A Time for Confessing

by Robert W. Bertram Eerdmans, 240 pp., $30.00 paperback reviewed by Frederick Niedner

Academic circles sometimes include a giant who publishes relatively little despite the pleading of students and colleagues. Such a figure was Robert Bertram, whom longtime colleague Edward Schroeder calls, in his grateful foreword, "the most unpublished Lutheran theologian of the twentieth century."

Bertram taught theology for 50 years in Lutheran institutions, including Valparaiso University, Concordia Seminary (St. Louis), Christ Seminary-Seminex and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He published dozens of articles and prepared even more public lectures. However, when he died in 2003, Bertram left only one "book," a dissertation that engaged Karl Barth's critique of Luther, and a handful of larger projects with which he never quit tinkering.

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Throughout these theses, one detects the foundational assumptions and methods that derive from Bertram's intense engagement with Luther and the Lutheran confessional writings. God's communicating through law and gospel, the crucified Christ as the Word of God, honoring Christ's death and the comfort of penitent hearts as the signs of genuine gospel—all these permeate and enliven the sequence of theses that address the current theological scene.

Dialogue between Barth and Luther also emerges as crucial. Barth criticized Luther for fixing theology on God's relationship to humankind, as though God cannot be understood apart from involvement with and even vulnerability to creatures. Alternatively, Barth worked to understand God "in himself," without regard to flesh-and-blood entanglements. To Barth, therefore, Christ functions as a revelation of God's eternal election, and his death becomes less a saving event than a sign that humans have always been saved but simply did not know it. This "revelationist half-truth," Bertram suggests, permeates a goodly share of current theology.

For Bertram as for Luther, God is deeply involved in both judging and romancing the world and humankind. Drawing strongly on Romans and the reconciliation imagery of 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Bertram probes the gospel of Christ's entry into the plight and place of those whom God has abandoned to their sins and perversions, paying little mind to the strongholds of the righteous who need no physician, so that the former, when they come to the end of their rope and breathe their last in utter abandonment, find themselves, to the surprise of everyone, in the company of the crucified Word of God. In this company there is hope—and plenty of work to do.  more

Avery Dulles passes away

Cardinal Avery Dulles, Theologian, Is Dead at 90

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN

Published: December 12, 2008

Cardinal Avery Dulles, a scion of diplomats and Presbyterians who converted to Roman Catholicism, rose to pre-eminence in Catholic theology and became the only American theologian ever appointed to the College of Cardinals, died today died Friday morning at Fordham University in the Bronx. He was 90. His death, at the Jesuit infirmary at the university, was confirmed by the New York Province of the Society of Jesus in Manhattan.

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Jerome Delay/Associated Press

Cardinal Avery Dulles, center, with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in 2001.

Cardinal Dulles, a professor of religion at Fordham University for the last 20 years, was a prolific author and lecturer and an elder statesman of Catholic theology in America. He was also the son of John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the nephew of Allen Dulles, who guided European espionage during World War II and later directed the Central Intelligence Agency.

A conservative theologian in an era of liturgical reforms and rising secularism, Cardinal Dulles wrote 27 books and 800 articles, mostly on theology; advised the Vatican and America’s bishops, and staunchly defended the pope and his church against demands for change on abortion, artificial birth control, priestly celibacy, the ordination of women and other issues.

His task as a theologian, the Cardinal often said, was to honor diversity and dissent but ultimately to articulate the traditions of the church and to preserve Catholic unity.  more

Remembering Barth and Merton

The nadir, of course, was 1968 with the assassinations of King and Kennedy. But two deaths, in December of that year, also caused great grief. Karl Barth and Thomas Merton died on this day, worlds apart physically, but sharing much spiritual kinship.

To my mind, on December 10th 1968, they appeared symbolically as spokesmen for God’s transcendent mystery, in a culture that was fast trivializing that sense. They also spoke realistically about the human plight when such talk seemed to run counter to a facile celebration of human potential.  read it all 

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Thomas Merton, 40 years on...

Wednesday December 10, 2008

Categories: Bishops, Catholic, Church , History, Pop Culture

1968 was a true annus horribilis, as the Queen (upending Dryden) might have said, with the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the social upheavals surrounding the Vietnam War ramping up. Then, on Dec. 10, 1968, came the bizarre death ofThomas Merton, the Catholic convert, Trappist monk and enormously influential spiritual writer who was accidentally electrocuted when he touched a poorly-grounded fan as he stepped out of his bath while he was on a trip to Thailand. (merton is pictured here with a young Dalai Lama.)   more

William C. Placher dies at 60

CRAWFORDSVILLE, Ind. — Wabash College professor William C. Placher died unexpectedly  on  Dec 4, 2008, at 6:14 PM leaving the college community mourning the loss of one of its most influential teachers and scholars.

Placher, the LaFollette Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, was 60. He died of natural causes, according to Wabash spokesman Jim Amidon.

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In 2002, the American Academy of Religion named him the best teacher in the country, honoring him with the Excellence in Teaching Award. He received the McLain-McTurnan Award for Excellence in Teaching at Wabash in 1980. In 2006, the Indiana Humanities Council honored him with the Indiana Humanities Award for his teaching, scholarship, and collegiality.

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He was the author of 13 books, including A History of Christian Theology, Unapologetic Theology, Narratives of a Vulnerable God, The Domestication of Transcendence, Jesus the Savior, and the Triune God. He also edited the textbook, Essentials of Christian Theology, which was honored by both Christian Century and Christianity Today. He gave more than 40 invited lectures and was the author of literally dozens of essays, articles, and reviews.

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