Book Reviews

[1] The ELCA Division for Church in Society has lost no time in getting copies of The Promise of Lutheran Ethics out to the desks of parish pastors. Now the question remains: Will pastors find promise in The Promise. . . ? Will these shiny two-tone volumes join the clutter of dust-covered books that already […]

[1] I thank Editor Peters for this dialog symposium on The Promise of Lutheran Ethics (PLE). In our initial plan for the book, Karen Bloomquist and I envisioned a second part in which pastors, other ethicists, and an historian would comment on the original essays. For practical reasons we had to drop the idea. This […]

[1] The Skeptical Environmentalist (by Bjørn Lomborg) is a copiously-referenced (2930 citations!) assessment of global environmental health by a professor at a Danish university trained as a political scientist and statistician. Lomborg’s principal thesis is that the vast majority of environmental problems are either overstated or non-existent. Lomborg refers to tendency to exaggerate as “The […]

[1] Over the past four decades, William Lazareth has shown himself to be one of the most able and articulate of the American Lutheran voices doing theological ethics. In print, lecture, sermon, and ecumenical discussion, he has sought to unpack the ethical implications of the gift of the gospel. In this volume, Lazareth draws upon […]

[1] Justification lies at the heart of Martin Luther’s theological contribution. But the radical freedom it entails leads to questions, questions Roman Catholics and Reformed Christians have asked Lutherans and Lutherans have asked themselves: Can Lutherans be ethical? How is Christian freedom related to love and the law? [2] William Lazareth attempts a response by […]

[1] Pastor, theologian, ethicist, ecumenist, bishop: William Lazareth’s lifetime of service in the church is reflected in the concerns and conclusions of this important book. The theology of Martin Luther, he contends, endures as a “classical authority” for the church as it continues to adapt new programs of Christian social ethics. Focusing on the biblical […]

[1] I begin my review of this estimable book with a quibble over the title. “Social ethics,” in William Henry Lazareth’s usage in this book, refers to the embodiment of Christian moral convictions in the time-bound culture of any given age. As such, Christian theological ethics need not, and in some cases, ought not, be […]

[1] Mary Solberg, associate professor of religion at Gustavus Adolphus College, has done historians, theologians, and ethicists a great favor by selecting, editing, and translating more than twenty documents relating to the “German Christian” movement in Nazi Germany. The documents cover the period from 1932 to 1940, but are primarily from the early to mid-1930s. […]

[1] The Sacredness of the Person: A New Genealogy of Human Rights, a monumental study of human rights as a value commitment, serves as the testing ground of Hans Joas’ theory of the “genesis of value commitments” developed in his earlier works The Genesis of Values and War and Modernity (originally published in German in […]

[1] Ronald F. Thiemann died of pancreatic cancer November 29, 2012, at the age of 66.  The Humble Sublime, accepted for publication on the day of his funeral, was published November 30, 2013.  It includes a brief but rich factual biography composed by four of his Harvard colleagues.  In the Foreword, his daughter, Laura Theimann Scales, adds further […]