Evangelical Hagiography

Hagiography happens. Even if you're Protestant. In this episode, we review the history of the saints as both products of the gospel and pathways to the modern practices of science and biography, make the case for why Lutherans and other Protestants should embrace hagiography in an evangelical key, disambiguate veneration from invocation, and, of course, we mention Bonhoeffer.

Notes:

1. Among the things I've written on this topic, see "Saints for Sinners," "Luther's Hagiographical Reformation of the Doctrine of Sanctification in His Lectures on Genesis," and my Lutheran Saints series.

2. See also Dad's inadvertent hagiography, Between Humanist Philosophy and Apocalyptic Theology: The Twentieth Century Sojourn of Samuel Stefan Osusky

3. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?

4. Brown, The Body and Society

5. The One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary (Lutheran-Catholic dialogue statement)

6. Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon

7. Hendrix, The Faithful Spy

8. Melanchthon, Augsburg Confession and Apology Article XXI on the saints

9. Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints

10. Mattox, Defender of the Most Holy Matriarchs

11. For All the Saints (evangelical Lutheran breviary)

12. I didn't mention it but also see Kolb's study For All the Saints

13. Related episodes: Perpetua and Felicitas, Athanasius against the World, Faith Just Faith, Justification by Faith Revisited, Faith to the Aid of Reason, The Empiricists Strike Back, Slovak Theologian Samuel Stefan Osusky

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