The "Lutheran" in the title doesn't mean A Lutheran Toolkit is just for Lutherans. It's about a Lutheran witness for the whole church and for all sinners with ears to hear. It's a slender book about the big theological ideas the evangelical reformers of the 16th century used as a lens for understanding God's work in Christ.
Starting with Philip Melanchthon's 1530 Augsburg Confession, Ken Sundet Jones sees its primary themes as a set of tools that God uses to build faith in us. He takes the reader beyond scholarly analysis and historical explanations and uses his own experience as a college professor, parish pastor, and sinner looking for mercy, to discover God's handiwork in our lives.
Each chapter takes as its starting point one of the foundational ideas presented to the Holy Roman Emperor and representatives of the church, including Sin, God hidden and revealed, justification, ministry, the Christian life, the church, sacraments, and vocation.
Ken Sundet Jones, Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, loves teaching undergrads. He was born in Heidelberg, which must be why he likes Luther so much. He was shaped by the Sturgis motorcycle rally in his hometown and by summers at his grandparents’ cattle ranch. His doctoral dissertation covered 16th-century German evangelical funeral preaching. And he knows how to do knitting and Scandinavian flat-plane woodcarving.
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Ken Sundet Jones
In the same way, the Lutheran toolkit contains things with a particular end in mind—to create and sustain saving faith.
In short, the toolkit is about how and why the gospel gets proclaimed, along with how it changes what we think it means to be a faithful person in this world.
Tools are objects that serve to obtain a desired outcome. Hammers help build the places we live in, wrenches help put together the bicycle your kid got for Christmas, and mops help us clean up kitchen messes.
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For press inquiries regarding A Lutheran Toolkit, please contact Sam Ortiz at sam@1517publishing.org
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