LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

VDMA: Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum . . . the Word of the Lord remains forever.

Autumn 2002 Issue

Volume XVI, Number 3

It is remarkable that Gustav Wingren’s dissertation has defined Luther’s doctrine of vocation for sixty years, with little or no dissent, until this fresh look at the subject by Kenneth Hagen. At issue yet again is law and gospel, specifically the uses of the law, as seen in Wingren’s immediate context of Swedish disputants. Hagen was Lutheran Quarterly’s Associate Editor when it was revived in 1987, while he was teaching at Marquette University.  His career of Luther studies is honored by the Festschrift reviewed in this issue. Now emeritus, he continues his research program at N6965 Rock Lake Road #19, Lake Mills, WI 53551.

Carter Lindberg once asked the question in these pages, ‘‘Do Lutherans Shout Justification But Whisper Sanctification?’’ and Robert Kolb takes the occasion of Lindberg’s retirement and Festschrift to pose that question to Martin Chemnitz and specifically his preaching.  (The volume of essays honoring Lindberg’s teaching career is described in Notes and Comment.)  Chemnitz the preacher, in Kolb’s experienced hands, indicates the Lutheran understanding of the sanctified life.  Kolb and James Nestingen have just concluded their historical introduction to the Book of Concord forthcoming from Fortress Press.  He is Missions Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary,  801 DeMun Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63105.

When Louis A. Smith retired from parish ministry and moved to Virginia, his various research and writing projects featured extensive archival forays into the letters and papers of the Henkel family, so central to the Tennessee Synod and the first complete English edition of the Lutheran Confessions.  David Henkel lived only thirty-six years (1795–1831) but half of that time was devoted to public ministry.  Smith presents David’s early years and especially the controversy over his ordination.  A regular contributor to Lutheran Forum, Smith writes from 128 York Dr., Waynesboro, VA 22980

A balanced and thorough survey of ‘‘Luther on His (many) Opponents’’ might seem impossible in twenty pages, unless the author had written several books on the subject and was willing to distill all that material for the readers’ sake.  Mark U. Edwards, Jr., wrote Luther and the False Brethren in 1975, Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics 1531–46 in 1983, and Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther in 1994.  His summary, originally written for the Cambridge Companion to Luther, is this issue’s installment of ‘‘Luther on . . .,’’ thanks to the cooperation of Cambridge editor Donald McKim and formal permission from Cambridge University Press.  Edwards, President Emeritus of St. Olaf College, taught the history of Christianity at the Divinity School of Harvard University and now pursues his writing projects at 225 Cushing Road, Newmarket, NH 03857–1735.