Articles

How It Is and How It Might Have Been Otherwise

Copyright 2011 Lutheran University Press. This essay will be published by Lutheran University Press in a book entitled Sources of Authority in the Church. How It Is [1] The Christian historian Papias of Hierapolis surprises us when he lays down a principle (which turns out to be quite conventional) of assigning higher value to oral […]

There will be an answer…

Copyright 2011 Lutheran University Press. This essay will be published by Lutheran University Press in a book entitled Sources of Authority in the Church. Exordium A poem inspired by Genesis 4, the story of humanity’s first child. It’s entitled “Without You.”1 Back before the dawn, east of envy, error or wrong, that’s where I wish […]

Response to Bo Kristian Holm

See also Paul R. Hinlicky’s Luther and the Beloved Community:A Path for Christian Theology after Christendom by Bo Kristian Holm [1] 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 […]

E.W. Mueller on the Christian Life

[1] 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. […]

Review Essay: Four Complimentary Complaints about Unsettling Arguments: A Festschrift on the Occasion of Stanley Hauerwas’s 70th Birthday

[1] 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 […]

Bart D. Ehrman’s God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer

[1] 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 […]

Carl E. Braaten’s Because of Christ: Memoirs of a Lutheran Theologian

[1] 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 […]

A Tale of Convergence: Eschatology, Anthropology, Ethics and Trinity

I [1] 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 […]

Editor’s Comments – Farewell and Thank You

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: Farewell readers and contributors! Thanks to Roger Willer, Senior Director for Studies, simply the greatest […]

Paul R. Hinlicky’s Luther and the Beloved Community: A Path for Christian Theology after Christendom

See also Response to Bo Kristian Holm by Paul R. Hinlicky [1] 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 […]