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XV EDITOR’S PREFACE Sixty years ago Jaroslav Pelikan ended his first book, a monograph on the influence of Luther on philosophy, with the hope that ―twentieth century Lutheranism may produce Christian thinkers of the ability and consecration necessary for that task [of working out a Christian philosophy].‖1 It is now the twenty-first century. This book renews the call for such work. My first call to the topic came not from Pelikan, whom I read later, but from my dissertation directors. I had written a thesis analyzing and ultimately advocating for Augustine’s understanding of the nature and vocation of the philosopher. My two readers, the Roman Catholic Matthew Lamb and the Methodist Robert Neville, came to an agreement; my read of Augustine was thoroughly Lutheran. Despite my Lutheran pedigree—my grandfather was an American Lutheran Church pastor, my father was a Reformation historian, my husband was seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—I was surprised to hear that my read of Augustine was Lutheran. After all, I was a philosopher and thus believed that I read from a neutral standpoint. And frankly, I had not read much Luther beyond the Small Catechism, so I failed to see how his writing could have influenced me. I saw myself as a classicist, owing much more to Plato than to the late medieval Luther. But as I began to read Luther, at my husband’s urging, I came to realize that Neville and Lamb had been right. I did read Augustine like a Lutheran. Moreover, I generally thought like a Lutheran and wrote like a Lutheran. But I was not sure where to go with this. There was no session at the American Philosophical Association on Lutheran philosophers. There was no Society or Association for Lutheran Philosophers. And when I went to those clubs for Christian philosophers I found thoughtful and faithful Calvinists and Roman Catholics but not many Lutherans. Frustrated, I began looking for contemporary Lutheran philosophers in earnest . Unlike my first love Augustine, who saw Lady Philosophy as a seductive lover, a caring mother, and a feminine version of Christ, Luther claimed philosophy was no lady but merely a lovely whore or, worse, Satan’s grandmother. Still, Lutheran philosophers had dominated nineteenth-century continental thought. The topic needed more inquiry in the current century. I began reading what I 1 Jaroslav Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard: A Study in the History of Theology (St. Louis: Concordia, 1950, 1963), 120. XVI EDITOR’S PREFACE could find written in English. There were some pieces by theologians like Pelikan, but virtually nothing by contemporary American academic philosophers. My father took a sabbatical to investigate the issue. My friend Cheryl Peterson, a Lutheran systematic theologian, took me to the American Academy of Religion and introduced me to a myriad of Lutheran and non-Lutheran professors of religion who were as interested in philosophy as in religion. Her husband, Charles Peterson , my father, David Hockenbery, and theologian David Gouwens came together to present a panel on the quandary of Lutheran philosophy at the 2008 national meeting of the AAR through the Martin Luther and Global Lutheranisms Consultation led by Deanna Thompson and Hans Hillerbrand. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, editor of Lutheran Forum, published the papers given at that AAR panel. At once, many scholars (philosophers but also historians, theologians, and professors of religion) came forth eager to research and write on the paradox of Lutheran philosophy. Three sections of inquiry emerged: those interested in understanding the philosophical formation of Luther and his subsequent formation of the discipline of philosophy; those interested in investigating Lutheran influence on major continental philosophers who were devoutly, or not so devoutly, Lutheran; and those interested in a new direction in twenty-first-century philosophy that would claim Lutheranism as an influence. The result is this book, a collection of essays from thinkers in several disciplines seeking to promote new interest in the question of Luther and philosophy. Each essay presents an angle or idea that is important to the general topic. No essay makes a holistic claim about what Lutheran philosophy is or should be. The essays reveal a Luther who is rich and complex philosophically, whose thought influenced much of continental philosophy from ethics to metaphysics, and whose ideas continue to bear fruit in our own century. In the end, the essays point the reader to new ideas, new questions, and hopefully a new line of inquiry for Lutherans and non-Lutherans, clergy and laity...

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