Luther’s Outlaw God, Volume 2: Hidden in the Cross (Lutheran Quarterly)
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
In this second of three volumes addressing Luther’s outlaw God, Steven D. Paulson uses several biblical figures (Ezekiel, Jonah, Moses, David, and more) to illustrate Luther’s understanding of law and gospel and what this means for preaching. Paulson shows that the challenge of all preaching is revealing God’s actual grace without using the law at all. The gospel is what freed Luther from thinking of the world as split into two: an obscure world where law accuses and a magical world where the law blesses. With remarkable depth and clarity, Paulson explores the question: Where do we find a gracious God? For Luther, it was not in the law, but only in the publicly executed and hated God, Jesus Christ, hidden in the cross.
- Illustrates Luther’s understanding of law and gospel
- Explores the theological implications for preaching
- Examines key biblical figures including Ezekiel, Jonah, Moses, David
- Luther’s Theologoumenon: Preached/Unpreached
- Jonah, God’s Worm
- God against the gods
- Adam’s Fall and Cain’s Failure: The Search for the Non-Accusatory Law
- Paul at the Areopagus: The Search for “the Unknown God”
- Adam’s First Sermon
- Moses Sees Glory
- David’s Trial: Absolute and Absolution
- Luther’s New Cabala: Christ, the Hated God
Steven D. Paulson’s lively style and insistent intelligence are on full display in the second volume of Luther’s Outlaw God. Readers who appreciate theology based on exacting scriptural exegesis, and that not only talks ‘about God’ but ‘for God,’ will find much here to engage and delight them
—Carl P. E. Springer, University of Tennessee Chattanooga
Following up his masterful first volume, Steven D. Paulson continues in this excellent second volume to explore further theological themes in his own inimitable fashion.
—Mark Granquist, Luther Seminary
This second volume in Paulson’s well-constructed trilogy takes up God’s hiddenness in Luther’s theology. Paulson offers a sustained polemic against all theologies ancient and modern that would attempt to tease God out of hiddenness so that seekers can accommodate God to their own notions of certainty.
—John T. Pless, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne
- Title: Luther’s Outlaw God, Volume 2: Hidden in the Cross
- Author: Steven D. Paulson
- Series: Lutheran Quarterly
- Publisher: Fortress Press
- Publication Date: 2019
- Pages: 275
- Christian Group: Lutheran
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Theology
Steven D. Paulson is professor of systematic theology at Luther House of Study, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He is an ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.