Issue: November 2011

[1] Silence. My important memory of September 11th was the silence that fell over Canada in the wake of the horrific attacks. It was not a quiet silence, but rather the very veneer of a people who with their U.S. neighbors were silenced by the dark mystery of evil, by a world they no longer […]

[1] 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? […]

[1] This month is a continuation of the work laid out by Victor Thasiah and Michael Shahan, JLE’s book review editor. The brilliance of this month’s authors and the timeliness of the subject matter I cannot claim for myself. I can only begin in gratitude that Journal of Lutheran Ethics is able to publish fresh, […]

[1] Three years ago I had the unique pleasure of attending an evening lecture by N.T. Wright (then Anglican Bishop of Durham) titled: “Learning the Language of Life, New Creation, and Christian Virtue.” The full lecture is actually available on iTunes, or you can read a summary at the Fuller Theological Seminary website. Essentially, Wright […]

[1] Bayer’s “contemporary interpretation” of Luther’s theology is must reading for anyone interested in Luther and Lutheran theology generally. In this ably translated book deriving originally from 30 hours of lectures from a general studies course at the University of Tübingen in 2002, Bayer compares his approach to Luther to a documentary that draws upon […]

[1] Martin Luther’s Theology, a masterly and mature summary by the grand old man of Luther studies in Germany, is not just a review of the reformer’s thought across the doctrinal loci: it is a handbook for life. This is quite deliberate on Bayer’s part. “Intellectual knowledge about faith,” he writes in the Preface, “is […]

See Part I of this article by Maria E. Erling Copyright 2011 Lutheran University Press. This essay will be published by Lutheran University Press in a book entitled Sources of Authority in the Church. [1] In part one of this presentation, Dr. Maria Erling has discussed the emergence of the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A. […]

[1] In this volume the English-language-preferred reader of things theological receives a distinguished German scholar’s summation and appropriation of the fruits of some forty years reading Martin Luther. The book’s immediate source was a series of fifteen double hour lectures given at the University of Tùbingen in 2001-2002. Thus there is here a freshness that […]

In St. Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth we read the following: For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This […]

William Schweiker, MDiv., PhD., is the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics in the Divinity School and the College at the University of Chicago, and Director of the Martin Marty Center. His work focuses on the global implications of theological ethics. JLE recently met up with Dr. Schweiker to discuss the project […]

[1] It was an average Tuesday morning. My mom drove me to school. I sat through homeroom, trying to ignore the obnoxious ten year-old who was swinging his feet into the back of my desk. After roll call and announcements, I left home room and went to my pre-algebra class. Mrs. T was talking about […]