Issue: June 2007

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 […]

[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] 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] 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] 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] 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 […]