Theologians of the cross
The new “Theologians of the cross” category of the Augsburg Aggregator features blogs devoted entirely to Lutheran theology, that is, orthodox christology. If you know of an unlisted blog that meets the following criteria, please leave its URL in a comment:
- Agreement with the Book of Concord;
- Complete absence of non-theological posts such as those on technology, church or state politics, or family life;
- Real names of post authors;
- Quality of content and presentation comparable to that of the blogs already listed.
Blogs listed under other categories meet another set of criteria.
Why pray?
Still More Luther on Prayer « Taking Thoughts Captive…
You might wonder, “Why does God insist that we pray to him and tell him our problems? Why doesn’t he take care of us without our having to ask? He already knows what we need better than we do.” God continually showers his gifts on the whole world every day. He gives us sunshine, rain, good harvests, money, healthy bodies, and so on. But we often neither ask God for these gifts nor thank him for them. If God already knows that we can’t live without light or food for any length of time, then why does he want us to ask for these necessities? Obviously, he doesn’t command us to pray in order to inform him of our needs. God gives us his gifts freely and abundantly. He wants us to recognize that he is willing and able to give us even more. When we pray, we’re not telling God anything he doesn’t already know. Rather, we are the ones gaining knowledge and insight. Asking God to supply our needs keeps us from becoming like the unbelieving skeptics, who don’t acknowledge God and don’t thank him for his many gifts. All of this teaches us to acknowledge God’s generosity even more. Because we continue to search for him and keep on knocking at his door, he showers us with more and more blessings. Everything we have is a gift from God. When we pray, we should express our gratitude by saying, “Lord, I know that I can’t create a single slice of my daily bread. You are the only one who can supply all of my needs. I have no way to protect myself from disasters. You know what I need ahead of time, so I’m convinced that you will take care of me.”
(from Faith Alone: A Daily Devotional / LW 21:144)
Why does doctrine matter?
False doctrine is poison to the soul. An entire banqueting party drinking an admixture of arsenic can drink physical death from its cups. So an entire audience can invite spiritual and eternal death by listening to a sermon that contains an admixture of the poison of false doctrine. A person can be deprived of his soul’s salvation by a single false comfort or single false reproof administered to him.
—C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel, page 20
That’s why we need the church “in which the Gospel is rightly taught,” as the Augsburg Confession puts it.
Even unto death fight for justice
Sirach 4:29 (Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition)
Strive for justice for thy soul, and even unto death fight for justice, and God will overthrow thy enemies for thee.
Quoted by C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel, page 30.
Pastor and People together in Christ’s Church
Pastor and People together in Christ’s Church
by the Lutheran Church—Canada
The meaning of AC XIV is not that one particular rite of ordination must be universally observed. But by committing themselves to the churchly process of examination, call, and ordination, the Reformers insisted that the functions may not be separated from the office. No layman may preach or administer the sacraments without first being given the full office of the holy ministry.
Give me neither poverty nor riches
Proverbs 30:8-9 (NKJV)
Remove falsehood and lies far from me;
Give me neither poverty nor riches—
Feed me with the food allotted to me;
Lest I be full and deny You,
And say, “Who is the LORD?”
Or lest I be poor and steal,
And profane the name of my God.
The best Lutheran blogs
Nominations for Augsburg Aggregator’s Best Blogs are open.
To nominate a blog of the Augsburg Aggregator as a Best Blog or to voice support for a nomination, leave a comment with the name of the blog, its category, a statement of how you have found it helpful, and your real name. Nomination for inclusion in the Augsburg Aggregator has a different process.
Evening, morning, and noon I cry out in distress
Evening, morning, and noon
I cry out in distress and He hears my voice.
Psalms for evening, morning, and noon from The Lutheran Hymnal
Homologoumena: The 20-book NT canon
A plan for reading the homologoumena in three months has been added to the Dawning Realm page on worship. Its lists of chapters to read are updated daily. To use the plan in family devotions, read one chapter in the morning and the other in the evening according to the month.
