Colleagues, The text for ThTh #117 is two letters just arrived from South Africa. First letter comes from Art and Mitzi Preisinger, ELCA mission volunteers. Art and I were seminary classmates in the 1950s. The Preisingers did campus ministry for a good long while, and in more recent years Art taught theology at Texas Lutheran University (Seguin …
Unity of the Church:the ELCA’s In-House Controversy on the Historic Episcopate
Colleagues, Last week’s posting, a series of your responses to ThTh #111, asked me to re-think the historic episcopate [HE], specifically my contention that if HE is now a YOU GOTTA in the ELCA, then it could indeed be a no-no for Reformation-rooted Lutherans. Several of you respondents went to the Lutheran Confessions themselves to show that the …
Readers’ Responses
Colleagues, Today’s edition, ThTh #115, offers readers’ responses to recent postings. There’s quite a bunch. If possible I’ll try next week to address some of the items raised here. Peace & Joy! Ed Last week’s critique (ThTh 114) of a Christ-less sermon we encountered on the weekend of the Schroeder family reunion elicited this from an ELCA …
Preaching the Gospel (again!)
Colleagues, It’s clearly a bone caught in my craw (or a barley-beard inside my pants leg, as we used to say back on the farm 60 yrs ago). Namely, preaching, less-than-Gospel preaching–and that from preachers who know the Gospel, but (apparently) don’t notice when they are NOT preaching it. Case in point. Background: Every two years on the …
The Authority To Be (Culpably) Inclusive: A Mark of Bonhoeffer’s Confessio
Robert W. Bertram [Paper presented at the Eighth International Bonhoeffer Congress, Berlin, Germany, August, 2000. UTS Archives, Bonhoeffer Secondary Papers, Series 1B Box 7] 1. Preview A. Entitled To Be Tainted Previously I had occasion to write about Bonhoeffer’s exclusiveness. (l) Really it was God s exclusiveness, as Bonhoeffer witnessed it. But that was only the first shoe. …
Common Christological Declaration of the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East
This week’s piece comes through Richard Leigh, a frequent student of the Lutheran School of Theology here in St. Louis. Enjoy! Ed Common Christological Declaration of the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East His Holiness John Paul II, Bishop of Rome and Pope of the Catholic Church, and His Holiness Mar Dinkha IV, Catholicos-Patriarch …
Nestorius and the Nestorian Church
Colleagues, Last week’s ThTh #111–Luther and the Jews, historic episcopate–generated considerable response. It’s still coming in. So I’ll wait a week or two before sorting it out and passing it on to you. Another reason for such a delay is that we’re doing a bit of vacation from now to mid-August–and NOT taking along the laptop! So …
Requests from Bishops
Colleagues, Two ELCA bishops have asked me for some theological help on sticky questions. That doesn’t happen often, so when it does, I perk up. Each bishop had 2 such tough questions. One bishop’s pair was: What did Luther really say about the Jews (and why)? Do the Lutheran Confessions give us any real help in the …
Reader Responses
Colleagues, Our posting for ThTh #110 is a collection of smaller items–a mixed bag, but good stuff. After a lead-in citation from Luther there follows reader-responses to recent postings and then an insider’s report from Canada. Peace & Joy! Ed God’s law and Christian ethics: The heart of the matter.Sent in by an ELCA pastor Luther’s Sermon …
Women Pastors – Christ’s Gifts to the Church
Colleagues, For this week, one from the archives of 24 years ago. Ancient as it is, it may cheer some ThTh receivers in the Lutheran Church of Australia right now. In the next days the LCA at its 2000 church assembly will vote yes or no on women clergy. Our year in Adelaide (1994) as guests at …