Alien and the Proper

Honoring both humanity's passive receptivity before God and its need for active civil engagement, the essayists in this book appropriate a neglected feature of Luther's theology: the two kinds of righteousness. For the Wittenberg reformer, humans are constituted by two dimensions, a vertical one in which Christ's righteousness is imputed to them and a horizontal one in which they are responsible for just and life-giving social relationships. Neither exiling themselves from the wider public nor occupying it through conquest, Christians empowered with Christ's goodness should engage the secular world as full citizens, since their new identity in Christ impels them to make a difference in the public arena. Luther called this approach "our theology." This book helps us to appropriate Luther's theology as our theology as well.

Mark Mattes

Lutheran Bible Institute Chair of Theology

Grand View University

In many expressions of twenty-first century Christian teaching, the only kind of righteousness one hears of is that of human works. This book, grounded in the Lutheran confessions and in the writings of Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, provides a healthy antidote to such mistaken instruction. By distinguishing alien and proper righteousness, as did Wittenberg's reformers, this collection of essays by some of the leading scholars at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, places the gracious, life-giving announcement of God's mercy at the very center of Christian proclamation and opens up new ways for Christians to imagine service to their neighbors. Few books available today will better inform the Christian church and its ministry.

Timothy J. Wengert

Ministerium of Pennsylvania Professor emeritus

United Lutheran Seminary (Philadelphia)

Robert Kolb has spent the last four decades investigating Luther's understanding of God's two kinds of righteousness. God's righteousness in Christ restores His human creatures to saving relationship to their Creator through faith in the divine promise. Set free from self-righteousness, believers live in righteousness in the world, giving themselves to works that serve their neighbors. In this volume, we see the fruits of Kolb's research manifested also in the scholarship of his former students, now colleagues, as they develop the implications of the Reformer's confession of God's twofold work for pastoral ministry, the doctrine of vocation, mission, and ethics. This superb volume makes Luther's theology of the two kinds of righteousness accessible to a wide audience in the church.

John T. Pless

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, IN