In the current edition of Life of the World, my friend the Rev. Dr. Korey Maas asks, “Do Lutherans Do Apologetics?” I encourage you to read the entire article. What caught my eye was the following:
To say that Lutherans don’t do apologetics may be, unfortunately, largely true as a simple description of recent North American Lutheranism. Yet it is certainly not the case that Lutherans have always been averse to the project, as becomes evident even upon examining the prolegomena of many seventeenth-century Lutheran dogmatic works.
Friends, this is what I’ve been hinting at for a few months now on Bioethike. To borrow a word from the Reformed theologian Stephen J. Grabill (2006), there is a “discontinuity” between what we believe and do today, and what Luther, Melanchthon, Chemnitz, Gerhard, et. al. believed and did in their day.
That’s what I believe Dr. Maas is hinting at in these two sentences. Lutherans used to do apologetics, but now not so much. Why? What changed?
Of course, we at Bioethike think we may have found the answer, and we’re happy to share. Just visit us soon. . . and often!
