luther

March 09, 2016

Working for Our Neighbor: A Lutheran Approach to Vocation and Economic Life

“If you are a manual laborer, you find that the Bible has been put into your workshop, into your hand, into your heart. It teaches and preaches how you should treat your neighbor.” Continue Reading...

April 29, 2015

That Time Obama Quoted Luther

This is a post about that time that President Obama quoted Luther (Martin, the reformer, not the anger translator). Okay, maybe the President didn’t quote the monk with a mallet, but suspend your disbelief for a few more paragraphs at least. Continue Reading...

August 06, 2014

Radio Free Acton: 500 Years of Reformation

2017 will mark the 500th Anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg Castle Church, the event that would eventually lead to what we now know as the Protestant Reformation. Continue Reading...

June 08, 2012

DCI John Luther: Secular Authority

An essay of mine on the wonderful and difficult BBC series “Luther” is up over at the Comment magazine website, “Get Your Hands Dirty: The Vocational Theology of Luther.” In this piece I reflect on DCI John Luther’s “overriding need to protect other people from injustice and harm, and even sometimes the consequences of their own sin and guilt,” and how that fits in with the Christian (and particularly Lutheran) doctrine of vocation. Continue Reading...

March 30, 2011

Acton Commentary: Debt and the Birth Dearth

In today’s Acton Commentary, “Debt and the Birth Dearth,” I examine the interrelationship between demographics, economics, and morality, especially within the context of America’s current public debt crisis. I conclude by pointing to the spiritual nature of our “debts”: Jesus taught Christians to pray, “Forgive us our debts.” Continue Reading...

June 22, 2009

Bonhoeffer Questions Justice

I had the privilege of lecturing at last week’s Acton University on the topic of Lutheran Social Ethics. In preparing for that session, I was struck again at just how “Lutheran” Dietrich Bonhoeffer sounds every time I read him. Continue Reading...

October 16, 2006

The Catholicity of the Reformation: Musings on Reason, Will, and Natural Law, Part 3

As I mentioned in Part 2, a common stereotype of Protestant ethics is that it is wedded to nominalism. While this may be true for some (particularly modern) Protestant ethicists, it is false for Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi, two older Reformed moral theologians. Continue Reading...

September 06, 2006

Agape and Eros

This article by Mary D. Gaebler, visiting assistant professor of theological ethics at Gustavus Adolphus College, “Eros in Benedict and Luther,” from the Journal of Lutheran Ethics argues, “Lutherans, insofar as they derive their theology from Luther, should welcome Pope Benedict’s Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. Continue Reading...