Marva Dawn, Lutheran theologian and author, has written many books devoted to Christian theology and practice. She is rooted in a Lutheran biblical hermeneutic that guides are provocative handling of the Christian life. Her books "Truly the Community" and "Reaching out without Dumbing Down" are must-reads for practicioners struggling to interpret and practice Christian faith in 21st century North America. She takes her context seriously (and also comedically) when she engages a particular subject. Shre has written on the worship wars, sexual ethics, Sabbath Keeping, and Christian language.
The latter is a topic of her most recent book, "Talking the Walk: Letting Christian language live again." In the introduction she writes, "This book arose as does all my work: when something keeps striking me a a problem in the interrelationships of Christians, churches, and the society around us, I finally feel compelled to do soemthing about it." That is the nature of her writing and the gift it provides. She believes in the power of words, of language, of the message. in this recent book, she writes short vignettes, almost personal reflections, on Christian vocabulary. Everything God and Christ to grave and hell and salvation. One of her chapters is entitled "X". This material is poetic, thoughtful, and theologically astute. She intends to recapture language that has been "corrupted" (her words) by sin, misuse, overuse, underuse,etc...
On p. 44, the entry on Word (located in the section on language about God) says, "Isn;t it funny that a religion centered in One who is named "Word" has become so loppy with its words? I don't mean just with rejections of docrinal terms, but also with careless or overly sentimmentalized song or liturgy writing, with illiteracy concerning the words of the Scriptures which give testimony to the Word, with increasing dependence upon the visual to convey our faith in the Word to the world around us, and with diminished ability to hear God speak in a voice that contradicts our society's words about values and ideologies. You'd think that if we really believed that Jesus is God's Word, who is both God and with-God for us, we'd spend more time listening to the Word, more attention to living it, and more concern for what we say and how we say it."
How true.
