Be Transformed by the Renewing of Your Minds': Christian Worship as the Root of Righteousness and Ethical Formation

This dissertation offers an alternative to the common but misleading criticism that Lutheranism is unable to provide a sustained account of ethical formation. The dialectic of law and gospel has suggested to some that forgiveness and the advocacy of ethical norms are in contention with each other. However, by grounding them in the single righteousness of Christ, this dissertation argues that forgiveness and ethics complement rather than oppose each other. Stanley Hauerwas suggested that the dichotomy between freedom in divine grace and ethical rigor is overcome through a community narrative integrating forgiveness with holy living. Joel Biermann adapts Hauerwas' model with Luther's concept of the two kinds of righteousness to suggest a framework of ethical formation centered on instruction and a creedal narrative. Yet Biermann's model does not adequately treat the conceptual roots of the question: that Christian righteousness is both imputed and imparted, and that a Christian receives and works with righteousness through Christian worship. Justification as forgiveness includes conversion, by which God grants a believer a new character. Traditional Lutheran anthropology says that this regeneration is God granting to a believer a new nature in mystical union with Jesus Christ. By critically exploring the work of the Finnish Luther School led by Tuomo Mannermaa, this dissertation explains how union with Christ imparts righteousness and the corresponding new character to the believer. Justification and the call to works of love are not dialectical opposites, but they are both rooted in Christ's righteousness. Furthermore, as the means of grace are held in the Reformation heritage to bestow grace to the believer, the Word and sacraments are the means of establishing union with Christ and of nurturing the new character. Considering Louis-Marie Chauvet's 'symbolic order' and Bernd Wannenwetsch's understanding of worship as Christianity's unique 'form of life,' this dissertation argues that worship practices are the foundational and determinative context in which grace is offered and in which the distinctively Christian ethos develops virtues consistent with Christian character. This understanding is also compared with Hauerwas' narrative ethics and the traditional Lutheran practice of ethical instruction by the Ten Commandments.