The Justified Body: Hauerwas, Luther and the Christian Life

Stanley Hauerwas and others argue that Luther’s understanding of justification denies the theological and ethical significance of the body. Indeed, the inner, spiritual person is the one who experiences God’s grace in the gospel, while the outer, physical (read: bodily) person continues to live unde...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in Christian ethics
Main Author: Nickel, Justin (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage [2018]
In: Studies in Christian ethics
IxTheo Classification:KAG Church history 1500-1648; Reformation; humanism; Renaissance
KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history
KDD Protestant Church
NBE Anthropology
NBM Doctrine of Justification
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Summary:Stanley Hauerwas and others argue that Luther’s understanding of justification denies the theological and ethical significance of the body. Indeed, the inner, spiritual person is the one who experiences God’s grace in the gospel, while the outer, physical (read: bodily) person continues to live under law and therefore coercion and condemnation. While not denying that Luther can be so read, I argue that there is another side of Luther, one that recognizes the body’s importance for Christian life. I make this argument through a close reading of Luther’s reflections on Adam and Eve’s Fall in his Lectures on Genesis (1545) and the sacramental theology in ‘Against the Heavenly Prophets’. For this Luther, disconnection from our bodies is not a sign of justification but rather the sin from which justification saves us. Accordingly, justification results in a return to embodied creatureliness as the way we receive and live our justification.
ISSN:0953-9468
Contains:Enthalten in: Studies in Christian ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/0953946817737928