Paul,Luther, and the Cross: In Dialog with Karl Donfried

In response to the articles appearing in Dialog 46:1 (Spring 2007), David Brondos defends his position that in Paul's thought Christ's death did not “effect” human salvation, over against Karl Donfried's critique of that position. While Brondos and Donfried agree that Luther got the essence of Paul's gospel right and that Paul did not understand Jesus' death in terms of satisfaction or penal substitution, Brondos argues that the idea of “inclusive substitution” defended by Donfried and characteristic of the “new perspective on Paul” is foreign to the thought of both Paul and Luther.     

The Unsettled German Discussions of Justification: Abiding Differences and Ecumenical Blessings

Abstract :  This essay provides an analysis of The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification . It argues that the future of ecumenism demands greater attention to doctrinal differences than was evident after 1980 in much of the Roman‐Lutheran dialogue on justification, especially as it unfolded in Germany.     

Our Journey Ahead

This text is an edited version of a keynote address given in Paris on 12 March 2019 to a colloquium on “Justice and Justification” organized by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Ecumenism (ISEO, according to its acronym in French) to mark the 20th anniversary of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) between Catholics and Lutherans in 1999. The article explores the origins and the reception of the JDDJ, as well as the opportunities it offers for Christians of all denominations today. It goes on to remember the Joint Commemoration of the Reformation by Lutherans and Catholics in 2016 in Lund and Malmö, Sweden, and how this was influenced by the insights gained from the Lutheran–Mennonite dialogue. The address notes how since the signing of the Joint Declaration in 1999, three other Christian World Communions have joined the declaration and highlights various upcoming anniversaries, including the 500th anniversaries of the Diet of Worms in 2021, and of the Augsburg Confession in 2030.     

Differentiated Consensus as a Means of Correcting Unilateral Ecclesiological Developments?

The methodology of “differentiated consensus,” which was used to arrive at the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification between Lutherans and Catholics in 1999, has led to more progress in 40 years than in the previous five centuries, through reinterpreting certain formulations that were seemingly incompatible, and allowing correction of those doctrinal developments that are unilaterally self‐referential and that reach far back in history. To assess the progress made, this article examines the type of doctrinal consensus originally required by the Catholic Church, so as to understand what is new about differentiated consensus and its potential for correcting unilateral doctrinal developments.     

Paul Meehl and the evolution of statistical methods in psychology

In his landmark 1978 paper, Paul Meehl delineated, with remarkable clarity, some fundamental challenges facing soft psychology as it attempts to test theory with data. In the quarter century that followed, Meehl’s views stimulated much debate and progress, while continually evolving to keep pace with that progress. This paper pays homage to Meehl’s prescience, and traces the impact of his ideas on the recent shift of emphasis away from hypothesis testing and toward confidence interval estimates of effect size.     

Diverse identities in Christ according to Paul: the enduring influence of the work of William S. Campbell

Abstract

Unlike previous scholarship that asserted that in places where Jewish and gentile identities conflicted, Jewish traditions and practices had to give way to gentile ones, Campbell’s work sets forth the proposition that Paul envisioned side-by-side, diverse identities expressing themselves in unity. Thus, in Campbell’s reading Paul made room for missional activity to both Jews and gentiles, affirming Peter’s work as well as his own. Furthermore, Campbell shifted the conversation from an opposition between Jews and gentiles in the early church to the challenges of forming early Christ-followers’ identity in the face of the pervasive influence of the Roman empire. Although Campbell’s emphasis on Paul’s Jewish identity seems to place him among the New Perspective on Paul scholars, he recognises that Paul’s own identity was not his primary focus in his letters – the in-Christ gentile identities of the new communities was. This emphasis of Campbell’s work moves him beyond the less nuanced approaches of scholars such as Sanders and Dunn. A significant part of Campbell’s work has been to discuss the relationship between Israel and the emerging Christ movement. He concludes that neither Jewish nor gentile identities are obliterated, nor is gentile Christianity absorbed into or a replacement for Israel. Instead, gentile Christ followers are accepted into God’s people as gentiles, alongside Jews and Jewish Christ followers. William Campbell has been instrumental both within the Paul within Judaism movement, but also in pushing for nuanced and innovative developments stemming from that body of work. His past work commands respect and his future work is highly anticipated.     

