From the Preface (pre-publications version):
This book focuses on the biblical norms of Luther’s theological ethics. Our aim is to demonstrate why Luther’s theological ethic rightly endures as a classical authority by providing scriptural support for the church’s continually adapted programs of Christian social ethics.
In the sixteenth century, it was Luther’s biblically-grounded conviction that character governs conduct, and that the character of Christians is transformed and nurtured by those gifts of the Holy Spirit that organically accompany our faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, the sanctified renewal of redeemed sinners is always an essential part of our total human response to the good news of God which is uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and then historically traditioned in the councils, creeds, confessions and catechisms of the Christian church.
Today’s situation is far different. In a secularized society characterized by a pluralism of co-existing human cultures, ethical proposals for human moral conduct most frequently seek their validation from the conflicting anthropologies and ideologies of current philosophies and social sciences. When absolutized, the impact of these corrosive forces has become so powerful that even many Christian ethicists now vainly substitute instant relevance for eternal reverence in their public endorsement of social ethical projects which are no longer governed by theological ethics that are normed by the Word of God in Holy Scripture. Without our faithful conformity to Christ (conformitas Christi) under God’s universal command of love, the prevailing analytical categories of “benefits and costs” are totally confused with good and bad, to say nothing of right and wrong, in the church’s understanding and advocacy of a blessed life in community under God.
Concurrently, however, we have also been gifted with a major sign of ecumenical hope in the recent achievement of major doctrinal agreement between the Roman Catholic Church and the 125 member churches of the Lutheran World Federation. After decades of biblical and doctrinal study, they have agreed on “a consensus in basic truths on the doctrine of justification. . . . Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works” (JD 15).
Consequently, all authorized signatories of this international Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1997) have officially declared that in 1999 the mutual condemnations (anathemas) issued in the sixteenth century on the doctrine of justification are henceforth no longer applicable to their respective ecclesial counterparts today. Both Roman Catholics and Lutherans may now publicly profess and practice with others of similar convictions that faithful and loving Christians are called to be “God’s co-workers in society.”
In 1997, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America also affirmed a relation of “full communion” with three churches of the Reformed tradition: the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America, and the United Church of Christ. Over the years, the participants in this Lutheran-Reformed Dialogue discovered that “efforts to guard against possible distortions of truth have resulted in varying emphases in related doctrines which are not in themselves contradictory and in fact are complementary.” Cf. Paul C. Empie and James I. McCord (eds.), Marburg Revisited (Augsburg: Minneapolis, 1966) Preface, ii. Thereby, complementarity of “mutual affirmation and admonition” has become the accepted joint responsibility of new ecumenical partners in coordinating Christian life and mission.
In co-authoring this ecumenical group’s original “Summary Statement” on theological ethics, the present writer already then contended:
We are agreed that there is a common evangelical basis for Christian ethics in the theology of the Reformers. Both the Lutheran and Reformed traditions have emphasized the new obedience of Christians through faith active in love and the inseparability of justification and sanctification.
While there remains a difference among us as to the importance we attached to the need for the instruction of God’s law in the Christian life, we do not regard this as a [church] divisive issue. We affirm together that Christians are free from the bondage of the law in order to live in love under the direction of God’s Word and Spirit to the end of good order and eternal life (p. 177).
In that continued conviction, our present research now seeks to demonstrate a construal of Luther’s biblically-grounded theological ethics that might further reconcile historical differences and facilitate more common societal witness among these major Christian communions. We do so by wholly disavowing nineteenth-century German Lutheran dualistic quietism, and by championing instead Luther’s original dynamic interaction of God’s “twofold rule” within the world’s “two kingdoms” through the ecclesially complementary forces of love and law (Lutheran-Reformed) along with justification and sanctification (Lutheran-Roman Catholic). Augustine, Luther and Calvin are surely not identical in their witnesses to the gospel of Jesus Christ, but there is also far more that unites them than divides them, especially in theological ethics.
Our study is devoted to the necessary ecclesial reception of these unprecedented ecumenical developments, to which was also later added a “full communion” between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church (Called to Common Mission,1998), with similar social ethical implications. We seek here to contribute to the healing of those open wounds in the broken Body of Christ that have resulted from centuries of post-Reformation mutual misunderstanding and acrimonious strife. It is written to serve as a basic text or reference work for those American seminaries or universities which still offer course work in the history and theology of Christian ethics. It offers to guide interested theological students (along with pastors, priests and lay persons) through the rather formidable primary and secondary sources involved in the comprehension of a central theme in serious Luther research today.