As those books of the New Testament that the early church universally recognized as apostolic, the homologoumena contain the entire Christian doctrine. Useful information on canonicity of the seven disputed books of the New Testament is provided by F. Pieper (1950) Christian Dogmatics, Volume I, Concordia Publishing House.
Irenaeus: Protestant or Catholic?
Even in the second century, before it was seen that even the bishops of the churches planted by the apostles could teach contrary to the writings of the apostles, apostolic succession was not relied on apart from Scripture since heretics claimed their own lines of succession. Because heterodox congregations insisted that the meaning of Scripture could only be uncovered with the aid of oral traditions they allegedly received from the apostles, St. Irenaeus, the most important second-century theologian,1 (p. 1) called Scripture rather than simply the church “the ground and pillar of our faith”:
That the apostles preached that Gospel and then subsequently wrote it down is important for Irenaeus, as it will later enable him to appeal to the continuous preaching of the Gospel in the Church, the tradition of the apostles. It is also important to Irenaeus to specify that what they wrote has been handed down (“traditioned”) in the Scriptures, as the ground and pillar of our faith. While Paul had spoken of the Church as being the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Tim 3:15), in the need to define more clearly the identity of the Church Irenaeus modifies Paul’s words so that it is the Scripture which is the “ground and pillar” of the faith, or, he states later, it is the Gospel, found in four forms, and the Spirit of life that is “the pillar and foundation of the Church” (AH 3.11.8). It is by their preaching the Gospel that Peter and Paul lay the foundations for the Church, and so the Church, constituted by the Gospel, must preserve this deposit intact.2 (p. 39)
As the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Article IV) asserted against the papacy, the authority of this church is the consensus of “all the prophets,” who bear witness that “whoever believes in [Jesus] will receive remission of sins” (Acts 10:43).
If his high view of Scripture made Irenaeus too Protestant for modern Catholics, his high view of the sacraments made him too Catholic for modern Protestants. He knew nothing of the Zwinglian divorce between Word and Sacrament that would be officially granted by the Council of Trent. According to Irenaeus, the rule of faith needed to understand Scripture is in believers, having been received through baptism (Against the Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 9). Since he was a disciple of Polycarp, in turn a disciple of John the Elder, that conviction was probably derived from if not identical to the doctrine represented in the writings of the latter. His Gospel says only those in whom Jesus’ cleansing Word remains will know the truth (John 8:31-32; 15:3). Likewise, he assured his “little children” that if the message/anointing they had received in the beginning remained in them, it would testify against the proto-Gnostic teachings (1 John 2:24-27). The concept of receiving the rule of faith in baptism may precede even John’s writings: an earlier “exhortation to put away evil and to receive the implanted Word is freighted with baptismal imagery” 3 (p. 65) (James 1:21). Not having been born of water through the resurrection to a living hope (John 3:5; 1 Peter 1:3; 3:21), the Gnostic opponents of Irenaeus took Scripture passages out of context to interpret them contrary to the gospel (Book 1, Chapter 8). By contrast, the orthodox of the early church recognized the canonicity of the genuine New Testament books on the basis of the baptismal creeds that had originated with Christ before the doctrine of the apostles was committed to writing.4 This use of the creeds confessed in baptism both to acknowledge the authority of Scripture and to interpret it was appropriate since baptism fully reveals the Triune God.4
Reference List
1. Irenaeus, Against the Heresies: Book 1 (The Newman Press, New Jersey, 1992).
2. J. Behr, The Way To Nicaea (SVS Press, Crestwood, 2001).
3. D. P. Scaer, James the Apostle of Faith: A Primary Christological Epistle for the Persecuted Church (Wipf & Stock Publishers, Eugene, 1994).
4. D. P. Scaer, “Baptism as church foundation,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 67, 109-129 (2003). Download the PDF file.
Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version.
