The Crossings Blog

Robert W. Bertram [Address in response to Kevin Sharpe’s From Science to Adequate Mythology for Ralph Burhoe’s and Philip Hefner’s Advanced Seminary on Science and Religion at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, April 15, 1986.] 1) I have been so encouraged by Kevin Sharpe’s From Science to an Adequate Mythology — and I thank my colleagues …

 Robert W. Bertram [Address at the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue USA, Burlingame, California, February, 1986. Later published in Dialog, vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 265-271. Reprinted with permission] ABSTRACT A positive [Lutheran] theology of the saints needs to address the Reformers’ concern about the practice of invocation of the saints interfering with the sole mediatorship of Christ. At issue …

Robert W. Bertram [Address at “The Lewis Conference,” St. Louis University, October 18-20, 1985.] FAITH; EMPIRICAL AND THEOLOGICAL 1. Recall this passage from Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s Towards a World Theology. “A Luther found faith so utterly significant a matter that he proclaimed that by it, and by it alone, man is saved. As an historian of human cultural …

Robert W. Bertram [Address given September 4, 1985. Published in Ecumenical Trends 14 (1985): 157-160. Reprinted with permission.] I. “This is not just one way alongside other ways but the only way.” Says who? In this ecumenical day and age – August of 1985, to be exact – who would still have the audacity to announce that his …

Robert W. Bertram [Printed in Justification by Faith, 172-184. Edited by H. Anderson, T. Murphy, J. Burgess. (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985). Reprinted with permission.] THESES Introduction Thesis One. The one theme in the Augsburg Confession that aroused both the strongest opposition from papal critics and simultaneously, from Melanchthon and Luther, the strongest claim, namely, the claim to be “the …

Robert W. Bertram January 1985 [Dr. Bertram presented this essay for “in house” discussion among his dialogue partners for Lutherans and Catholics Dialogue VIII during the February 21-24, 1985 session at Marriottsville, MD. The final results of this dialogue were published in The One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary: Lutherans and Catholics Dialogue VIII, edited by H. George …

[In Justification by Faith, 241-255. Edited by H. Anderson, T. Murphy, J. Burgess. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985.] Robert W. Bertram Thesis One When recent Lutheran theologies have confronted the Reformation claim that justification by faith is the “article by which the church stands or falls,” their reactions, though mixed and reflecting a variety of readings of what the Reformers …

By Robert Bertram [Published in The Cresset, 38 (December, 1984): 4-6. Reprinted with permission.] I. Allocating Value Authoritatively (Propositions 1-20) 1) The assigned topic reads, “Preaching on Controversial Social Issues.” Let us, for reasons of shorthand refer to that as “political preaching” — but not only for reasons of shorthand. 2) All good preaching is tacitly political, just …