A Tribute to Herbert Lindemann

(Excerpt) (An edited transcript of presentations at the Institute Banquet by David Truemper, John Nelson, Jerald Pipping, Walter Bouman, Jill Knuth, and Philip Gehring, with a response by Herbert Lindemann.) Truemper: As announced in our publicity, it is our desire to honor the ministry and the work, the example, the life of service and teaching of Pastor Herbert Lindemann. We probably have a huge fund of stories to tell to Herb and about him. We won\u27t risk telling all of those tonight. His life has been rich and his ministry full, and this room is full of many who have been beneficiaries of that. A few of us will use the right to say something about our debt to Herb. Permit me to do the simply objective things

Fear and Faith In the Fields of Our Hearts

(Excerpt) In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This morning\u27s sermon is in some ways a sermon that many of you have already preached this week. The lessons are familiar, and those of you who occupied pulpits across the churches of the land hear still the echo of the way the Gospel sounded in your parishes. And those of you who were occupying other roles in those parishes heard that same Gospel. It echoes its Alleluias and its amazing connections between the wounds that our Lord shows as the basis for his first Peace be with you and the wounds that he again shows to elicit from Thomas the great confession My Lord, My God. As we gather these days to consider the \u27\u27wheat arising green\u27\u27 on \u27\u27the fields of our hearts,\u27\u27 we come as Gospel-agriculturists to tend the growth, to watch, to smile, to celebrate as Christ\u27s peace grows in our midst, as that faith and its confession rises and wells up and so bears witness to those within earshot of the words it takes in us. That is the ground for doing what we have done once already this week, preaching and hearing this Gospel

Church and Ministry in the Lutheran Symbols: Serving the Gospel to the Priestly People

(Excerpt) In a particularly eloquent passage in his Forum Letter of 30 May 1979 Richard John Neuhaus had the following to say in a story on the foibles of contemporary American Lutheranism: We are not dealing with an ideal church. We are dealing with a church so muddled and compromised that only a faithful Lord would dare to own up to it. That is such an apt statement, such an exquisitely Lutheran statement, that I promptly typed it on a file card and stuck it on a crowded little cork-board on my office wall above my typewriter. It stands, therefore, as a kind of benediction on my work as I compose this essay --and, more importantly, as a contemporary summary of a couple of the most essential motifs in the view of the church and, by implication, the ministry in the Lutheran symbolical books. The church confessed at Augsburg is a flawed church, a sinners\u27 church

Luther\u27s Enchiridion as Resource for Spiritual Formation

(Excerpt) My purpose in this essay is to consider Luther\u27s Small Catechism as a resource for the spiritual formation of the faithful. That aim brings with it a number of automatic consequences. First, it requires that I take into account also Luther\u27s Large Catechism--that book of advice to pastors in the spiritual formation of Christians. Second, it requires that I invite you to pay attention to the original setting and intention of Luther in writing and publishing his catechisms at the end of the first decade of reformatory activity in Germany. Third, it requires that we consider the catechisms in their ecclesial context, that is, as a part of the confessional writings of the churches of the Augsburg Confession. Fourth, it suggests that we make clear just what is included when we speak of Luther\u27s Small Catechism; that is, we must give some attention to the more or less official content of that often-revised document. Fifth, it suggests that we let Luther\u27s prose speak, as much as possible, for itself; accordingly, a portion of this essay will simply be an attempt to do so, composed of a catena of citations from the catechisms. Finally, it invites us to offer some practical suggestions for the implementation of what is gained from what I hope is a sensitive reading of Luther\u27s manuals

Enough, Already-But Perhaps Not Yet: Liturgy, Church Unity, and Eschatology

(Excerpt) Enough, as we have been saying, ought to be enough. We\u27ve heard the crucial sentence from Article VII of the Augsburg Confession over and over these days, about what\u27s enough for the true unity of the church, namely the one and only gospel proclaimed and enacted in the assembly of believers. We have to suppose that the confessors that sunner day in 1530 meant precisely what they said about preserving and maintaining the genuine unity of the church-enough to have some prima facie acknowledgment that it is indeed the Christian gospel being said and done in this and that assembly of the faithful. Not that gospel plus some theological proposition or some canonical requirement, we\u27d want to say. For we\u27ve learned the lesson well: gospel plus anything is always less than gospel

X-ray Pulsations from the Central Source in Puppis A

There are several supernova remnants which contain unresolved X-ray sources close to their centers, presumably radio-quiet neutron stars. To prove that these objects are indeed neutron stars, to understand the origin of their X-ray radiation, and to explain why they are radio-quiet, one should know their periods and period derivatives. We searched for pulsations of the X-ray flux from the radio-quiet neutron star candidate RX J0822-4300 near the center of the Puppis A supernova remnant observed with the ROSAT PSPC and HRI. A standard timing analysis of the separate PSPC and HRI data sets does not allow one to detect the periodicity unequivocally. However, a thorough analysis of the two observations separated by 4.56 yr enabled us to find a statistically significant period $P\simeq 75.3$ ms and its derivative $\dot{P}\simeq 1.49\times 10^{-13}$ s s$^{-1}$. The corresponding characteristic parameters of the neutron star, age $\tau=P/(2\dot{P})=8.0$ kyr, magnetic field $B=3.4\times 10^{12}$ G, and rotational energy loss $\dot{E}=1.4\times 10^{37}$ erg s$^{-1}$, are typical for young radio pulsars. Since the X-ray radiation has a thermal-like spectrum, its pulsations may be due to a nonuniform temperature distribution over the neutron star surface caused by anisotropy of the heat conduction in the strongly magnetized crust.Comment: 9 pages, 2 postscript figures, to appear in ApJ Letters; an acknowledgment is adde

Observability of atomic line features in strong magnetic fields

The physical properties of atoms in superstrong magnetic fields, characteristic of neutron stars, and the possibility of detecting magnetically strongly shifted atomic lines in the spectra of magnetized X-ray pulsars are discussed. It is suggested that it is recommendable to look for magnetically strongly shifted Fe 26 Lyman lines in rotating neutron stars of not too high luminosity using spectrometers working in the energy range 10 - 20 keV, with sensitivities to minus 4 power photons per sq cm and second, and resolution E/delta E approx. 10-100