Detail:
From Dr. Kleinig:
This talk builds on my earlier (03/01/22) For Life Live discussion on God’s creation of all human bodies in his image and draws on some of the implications of this amazing fact that I have explored more fully in my book Wonderfully Made. A Protestant Theology of the Body (Lexham, 2021). I will cover some, if not all, of the following points.
- Our God-given bodies that are created and sustained and owned by him
- The God-given ecosystem for bodily life on earth
- Our God-given bodily dependence and interdependence rather than our bodily independence and autonomy
- Our “right to life” from God through his word
- Our bodily cooperation with God in the order of creation
- Our God-given, gendered sexuality rather than our self-chosen gender and sexuality
- Our God-given bodily union of husband and wife in marriage
- Our spousal bodies as single or married persons
Dr John Kleinig is a pastor of the Lutheran Church of Australia. After serving as a high school chaplain and parish pastor, he has been involved in the preparation of students for ordination as pastors for 25 years at Luther Seminary in Adelaide and is now retired from active service. He is the author of numerous books and articles. The most recently published of these is Wonderfully Made. He has been a frequent visitor to the USA where he has been closely associated with Doxology – The Lutheran Center for Spiritual Care and Counsel as a regular speaker at its conferences.
He is, by training, an Old Testament theologian but has also taught courses on other parts of the Bible and on pastoral theology. As a teacher of theology, he is interested in integrating all the classical theological disciplines pastorally and practically. He has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and honorary doctorates from Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne and Concordia University in Irvine.
Aged 79, he is married to Claire, a church musician and retired music teacher. He is the father of four children, and proud grandfather of ten grandchildren. His hobbies are fishing, gardening, reading novels, viewing films, and doing nothing.