Law and Gospel

[1] It is the Word as received by the congregant, not as spoken by the preacher, that makes the impact. The Law portion of that Word is intended to inspire repentance and thus drive the penitent towards the arms of Christ. The Law and the Gospel are dissimilar and distinct concepts which are nonetheless inextricably […]

Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them … and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. – Matthew 28:19–20 [1] Jesus commissioned his apostles to carry on his mission to the ends of the earth. That mission includes bringing people to new life through the sacrament of baptism, and teaching […]

[1] It is November 4, 2008. I live in Chicago, and I am one of the lucky ones who has secured a ticket to be in Grant Park on the night of the election. My husband and I are there together, and all around me, as far as I can see, are people who are […]

[1] Without a reformation early Lutherans feared that the gospel as they understood it might have been lost. We cannot make a historical judgment about that fear, but we can be reasonably sure that without the law the Reformation would have been lost. John Witte’s book, Law and Protestantism, demonstrates the extent to which the […]

[1] John Witte, Jr. concludes this superb study with a prophecy: “Heaven will exalt due process, and each will always receive what’s due. Hell will exalt pure caprice, and no one will ever know what’s coming” (303). That is literally a prophecy, but a well-founded one drawn from the story Witte tells in this book. […]

Reformation historians, lawyers, and theologians all find they have a stake in a book such as Law and Protestantism. Here you will find a roundtable populated by reviewers Mary Gaebler, Scott Hendrix, Paul Hinlicky, and Mary Sommar, and aided by law scholar Robert Tuttle and Reformation scholar David Whitford which brings out the particular perspective […]

[1] I will not reiterate, not for too long, anyway, my appreciation of Robert Benne’s Ordinary Saints, well-written, sound, and purveyor of the comprehensibly complex. I would certainly recommend the book to some members of my congregation seeking to live faithfully and thoughtfully in a complex and demanding time. [2] The book is heavily flavored […]

[1] In The Christian Tradition, Jaroslav Pelikan describes a fascinating scene at the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome, on Holy Thursday, 1833. Unknown to either, Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Henry Newman both were in attendance at this sacred Mass and both were deeply moved by its high drama and powerful evocation of feeling. […]

[1] Professor Robert Benne was probably the best seminary professor I had. One of the great joys I had, as a seminarian student was a course taught by Benne called “Introduction to Church and Society.” This course coupled with Benne’s passion, its methodology, and readings confirmed what I experienced as a church worker in the […]

[1] Scott R. Murray, currently a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod pastor in Houston, Texas, began this book as a dissertation at New Orleans Baptist Seminary. His work was motivated initially by what he perceived as an ethical libertinism in the ELCA’s human sexuality studies of the early 1990s. The goal of this book is to […]