Issue: September 2015: Faith and Justice

The church is at an important juncture in its public life. How will it respond to the cries for justice bubbling up from the various marginalized sectors of our society?

​In a time of moral ambiguity surrounding discussions of drone warfare, Peters invokes Luther’s “Sin Boldly!” to urge people to adopt a “responsibility ethic” that puts the neighbor’s needs at the forefront of ethical deliberation. ​In our broken world, can we avoid sin? No. Therefore, Peters asks the question–“Should we try?” For him, the answer is no. In order to best serve our neighbors, we need to accept that doing our best is better than doing nothing at all.​

How can a story without women speak to women? Sarras explores the circumstance of the prophet Jonah and how his experience can speak to Palestinian women today. ​ She examines the story and language of Jonah’s story and compares to the oppression Palestinian Christian women endure today, while suggesting how the church can strengthen these women in their justice work.​​

Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Vainglory: The Forgotten Vice. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014, 167 pages, $14.00

[Originally published in JLE September 2015] [1] Ted Peters opens up the doctrine of justification by grace for Christ’s sake through faith so that we can see and appreciate how truly radical it is as he unpacks its vitality for our lives and our life in engaging this complex world. The doctrine of justification though […]

“The relationship between justification and justice in Luther´s theology pertains to his distinction of régimes, the so-called “two kingdoms doctrine.” The amount of literature on this “doctrine” produced between the 1930s and the 1970s is immense.[1] However, at the theological core of this distinction lies Luther´s reading of the scriptures’ framing of the peculiarities of two central notions, faith and love. The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) exemplifies the crux of this distinction offering two sets of injunctions, which we find throughout the bible, but in the Sermon are presented in a succinct form parallel to each other…”