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October 29, 2008

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History

October 29, 2008

[Adapted from "After Ten Years" from LOGIA, Epiphany 2003, Volume XII, Number 1]

The first issue was published at Reformation 1992. (Wishing to observe the church year, the editors decided to number Epiphany 1992 Vol. 2, No. 1.) Not everyone, including the editors, was convinced that the enterprise would last. At least one predicted less than a five-year life. Those of us at the heart of it didn’t even think about how long LOGIA would be on the scene. We were more interested in significant theological reflection.

For the longevity we've enjoyed, we thank our readers and contributors. The debate forums we envisioned for our journal pages have not always been as lively as we imagined they would be. But we have always been gratified to know that LOGIA provided discussion material for pastoral conferences, seminary classrooms, and personal study and discussion.The regular vote of confidence expressed through the renewal of subscriptions has been encouragement enough. Nearly always, our readers and contributing editors have offered us much more material than we could use, often forcing us to make some hard choices in what to include.

We thank our readers for tolerating our sometimes irregular appearance. The entire editorial staff is a volunteer staff, and all have regular duties in the parish and the classroom. Especially parish duties often have had to take precedence over beating a deadline, and those who labor in the classroom often have to give precedence to those duties. The support staff are paid pitifully little, and it is a labor of love that keeps them at their tasks.

For this issue (After Ten Years), we asked several of our contributing editors to write on issues they consider important. And you can see how they have responded: Baptism and the Supper; church unity, fellowship, and doctrine; the church’s confession and the identity crisis in the twenty-first century, Was Heisst Lutherisch?, What does it mean to be Lutheran?; and the church in the world, the problem of the state church, and more importantly, the Christian in the state, the doctrine of the two kingdoms. Other issues could have been addressed as well, but we think our contributing editors have aimed at issues that will continue to be our focus.

Early on LOGIA identified itself as “a free conference in print.” The contributing editors represent an approximation of a pan-Lutheran perspective, albeit from the side of conservative confessionalism. The working editors represent the Synodical Conference tradition, particularly Missouri, Wisconsin, and the Norwegian Synod, with a nod to the brethren to the north. The readership is worldwide, with every continent on the mailing list. The readership is largely Lutheran, but with a significant part outside of the Lutheran world as well.

Whether or not we have succeeded in our ideal of being a free conference in print, we will leave it to others to judge. But we have tried to give a voice to those who take the Lutheran Confessions seriously; who are committed to an inspired, inerrant Scripture and to a ministry that is truly apostolic; who believe that the Divine Service belongs to God himself, not to the whims of a trendy generation; and who are convinced that the proclamation of the gospel in this age does not require a revision of our confession.

LOGIA is a free conference in that the editors and writers speak for themselves and not for their churches. They presuppose a fellowship in the gospel that unites them before the throne of grace, but they do not presuppose a fellowship that can be expressed now in a visible way. They continue to pray for a time soon when confessional Lutherans around the world will come together with a unified confessional voice and practice.

LOGIA has provided a forum for professional theologians and parish pastors. While the larger part of this issue is written by teachers of theology, at least half the writing in LOGIA has come from parish pastors, and in a few cases, students preparing for the parish ministry. We have been happy also to hear the voices of some lay men and women.

Issues addressed in these ten years have reflected the concerns of the 1990s; the office of the ministry and the nature of worship have been at the forefront, but certainly were not the sole focus. In the present decade, the nature of church fellowship and ecumenical relations, the secularizing slide of world Lutheranism, and syncretism will be important. But it is doubtful that the issues of church and ministry will fade very quickly. The question of the ordination of women is certainly not likely to be discussed (or be discussable) in most of world Lutheranism, but it will undoubtedly be debated in the orb of the Synodical Conference churches and its world associates.

As a journal, LOGIA has not aimed to react immediately to the church news of the day. But we have tried to give deliberate attention to the theological issues behind the church news and the hotly debated issues. We intend to continue to formulate our agenda in that way and to invite our contributors and our readers to offer their study and reflection on current theological issues.

