LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

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

WINTER 2003 Issue

Volume XVII, Number 4

Although Lutheran assertions regarding Scripture, such as sola scriptura or claritas scripturae, are often applied to literary questions of exegesis, Steven D. Paulson probes their application to the deeper theological force of the proclamatory Word. Far from a dead letter, this is the Word that kills and makes alive as law and gospel. For several years our Book Review Editor, Paulson is now Associate Editor of Lutheran Quarterly and recently author of Luther for Armchair Theologians, from Westminster/John Knox. Luther Seminary, 2481 Como Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108.

Historians love to crack the codes of manuscript marginalia. Multiple layers of such notes in the margins of a first edition Book of Concord inspired Timothy J. Wengert to listen for confessions of the faith across several centuries in Germany, the colonies and the United States.  His article, a collaborative effort with librarian Karl Krueger, narrates those dramatic moments along with illustrations of the various hands involved. Also Associate Editor of Lutheran Quarterly, Wengert teaches at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, 7301 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19119.

As a companion to Wengert’s essay, Karl Krueger’s article focuses on the stormy relationship between the colonial baker, Jacob Beyerle, who wrote his testament into his copy of The Book of Concord, and Pastor Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. The discovery of Beyerle’s own side of that episode in colonial Lutheranism provides new perspectives on the experience of German immigrants in the Philadelphia area.  Krueger wrote his Ph.D. thesis (University of Michigan, 1992) on European immigrants to the United States, and serves as the director of the Krauth Memorial Library where this richly annotated Book of Concord can be consulted. The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, 7301 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19119.

For Gerhard O. Forde, “Lutheran Ecumenism” concerns first and last an understanding of the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the administration of the sacraments as gospel. This earlier but timeless essay, never before published, appears not only here but also in our third Lutheran Quarterly Book, edited by Mark C. Mattes and Steven D. Paulson, A More Radical Gospel: Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement and Ecumenism, due out from Eerdmans in February 2004. For more on the volume, see Notes, p. 475–76. Forde has recently completed a book on Luther’s Bondage of the Will, which will also appear in our Eerdmans series. Luther Seminary, 2481 Como Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55108.

Luther’s views on women, whether biblical or contemporary, are complex and perhaps even ambiguous. Mickey Mattox devoted his Duke doctoral dissertation to Luther’s mature exposition in the Genesis lectures specifically regarding these early matriarchs, now published by E. J. Brill (2003).  Until recently a Research Professor at the Ecumenical Institute in Strasbourg, Mattox is now Assistant Professor of Historical Theology in the Department of Theology, Coughlin Hall 100, Marquette University, P.O. Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881.