Colleagues, In 1999 Marie and I were the clergy couple serving an English Language congregation on the island of Bali in Indonesia. We lived just a few blocks north of the site of last weekend’s cataclysm. Our church bldg was just a few blocks east. Some of our colleagues from that time continue to serve there. One pair …
Luther’s essay ON WAR AGAINST THE TURK
Colleagues, Two days from today our eldest grandson Peter turns 18 yrs old. It’s got me thinking. That used to be “draft age” for military service when I turned 18–also when Peter’s father turned 18 a generation later. And each of us duly registered for the draft on that birthday in 1948 and 1977. Neither of us …
The Lord’s Supper: How open, how close?
Colleagues, Marcus Felde is the pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation in Olean, Indiana. He’s a frequent contributor for Sabbatheology text-studies, the companion piece to these Thursday postings. If you’ve read his stuff there, you know he’s an awesome Gospeller–and an awful punster. In this essay–with its “pax on both your houses”–he’s doing more …
Exodus: A Saving Event? (One more time. Might it be the last?)
Colleagues, Two of my seminary classmates (class of ’55) and dearest friends, plus a younger co-confessor named after the first Evangelist, keep beating the drum that Exodus IS INDEED the “central saving event” of the OT. And that I should recant my contrary point of view. They make impressive cases, but I’m not convinced. Basically my contrary point …
Regime Change and the Word of God. Some Theological Reflections
In a famous passage in Romans 13 St. Paul claims that “there is no [worldly] authority except from God and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists such authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.” Paul said this when Nero was Roman emperor. He was the Saddam …
R-words for September 11
Colleagues, “Aut disce aut discede.” So said the bumper sticker [yes indeed, in Latin!] that I saw just the other day on our street here in south St. Louis. It’s grim: Either discern or decease. In nickel words: Either learn or die. There’s something Biblical about that epigram. Although the Biblical versions (sometimes) articulate the flip-side: Repent …
Luther and Islam at the Tenth International Congress for Luther Research, August 4-9, 2002 in Copenhagaen
Colleagues, From Sunday to Friday in the first full week of August 155 participants from 21 countries met in Copenhagen for the Tenth International Congress for Luther Research. 54 Americans and 51 Germans constituted 2/3 of the assembly. The remaining 50 participants came from elsewhere in Europe and from such far away places as Nigeria, Namibia, Argentina, Brazil, …
Willingen II (2002), The 50th Anniversary Congress on “Missio Dei” [Latin for God’s Own Mission]
Crossings Colleagues, Just last week, Aug. 18-21, Marie and I participated in “Willingen II,” the 50th Anniversary Congress on “Missio Dei” [Latin for God’s Own Mission]. Exactly 50 years ago in Willingen, a small German town in Hesse, the International Missionary Council from 40-some countries gathered for the first post-WW II international gathering on Christian Missions. Curiously enough …
A Baptism Serendipity
Colleagues, You have been getting ancient Schroederiana in the last five Thursday Theologies, #214-218. Today a return to postings “live.” Marie and I have been home in St. Louis, for not yet quite 24 hours, after our four-week’s worth of travel and work in Europe. We thought the primary purpose was to attend two conferences–The Tenth Int’l …
A Theology of Acceptance – Part 2 Edward H. Schroeder Proceedings of the 1964 Valparaiso University Workshop and Institute on Human Relations
THE FACT OF ACCEPTANCE IN JESUS CHRIST The New Testament sees the word acceptance written large over the New Testament era. The New Testament is a new deal from God, the new age, and acceptance is one title for the age. In Jesus’ first recorded sermon in Luke’s gospel, following immediately after his baptism and testing in the …