The Freedom of a Teenager: Vocation and Service Learning as the Future of Youth Ministry

Abstract : This article asserts the value of service learning as integral to youth ministry's future. However, service learning often lacks an appropriate philosophical foundation and an effectual process. Therefore, we offer Luther's doctrine of vocation as a framework for engaging youth in service experiences, which in return becomes a concrete way to experience the doctrine of vocation and, more importantly, the freedom of a Christian. Framed and interpreted through a vocational lens, service experiences aid youth in recognizing the urgency of a life of faith,     

Social Ethics between Universality and Specificity: Outline of a Chalcedonian Social Ethic1

Abstract : In Lutheran ethics the Chalcedonian notion of the communication of properties (communicatio idiomatum) plays an important role in understanding the paradoxical relation between the reality of God and the reality of the world. This motif also plays an important role for Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In a contemporary context the Chalcedonian understanding substantiates a differentiated unity between universality and specificity with regard to the foundation of a Lutheran social ethic.     

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.     

Implicit learning: An analysis of the form and structure of a body of tacit knowledge

Subjects learned implicitly the underlying structure of an artificial language by memorizing a set of representative exemplars from the language. The form and structure of their resulting knowledge of the language was evaluated and analyzed over a four day period by several procedures: (a) solving anagrams from the language, (b) determining the well-formedness of novel letter strings, and (c) providing detailed introspective reports. Several important implications about implicit acquisition of a novel complex system emerged. First, the memorial representation of a structured system is acquired through the dual operations of a differentiation-like process based upon relational invariances and a configurational process based upon overall structure. Second, the form of tacit knowledge is an abstract representation of the intrinsic structure of the stimulus field. Third, while the ability to make explicit what is known implicitly increases with performance levels, the conscious apprehension of structure always lags behind what is known unconsciously.     

Sentence understanding and knowledge of the world: Evidences from a sentence-picture matching task performed by aphasic patients

The abilities of aphasic patients to perform a sentence-picture matching task were investigated on simple declarative reversible sentences. Two factors were found to differentially affect Broca's versus Wernicke's aphasics' performance: sentence plausibility and spatial arrangement. Sentence plausibility, that is to say, the liability of two given nouns in a sentence to act as agent and recipient according to normal subjects' expectancies, had a significant effect on the frequency of correct responses of Broca's aphasics but not on those of Wernicke's. Conversely, the latter were found to be more sensitive to a match or mismatch in the left-to-right spatial arrangement of the grammatical subject and object in a sentence on the one hand, and the order of the corresponding personages in the picture on the other. The results are discussed in terms of “frame selection” and the handling of ordered structure strategies contributing to normal system, but selectively disturbed in the case of brain damage.