LOGIA is published quarterly by The Luther Academy.
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Issues relating to body and soul are being discussed throughout society and the church today. Questions about gender, identity, and sexuality are fiercely debated in various forums with wildly different conclusions. Of particular import in these discussions are the underlying presuppositions of anthropology.
In any serious discussion on the power and purpose of the law in the Christian life after baptism, certain questions have always remained the same: What power does the law have in the Christian life? Does the law only accuse? Do the righteous even need the law? What is the law’s relationship to sanctification and holy living? Should preachers use the law to motivate Christians to good works? Or do good works happen spontaneously from the gospel?
Issues relating to body and soul are being discussed throughout society and the church today. Questions about gender, identity, and sexuality are fiercely debated in various forums with wildly different conclusions. Of particular import in these discussions are the underlying presuppositions of anthropology.
The January 2019 issue of The Day Star Journal carried an article by the Rev. Dr. Norman Metzler, a professor of theology (emeritus) at Concordia University, Portland, under the title “Sanctity of Life: the Complexities of the Abortion Issue.” In this article, Prof. Metzler moves rather quickly from “problem pregnancies” to an argument to keep abortions “legal and therefore medically safe and responsible” (p. 1). While there is much in Metzler’s article that needs to be critiqued, I wish to dwell on a single assumption rooted in a deeply flawed anthropology.
Restlessness. Easily distracted by extraneous stimuli. Diffi- culty in sustaining attention in tasks. Frequent shifts from one uncompleted activity to another. Often talking excessively. Can symptoms attributed to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) be characterized in the demeanor of a congregation?
Throughout the course of their theological studies, it is likely that many American Lutheran pastors and academic theologians have come across the name Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860). It is also likely that some have even heard of Baur’s dialectical interpretation of the Petrine and Pauline division within early Christian history. It is unlikely, however, that many have had the opportunity to read any of Baur’s theological writings, or any secondary literature about Baur. Until the last decade, only a handful of Baur’s texts had been translated into English and most of these translations, dating from the late nineteenth century, were out-of-print.
David A. Covington is an artist-theologian who is passionate about both music and Christian discipleship. Unfortunately, for quite some time in his life he found these two passions to exist in separate realms, especially within the context of the church. In his search to “live one life rather than two separate ones, one in music and one in theology” (21), he was led later to seminary to study “what the Bible has to say about the power of music, about all beauty, all passions [aesthetics]” (21). He was in search of a way past the long-standing separation of theology and aesthetics—a dichotomy he argues is “unnecessary, even harmful” (49). This book is the result of that search.
The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, and more recently the Roman Catholic Reformation scholar Brad Gregory, have argued that the Protestant Reformation rejected natural law theory, as well as virtue ethics. In particular, Gregory has asserted that the failure of modern Western society to train people in virtue is an indirect legacy of the Reformation. Believing humans were dead in sin, the Magisterial Reformers held that it was pointless to inculcate virtue in them.