Finally, we wish to renew the pledge we made in LOGIA I:1, Reformation, 1992:

In sum, we wish to return to the one source—the Holy Scripture, and our Lutheran understanding of it expressed in the Book of Concord. That, and that alone, will inform and mold our thought in this journal. We do that in unity with the fathers of the church, of both ancient and reformation times as well as from more recent times. We appreciate their struggles and we look to them for guidance in our own struggles. We may not be able to return to the past. Who would want to? But if there is an ecumenical unity possible, surely we have it with our confessing fathers. We want to sit at their feet and hear their teaching and sing with them the praises of him who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Donate

October 29, 2008

Support for Luther Academy is support for LOGIA Thanks to the aid of many generous individuals and organizations, Luther Academy has been able to carry out its work. In addition to the production of LA's publications and the conducting of its conferences, financial gifts from ordinary Lutherans have allowed Luther Academy to blossom into an organization with international influence.

With your help, Luther Academy can continue to bring the pure proclamation of the Gospel to many in the United States and numerous other countries around the world. Assist us today in our mission to preserve and proclaim our Confessional Lutheran theology.

Donations can be made at Luther Academy's website or can be sent "with gratitude for LOGIA" to

LOGIA / Luther Academy PO BOX 2396 Brookfield, WI 53005-2396

Upcoming Themes

October 28, 2008

LOGIA is published quarterly (Epiphany, Eastertide, Holy Trinity, and Reformation) Missio Dei Holy Trinity 2014 (XXIII:3)

Wittenberg, Wall Street & Welfare Reformation 2014 (XXIII:4)

Luther As Exegete Epiphany 2015 (XXIV:1)

Martyrdom & Suffering Eastertide 2015 (XXIV:2)

Interested in contributing to one of these issues? See our Call for Manuscripts

Mission Statement

October 28, 2008

LOGIA is a quarterly journal of Lutheran theology published by The Luther Academy featuring articles from diverse contributors worldwide on exegetical, historical, systematic, and liturgical theology that promote the orthodoxy of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. We cling to God's divinely instituted marks of the church: the gospel, preached purely in all its articles, and the sacraments, administered according to Christ's institution. In Greek, LOGIA functions either as an adjective meaning "eloquent," "learned," or "cultured," or as a plural noun meaning "divine revelations," "words," or "messages." The word is found in 1 Peter 4:11, Acts 7:38 and Romans 3:2. Its compound forms include homologia (confession), apologia (defense), and analogia (right relationship). Each of these concepts and all of them together express the purpose and method of this journal.

LOGIA is committed to providing an independent theological forum normed by the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. At the heart of our journal we want our readers to find a love for the sacred Scriptures as the very Word of God, not merely as rule and norm, but especially as Spirit, truth, and life which reveals Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life—Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, we confess the church, without apology and without rancor, only with a sincere and fervent love for the precious Bride of Christ, the holy Christian church, "the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God," as Martin Luther says in the Large Catechism (LC II, 42). We are animated by the conviction that the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession represents the true expression of the church which we confess as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.

We are also distributors of confessional Lutheran resources, such as the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, the Pieper Lectures, and other media from theolgoical conferences.

LOGIA is indexed in the ATLA Religion Database, published by the American Theological Library Association, 250 S. Wacker Drive, Suite 1600, Chicago, IL 60606

We invite you to subscribe today.

Call for Manuscripts

October 27, 2008

The editors hereby request article manuscripts, book reviews, and forum material for the following issues:

Issue	Theme	Deadline
Epiphany 2015	Luther as Exegete	June 1, 2014
Eastertide 2015	Martyrdom & Suffering	September 1, 2014
Holy Trinity 2015	Preaching in the 21st Century	December 1, 2014
Reformation 2015	Called and (or?) Ordained	March 1, 2015

Submission Guidelines

LOGIA is happy to receive unsolicited manuscripts. Before submitting an article, please read several issues of LOGIA and/or read the articles that are available online at logia.org to see the subjects we treat and the way we treat them. You may also ask the senior editor about an article that you want to submit, if you are not sure whether it will work for LOGIA. Please understand that a positive response does not guarantee that your article will be published. All manuscripts are subject to peer review and editorial modification.

