Luther Seminary

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In the early 1990s, David Orr wrote about the epistemological myths of North American culture, and offered ecological literacy as a form of resistance. In the same decade, Parker Palmer confronted dominant epistemologies in religious institutions, and retrieved early Christian frames by way of resistance. One was writing through the lens of environmental science, and one through the lens of the desert mothers and fathers of Christian history. Neither acknowledged the First Nations, Metis and Inuit epistemologies which offered similarly contesting frames. It may be too late, yet even in a moment of climate catastrophe there is hope that shifting our forms of knowing can invite pedagogical practices that transform our communities. This essay will articulate the congruence between these disparate and diverse stances as sacred ground within which to root embodied, theologically astute pedagogies for the 21st century. Several pragmatic exercises that have emerged as fruitful for learners seeking to embody compelling counter narratives are also offered.

African American Grief is a unique contribution to the field, both as a professional resource for counselors, therapists, social workers, clergy, and nurses, and as a reference volume for thanatologists, academics, and researchers. The classic edition includes a new preface from the authors reflecting on their work and on the changes in society and the field since the book’s initial publication. This work considers the potential effects of slavery, racism, and white ignorance and oppression on the African American experience and conception of death and grief in America. Based on interviews with 26 African Americans who have faced the death of a significant person in their lives, the authors document, describe, and analyze key phenomena of the unique African American experience of grief. The book combines moving narratives from the interviewees with sound research, analysis, and theoretical discussion of important issues in thanatology, as well as topics such as the influence of the African American church, gospel music, family grief, medical racism as a cause of death, and discrimination during life and after death.

This essay argues that the German Reformer, Martin Luther, makes a contribution to a Christian feminist theology of mothering. His preaching and theology about child-bearing stand out in the Christian theology of his time because of the realistic way in which he describes the experiences of pregnancy and birth, especially in contrast to conventional descriptions of the Virgin Mary’s maternity. Yet Luther is no feminist. He maintains essentialist views of women and attaches women too closely to home life. But his optimistic view of the female child-bearing body subverts the traditional Christian views of the cursed female body and affirms the power that women have in God’s activities of creation and new creation.

Vowed to Community or Ordained to Mission? Aspects of Separation and Integration in the Lutheran Deaconess Institute Neuendettelsau, Bavaria. By Judith Lena Böttcher. Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 114. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck and Ruprecht, 2018. 251 pp. €39.99 hardcover. - Volume 89 Issue 1

Abstract This chapter situates New Testament writings about women, men, and sex within the ancient conflict between philosophers and poets over erotic desire. While philosophers thought desire could be tamed by subordinating it to the system of household management (oikonomia), poets wrote of its unavoidably “limb-loosening” and “melting” effects. Reflecting the philosophers’ construction of gender, the ideal male according to Ephesians, the Pastoral Epistles, and 1 Peter is self-controlled, and women are thought to be by nature insatiable in dress, speech, and sex. Echoing poetry’s fear of and attraction to eros with its power to cast its victims into liminal spaces, the Paul of the genuine letters both challenges philosophy’s binary construction of gender and repeats it.

Theological libraries and scholarly publishing in religion and theology operate within multiple overlapping contexts and economic markets: faith communities, theological education, scholars, libraries, and publishing. This paper will complete an analysis of available religious publishing and theological library purchasing trends in order to create a thicker description of the system of scholarly communication. Even allowing for degrees of uncertainty in the data presented, there remains a significant disconnect in the rising collective costs for publishing versus the declining expenditures among theological libraries. The trend appears to be that the average theological library is purchasing a declining portion of the scholarship. The evidence may suggest an increasingly unsustainable market.

This article examines a thread that runs through Martin Luther’s biblical and catechetical writings: his appropriation of a Messianic logic in light of a creedal interpretation of the whole of Scripture. Situating my case in relation to recent philosophical scholarship on the apostle Paul, I contend that this biblical hermeneutic may well be Luther’s signal ethical contribution for our age. Drawing on the solae ( sola gratia, sola fide, sola scriptura, and solus Christus) and relating them to three themes central to his biblical hermeneutics—the Word of God, Scripture, and the Creeds—I discuss how he develops (1) a Messianic ethics that intrinsically links faith and love in relation to (2) the biblical motifs of command and promise and (3) the Christological themes of cross and incarnation. I conclude by discussing the relevance of Luther’s biblical hermeneutics for a post-secular age.

En su comentario a la epistola de Pablo a los Galatas publicado en 1535, Lutero expone su teologia como un lenguaje marcado por el arte de las distinciones (dos justicias, obras y gracia, actividad y pasividad, ley y evangelio, sociedad y religion). Estas distinciones no son un reflejo de un dualismo ontologico, sino la confrontacion de la situacion dual y traumatizada de la existencia humana inscripta en dos tipos de entornos simbolicos: uno representado por el resultado de un proceso evolutivo que tiene como perspectiva al ego(s) y su construccion social, y otro que surge como una perspectiva ‘virtual’ diferente en disputa con este ego–lo que Lutero identifica como Cristo y la fe. No se trata de la clasica grieta entre mente y cuerpo, conciencia y obras, sino de la brecha que atraviesa al sujeto que lidia con dos tipos de ‘objetividades’, interpelaciones, inscripciones, perspectivas y simbolizaciones. En dialogo con las ciencias neurocognitivas y fi losofias de la mente contemporaneas, las clasicas distinciones de Lutero adquieren una nueva luminosidad, reubicando de lleno al discurso teologico en el debate actual en torno a la consciencia y la subjetividad.