Post Archive by Year

Concluding the last two weeks’ discussion of the June 25 “Clarifications” on the Catholic – Lutheran “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” [JDDJ] coming from Edward Cassidy, the Vatican’s chief ecumenical officer. Topic: Simultaneity: To call Christians righteous and sinners at the same time prompts Cassidy’s third “big” objection to JDDJ. He says flat-out: “not acceptable.” Although …

Continuing last week’s discussion of the June 25 “Clarifications” on the Catholic – Lutheran “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” [JDDJ] coming from Edward Cassidy, the Vatican’s chief Ecumenical Officer. Last week’s ThTh #10 focused on one of Edward Cassidy’s three major theological objections to the text of JDDJ, viz., it fails to mention human “cooperation with grace” when …

  Like day and night. That’s what the last two issues of Lutheran World Information (LWI), the fortnightly newsletter of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), were. LWI’s issue of 23 June 1998 was all hype and hallelujah about the LWF council members unanimously approving the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ)” with the Roman Catholic church. …

Both friends and foes–then and still now–talk about “the theology of Seminex.” Just what was that? It’s not easy to specify–even for us Seminexers. Critics from within the Missouri Synod painted our theology with the “liberal” brush. For some that meant “Bible-doubters.” I.e., we didn’t believe the six-day creation that the Bible teaches; we were skeptics about Jonah’s …

Warren Rubel, friend of Seminex, says he learned this from his wife on their (first?) wedding anniversary: “Warren, ours has been a strange and wonderful relationship. You are strange and I am wonderful.” Much about Seminex, like the Rubel marriage, was strange and wonderful–often both at the same time. First of all, it was strange for us to …

ThTheologians, ThTh this week comes from Robert C Schultz. It’s not directly linked to my Seminex narrative, although Bob himself indirectly is. Bob’s a retired ELCA pastor living in Seattle. He’s contributed before to our Sabbatheology series. Like me he has Missouri Synod roots. We’ve been friends since seminary days in St. Louis in the early 50s. …

Today’s the 468th anniversary of the presentation of the Augsburg Confession to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. I thought you’d like to know. The year was 1530. Times were tough. Suleiman the Magnificent was outside the walls of Vienna with 600,000 Muslim troops, having just “scorch-earthed” his way through a big chunk of southeastern “Christian” Europe. That’s …

Dear Sabbatarians, Our perusal of Seminex history will begin again next week with Ed’s next chapter, “The first days at Seminex, Feb. 20, 1974ff.” This week I asked Jim Squire to write about the Central States Synod Assembly which took place this past weekend. THE ISSUE of the assembly was the defrocking of a pastor who admitted to …

Next month the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod will hold its convention here in St. Louis. The gossip says it will be a hot one regardless of the local weather. One district president (i.e., a regional bishop) is on the carpet for practicing fellowship with the heterodox. He participated in the wedding of his niece in a service …

Colleagues, A fortnight ago in ThTh (#2) I bubbled about the two Seminex grads, Marcus Lohrmann and Robert Rimbo, who had just been elected to episcopal office in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Robin Morgan, our Sabbatheology editor, added a good word from Article 28 of the Augsburg Confession to accompany them on their episcopal callings. Some …