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  • Notes

How Luther, not Calvin, Improved on Augustine

Augustine loved the psalm that says, "My good is to cling to God" (Ps. 73). The question for anyone in the wake of Augustine is where the heart turns its attention, love, and desire when it seeks to cling to God. For Augustine, we turn inward, where Christ is the inner teacher, and words and signs merely direct us along the road of this inner journey. For Calvin, we are united to Christ's flesh in heaven by the supernatural and incomprehensible power of the Spirit. And for Luther, we grope for God in bread and wine, where Christ gives himself bodily to us by his word. Luther insists that faith lives by clinging to these external things, whereas Calvin has Augustine on his side, not to mention Karlstadt, when he warns us not to "cling too tightly to the outward sign" (Institutes 4.14.16). For Luther, there is no such thing as clinging too tightly to the outward signs given us by God, the external word of the gospel and the sacrament in which Christ's body and blood are present. Our whole salvation depends on clinging as tightly as we can to these outward signs, and nothing else.

Phillip Cary, The Meaning of Protestant Theology: Luther, Augustine, and the Gospel that Gives Us Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 295.

LQ Books

As previewed in our last issue (LQ 33.4, 413–16), John Doberstein's treasured Minister's Prayer Book is now available in a revised version, thanks to Timothy Wengert and his team of editors. Coming in June in our Fortress series is Wengert's own volume The Augsburg Confession: Renewing Lutheran Faith and Practice. Our fall 2020 titles will feature the third in Steven Paulson's trilogy (Luther's Outlaw God) and an overview of 500 years of Lutheranism by Martin Lohrmann: Living Stones in Global Lutheranism: Historical Introduction. [End Page 93]

The Oliver K. Olson Endowment

A year ago the LQ Board announced that a new endowment fund will honor our founding editor Oliver K. Olson in support of the editor's "chair" that is now named for him. At that time, $22,000 had been given or pledged towards the goal of $30,000. Year-end gifts in 2019 brought us very close to the goal, and we invite all LQ readers and/or friends of OKO to join the campaign to put it over the top. Gifts or pledges (to be fulfilled by the end of 2020) should be sent to Managing Editor Bud Thompson, 2752 N. Nugent Road, Lummi Island, WA 98262; vftonlummi@gmail.com.

The Expansive and Expanding Kolb Bibliography

In 2018, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht published a volume of essays in honor of LQ stalwart Robert Kolb, edited by Charles P Arand, Erik H. Herrmann, and Daniel L. Mattson, namely, From Wittenberg to the World: Essays on the Reformation and its Legacy in Honor of Robert Kolb. Besides the excellent essays, informative introduction, and striking photographs of Kolb in 1980 and now, the volume also carries an extraordinary bibliography: Kolb's own writings in reverse chronological order from 2017 back fifty years to 1968. Fully 500 items are listed across nearly 30 packed pages, thanks to Ruth A. Mattson, "Robert Kolb Bibliography 2017–1968," From Wittenberg to the World (Götingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 327–55. As comprehensive and definitive as this may seem, it is an interim report. Kolb's output continues, dozens of items each year, meaning that another version will add pages more, such as Luther's Treatise on Christian Freedom and Its Legacy (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/ Fortress Academic, 2020).

This familiar logo stems from the long and general use of MA Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum, from Isaiah 40 and 1 Peter 1, as every Table of Contents repeats and as Christian Herrmann has documented in some sixteenth-century books in LQ 33 (2019): [End Page 94] 72–86. The initials can vary (such as VDMIAE), and the media also vary (books, flags, badges, coins, even cannons), but the square design on our pages is original with Lutheran Quarterly, new series, and should not be used...

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