LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

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

SPRING 2004 Issue

Volume XVIII, Number 1

Mark D. Menacher traces the long arc of Gerhard Ebeling’s full and complex career as a theologian and Luther scholar by way of Kirchenkampf (church struggle). Theological struggle, argues Menacher, characterized not only Ebeling’s development over against the Nazi ideology and his analysis of Luther’s theology but also his leadership of the opposition to the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” near the end of his life. Menacher’s 1998 Manchester doctoral dissertation explored language and theological method in Ebeling’s corpus. He is now pastor at St. Paul Lutheran Church, 215 East Michigan Avenue, Au Grès, MI 48703.

If some of the early Lutheran reformers such as Johannes Bugenhagen and Urbanus Rhegius are relatively unfamiliar, their wives are almost unknown except to a few scholars. Inge Mager’s 1999 essay on three such women pulls together the stray and slight clues to their contributions to the Reformation.  Mager has also published essays on the family life of Jonas and Melanchthon, as well as Katharina Zell, and essays on hymnody and seventeenth-century studies. She teaches on the Protestant faculty of the University of Hamburg, Sedanstrasse 19, 20146 Hamburg.

Mager’s essay was translated by Kurt K.Hendel who also here supplies a sketch of the organizational activities of Johannes Bugenhagen. Hendel’s publications on various aspects of Bugenhagen’s career have made him the Pomeranian’s principal historian in English. He teaches Reformation history and theology at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1100 East 55th Street, Chicago, IL 60615.

Rounding out this trio of essays is an introductory overview of the life and work of Urbanus Rhegius. His principal historian in English, Scott Hendrix, presents Rhegius’ reforming career in terms of frontline engagement while the evangelical movement was still new and before its outcome was assured. Besides a recent book on Rhegius (see his note 24), Hendrix also has a volume forthcoming from Westminster John Knox, Recultivating the Vineyard: The Reformation Agendas of Christianization. A frequent contributor to Lutheran Quarterly, Hendrix teaches at Princeton Theological Seminary, P.O. Box 821, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803.