Rev. Dr. James Lee
Rev. Dr. James Ambrose Lee II is associate professor of Theology, chair of the Division of Theology, and director of the Honors Program at Concordia University Chicago. Rev. Lee is a graduate of Concordia University Chicago, Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, Yale Divinity School (STM, Liturgics), and Saint Louis University (PhD, Historical Theology). Prior to Concordia Chicago, Dr. Lee was assistant pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church, Worden, and Zion Lutheran Church, Carpenter. Rev. Lee is the author of Confessional Lutheranism and German Theological Wissenschaft (De Gruyter, 2022), and numerous articles on the nineteenth-century confessional Lutheran revival. Rev. Lee and his wife, Emily, have three children, and will welcome their fourth in August.
The Pedagogical and Theological Value of Augustine’s Confessions for Teaching the Christian Faith within a Distinctly Lutheran Framework
This paper explores the pedagogical and theological value of Augustine’s Confessions for teaching the Christian faith within a distinctly Lutheran framework. Drawing on my classroom experience teaching “Introduction to Christianity” at Concordia University Chicago, I argue that the Confessions function not merely as a classic of Christian literature, but as a uniquely formative text for catechesis, theological reflection, and moral formation. Augustine’s probing account of sin, disordered desire, and self-deception places students squarely before the law, exposing the depth of human bondage to sin and the futility of self-justification. At the same time, his sustained confession of God’s grace provides a rich occasion for articulating the gospel as God’s unmerited action toward the sinner. Read in this way, Augustine’s narrative of restless desire, conversion, and ongoing repentance exemplifies a theology of the cross in which true knowledge of God arises not from human ascent but from divine condescension and mercy. Through autobiographical narrative, Augustine’s Confessions demonstrate that doctrinal claims about grace, justification, and faith are inseparable from the lived reality of trust in God’s promises. In the classroom, this integration enables students to see how Lutheran teaching on justification by grace alone through faith alone is not an abstract dogma, but a confessed and prayed reality that shapes the Christian life as one of daily repentance, dependence upon God, and rightly ordered love.