Please prepare your article in accordance with LOGIA's Manuscript Preparation/Style Guide (pdf).

All submissions must be accompanied by a 300-word or less abstract of the article.

Manuscripts should be typed in Microsoft Word, double-spaced. Please use only one space after periods and other punctuation. Please use footnotes rather than endnotes. Please use parentheses for references to Bible passages and quotations from the Lutheran Confessions and Luther's Works. Keep notes short. Provide only pertinent documentation. Long discursive footnotes are discouraged and are subject to editorial revision or removal.

Article length should be as follows:

Feature articles (including notes) should be between 18,000 and 28,000 characters (3,000 to 5,000 words). LOGIA does not accept simultaneous submissions or previously published materials, including material published on the author's own web site. Book review essays should be between 7,000 and 12,000 characters (1500 to 2500 words). Book reviews should be no more than 5,000 characters (1000 words). Shorter articles for LOGIA Forum should be no more than 10,000 characters (2000 words).

Please include your contact information: email address, postal address and phone number.

Send your manuscript to our senior editor.

Send all other submissions to the appropriate editor.

It is not necessary to submit a hard copy.

If your article is printed in LOGIA, you will receive two complimentary copies of that issue. Additional copies may be purchased.

Wittenberg & Athens

September 30, 2008

Journal Cover Reformation 2008, Volume XVII, Number 4 Table of Contents

(Introduction by Carl P. E. Springer)

This issue of LOGIA is dedicated to answering Tertullian’s famous rhetorical question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” from a contemporary Lutheran perspective. While Tertullian would probably have answered his own question along the lines of “obviously, nothing at all,” there have been many other Christians, from patristic writers like Clement of Alexandria, Basil of Caesarea, and Augustine, to nineteenth-century churchmen like Thomas Arnold and John Henry Newman, who have found substantial areas of commonality between the two cities and what they represent. Not all...Lutherans, including Luther himself, have endorsed Tertullian’s radical rejection of the Classics. Indeed, Lutheran higher education has, until relatively recently, participated enthusiastically in what has been called “The Great Tradition,” namely, the idea of an “education rooted in the classical and Christian heritage.”1 Luther himself praised “the languages and the arts” highly and regarded their study as a great “ornament, profit, glory, and benefit, both for the understanding of Holy Scriptures and the conduct of temporal government.”2 The relationship, however uneasy, between Athens and Wittenberg has been long-lasting and pervasive. It was by no means restricted to the time of the Reformation or limited by the borders of Germany or even of Europe. In America, too, young men preparing for the Lutheran ministry were expected not only to study biblical Greek and Hebrew, but to read the Greek and Latin pagan poets, philosophers, and historians as part of their training in the liberal arts. This practice persisted in at least one Lutheran preministerial college until 1995, when Northwestern College in Watertown, Wisconsin, ceased to exist. Every student who went through the four years of the Untergymnasium (Preparatory School) and the Obergymnasium (College) was required to learn classical Latin (four years in high school; one in college), German (two years in high school; more in college); classical Greek (two or three years); and Hebrew (two years in college). It is true that Northwestern College was somewhat exceptional in this regard. As one of its best known professors, John Philipp Koehler, notes in his history of the Wisconsin Synod:

The Missouri schools were different from what Northwestern now set out to be. Although organized at once after the pattern of the German gymnasium (excepting that they had only one Prima, hence only a six-year instead of a seven-year or today’s eight-year course at Northwestern), they lacked a something in the study of languages that narrowed down the whole educational outlook. Walther liked to say humorously of the college study of the ancient languages that it was “the Court of the Gentiles.” Many of his students misunderstood this to mean that the only purpose of such study was to prepare the student for the reading of the Bible in the original tongues and of the Latin church fathers. Just like the misunderstanding of Luther’s saying (An die Ratsherren): As we love the Gospel, so let us cling to the study of the ancient languages. . . . These languages are the scabbard which sheathes the sharp blade of the Spirit; in them this precious jewel is encased. American and English teachers of New Testament Greek like to cite Erasmus in the same connection because he was the chief exponent of Humanism in the Reformation period, and we Lutherans, from the same point of view, might refer to Melanchthon. But the proper thing is to fall back on Luther, provided you understand him, because of his genius for language.3

