The Relationship of Faith and Knowledge in the Lutheran Confessions

The proper understanding of the nature of faith is a matter of central importance in Christian theology. For this reason the Christian Church has sought for terminology by which to describe faith in a manner that will do justice to all the affirmations of Holy Scripture concerning it. The origin and development of some of this terminology was the topic of a recent essay in the pages of this journal. There it was indicated that the distinction between the believing (knowing) subject and the believed (known) object was intended to safeguard an integral element in the Christian definition of faith and knowledge; but that it could, and sometimes did, lead to an objectivism and to a subjectivism both of which surrendered what the distinction aimed to preserve. This very circumstance makes further investigation of the question necessary

Book Review. - Literatur

Book Review. - Literatu

In Memoriam Joh. Albrecht Bengel

November 2, 1952, is the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of Johann Albrecht Bengel, a leading figure in the history of Lutheran theology. He has exerted an influence over subsequent Biblical scholarship comparable to that of Luther and Flacius in the sixteenth century, the Buxtorfs in the seventeenth, von Hofmann in the nineteenth, and Schlatter in the twentieth. Until a generation or two ago his Gnomon Novi Testamenti was a commonplace in the libraries of the evangelical clergy; and some of the works which have come to replace it, like Dean Alford\u27s commentary and the Expositors Greek Testament, are expansions and adaptations, though not always improvements, of Bengel\u27s classic work. There has not been, to this writer\u27s knowledge, a definitive study assessing the significance of Bengel\u27s work in the history of Christian thought; he would certainly deserve such a treatment. In its absence this brief essay will attempt to describe his life and work and to point out some of the questions that warrant more detailed investigation

Theological Observer. – Kirchlich Zeitgeschichtliches

Theological Observer. – Klrchllch Zeitgeschichtliches (Theological Observer. – Of course contemporary history

Dukedom large Enough

This article is the address delivered, by Dr. Pelikan at the inauguration of Dr. Robert V. Schnabel as president of Concordia College, Bronxville, N. Y., on Feb. 5, 1972

Chalcedon After Fifteen Centuries

This year marks the fifteen hundredth anniversary of one of the most important councils of the ancient Church, the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Chalcedon is generally regarded as the conclusion of almost a century and a half of theological discussion centering in the doctrine of the person of Christ. This discussion came to a focus at the first four ecumenical councils-Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381, Ephesus in 431, and Chalcedon in 451. Out of these four councils and the theological work that went into them there emerged the dogmas of the Trinity and of the person of Christ which have since become the common property of ecumenical Christendom. This fact alone would make Chalcedon an important event in Christian history

Angel and Evangel

A sermon preached at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo., on the Eve of Saint Michael and All Angels, Sept. 28, 1974, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the ordination of John Tietjen

Church and Church History in the Confessions

The current revival of interest in the doctrine of the Church has far-reaching significance for many areas of theological study. Without an adequate appreciation of the nature of the Church much of Christian doctrine cannot attain full articulation. For example, there has always been a close connection between the doctrine of the Church and the doctrine of the means of grace, as Article V of the Augsburg Confession shows. The study of the Old Testament as the record of God\u27s dealings with His people, of the New Testament as the account of God\u27s establishment of His new people, of liturgy as the way the Church worships- these and other fields of ideological investigation need to find rooting in the doctrine of the Church and its implications

Some Word Studies in the Apology

When I use a word, said Humpty-Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less. In the history of Christian theology the tendency to do this has become almost an occupational disease, often making it difficult to understand theologians of the present and almost impossible to understand theologians of the past. Nor does this apply only to thinkers like Berdyaev, who found it necessary to coin his vocabulary as he went along, or to groups like the Gnostics, who sometimes seem deliberately to have chosen nonsense syllables to reveal their theology. It applies as well to those theologians to whom the modern reader feels closest, and to those words and technical terms of which he makes most frequent use

The Doctrine of Creation in Lutheran Theology

The fundamental category in the Biblical doctrine of man is the category creature. Whatever else Christian theology may have to say about the nature and destiny of man, it says in the limits described by that category. Its picture of man as sinner, therefore, must portray him as a fallen creature. It must not make him a creature of Satan because of his sin. Nor dare theology forget that it is precisely man\u27s creaturely derivation from God that makes his sin so calamitous. Because the category creature is so fundamental, orthodox Christian theology has always felt compelled to draw a line beyond which mysticism is not permitted to go. In a manner reminiscent of mysticism, it promises that its adherents become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). But, unlike classical mysticism, it insists that such participation does not abolish but rather confirms the creaturely character of the participant. From these and similar relationships it would appear that for Biblical theology man is fundamentally man the creature, be he innocent, fallen, or saved