Justification Is for Preaching: Essays by Oswald Bayer, Gerhard O. Forde, and Others
Ebook
Overview
Although preachers often question their effectiveness, no task of the church is more important than proclamation. Only the gospel liberates sinners from guilt, despair, and death and grants them freedom, hope, and new life. Few have grasped this truth better than Martin Luther. This volume features contributions by contemporary theologians whose work is shaped by Luther’s conviction that God’s justification of the ungodly comes through preaching: Gerhard Forde, Oswald Bayer, and their students and friends. Taken from the pages of Lutheran Quarterly, these essays in historical and theological perspective bring the doctrine of justification to bear on contemporary preaching. For Luther, the whole creation has its life out of God’s “pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness of ours at all!” Luther’s insight to center creation around God’s justifying work accents the cosmic scope of the doctrine. Justification is at the core of God’s creative and saving activity with respect to all that has been, is, and will be. God’s justification of the ungodly is the heart of all Christian theology and mission, and inescapably shapes the character of both. Preaching Christ as the justifier of sinners, in contrast to the accusing directives of the law, does nothing other than establish God’s deity over and for the world, and brings an end to sinners’ own self-deifying quests, re-creating them as fully human, fully free. Theologians and preachers gain their compass, purpose, and courage from this truth.
Top Highlights
“T21he doctrine of justification is intended to formulate an answer to the question: ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Justification’s answer, ‘nothing,’ is startling, and it reframes the question itself by asserting that God is not in the salvaging business. Instead, what God does in saving us is to recreate us, that is, to make us to be creatures who have faith at the core of their being, and humble and contrite hearts (Ps 51:10–12). God’s salvation is a recommitment to his original and continuing work of creating out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) ( Cor 1:27–30; Cor 5:17–18). God not only re-creates us out of the nothingness of sin and death, but also providentially sustains our lives, together with those of all creatures (samt allen kreaturen),1 from moment to moment, out of nothingness.” (source)
“It depends on whether someone has the courage to announce to us, ‘You have died and your life is hid with Christ in God!’ ‘Awake you who sleep, and arise from the dead!’” (source)
“Instead, it looks to the ‘preached God,’ a word of promise that actually imparts the reality of Christ and his grace.” (source)
“The fact that this captivity is one’s own fault leads Luther to discuss the condemning law that also kills” (source)
“are not so concerned about ourselves, including our own salvation.10” (source)
"Justification Is for Preaching is refreshingly radical .
. . because it goes to the root of God’s own design for preaching,
the bestowal of a promise that creates faith in Christ Jesus.
Preaching is not about transformation of character or political
advocacy but God’s own declaration of righteousness for the
ungodly. In essays from both sides of the Atlantic, theologians in
the tradition of Luther carry out his approach to the renewal of
the church, that is, . . . the preaching of Christ crucified.
Seminarians as well as seasoned preachers will be invigorated and
challenged by . . . this fine book."
--John T. Pless
Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry & Missions / Director
of Field Education
Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana
"Good preaching is dependent on good theology. Central to effective
proclamation of the Christian faith is the proper understanding of
God’s fashioning of the relationship between himself and his human
creatures. Thompson has assembled fourteen essays by eight leading
Lutheran theologians from the US and Germany who give preachers a
host of insights into how to deliver Scripture’s central message of
the restoration of sinners to a right relationship with God."
--Robert Kolb
Professor of Systematic Theology Emeritus
Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis, Missouri
"Justification Is for Preaching both revives and confesses the
central contribution that Lutherans make not just to the world of
preaching, but to the whole world itself: that God is gracious,
that God is active, and that God actively and graciously justifies
the unjust through the preached Word of Christ. The authors
represent some of the most important and incisive voices in recent
Lutheran theology and they are at their respective and collective
best in this book. If there is a single volume you would buy to
invigorate your proclamation and restore your confidence in the
importance of the preaching office, this is it."
--David J Lose, The Marbury E. Anderson Chair in Biblical Preaching
at Luther Seminary
Product Details
- Title : Justification Is for Preaching: Essays by Oswald Bayer, Gerhard O. Forde, and Others
- Author: Thompson, Virgil
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications
- Publication Date: 2012
- ISBN: 9781630879204
Virgil Thompson currently teaches the New Testament at Gonzaga University. Previously he served as pastor to congregations of the Lutheran Church for over thirty years. For the past twenty-five years he has served as Managing Editor of Lutheran Quarterly.