Reformation Reconsidered

Abstract

In my response to Profs. Thompson and Marga, I first highlight the theological challenges that both scholars name for theology today and analyze their retrieval of key notions in Luther’s works to meet these challenges. In the second part of my response, I reflect on the purpose of theological retrieval and raise historical questions with regard to the purportedly liberating social effects of the Reformation. Finally, I register a theological concern by asking if retrieving the concepts of Christian freedom, neighborly love, justification by faith, and ethics as a secular enterprise, if divorced from their dogmatic moorings in Luther’s robust theology of the happy exchange, opens the way for theology’s cultural colonization by secular modernity.