LOGIA

Eastertide 2012, Volume XXI, Number 2
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(A feature article from the journal: The Greco-Roman Savior: Jesus in the Age of Augustus by Peter Scaer)

God speaks Hebrew. Of course, our holy book consists, by and large, of the Hebrew Scriptures. To understand Jesus, you must know him as Yahweh, the Lord of Israel. For good reason, then, Matthew proclaims Jesus to be the promised seed of Abraham, the fulfillment of Israel’s history. But the roots of the Old Testament run deeper. The call of Abraham does not appear until after the Tower of Babel. Previously people and things were not set apart by language. There was no Levitical Law or kosher foods. God created all things and saw that they were good. There was no Holy Land; all the land was a fit for God’s people. Salvation’s story thus requires a new Adam, a truly universal figure for a newly universal outreach. Enter Luke’s Gospel, at once more modern and more ancient, which introduces Christ as the new Adam (Luke 3:23–37) and the whole world as a fit dwelling place for the Lord and his followers.

Luke’s infancy narrative serves as a type of time machine, transporting us back to Jerusalem, where we meet faithful Zechariah. Along the way, we encounter an entire cast of Old Testament characters. But upon closer examination, Luke begins his Gospel not really in Jerusalem at all, but in the same place his second volume ends, in Rome, the heart of the Greco-Roman world. Indeed, the first four verses of Luke’s Gospel are strikingly devoid of Semitisms. Addressing his treatise to the “most excellent Theophilus,” Luke writes as a Greco-Roman historian, in the line of Herodotus and Polybius, composing the finest of periodic sentences.1 As Frederick Danker puts it, the opening sentence is meant to “make a favorable impression on Greco-Romans across a broad cultural front,” and “is intended for the Greco-Roman public square.”2 If we are to enter Luke’s world, we must enroll in the Gymnasium and make it our own.3 The first four verses of Luke’s Gospel proclaim it to be a cosmopolitan gospel for a cosmopolitan people, on the verge of turningthe whole world upside down (Acts 17:28).

Epiphany 2012, Volume XXI, Number 1
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(A feature article from the journal: Confessional Fidelity by Bo Giertz) Ruben Josefson takes the designation "confessional" from those in the current debate concerning women pastors who have incorrectly taken the title for themselves, and gives it back to those who deserve to wear it.

So says Ingmar Strom in Woman, Society, Church concerning Ruben Josefson's essay, "The Evangelical-Lutheran Position," in the same book. Thus, those are truly "confessional" who find no opposition in the Bible or the Confessions to opening the office of the ministry to women. One who honestly desires to be faithful to the Confessions naturally listens with interest. More so, his own faith and work as a pastor stand endlessly in debt to the Confessions. If it is true that it can be shown with good reason that our Confessions represent a view of Christianity and biblical interpretation that naturally leads to introducing women pastors at an appropriate time, then this whole controversy can be ended — certainly a relief for all parties involved. What are the reasons, then?