In this connection, as Koehler notes, many will no doubt think first of the contributions of Philipp Melanchthon, a gifted philologist, who played a critical role in helping to shape the curriculum of Lutheran schools and universities along humanistic lines, but it would be a mistake to overlook Luther’s own enthusiastic support of the Classics. While Luther certainly was no friend of ancient philosophers like Aristotle or Epicurus, he valued the ancient languages highly, praised the works of pagan poets and rhetoricians like Virgil and Cicero in hyperbolic terms, and recommended the continued study of logic in Lutheran schools. It is altogether possible that without Luther’s advocacy of the classical curriculum, the anti-intellectual ideology of contemporaries like Carlstadt and the Anabaptists would have held sway and Tertullian’s vision of a clean divide between the church and the academy would have won through to a belated realization. Koehler observes that it was Luther, not Melanchthon, that

penetrated into the life of the language concerned and mastered its psychology. He was not concerned only with vocables and grammatical forms but with the peculiar logic and mental processes of a people as expressed in its language. . . . He was not a pedantic scholar, but the artist and poet whose lines and colors and metaphors are true to life, and to him language was life.4

None of this is to gainsay Luther’s famous repudiation of Aristotle and his insistence on the primacy of faith rather than meretricious reason in matters theological. Luther most emphatically rejected the notion, propounded by Plato and reinforced by centuries of ascetic thought and practice in the medieval church, that, given a proper education, human beings could free themselves from the powerful grip of sin. Aristotle’s advocacy of human self-improvement through the power of moderate living runs completely counter to the Lutheran principle of sola gratia and the theology of the cross. This said, it would be a mistake to go so far in the other direction that we end up seeing Luther as some sort of proto-existentialist, teetering on the brink of irrationality or even insanity, whose truest interpreters are Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Of these last two, Jaroslav Pelikan once observed that “their insanity helped them to insights of which the normal and balanced mind is rarely capable.” In his famous assemblage of “fools for Christ,” Pelikan also includes Paul, Luther, and Bach, but admits that these last three

may not have been insane in the clinical sense of the word. But by sacrifi cing themselves to the service of God and subordinating their values to the lordship of Christ, they evidenced the madness of the Holy, an insanity that saw what sanity refused to admit.5

Luther certainly can be described as “a fool for Christ,” but, as the following articles amply demonstrate, it would not be fair to suggest that Luther was an irrationalist or that he did not highly value rationality. Everything he wrote, even his most emphatic attacks on Aristotle and Erasmus, reveals the pervasive influence of his own traditional Greco-Roman education in the liberal arts, grammar, rhetoric, music, and, yes, logic. It is true that he lived a spectacularly brave life (some would call it foolish, no doubt) in defi ance of a world “filled with devils” and the imminent threat of death and yet he thought and wrote with the utmost clarity and sanity and sense of balance about how his followers should live safely and wisely and well in a world that might very well end with the Lord’s return tomorrow. It is hoped that this issue of LOGIA may help readers to understand why Luther valued “Athens” as he did, to consider how influential his own endorsement of the Classics was for “Wittenberg,” and to think more clearly about how best to reappropriate this neglected part of the Lutheran legacy today.

Carl P. E. Springer Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Guest Editor for Reformation 2008

1. The second of Tertullian’s questions in De praescriptione haereticorum 7:9 makes it clear that he has higher education in mind: Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? Quid academiae et ecclesiae? Quid haereticis et christianis?

2. From Luther’s 1524 address To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany, as cited in Richard M. Gamble’s anthology, The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2007), 374–75. Gamble addresses himself to a growing community of educators, many of them involved in the homeschooling movement, that “values liberal education for its own sake; desires to educate for wisdom and virtue, not power and vanity; finds tiresome the present age’s preoccupation with utility, speed, novelty, convenience, efficiency, and specialization; and refuses to justify education as a means to wealth, power, fame, or self-assertion” (xviii).

3. John Philipp Koehler, The History of the Wisconsin Synod, ed. Leigh Jordahl, 2nd ed. ([Mosinee, WI]: Protestant Conference, 1981), 138.

