During 2020-2022 I have been writing a book about the transformative potential of mercy. As part of my background reading, I delved into writings from diverse traditions, and stumbled on a collection of Lutheran reflections on mercy. The Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church in the USA published this series of 26 articles on mercy, totally over 600 pages, in 2019. The whole series can be downloaded from https://reporter.lcms.org/2018/mercy-essays-feature-lutheran-theologians-from-reformation-to-today. Having read the whole series, along with Timothy Keller’s book Ministries of Mercy, I wrote some observations here to help me think through how Reformed views on mercy relate to my own emphasis on mercy as a gift of extreme kindness motivated by compassion.
The result is this essay: