This volume is a compilation of twenty-eight essays presented at the conference ‘The Future of Lutheran Theology: Charisms and Contexts’, held at the University of Aarhus in January 2003. Attended by 125 Lutheran theologians from around the world, this event was sponsored by the Theological Faculty of the University of Aarhus and the Editorial Board of Dialog, along with support from the Danish and German Lutheran churches. The essays published here include plenary papers as well as workshop session papers. The aims of the conference were (1) to examine the current status quo of theology and (2) to note where Lutheran theology is likely to head. The essays are clustered around eight themes: (1) grace, (2) cross, (3) justification, (4) justice, (5) comparisons, (6) ecumenics, (7) world and (8) science.

Many of the book's essayists challenge the traditional, confessional view that justification is forensic, the divine imputation of forgiveness to the sinner, the criterion for articulating the gospel as promise, in distinction to law, God's expectations for human social interactions. This revisionist work is beholden to the new Finnish School of Luther research, associated with the work of Tuomo Mannermaa. It undermines the forensic nature of justification by focusing, like Andreas Osiander (1498–1552), on the indwelling Christ as the basis of justification. This view stands in contrast to God's objective forgiveness of the entire world in the event of Jesus's resurrection.

These thinkers present grace and justification from within the framework of a nature/grace distinction in which grace is seen as perfecting nature, permitting the temporal to achieve its entelechy in the eternal, the final deification of the human in the harmonious beauty of the triune life. This development is intentionally in contradistinction to the confessional Lutheran perspective that contrasts grace to law, in which the gospel liberates the terrified conscience from the law's accusations and helps liberate sinners from self-righteousness so that they can honour God on God's own terms and serve creation as God intends. From this latter perspective, grace does not perfect nature but instead liberates it from sin.

Other essayists flounder in their attempts to relate justification to important issues of God's ‘left-hand’ kingdom, such as justice and the life of the secular world, including the acquisition of knowledge in the academy. These disturbing trends undermine the ability of Lutheran theology to assist the proclamation of the gospel which, from a Lutheran perspective, ought to be the chief reason for doing theology at all.

Niels Gregersen introduces the essays with ten theses that set an agenda for Lutheran theology. He contends that the doctrine of justification should not be construed as a hub from which to articulate all other doctrines but instead that it is accountable to liturgical practices that guard the distinction between law and gospel in preaching and worship. Lutheranism must take seriously that today's theology will be post-confessionalist and ecumenical. Some of Luther's beliefs, such as his ‘logic of terror’ resulting from his views of both an electing and a damning God, and the ‘hidden God’ (deus absconditus), must be rejected.

The sections on grace and justification are directed by themes which Christoph Schwöbel summarises from Robert Jenson's introductory essay: (1) grace and the gift of the indwelling Christ are the same, (2) the gift includes the indwelling of the entire triune life, (3) the Father is the giver and the Son and Holy Spirit are the gifts, (4) the external word that imputes forgiveness is based on the internal gift of the Christ present in faith and (5) creation and grace share a common source in God. The trend in these six essays is to affirm that forensic justification must be supplemented with the effective justification of the indwelling Christ. For Monica Melanchthon this indwelling Christ is the source of energy for bringing justice for the oppressed, particularly, she notes, for the Dalits (India's ‘outcastes’).

These essays are counterbalanced with that by Peter Widmann, in the section on ecumenics. Widmann sees salvation not in terms of a nature/grace schema in which nature needs to be perfected by grace, but instead in terms of the traditional law/gospel distinction, in which nature is restored to creation since the gospel liberates us from incurvation and opens us to God and neighbour.

Two essays on the theology of the cross are provided. One is by Lois Malcolm, who appreciates the paradoxical (sub contrario) aspects of Luther's stance, such as power in weakness, grace hidden in the suffering Christ, and wisdom in the cross that the world finds foolish, but challenges Luther's Nominalist heritage in his doctrine of God when expressed as the deus absconditus. The latter expresses an unqualified power to the Almighty which could be misused and misconstrued. Fidon Mwombeki argues that Luther's theology of the cross was not meant to be taken as programmatic. It could be misused so as to disempower victims. Africans should instead look to a ‘theology of the blood’, as the affirmation of an active suffering that seeks social change.

Several other essays are of note. The late David Truemper has provided a superb discussion of the status and role of the Lutheran confessions, acknowledging their abiding authority while recognising their location in specific historical debates. Vitor Westhelle moves the discussion of the two-kingdoms doctrine by seeing it as a modern invention. Luther himself taught that the very mind of Christ permits us to do justice within the ambiguity of the world. Ambrose Moyo cautions that justification and justice must not be juxtaposed, while Guillermo Hansen notes that God is by no means limited to the church in the call for justice. Paul Chung offers an interesting discussion of grace in Luther and Chinese Buddhism. Oswald Bayer compares Luther's view of creation with that of process theology.

It would appear that many of the essayists here contend that Lutheran theology has a future, but only to the degree that it is not uniquely Lutheran. While Mannermaa's positions are widely adopted, Mannermaa himself fails to take into account that Luther was not contending for an alternative theory of deification in contrast to medieval theologians, but that the indwelling Christ reinforces the assurance derived from the word that absolves from sin. In so far as injustice exists in the world, people have yet to hear God's accusing law. In so far as pretending that they can serve as their own deities for themselves, they also need to hear accusing law. In so far as some are aware of divine rejection of such folly, these need to receive God's promise of steadfast love to them and the creation for Jesus's sake.