Issue 21/1 of the Global Journal will feature a transcription of John Warwick Montgomery’s address the evening before 1517’s annual Here We Still Stand conference. The lecture covered two subjects of importance and interest to evangelicals and Lutherans—the authority of scripture and the apologetic legacy of C. S. Lewis.

Issue 20/3 of the Global Journal will feature two fascinating subjects, one Anglo-Saxon in orientation (interrelating Sir William Blackstone and Abraham Lincoln), the other analyzing the dire effects of pornography in Africa.  A challenging opportunity to broaden the reader’s theological horizons!

Our 20/2 issue will have a particularly wide scholarly scope, offering in its two articles theological analysis of a questionable philosophical orientation (subordinationism), as well as a deep treatment of a powerful Christian littérateur (Fyodor Dostoevsky).

Our next issue will contain no less than two articles by the same scholar:  Concordia Theological Seminary (Ft. Wayne, Indiana) adjunct professor Josh Pagán.  It is not our usual policy to publish two contributions from an author at the same time, but we believe that the apologetic importance and interconnection of the forthcoming two essays warrant special treatment.  Readers of 20/1 will therefore benefit from a double-barreled apologetics issue!

Readers of the Global Journal 19/3 will benefit from two articles in the area of New Testament scholarship. The first offers a defense of one of the key biblical passages supporting the physical resurrection of Our Lord from the dead, I Corinthians 15.  The second provides new insight into an aspect of the crucifixion seldom discussed by exegetes:  the sop employed to offer drink to the dying Jesus.

Global Journal 19/2 will contain two seemingly esoteric papers: James Lutzweiler’s critique of the apologetics style of the late Ravi Zacharias, and Ron Kubsch’s analysis of aspects of the thought of French philosoper Jean-François Lyotard. A qualification: the adage “De mortuis nihil nisi bonum” does not preclude responsible criticism, and the forrthcoming articles will be dealing with serious apologetics issues, not questionable aspects of personal life. Ravi began his apologetics studies with your Editor as his teacher, and I am deeply saddened by the details of his personal life, as well as by the superficiality of his so-called cultural defanse of the faith. But one can learn both from the positive and from the negative in the thinking and actions of others—which leads me to a second adage: “Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.”

Global Journal 19/1 will be our “Canadian Issue,” featuring just one (but a particularly important) article by Canadian scholar Jeremy Hexham.  Your editor served three years as chairman of the history department of the then Waterloo Lutheran University, an hour west of Toronto; his debate with philosophy professor Avrum Stroll at the University of British Columbia led to the initial publication of essays that would eventuate in the editor’s widely-read book  History, Law and Christianity; an issue of the Canadian Christian Legal Journal was devoted to his apologetics contributions; and—most important—following the sad decease of his wife Lanalee last year, he has just remarried–to Carol Maughan, a retired Canadian school teacher.  Thus, the next issue of the Global Journal is justified on multiple counts!

There are readers who suppose that the Global Journal is limited to Lutheran or quasi-Lutheran authors.  Of course, since God is Lutheran, there will be a powerful influence of Lutheran confessional theology in the Journal’s lineup of scholarly articles. That hardly means, however, that Lutheran chauvinism defines this publication. Issue 18/3 will demonstrate this clearly by way of the Revd Jeffrey S. McDonald’s contributions dealing with two fine orthodox Presbyterian theologians whose impact on evangelical thought and opposition to liberal deteriorations in Reformed ecclesiastical circles had wide impact.

The Global Journal has greatly benefitted in the past from articles by the Australian apologist Philip Johnson. Issue 18/2 will provide not only his two-part analysis of the legal defense of the faith offered by 19^th-century Harvard law professor Simon Greenleaf but also Johnson’s unique bio-bibliography of American legal apologetics. These scholarly contributions especially warm the heart of the Global Journal’s editor, since the Christian law school he founded in California was named for Simon Greenleaf, and much of the editor’s apologetic activity has centered on the legal defense of the faith (cf. William P. Broughton, The Historical Development of Legal Apologetics, with an Emphasis on the Resurrection [Maitland, FL: Xulon Press, 2009]).

Never think that the Global Journal is but the dull publisher of stereotyped theological articles! Vol. 18, No. 1 should put paid to any such notion.

The lead article will be “God’s Own Wind: Sherlock Holmes as Conan Doyle’s, and Modernity’s, Post- Christian Search for Meaning,” by Brett Graham Fawcett of Newman Theological College. (This editor’s book, The Transcendent Holmes, demonstrates our commitment to the theological value of The Great Detective.)

That fascinating essay will be followed by something African:  “Commercialization of Religion in Neo-Prophetic Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches in Ghana,” by George Anderson Jr., Department of Religion and Human Values, University of Cape Coast, Ghana.