4. Ibid., 138–39. Th ere is no question that Luther understood the importance of the study of the Classics for the intellectual formation of those preparing to be servants of the word. In the preface to his study of Isaiah, he wrote: “Two things are necessary to explain the prophet. The first is a knowledge of grammar, and this may be regarded as having the greatest weight. The second is more necessary, namely, a knowledge of the historical background, not only as an understanding of the events themselves as expressed in letters and syllables but as at the same time embracing rhetoric and dialectic, so that the figures of speech and the circumstances may be carefully heeded.”

5. Jaroslav Pelikan, Fools for Christ: Essays on the True, the Good, and the Beautiful (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1955), ix. 1. The second of Tertullian’s questions in De praescriptione haereticorum 7:9 makes it clear that he has higher education in mind: Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis? Quid academiae et ecclesiae? Quid haereticis et christianis?

Löhe Bicentennial

July 06, 2008

Journal Cover Holy Trinity 2008, Volume XVII, Number 3Table of Contents

(Introduction by Dennis Marzolf)

The nineteenth century was a time of dramatic renewal in the Christian church. The sixties and seventies of the previous century had been decades of experimentation. The ideals of an optimistic rationalism gave birth to the revolutionary dreams of the eighties and nineties. In both cases orthodox Christianity seemed to be outmoded in light of a new faith in the rights and possibilities of man. Christian energy, for so many centuries the shaping force in European culture, was eclipsed during the “great upheaval.”

The church, eager to survive within the new culture, conformed her thought and practice to the world. Pragmatism and unionism replaced dogmatism. Truth was experienced rather than known.

This kind of truth is short-lived, however. It is bound to the span of a single life, a single generation. This led to the perennial bloom of the dogmatic church showing itself in various corners of Christendom in the first half of the nineteenth century.Trinitarian orthodoxy blossomed again at Oxford and Solesmes. The invasive weeds of politically expedient unionism and evangelical pragmatism threatened orthodox Lutheranism, but the hearty root would not yield its life and character.

For Wilhelm Löhe true Lutheranism drew its strength from the means of grace. All of mission and preaching and pastoral care had as its goal the encounter with the real presence of Christ in the sacrament of the altar. Löhe knew no greater comfort in this life, and the Supper nourished him in his work as a shepherd. The sweet fellowship of the altar inspired him to explore the rich liturgical heritage of Lutheranism, but his was no empty ritualism. His responsible sacramental practice included sound preaching, thorough catechesis, and a conscientious cultivation of individual absolution, which he viewed as the cornerstone of church fellowship.

Löhe’s work was not just the product of an idealistic Romantic yearning for the warmth of the ancient liturgies and rites of the church. He was a Lutheran who was not ashamed to confess that the brightest light of evangelical catholicism could only be found in a Lutheran Church which knew and confessed its birthright according to the doctrine and practice set forth in the Book of Concord. His personal and public confession of the faith, articulated in “Why I Declare Myself for the Lutheran Church,” was a dynamic Lutheran confessionalism that viewed the Concordia as the basis for a lively, ongoing development of doctrine and practice. This view of the Confessions was a source of tension between Neuendettelsau and other centers of the nineteenth-century Lutheran revival, notably the Saxon immigrants in Missouri. His confessionalism, not strong enough for some, was too strong for many in his own regional church. A study of this is pertinent today as we continue to examine our own confessional relationships in congregations and synods.

Löhe rediscovered the vibrant life of dogmatic Lutheranism, and the fruits of that experience continue to color Lutheranism in the United States and throughout the world. It is hard to avoid overstatement of the case, especially when we consider his work with regard to liturgy, mission, pastoral theology, the diaconal ministry of mercy, and the establishment of institutions of care and education. His pastoral genius continues to be felt in Lutheran ministries of mercy as well as in American Lutheran seminaries and colleges. One can hope that an observance of the anniversary of his birth will encourage further scholarship, especially in English, for the benefit of the English Lutheran Church.

Dennis Marzolf Mankato, Minnesota Guest editor, Trinity, 2008

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August 09, 2004

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