Lutheran Theology: A Critical Introduction (Cascade Companions)
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
In this book Lutheran theologian Paul Hinlicky makes the deeply conflicted origins of Lutheran theology fruitful for the future. Exploring this intellectual and spiritual tradition of thought through its major historical chapters, Hinlicky rejects essentialist projects, exposing the debilitating binaries such programs engender and perpetuate, to establish an authentic Luther-theology or Lutheran theology. Hinlicky excavates the ways that throughout a five-hundred-year tradition the legacy of Luther texts has been appropriated, retooled, subverted, or developed. Readers of this introduction will thus be critically equipped to make intellectually honest appropriations of the Luther legacy in the plurality of contemporary contexts in which this iteration of Christian theology will continue.
- Provides a series of relevant theological themes that stem from Martin Luher which provide an overview of the ways in which these have been appropriated by later proponents of Lutheran theology
- Unfolds a story of Lutheran theology, from its beginnings and up to the preceding generation
- Presents commentary on the contemporary scene in Lutheran theology
- The Theology of the Cross as Program of Reform
- From Confessionalism to Orthodoxy
- The Idealistic Theology of Liberal Lutheranism
- Neo-Orthodoxy and the Renewal of Trinitarianism
- Conclusion: A Brief Prolegomena to Any Future Lutheran Theology
Paul Hinlicky draws on a lifetime of reflection to tell us a story of Lutheran theology from its origins up to the previous generation. Covering the major themes, movements, theologians, and controversies in the history of Lutheran theology, he also provides us with a sound launching pad for new developments. His masterful combination of breadth with nuance and insight makes his Lutheran Theology an essential guide for understanding this conflicted but generative theological tradition.
—Lois Malcolm, Luther Seminary
Few could author such an authoritative, searching, and engaging account of the development of Lutheran theology as Paul Hinlicky has done in this concise Cascade Companion. As dense with learning as it is alive with provocation, Hinlicky’s fine study tells the tale of Lutheran theology in such a way that no faithful reader will be able to fall back into reductive and overly simple views of what it has meant across the centuries—and so yet means—to think theologically as a Lutheran.
—Philip G. Ziegler, University of Aberdeen
Reading this important introduction to the foundations and evolutions of the Lutheran theological tradition will put any reader in an excellent place to do the faithful creative work in theology that Hinlicky rightly asserts needs to be done today.
—Jennifer Hockenbery Dragseth, Mount Mary University
Paul Hinlicky’s book on Lutheran Theology through its main epochs is thought provoking and sharp. He avoids many possible pitfalls focusing on both innovation and corruption in the Lutheran theological tradition. Regardless of one’s own position, the clear force of this book is its emphasis of the ambiguities in the Lutheran tradition, and the insistence that these ambiguities are intimately related to the cornerstone, that God alone is the true problem of humankind. Thereby, reminding the reader that even larger problems emerge, if one ignores it.
—Bo Kristian Holm, Aarhus University, Denmark