- The Festival of the Reformation
Colleagues,
Today’s posting is the current draft of my paper for the international conference on “The Future of Lutheran Theology: Charisms & Contexts.” Time and place for the gathering is January 2003 at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Last week’s ThTh 228 was Robin Morgan’s paper prepared for the conference.Last week we told you about ...
- Law and Gospel Theology: An Unused Resource for Social Ministry
Colleagues,
First off, A REQUEST FOR FUNDS.
Robin Morgan, Ed and Marie Schroeder have been invited to “do Thursday Theology” at an international conference middle of January 2003 at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. “The Future of Lutheran Theology: Charisms & Contexts” is the conference theme. Folks already registered (61 so far) are from all over ...
- Christians Amidst the Bali Massacre
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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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 ...
- Regime Change and the Word of God. Some Theological Reflections
In a famous passage in Romans 13 St. Paul claims that “there is no 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 ...
- R-words for September 11
Colleagues,
“Aut disce aut discede.” So said the bumper sticker 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: ...
- 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, ...
- 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” . 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. ...
