The Heresy of Relevance: Bonhoeffer's Warning to Preachers

Amid a crisis in biblical interpretation brought to a head by the Church Struggle in Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered an address in August 1935 to a group of Confessing Church pastors entitled “Contemporizing New Testament Texts.” Bonhoeffer sounded a clarion call for the retrieval of a thoroughly theological hermeneutic that would liberate preachers for the bold proclamation of the Gospel within a culturally compromised church. This paper will present a reading of Bonhoeffer's daring address that seeks to both situate it within its unique historical context and attend to the ways that it calls into question many of the cherished hermeneutical and homiletical assumptions that dominate contemporary preaching for the sake of a more faithful proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Tokens of Presence: Second-Personal Presence and Baptistic Accounts of the Eucharist

This paper attempts to provide a bridge between the two predominant Baptistic accounts of divine presence in Eucharist, with the help of Eleonore Stump’s account of second-personal presence and theories of emergence. Predominantly understood in either Zwinglian (memorialist) or Reformed (instrumentalist) categories, a dividing wall is erected with baptistic theology over the question of whether or not communion is strictly an act of human remembrance or involves divine presence in some form or fashion. After identifying three key problems with the memorialist account, this paper attempts to provide a middle way between the two views, arguing that the Spirit appropriates the bread and wine as tokens through which he communicates the thoughts, intentions, desires, and second-personal presence of Christ to the gathered body in order to strengthen the church's union with Christ.

Denominating “Justification” and “Faith”: Catholics, Lutherans, and a North American Baptist's Response to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

That the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Unity attempted a joint declaration on the doctrine of justification is worthy of commendation. The resulting Joint Declaration constitutes some of the best contemporary efforts at ecumenical dialogue in the spirit of Christian union. This essay outlines the development of both medieval Catholic and subsequent Protestant conceptions of justification that led to disunion in the Western Church, reviews the initial points of division on the doctrine during the era of the Reformation for the purpose of grasping more fully the ecumenical feat of the JDDJ, and seeks to clarify what issues appear to remain unclear or unresolved in the document. The article also outlines the history of how Baptists in America have understood the doctrine of justification in order to consider how such Baptists might perceive the promise and potential lingering challenges or questions regarding the joint declaration.

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: An Outline of its Genesis and Impact From a Baptist’s Perspective

This essay outlines the genesis and impact of the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” (JDDJ) from a Baptist perspective. Starting with comparative studies of individual theologians from 1949 to 1980 it sketches the prehistory of the JDDJ including the results of ecumenical dialogues from 1972 to 1994. The essay then presents the origins and contents of the JDDJ from the draft version 1997 to the Signing 1999, including the development and content of the “Official Common Statement.” The author includes as well the impact of JDDJ on the Study on “The Biblical Foundations of the Doctrine of Justification” 2012; the Notre-Dame-Consultation 2019; and ecumenical dialogues on justification with Baptist participation. The author appreciates the JDDJ as the most significant result of ecumenical dialogues since the formation of the ecumenical movement and expresses his hope that the Baptist World Alliance too will assent to the consensus.