Luther and the Beloved Community: A Path for Christian Theology after Christendom - Softcover

Hinlicky, Paul R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802864929 ISBN 13: 9780802864925

Verlag: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010

Inhaltsangabe

Is Christian belief tenable today? Is it possible to be a creedal Christian? With the help of Martin Luther, Paul Hinlicky here explores classical Christian beliefs regarding the person and work of Christ and human nature and destiny. He also counters contemporary objections to creedal faith, from the so-called "new perspective on Paul" to Pope Benedict's rejection of the Augsburg Confession to the continuing challenge of Marx. Luther and the Beloved Community does not present Luther's medieval thought as a possibility for today, but does make him available for the future as a teacher of the faith and a help for tackling contemporary questions of Christian belief. According to Hinlicky, Luther is misused and misunderstood by those of his own tradition and needs to be understood not as "hero of the faith" but rather as the proponent of a beloved community that does not yet fully exist. In performing this makeover, Hinlicky reveals genuine new insights concealed within Luther's rhetoric. "Readers who have taken up this book expecting another 'business as usual' approach should be forewarned. The great strength of this book is not that it resolves all the questions about Luther's theology, but that it repositions Luther within the narratives that we theologians tell ourselves about the history of theology. . . . Hinlicky's Luther is much more than a one-trick pony who can run the syllogisms of forensic justification forward and back. To the contrary, he is a theologian grounded in the central teachings of the catholic faith and possessed of a remarkable capacity for applying that faith to perennial theological questions." -- Mickey L. Mattox (from the foreword)

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Paul R. Hinlicky is Tise Professor of Lutheran Studies at Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia. His previous books include Divine Complexity: The Rise of Creedal Christianity.

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Luther and the Beloved Community

A Path for Christian Theology after ChristendomBy Paul R. Hinlicky

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Copyright © 2010 Paul R. Hinlicky
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8028-6492-5

Contents

Foreword, by Mickey L. Mattox...............................................................................xiPreface.....................................................................................................xvAbbreviations...............................................................................................xxv1. The Problem of Christian Belief in Euro-America Today....................................................32. "One of the Trinity Suffered": Luther's Neo-Chalcedonian Christology.....................................313. God Surpassing God by "Christ Made to Be Sin"............................................................664. Trinitarian Advent: Resituating the Dialectic of Law and Gospel..........................................1055. Somatic Self, Ecstatic Self: Luther on Theonomy..........................................................1396. The Redemption of the Body: Luther on Marriage...........................................................1797. "New, Old, and Different Perspectives" on Paul (Augustine and Luther)....................................2218. Communio: Luther's Forgotten Ecclesiology................................................................2589. Passion and Action in Christ: Political Theology between the Times.......................................30110. By Way of Conclusion: What Luther Meant by theologia crucis.............................................358Appendix: The Problem of Demonization in Luther's Apocalyptic Theology......................................379Works Cited.................................................................................................386Index of Names and Selected Topics..........................................................................401

Chapter One

The Problem of Christian Belief in Euro-America Today

A Question Posed by Josiah Royce

This book is written in order to put dogmatic insights of Martin Luther to work as resources for contemporary Christian theology in Euro-American civilization. Yet obviously this is a question that was not and could not have been posed by Luther himself. It was posed almost one hundred years ago by the nearly forgotten Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce: "In what sense, if in any, can the modern man consistently be, in creed, a Christian?" In a final book, The Problem of Christianity, published on the cusp of the First World War, Royce lifted up three tenets of creedal Christianity as "central" problems begging contemporary interpretation: the "idea of the spiritual community in union with which man is to win salvation, the idea of the hopeless and guilty burden of the individual when unaided by divine grace, [and] the idea of the atonement...." Calling attention to these creedal notions, Royce knew that he was on the soil of Pauline Christianity: "Historically speaking, Christianity has never appeared simply as the religion taught by the Master. It has always been an interpretation of the Master and of his religion in the light of some doctrine concerning his mission, and also concerning God, man and man's salvation ... [for] only after he had suffered and died, and — as was early reported — had risen again, did there become manifest, according to tradition, what, during his earthly life, could not become plain even to those who were nearest to him." With Luther, Royce sees that the (Pauline) kerygma of the cross and resurrection of the Christ constituted the hermeneutic of the traditions about Jesus of Nazareth in the rise of "normative Christianity." Sharing that fundamental theological decision about the normative nature of Christian doctrine makes it possible to retrieve insights of Luther by means of a contemporary question which Luther himself may not have especially posed in his own historical particularity.

Another factor that makes Royce's question pertinent is that he did not take his Pauline point of departure from Galatians as did Luther but found in the Corinthian correspondence the "ideal of a universal community." Needless to say, that hardly meant that Royce discounted the moral burden of the individual or the need of atonement, or that Luther has nothing to say about the coming kingdom of God, only that Royce gave the formation of the Beloved Community premier place in his exposition of the contemporary possibility of creedal Christianity's other two fundamental ideas. This shift toward the "social intention of all the basic Christian concepts" (Bonhoeffer), like the so-called "new perspective" on Paul (see Chapter Six below), represents important advances during the last century in understanding the "nature of doctrine" (Lindbeck) as in the first instance the church's self-regulation by its own constituting discourse. In the study that follows, I take this contemporary social orientation as the frame of reference in which I enlist Luther's insights into the church's constituting discourse as resource for critical dogmatics today.

In contrast to the project of this book, if one desired a presentation of Luther's theology on its own terms from the sixteenth century as a contemporary possibility, one could do no better than carefully to study Oswald Bayer's masterful Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation. My appreciation of this insightful work will be evident in the ample use of Bayer's interpretations in the pages to follow. Yet it will also be clear that I do not think that the method of Vergegungwrtigung which Bayer deploys to approach Luther is finally either possible or for that matter desirable. I do not think it is possible because Bayer himself inevitably modernizes, that is to say, corrects Luther by interposing contemporary questions; this tacit procedure cannot but cast doubt on the viability of what purports to be a re-presentation of Luther's theology on its own terms. Nor do I think such re-presentation is desirable, if it tacitly lifts Luther out of the stream of Pauline-Augustinian tradition to which he belonged to offer a reconstructed Luther-theology as a Sonderweg, when we today should rather find ourselves within that same, broader stream of theological tradition. Thus I do not think such a Luther helps church and theology in North America, more broadly EuroAmerican civilization, today. Bayer, on the other hand, would deny that Luther can contribute or be made to contribute to "systematic theology": "presenting one's thinking as a system was foreign to him.... Those who think within a systematic framework are obsessed with unity and consistency. ... Luther's theology raises fundamental questions about that enterprise." Tertium non datur? There are to be sure problems with "systematic" or as I should say more precisely today "constructive" theology — not only from Luther's perspective; but critical dogmatics of the kind I am advocating does not find these problems to lie centrally in a concern for unity and consistency.

Returning to Royce's question, then, he justified "philosophical" exploration of these creedal themes on the grounds that, "familiar as these three ideas are, they are still almost wholly misunderstood, both by the apologists who view them in the light of traditional dogmas, and by the critics who assail the letter of the dogmas, but who fail to grasp the spirit." What is needed, Royce argued, is an approach...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2010
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0802864929
• ISBN 13: 9780802864925
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 431
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland