Incongruous and Creative Grace: Reading Paul and the Gift with Martin Luther

Paul and the Gift by John Barclay advances an interpretation of Paul’s theology of grace that resonates with Martin Luther’s reading: God’s gift is God’s Son, Jesus Christ, given for and to the unworthy. To imagine Luther reading Paul and the Gift is thus to conjure images of deep and fundamental consensus. But questions remain. Is the law a cultural canon of worth that God’s gift of Christ ignores, or is it, as God’s law, a fixed judgement that God’s grace contravenes? Does God give only ‘without regard to worth’ and thus with a kind of divine indifference to cultural indices of value, or does the gift of Christ contradict the conditions of its receipts and thus come in a way that is actually incongruous? With these questions, Luther might push back against Barclay. With others he would ask Barclay to go further. Is not God’s incongruous grace also and characteristically creative? How is the gift of Christ that God gave present to and for recipients as the gift God now gives? In all these ways, Luther’s theology of the word poses questions to or invites expansions of Barclay’s theology of grace.     

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.     

Falling From Grace: Understanding an Ethical Sanctioning Experience

Although an ethical sanction is viewed as an incredibly stressful event for professional counselors, the experience of being sanctioned is not well known. This article provides an overview of the sanctioning process, a discussion of professional silence, and a case example of a sanctioning experience for a counselor. The sanctioning experience is described in a 3‐stage response sequence and is illustrated with journal entries from a sanctioned counselor. Response interventions for each stage are suggested, and implications for the counseling profession are offered.     

Triune Grace

Grace is the favor of God, both the giver and the gift at the same time. In trinitarian understandings of grace, the Father is the ungifted giver; the Son and the Spirit are in different ways the gift. The Son is the external act of grace in humanity; and the Spirit is the internal gift. Both are infused. Although this is essential to Lutheran theology, it is here offered as ecumenical theology.     

Economy of Grace

Book reviewed:
Economy of Grace by Kathryn Tanner (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2005) xiii + 158 pp. Reviewed by D. Stephen Long Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary 2121 Sheridan Road Evanston, IL 60201 USA     

Comedy as Correction: Humor as Perspective by Incongruity on Will & Grace and Queer as Folk

This essay examines the television programs Will & Grace and Queer as Folk through the lens of a comic frame to argue for each show’s potential to change our social culture. Because television culture is oriented to heterosexual and Christian perfection (i.e. heterosexuality and Christianity as normative identities), gays, lesbians and Jews are rendered Other and thereby tragically framed. By reading Queer as Folk and Will & Grace together and employing the Burkean notion of perspective by incongruity, this article argues that neither show’s characters exist within the tragic binary of victim/villain. Rather, the use of humor offers the necessary perspective by incongruity to comically correct the tragic frame of heterosexual and Christian perfection.