| |
|
Editor's Comments |
 |
|
Farewell and Thank You
by Victor Thasiah
Victor Thasiah has resigned his position with Journal of Lutheran Ethics. In the fall, he will begin teaching Christian ethics in the department of religion at California Lutheran University. He would like to offer these words of farewell and thanks. |
|
|
| |
|
Special Feature |
 |
|
A Tale of Convergence: Eschatology, Anthropology, Ethics and Trinity
by James M. Childs, Jr.
Upon learning of my plans to offer a course this coming year at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg entitled, "The Holy Trinity: Theology and Ethics," JLE editor Victor Thasiah kindly thought an article describing its development and content might be of interest. I have accepted his invitation to write this with the hope that he might be right, at least to some degree. |
|
|
| |
|
Book Reviews |
 |
|
Carl E. Braaten's Because of Christ: Memoirs of a Lutheran Theologian
by Scott Grorud
In the early 1990s, fresh out of seminary, I was thrilled to learn that Dr. Carl Braaten was coming to the town where I served to present a lecture at the ELCA synod office. I had read some of Braaten's work in seminary, but had never heard him speak in person. For an eager young pastor, deeply rooted in the Lutheran heritage and striving to be a parish theologian, it was a rare privilege to learn from one reputed to be among the greatest Lutheran theologians of the later twentieth century. |
|
|
|
Bart D. Ehrman's God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer
by Mark W. Bartusch
Bart Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and one of the most prolific New Testament scholars today, publishing seven books in the last five years alone. Among his more popularly written books is now God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer (2008). |
|
|
|
Derek R. Nelson's What's Wrong with Sin? Sin in Individual and Social Perspective from Schleiermacher to Theologies of Liberation
by Ryan P. Cumming
Anyone privy to undergraduates working their way toward understanding social or structural sin is familiar with the questions that give rise to Derek R. Nelson's What's Wrong with Sin? How can a system/structure/society sin? How do we talk about sin if everyone/no one is guilty of sin? Who is sinning in a sinful structure? Who is sinned against? Many contemporary authors, Nelson argues, evince "conceptual imprecision" in their doctrines of sin, especially as they attempt to answer (or avoid entirely) these questions. |
|
 |
|
Review Essay: Four Complimentary Complaints about Unsettling Arguments: A Festschrift on the Occasion of Stanley Hauerwas's 70th Birthday
by D. Brent Laytham
For 40 years, Stanley Hauerwas has been a force to be reckoned with in Christian ethics. Yet too often that reckoning fails to occur, either because pejorative categories impede vigorous debate, or because shared convictions are left unexamined. As an example of the former, notice how "sectarian" is never a reflective conclusion earned by careful argumentation, but always a preempting prejudice that discolors engagement. This is typically a failing of Hauerwas's critics. |
|
|
|
Review Essay: The Revolution Ate Its Children — Two New Essay Collections Address the Embodied Politic
by Bert Stabler
In the book Paul's New Moment, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek paraphrases Karl Marx's comments on the French Revolution, comparing "the sublime revolutionary explosion, the Event of freedom, equality and brotherhood" to the "miserable utilitarian/egotistic universe of market calculations." And, immediately after, Zizek quotes the British Catholic G.K. Chesterton, who wrote of mankind's desire for faith: "Alone among the animals, he feels the need of averting his thoughts from the root realities of his own bodily being." |
|
 |
|
Paul R. Hinlicky's Luther and the Beloved Community: A Path for Christian Theology after Christendom
by Bo Kristian Holm
Lutheran theology is in a process of transformation. Perhaps it has always been. The process of transformation moves in many directions at the moment, but several of these try for a variety of reasons to liberate Luther from twentieth-century mainstream Lutheran theology. Paul Hinlicky is one of these transformers, and with Luther and the Beloved Community he makes clear his path into a future of transformed Lutheran theology, at the same time leading us away from the landscape known as Christendom where society and Christianity were inseparable. |
|
|
|
Response to Bo Holm
by Paul R. Hinlicky
I am grateful to Bo Holm for his careful and insightful elaboration of my recent book on Luther. Taking the book on its own terms, he grasps its leading intentions very well and in this light earns the right to ask trenchant questions in the end. This is the very model of a review essay, which I strive in my own work also to follow. I am happy to acknowledge here as well how much I have benefited from Holm's important work on the theology of gift.
|
|
|
| |
|
Cloud of Witnesses Series |
|
|
E.W. Mueller on the Christian Life
by Gilson A. C. Waldkoenig
E.W. Mueller (1908-1993) was for many years the Secretary of Church in Town and Country for the National Lutheran Council. The NLC was a cooperative venture among Lutherans during the mid-20th century. At a time when Lutherans were split in several different denominational organizations, the NLC provided cooperative programming of benefit to the churches. Although the NLC involved Lutherans in a variety of good causes, it was still something of a surprise when one of the NLC's program officers received an award from an organization not typically associated with the official business of Lutheran clergy. |