Reconstructions in Lutheran Doctrinal Theology

The Lutheran Doctrine of Two Kingdoms commends a promising political theology. The doctrine challenged the extremes of religion/government fusion and absolute separation then, as it can with the crises of both Christian nationalism and ideological secularism now. But major changes in philosophy's understanding of natural law and human sovereignty left the doctrine little in the temporal realm to which the values of the spiritual realm could relate, a relationship necessary for the doctrine's viability. This severance was punctuated by the Nazi fusion of church and state. Another, though unrecognized, crisis was that Christian theology itself lost its eschatological mind, which had framed the doctrine. Now philosophy and theology have rediscovered eschatology and apocalyptic. When so read, the Doctrine of Two Kingdoms holds great promise for faith and politics, freed from the flatly chronological eschatology that holds popular culture in thrall today. In this early volume of a new series of postmodern reclamations of doctrine in the Lutheran tradition, Duane Larson offers a theological vision for our politics informed by philosophy and law that enlarges our understanding of St. Paul's counsel to "obey the governing authorities."

How does the Christian produce good works in service of her neighbor after justification? In Martin Luther's famous 1520 treatise The Freedom of a Christian, the Reformer claimed that Christ's love "springs spontaneously" from the Christian's soul as good works. In Luther's late-medieval theological context, however, this statement was incoherent with philosophical theories of moral action, which required an interplay between the soul and body. This problem persists in Lutheran theology today where human passivity in justification is extended over the Christian's entire temporal life. Yet, Luther seemed to find solutions to this question in his late controversies with Johann Agricola over law and gospel. This study looks to pneumatological developments in that controversy for resources that support a more coherent view of moral action in the Christian life.