theology and a preaching of glory as well as the criterion for theology and preaching that authentically proclaims God and the gospel of Jesus Christ.     

平等的正义性及其形式原则考论

正义在逻辑上是比平等更底层、更基础的概念,可以为平等理论提供逻辑基础,平等的论证是一种正义性论证。支撑平等的正义的形式原则相同的人相同对待,不同的人不同对待,恰恰是从平等的描述性概念即人们的相同性到平等的规范性概念即平等要求的逻辑过渡。     

Grace in Nature and History: Luther's Doctrine of Creation Revisited1

Abstract: Interpreting Luther's Trinitarian theology of creation, it is shown how Luther's doctrine of creation is modelled on his soteriology. In his writing Against Latomus(1521) Luther established his famous distinction between the external grace of God (favor dei) and the divine gift (donom): the living Christ. A similar distinction can be re‐constructed from Luther's theology of creation as presented in his catechisms, sermons, tracts, and exegetical writings. Just as Luther makes a distinction between the Christ who takes side for us within God, and the Christ who is dwelling in the heart of the believer, Luther makes a the distinction between the fatherly love toward humankind (benevolentia), and the Father, Son and Spirit, who are at work from within the life of the creatures in God's blessing (benedictio). There is an implicit notion of a pater pro nobis and a pater in nobis, which reflects, in the order of creation, the classic distinction between Christus pro nobis and Christus in nobis. According to Luther's theology of the Eucharist and divine blessing, there exists a union between God and creature, which has a similar structure as the union between Christ and believer. There are distinctions to be drawn as well as correlations to be seen between the order of creation and the order of salvation.     

从平等与责任谈医患共同体何以可能

研究对“医患共同体”这一颇具可能性的命题进行分析,指出其成立的基础之一是对医患双方“分裂”处境的认知与承认,通过以对医患平等的探讨为起点,提出应将医、患双方知识/权力上的优劣转化为差异的能动性,在促进共同责任的基础上,建立在理论及实践的医患共同体。目前可能的临床实践包括鼓励医护讲述成为患者的真实体验,鼓励包括叙事医学在内的促进平等共情的实践以及赋能患者、使其具备更强能力参与医疗共同决策的实践等。

     

论社会主义荣辱观的主体层次性

对社会主义荣辱观进行主体层次性划分,不仅是构建和谐社会的客观要求,而且是道德层次性研究的内在呼唤。胡锦涛同志提出的“八荣八耻”社会主义荣辱观应针对不同的道德主体各有侧重,并针对不同的道德主体切实加强社会主义荣辱观教育。     

Luther and Shankara: Two Ways of Salvation in the Indian Context

Abstract : This article compares and contrasts the soteriology of Reformer Martin Luther with Advaita philosopher Shankara. Luther's emphasis on the communication of attributes (communicatio idiomatum) in the two natures of Christ gets doubled in faith, where the indwelling Christ takes on our human nature while giving the believer the fruits of his divine nature, such as eternal life. Conversely, our human finite history replete with suffering is taken up into the divine life, dignifying what is mundanely human. In the Indian tradition of the Upanishads and nonduality in philosophy, Shankara seeks the union of the Self (atman) with the highest reality, the Absolute (Brahman). The realization of the oneness of Self with Brahman requires the shedding of all historical or personal attributes. The result is that the suffering of oppressed untouchables and other lower castes is dubbed unreal. A healthy soteriology in the context of Indian spirituality—a Dalit soteriology—could benefit from Luther's exchange of attributes, because the mundane sufferings of humble people are dignitifed by receiving a place in God's reality.     

Equality of opportunity and complex equality: The special place of schooling

This paper is an engagement with Equality by John Baker, Kathleen Lynch, Judy Walsh and Sara Cantillon. It identifies a dilemma for educational egalitarians, which arises within their theory of equality, arguing that sometimes there may be a conflict between advancing equality of opportunity and providing equality of respect and recognition, and equality of love care and solidarity. It argues that the latter values may have more weight in deciding what to do than traditional educational egalitarians have usually thought.     

Grace as Pardon and Power: Pictures of the Christian Life in Luther, Calvin, and Barth

Christians have long understood grace both as a declaration of acceptance and as a power that transforms. This article illumines two theses while investigating the relationship between these understandings of grace in Luther, Calvin, and Barth's development of the law/gospel dialectic and the doctrines of justification and sanctification. First, though each theologian makes use of both understandings of grace, each also tends to emphasize one over the other. The unity and tension within and between these perspectives help to show that while both pictures are of the greatest importance for each other and cannot be separated, they also exist in tension, as long as they are worked out in the lives of sinners. Second, the author claims that the positions of Luther and Barth are more alike than is generally recognized.