The Gift of Our Bodies in Life and Death Kent Burreson and Beth Hoeltke
Kent J. Burreson is the Louis A. Fincke and Anna B. Shine Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. He also served as dean of the Chapel of St. Timothy and St. Titus. His areas of interest and expertise include liturgical studies, sacramental theology and Reformation worship. He is co-author (with Beth Hoeltke) of Death, Heaven, Resurrection, and the New Creation published by Concordia Publishing House.
The Baptismal Body: Life and Death in Baptism Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (John 3:5–6).
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n this disenchanted age, humans, including Christians, tend to see their bodies in utilitarian ways, even as inconsequential and unimportant. As P. C. Cast puts it in Beth Hoeltke is director of the her book Goddess of Spring, “Ultimately, graduate school at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis where she the body is just a shell; it is the soul also earned a PhD in doctrinal which defines the man or woman, theology. In addition to natural god or goddess.”1 We perceive the burial, Hoeltke’s interests body as a tool for living, as the include the role of women in the church from a biblical outer shell for our true inner life. perspective, a focus on environmental and ecological issues, and hymnody in worship. Contrastingly, the biblical narrative calls for the re-enchantment of how we understand our bodies not as utilitarian containers, but as sacred on account of God’s creative work. The human body is the visual expression of God’s magnanimous giving.
Burreson and Hoeltke, The Gift of Our Bodies in Life and Death
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