Hearts Set to Obey

Abstract : Caught in the tension between the reality of our sin and the reality of God's forgiveness and grace, how are we to obey the commandments of God and strive for a holy life? Many have argued that the Lutheran tradition has undermined the ethical imperative of the Christian walk. While it is true that Lutheran theology in some modes has denied the sort of linear moral progress emphasized by some other traditions, it affirms the reality of genuine transformation in the Christian life, which moves us beyond the static Sisyphean tension in which we are simultaneously sinners and saints. Though emphasizing grace as pardon and righteousness as relational, Lutheran theology also has place for a grace that empowers believers for growth in discipleship. The terms ‘justification’ and ‘sanctification’ point not to different works of God but to two different angles—pardon and power—from which to describe the one work of God in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. In light of this, we need not sever ethics from theology to understand how our hearts may be set to obey the commandments of God.     

The Indicative of Grace & The Imperative of Freedom: An Invitation to the Theology of Eberhard Jüngel

Abstract :  This essay offers a comprehensive introduction to German theologian Eberhard Jüngel's theology and philosophy of religion. It traces his intellectual development, beginning with his formation studies in New Testament with Ernst Fuchs, and ends with his controversial position in matters of church unity and ecumenism. Special attention is paid to his theological anthropology, and the potential contributions his theology could make in the North American context are assessed.     

Speaking of God after the Death of God

Abstract :  This article affirms the ability to talk about God in the twenty‐first century 40 years after God died (according to Death‐of‐God theologians) in the 1960s. It does so by an appeal to the proper combination of mystery and revelation ideally expressed in the paradox that God reveals Godself as hidden. The language of God's revealed hiddenness comprises a "middle way" which avoids the extremes of theological hubris on the one hand and atheism or unbelief on the other, making it possible to speak today of God in a faithful yet humble manner.     

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.     

Luther and the Eucharistic Controversy

Luther wrote That These Words of Christ … Still Stand Firm to teach people what they should believe about the Lord's Supper and to refute the arguments of his opponents. Luther saw the devil as responsible for the rejection of Christ's substantial presence in the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. The disagreement concerning the eucharist rested on the opposing exegesis of key Scripture texts and had implications for Christology and the understanding of the relationship between theology, science, and human reason. Luther believed that his opponents taught a heretical position that endangered people's souls, and so their ideas could not be tolerated.     

Luther and Gender: Shifts in Paradigms and Orientations

Considering the tenderness and detail with which Luther attends to matters “all about Eve” in his Genesis lectures—and how he treats the matriarchs in the Genesis narrative—we can say that gender and women constitute a central interest for the reformer. He developed, in his context, a new theological anthropology that valued women's biological distinction, difference within sameness in creation, and absolute equality in redemption and callings. While his gender ideology is a work in progress, Luther's instincts are modern, if not even feminist, when placing the uterus at the central place of the delivery of the saving incarnate Word.     

Challenges and Gifts of Teaching Luther in a Lutheran College1

This article examines what can be learned from teaching Luther to American college students. It reviews several ways in which college students benefit from studying Luther. The article suggests that identifying the “operating principles” in Luther's thought can help students more carefully discern the contemporary significance of his thought. After discussing some challenges encountered when teaching Luther to college students, the article ends with reflections on the theological significance of the college context. While Luther's discovery of a gracious God remains central, the college setting promotes a retrieval of several broader themes in Luther's thinking that have often been neglected by Lutherans: ongoing creation, wisdom, the Bible as “torah,” the suffering of God, and societal reform.     

Listening for Safe Places: Networks of Playing and Chalcedon in Disaster Pastoral Care

Disaster pastoral care operates in diverse contexts, which may challenge clergy responders in ecclesiological meaning‐making of their practices of care. This article argues that pastoral care may be imagined as part of a larger “network” of caring acts understood as a collective, multiple care practice. Such practice reflects deep‐rooted movements described in psychoanalytical theory as playing, and the christological idea of communication of properties. Therein, spiritual “safe places” can be seen to emerge, even in the midst of traumatic events.     

From body to body: A post‐gender politics for the cosmic homo1

This article engages in establishing some common ground, some human and humane politics for the global Luther, in contradistinction to the focus in much recent scholarship on difference/s as an almost hegemonic way of understanding human life. The aim is to move beyond feminist, poststructuralist, and postcolonial theories to a post‐gender politics by employing Judith Butler's concepts of performativity and “abject” bodies. Homo, the human being, will be the hermeneutical key for examining Luther's understanding of God's creation and incarnation as well as of baptism, the Lord's Supper, and the church. The aim is that of searching out Luther's differing performances of body, from the carnal body of the incarnate Christ and the human body to the spiritual body of church and community, and how these matter, materialize and intersect in the body of Christ as one body/homo.     

Sin,shame, and the subject

In this chapter I revisit construals of sin and shame, beginning with a moment of auto-investigation. I then set this data in conversation with historical, theological, and philosophical configurations of shame to reconceive sin and shame. I describe sin as curvatus ex carne (turning from the flesh) to signal sin as a refusal of both our embodied existence and a commodification of the land on which it lives. I then use a carnal hermeneutic to argue for a positive understanding of discerning shame as a resource for an ethical life that contrasts with shame of disgrace.