[1] A biblical image that comes to mind when I think of raising a child with special needs, is that of Jacob wrestling a blessing from God in Genesis 32:22-32. In the story Jacob was returning to his homeland after being gone for many years. He had left home because he had tricked his brother […]
[1] Gender and sexuality present two of the most basic and intimate forms of difference, differences that inescapably pervade familial and social relationships. For this reason, how people conceive of differences between male and female affects their fundamental perception of the world and their place in it. In the history of Christianity, women generally have […]
[1] Her eyes were red and puffy and dried out from all the tears she had shed. Her head was swimming from all the information and terminology she had heard these last few days. She asked the nurse in the clinic, “Do you have somebody who can come and help me understand what I’m supposed […]
[1] I recently completed a research project[1] which sought to identify characteristics of congregations in which people with chronic mental illness[2] were full participants. In this article I will briefly describe the project, present the theological reflections of the participants, report the research findings, and offer my own theological reflection on the research project and […]
[1] Allow me first to express my gratitude to the Journal of Lutheran Ethics and particularly the efforts of Book Review Editor, Michael Shahan, for assembling these courteous and thoughtful responses to The Role of Justification in Contemporary Theology. I am honored that the Journal of Lutheran Ethics would find this book important enough to […]
[1] Mattes offers a well-written and well-organized examination of the use of the Lutheran doctrine of justification in the work of five contemporary Protestant theologians. The reader who approaches Mattes’s work from a non-Lutheran theological background will find the work rewarding because the issues which Mattes addresses are universally relevant to the present concerns of […]
[1] Mark Mattes offers an assessment of the role of the doctrine of justification in five contemporary Protestant theologians: Eberhard Jüngel, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jürgen Moltmann, Robert Jenson and Oswald Bayer. These theologians are not just expounded and described but also rigourously assessed. By what criterion? This is explained in the first chapter. Mattes shares the […]
[1] Every time I read Mattes’s Justification I am struck by its freshness, newness and, well-since there is no better word-promise. This remarkable little book starts by categorizing what has gone before, as theology must. Mattes’s ordering of the great, recent Lutheran or Lutheran-like theologians will no doubt be its most controversial aspect, since theologians […]
[1] I do not know many parish pastors who routinely wrestle with a substantial theological work like this book by Mark Mattes. That is tragic because the result of failing to take our theology seriously is that we are awash in shallow preaching and trite worship. Yet deep theology is no guarantee of vitality for […]
1] Published in the darkest days of the Great Depression, presciently warning about Hitler’s rise in Germany, insightfully urging that achievement of greater equality within America is a matter of its own survival, Reinhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society is one of those books often referred to but infrequently studied. As we struggle to […]
