Where Christ is Present: A Theology for All Seasons on the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation ed. by John Warwick Montgomery and Gene Edward Veith (review)

This essay collection offers a popular defense of Lutheran Christianity in anticipation of the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. Prospective readers should know beforehand that the contributors are mainly from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and reflect that denomination’s understanding of what constitutes an orthodox Lutheran theology.

The first essay by Montgomery offers a brief apologetic examination of different orthodox or heterodox Christian denominations. According to Montgomery, Christianity is the only religion capable of being taken seriously because it makes its claims on the basis of empirical data that can, at least in part, be tested. Mormonism and Catholicism are criticized for their failure to pass this criterion. Montgomery offers standard Lutheran polemics against Calvinism and Arminianism on exegetical grounds. In light of this, Lutheranism becomes plausible not only as a “last man standing,” but also on the basis of its ability to pass the muster of Montgomery’s empirical and exegetical tests.

Next, Veith offers an essay on the contemporary Christian landscape in America. The church-growth movement is castigated for its shallowness, self-focus, and lack of gospel-centeredness. Mainline Protestantism is also criticized for its compromise with secular culture. In light of these two bad options, Veith argues that historical confessional Lutheranism represents an important alternative because it embraces catholicity and gospel-centeredness.

Probably the most thorough essay in this collection was written by Rod Rosenbladt. In great detail, Rosenbladt explains the Lutheran Reformation’s understanding of the gospel as centered on the promise of forensic justification. He criticizes Catholicism for collapsing justification into sanctification. Rosenbladt is also critical of the Calvinist and Arminian versions of justification, which primarily focus on sanctification as a sign of justification.

Probably the best essay comes from Angus Menuge. Menuge contrasts Lutheranism’s attitude to culture and science with that of other Christian traditions using H. Richard Niebuhr’s fivefold typology in Christ and Culture. Menuge convincingly argues that Lutheranism’s “Christ and Culture in Paradox” is the best model. On the one hand, it does not reject or try to Christianize the products of secular culture, as the Reformed and Anabaptist traditions do. Such an attitude often leads to a rejection of good things that God has made, all of which we may enjoy in Christian freedom. It can also lead to attempts to make Christian versions of secular cultural products, and these imitations ultimately turn out to be inferior. On the other end of the spectrum, the Liberal Protestant and Roman Catholic impulse to synthesize culture with Christianity has the destructive effect of treating finite and provisional human culture as if it were on par with the Word of God. There is no clearer example of this than the sciences, where the Roman Catholic Church’s synthesis of Aristotle and the Bible made it initially unable to accept the new astronomy of the seventeenth century. This harmed Christianity by making it appear scientifically backward. At present, Menuge believes that Mainline Protestants are essentially making the same mistake with their unqualified acceptance of Neo-Darwinism.

Overall, the essays are recommended to educated laypeople who are interested in a popular defense of the LCMS approach to Lutheran doctrine and ethics. Although this collection is not deeply academic in nature, it nevertheless should resonate with the popular audience for which it was intended.