'Dancing cannot start too soon': Spiritual education in the thought of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

Johann Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825) adopted the pen-name 'Jean Paul' in honour of Jean Jaques Rousseau. His Levana or the doctrine of education (Levana oder Erziehlehre) was once a standard text and required reading in teacher education. Outside Germany the name of Jean Paul is now little known and the seminal educational text for which he was famous is rarely read. This neglect of Jean Paul is undeserved. What Jean Paul owed to Rousseau is apparent, but his work is rich in insight of his own. Three principles undergird Jean Paul's understanding of spiritual education (geistige Erziehung). Jean Paul insisted that spiritual education is essentially counter-cultural, that it is promoted by play and that it is grounded in love. Such education can never be at home in a curriculum which, however lofty are its stated objectives, is ultimately politically controlled. Jean Paul's insistence that play is constitutive of education needs to be heeded in an educational culture in which the playful is always at risk of displacement by what the government of the day deems to be of greater consequence. The heart of Jean Paul's understanding of education can be expressed succinctly, 'We love to teach and we teach to love'.     

Faith in Christ today: An engagement with Klaus Nürnberger

Today's Lutheran theologian must retrieve his or her particular Christian tradition while articulating the faith for our globalized twenty‐first‐century context. South African Klaus Nürnberger's new two‐volume systematic theology, Faith in Christ Today, adds heat to the current creative flurry of red‐hot systematic theologies. Nürnberger, who is oriented both to God's future and the world's future, places the theological articulation of the faith within the context of the worldwide and multi‐cultural Christian church. We all can learn from Nürnberger.     

The Economy of the Gift: Paul Ricoeur's Significance for Theological Ethics

Paul Ricoeur's understanding of the relations of faith, love, and hope suggests a unique approach to theological ethics, one that holds fresh promise for bringing together considerations of the good (teleology) and the right (deontology) around the notion of an "economy of the gift." The economy of the gift articulates Ricoeur's distinctively dialectical understanding of the relation of the human and the divine, and the resulting dialectical moral relation of the self and the other. Despite our fallen condition, Ricoeur suggests, we are called by the divine to embrace the radical possibility of the reconciliation of human goods under the requirement of accountability to human diversity and otherness.     

The Economy of the Gift: Paul Ricoeur's Significance for Theological Ethics

Paul Ricoeur's understanding of the relations of faith, love, and hope suggests a unique approach to theological ethics, one that holds fresh promise for bringing together considerations of the good (teleology) and the right (deontology) around the notion of an “economy of the gift.” The economy of the gift articulates Ricoeur's distinctively dialectical understanding of the relation of the human and the divine, and the resulting dialectical moral relation of the self and the other. Despite our fallen condition, Ricoeur suggests, we are called by the divine to embrace the radical possibility of the reconciliation of human goods under the requirement of accountability to human diversity and otherness.     

Paul Hinlicky's Critical Dogmatics: Triune Redemption and Hope in the Beloved Community

In a host of recent publications, Paul Hinlicky has offered both methodological and substantive contributions to a constructive Lutheran theology that takes seriously the post‐Christendom context in which the church finds itself. By elaborating a vision of theology as “critical dogmatics,” Hinlicky adapts pragmatist and perspectivalist motifs to outline a trinitarian picture of the redemption of creation as well as the church's role in anticipating the coming of the Beloved Community. Grounded both in Romans 8 and the trinitarian implications of Luther's joyful exchange, Hinlicky's vision interweaves soteriological, eschatological, and ecclesiological themes to demonstrate how critical dogmatics can test the spirits of a given age in order to determine which features of contemporary existence align with God's ongoing redemptive work, and which must be opposed by the church.     

Interpreting the Reformation in Africa: Transformative hermeneutics of Manas Bethulezi in light of 500 years of the Reformation

A cursory look at the various histories of religious renewal shows three interrelated aspects; there is an experience of injustice that is followed by the religious movement's new revitalization through the special encounter or reference to divine communication, and then an effort to reorganize the socio‐economic and political structures of society in light of the newly discovered religious vitality. This article observes in the phenomenology of religious renewal that cultural renewal and cultural distinctiveness tend to accompany religious renewal.     

Christology as a Function of Epistemology: A Bibliographic Study in the Theology of Paul Tillich

ABSTRACT

Paul Tillich is widely regarded as one of the theological giants of twentieth-century theology, and yet, according to Russell Re Manning, remains perhaps the most neglected great theologian of recent times (Re Manning, 2009 Reijnen, Anne Marie, “Tillich's Christology.” In: The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich, Russell Re Manning (ed). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 56–73.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). This study, based on Tillich's three-volume Systematic Theology (1967) describes Tillich's epistemology and discusses its effect upon his Christology, specifically with a view towards the concept “the uniqueness of Christ.” The article concludes with bibliographic annotations on Tillich's life.     

