“On Saint Patrick’s Day in 1946 six Nipponese defense counsel appeared at the captial’s war-crimes tribunal wearing green lapel ribbons…” (American Caesar, 474)
If you think of what is going on in Libya and what went on in Egypt as popular uprisings against unjust governance, then you can say Libya has come to the LCMS in the form of ACELC. Continue reading
In a sermon written circa 1520 entitled “A Sermon on the Three Kinds of Good Life for the Instruction of Consciences” (LW, 44, 235-242), Luther breaks the church down by churchyard, nave, and sanctuary. “A churchyard saint, Luther says, is blind to sound doctrine, and his soul is tied to empty externals” (234). Continue reading
A Greif Observed is the title of one of C. S. Lewis’ most poignant books. It’s about losing his wife of only four years after being a confirmed bachelor. Even as a young man it was difficult to read, now I postpone picking it back up. You’ll get an idea of the poignancy of which I speak when I tell you his wife’s name was Joy and he entitled his auto-biography Surprised by Joy. But I’m chasing rabbits here; I wish to report the happy news that Elizabeth Kubler Ross has been unhorsed. Continue reading
They finally got rid of the dingy Mobil gas station across from the church. After hearing it was to be a new bank and then a wine bar, it became another gas station. But this is not your father’s gas station. This is “Signature Fuels.” They kept the same building and put all new fancy siding on. That night the local gang tagged it with graffiti. It is a crime to tag a building with graffiti, but I think it more serious to use Scripture as a tag. Continue reading
“Luther’s judgment of the papacy as Antichrist is no longer accurate with respect to the modern papacy. But at that time it did apply, insofar as the papacy was destroying God’s order in the world because of a false understanding of the church, marriage, and family, and of economic and political matters as well.” So says German Lutheran Oswald Bayer in his Martin Luther’s Theology ( 4, fn. 8). Plenty of English Lutherans, and some confessionals, are now picking it up. But remember this isn’t just Luther’s judgment. It is the judgment of the Confessions we have bound ourselves to as a correct exposition of the doctrines of the Word of God. So ask yourself: is the teaching that the papacy is Antichrist free to be ignored? Continue reading
What’s worse than a false dichotomy? The failure to recognize a true dichotomy. President Harrison’s latest discovered truth is in his words garnered from “studying and paging through my Greek New Testament” yet, strangely enough, it is quoted from Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. It is that witness and confession belong together (Lutheran Witness, December 2010, 29). Continue reading
C-4 is a plastic explosive I was trained to use. You could take a piece of this white doughy substance and safely heat your C-Rations. But if you tried to put that fire out by stamping on it, the resulting explosion could blow your foot off. Stamping on C-4 is what I might be doing in this review of the Rev. Dr. John Kleinig’s Grace Upon Grace. Continue reading
That’s what the headline of the press release should have been from the latest meeting of the ACELC Steering Committee and the LCMS. But below is what it was. I kept the ! and didn’t change it to 1 because this comes from the meeting like from the Medes and the Persians. You’re not allowed to change anything, so I didn’t. (I suspect it comes this way from the Synod side not the ACELC side.) Continue reading
I don’t think Simon and Garfunkel were praising the sound of silence in their song by that name. After all, they have the line “Silence like a cancer grows.” They don’t appear to praise silence; I do. Continue reading
