Augustine, among others, is a prize-fighter of the Evangelical church. His Confessions persists as an essential read for every young believer, and his emphatic defense of the church in the ugly face of pelagianism is the stuff of legend within Mockingbird. While he certainly faltered in places because of his cultural milieu (he suggested deaf […]
Law and Gospel in Luther and Paul
You may not have heard, but the 500th anniversary of the unofficial start of the Protestant Reformation happened recently. Praise of Luther and his theology took my Twitter feed by storm as every theology nerd weighed in on the merits of Luther and the significance of the Reformation. This post aims to assess one of Luther’s […]
Day One of the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature (AARSBL)
For anyone studying the Bible, theology, or religion, the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature (AARSBL) is the go-to conference to learn about the latest and greatest in current research. Several thousand scholars from all around the world descend upon an unsuspecting city’s conference center and hotels. This year Boston was the […]
Another Week Ends: Greenblatt’s Eden, Fidget-Spinning, Fake News Biases, Mandatory Euphoria, and A Horse Named Grace
1. Well, you just can’t make this up. An urban cowboy riding through the gang-ridden streets of Fresno, California, preaching the gospel of Jesus? On a horse named Grace? Aeon covered the story here, with a video. This below is not the full video, but you’ll get the picture. Totally cool. 2. Shakespeare scholar Stephen […]
Flipping Rest into Work, Grace into Law
This post comes to us from Samuel Son. Jesus went into the synagogue again and noticed a man with a deformed hand. Since it was the Sabbath, Jesus’ enemies watched him closely. If he healed the man’s hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath. – Mark 3:1-2 (New Living Translation) No […]
From the Archives – Coping with Our Failure to Be Happy: Moral Palliatives vs Repentance
Well, we’re probably nearing our yearly limit for writing about anxiety, but great articles on the subject have been irrepressible. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that our increasing need to self-actualize, and increasing avenues for doing so, is a root behind the contemporary epidemic of nerves that had 1 in 5 American adults on anti-anxiety […]
Another Week Ends: Bad Luck, Egyptian Daggers from Outer Space, Piety Vacuums, The Golden Calf of College, Eulogy-Virtues, Spiritual Shins, and Baptist Justice
Click here to listen to this week’s episode of The Mockingcast, which features an interview with author and film critic Alissa Wilkinson. 1. This week New York Magazine covered the fascinating tug-of-war between meritocracy and luck in modern culture. Entitled, “Why Americans Ignore the Role of Luck in Everything,” the article discusses the inflammatory remarks of […]
From a Beggar Across the Atlantic
This post was written by our Mockingfriend Anna Nott. I’ve been listening to The Barr Brothers lately, a folk quartet from Montreal. They consist of harpist Sarah Page, pianist/composer Andres Vial, and the [actual] Barr brothers: drummer/producer Andrew, and guitarist/singer Brad. They have this song, “Beggar In the Morning,” which starts with: Steady woman won’t […]
Some Things Can’t Be Solved: The Formation of the New Detective
They all think any minute I’m going to commit suicide. What a joke. The truth of course is the exact opposite: suicide is the only thing that keeps me alive. Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I’m as cheerful as a nitwit. But if I […]
From the Forgiveness Issue: 11 Special Portraits of Forgiveness in Film
This list, from the Rev. JAZ, is our first free peek at our summer issue. If you’d like to order a copy, check them out here. Les Miserables In any version, this is the gold standard. You know the scene: Jean Valjean steals the Bishop’s silver in the middle of the night. When the police […]
When John Locke Turned Gospel Into Law
It’s no secret that here at Mockingbird we like to talk about how the themes of Law and Grace play out in everyday life, so much, in fact, that there’s now a Mockingbird publication which bears its namesake. When we say “law”, we tend to mean that the posture of the self in some way […]
Bayer on Law, Gospel, and Justification
From Oswald Bayer’s interpretation of Martin Luther’s Theology, pages 228-9:
“The effect that the law creates is not surprising. One has no trouble understanding what it means to rely on oneself and on one’s own deeds; the action-consequences relationship has its own logic. But the gospel is absolutely, completely incomprehensible. That God rescues one from, and brings one safely through, the deserved judgment is a miracle. Law and gospel cannot be plausibly intertwined together; their existence is hard and fast in opposition to each other. The gospel is literally a paradox: it stands against that which the sinner can reasonably expect; it stands against damnation.
It is thus not surprising that the communion between the sinning human being and the God who justifies through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit is incomprehensible; it is stupefying – astonishing – which does not lead one to be calm and at peace. Rather, it is described by Luther as a ‘stupendumduellum‘ – as a duel that arouses astonishment, as a duel like the one Jacob engaged in at Jabbok (Gen. 32). That this deadly confrontation between God and humanity is a ‘happy exchange,’ is a miracle. The one who has escaped from judgment and death cannot be sufficiently astounded about this.
‘The love of God does not find one worthy of its love to be present already, but [first] creates it.’ In this sense God is ‘God and no mortal’ (Hos. 11:9). For: ‘human love comes for the one who holds another worthy of love [already].’ (Luther, WA 1:354.35f). By contrast, the justification of the ungodly (Rom 4:5) is nothing less than the resurrection of the dead and the creation out of nothing (4:17).”