Belief, faith, and acceptance

Belief is a central focus of inquiry in the philosophy of religion and indeed in the field of religion itself. No one conception of belief is central in all these cases, and sometimes the term ‘belief’ is used where ‘faith’ or ‘acceptance’ would better express what is intended. This paper sketches the major concepts in the philosophy of religion that are expressed by these three terms. In doing so, it distinguishes propositional belief (belief that) from both objectual belief (believing something to have a property) and, more importantly, belief in (a trusting attitude that is illustrated by at least many paradigm cases of belief in God). Faith is shown to have a similar complexity, and even propositional faith divides into importantly different categories. Acceptance differs from both belief and faith in that at least one kind of acceptance is behavioral in a way neither of the other two elements is. Acceptance of a proposition, it is argued, does not entail believing it, nor does believing entail acceptance in any distinctive sense of the latter term. In characterizing these three notions (and related ones), the paper provides some basic materials important both for understanding a person’s religious position and for appraising its rationality. The nature of religious faith and some of the conditions for its rationality, including some deriving from elements of an ethics of belief, are explored in some detail.     

Love is Better than Knowledge: Paul,Luther and a Theology of Being Human

It is said in several contemporary theologies that in acting on their proclivities, homosexuals act as a law unto themselves rather than subordinate their desires to God's law. In linking homosexuality with the notion of a selfish individualism, these theologies cast homosexuals as incapable of exercising community-building love. They sustain a reductive model of the human person that issues from an anxiety about the presence of the “secular” ideology of individualism in theology. I suggest that we rehabilitate a vision of love based on a re-reading of the Apostle Paul's understanding of love as God-given and life-giving in 1 Corinthians and Romans, and use it as the basis for a revitalized vision of being human. Guided by Martin Luther's hermeneutic and contemporary thought, this vision recognizes the interdependent relationship between self- and other-concern, and proposes that we prioritize love over reductive knowledge claims in our theologies.     

Arguments by Parallels in the Epistemological Works of Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge

The works of the Tibetan logician Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge (1109–1169) make abundant use of a particular type of argument that I term ‘argument by parallels’. Their main characteristic is that the instigator of the argument, addressing a thesis in a domain A, introduces a parallel thesis in an unrelated domain B. And in the ensuing dialogue, each of the instigator’s statements consists in replicating his interlocutor’s previous assertion, mutatis mutandis, in the other domain (A or B). I show that such a dialogue involves two parallel arguments that develop in an intersecting zigzag pattern, and discuss the principles involved in the establishment of the conclusion from the perspective of parity of reasoning and analogical argument. I examine the overall rhetorical strategy directing the use of arguments by parallels and the pedagogical and explanatory functions they can serve. I also evaluate the plausibility of their use in Phya pa Chos kyi seng ge’s works mirroring a contemporary practice of oral debate, and reflect on the status of such arguments in the framework of Indo-Tibetan logic.

反事实思维两大理论：范例说和目标－指向说

反事实思维是个体对不真实的条件或可能性进行替换的一种思维过程。该文通过综合国外许多研究者的研究成果,探讨了反事实思维的定义、分类以及反事实思维的两大理论：范例说和目标－指向说。范例说认为反事实思维的激发是自动化过程,影响反事实思维产生的因素包括：正常性、结果的效价、与替代结果的接近性、前提的突变性和前提的突出性。目标－指向说则认为反事实思维的激发过程同样受目标、情绪控制、态度等认知因素的影响     

Four Fictions and Their Theological Truths

Four novels elicit theological reflection in the college classroom. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver describes justification by grace and the difficulty of living liberated from guilt. The Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling prompt tensions between destiny and free choice in determining personal identity. At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon challenges conscientious Christian community to open itself in risk to outsiders. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant retrieves silent women's voices in the Book of Genesis, raising tensions between fiction and biblical authority.     

The meaning and legacy of the Reformation in a global perspective

When reviewing the non‐European perspectives of Lutheran theology presented in the contributions of this issue of Dialog, it is easy to recognize a dominant, unifying theme and a common task in a confrontation with the new Pentecostal churches. It then makes sense to refer to the two central themes and tasks of Lutheran theology mentioned in this volume: the development of a Lutheran pneumatology in contrast to the Pentecostal/charismatic movements; and an interpretation of the Lutheran doctrine of justification that concentrates on how the pure grace and love of God can be witnessed in good works. As a future focal point of Lutheran theology, the contributions from non‐European Lutheran Christianity presented here show that the connection between the theology of the cross as a central element of the grammar of Lutheran Christianity and the dialectics of law and gospel for the interpretation of the salutary efficacy and experienceable nature of the Spirit requires further reflection.     

The Usefulness of the Lutheran Confessions in the African World

Abstract: The Malagasy Lutheran Church is one of the fastest growing churches in Africa. Maturing after having been seeded by Western missionaries, the confessional bond to Lutheran history is flowering differently within (1) the development of African contextual theologies and (2) ecumenical dynamics involving Lutherans and other Christian traditions.