Six Ways of Salvation: How Does Jesus Save?

Abstract : Using the model method for comparative analysis of theological theories, this article compares and contrasts six models of atonement: (1) Jesus as teacher of true knowledge; (2) Jesus as moral example and influence; (3) Jesus as the victorious champion and liberator; (4) Jesus as our satisfaction; (5) Jesus as the happy exchange; and (6) Jesus as the final scapegoat.     

The Book of Concord and Human Sexuality,Seen Through the Institution of Marriage

Abstract : Although The Book of Concord says only a few things about sexuality explicitly, by observing the distinction between law and gospel and the way the reformers correlate the law with their social situation, today's Lutheran readers may reach broader conclusions about their approach to such matters. The most important issue regarding sexuality in the sixteenth century arose from the reformers' desire to distinguish monastic celibacy from true chastity and thus to support their conviction that every‐day married life was a God‐pleasing, Christian vocation.     

Calling a Thing What It Is: A Lutheran Approach to Whiteness

The July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in killing of African American teenager Trayvon Martin and the aftermath demonstrated that America is not yet cured from “the cancer of whiteness” that infects the heart of American Christianity. This article interrogates “whiteness” as a pressing American and religious issue. It looks to Martin Luther's theology of the cross as a way to both expose the sinfulness of whiteness and to offer a framework for dislodging it.     

Prayer and the Theologian of the Cross: Julian of Norwich and Martin Luther

This article constructs a dialogue between Julian of Norwich and the concept of “theologian of the cross,” as found in Martin Luther and his recent interpreters. Since she is Catholic and medieval, one might begin by suspecting that her theology is not acceptable to someone who follows Luther's teaching in the Heidelberg Disputation. However a closer look will suggest that what she has to say is largely in accord with Luther's standard for a theologian of the cross. Put more positively, Julian is a theologian of the cross, in spite of her use of different language and concepts from those of Luther. The focus of the article is the subject of prayer: what Julian teaches about it, and what may be inferred about prayer from Luther's dramatic theses in his disputation.     

The “Strange Acts of God:”The Hermeneutics of Concealment and Revelation in Luther and Shakespeare

Abstract: Martin Luther called himself “God's court‐jester”. He saw history as one of the “masks of God,” and he understood God as hiding Godself often behind the mask of the Devil. Luther developed a paradoxical theology, a theology of the cross, that is surprisingly compatible in certain respects with the paradoxical artistic vision of Shakespeare, especially in Hamlet, King Lear and Measure for Measure. Crucial motifs of Luther's theology—the hidden God, indirect revelation, revelation by concealment, revelation under the opposite, the “strange acts of God,” God's “rearward parts”(posteriora), and suffering (Anfechtungen and melancholy)—resonate with certain latent, even if at times blasphemeous, theological motifs and themes in Shakespeare. They also resonate with the experience of the Lutheran church in Hungary both in its past under communism and today in post‐communist Hungary.     

Why a common commemoration of the Reformation?

This article provides information about the fact that today any commemoration of the Reformation can only be celebrated in ecumenical communion. In contrast to earlier Reformation jubilees, the commemoration of the Reformation in 2017 is taking place, for the first time, in an ecumenical era. The year 2017 refers back to the year 1517, that is, to a time when the break with the Catholic Church had not yet happened. Martin Luther himself did not intend the division of the Church, nor did he visualise the founding of a new church, but the renewal of all Christendom. This failed in his time. Therefore one should regard the ecumenical search for the restoration of unity as the – indeed very belated – success of the Reformation. The commemoration of ??a reformation is an ecumenical opportunity, if it is committed to living the triad of gratitude for the reformation’s positive aims, of repentance for the sins of division and subsequent confessional wars, and of hope for a greater unity between Lutherans and Catholics.     

Higher Education in Light of the Cross

What is the summum bonum of a university education? The much lauded “liberal” approach of Aristotle, Newman, and Roche proposes that education is for contemplating the truth—an intrinsic, joyous end in itself. This approach offers the benefits of pursuing truth, virtues, and intellectual habits, but it also carries with it the temptations of idealatry and homo incurvatus in se. Christian universities can reform this approach to education, though, with Luther's theology of the cross, reorienting it through the crucified Christ toward the highest ends of life revealed in God's word: faith in God and love for the neighbor.     

“FILL AND SUBDUE”? IMAGING GOD IN NEW SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL CONTEXTS

While the social and ecological landscape of the twenty‐first century is worlds away from the historical‐cultural context in which the biblical myth‐symbols of the image of God and the knowledge of good and evil first emerged, Philip Hefner's understanding that Homo sapiens image God as created co‐creators presents a plausible starting point for constructing a second naïveté interpretation of biblical anthropology and a fruitful concept for envisioning and enacting our human future.