ELCA Presiding Bishop Eaton and “the cross” What kind of Lutheran is Elizabeth Eaton, the new ELCA Presiding Bishop? Outgoing Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson says of her: “She is a wise theologian committed to a strong Lutheran evangelical witness….”[1] To be sure, she’s known to point to the cross: “On our own we are helpless […]
Cranach Altar Painting
Christ the Center The Predella of the Cranach Altar Triptych This painting is the bottom panel of the Cranach altar in Wittenberg’s Town Church. It is the best known among the altar’s paintings and shows Luther in the pulpit preaching the “Word of the Cross.” One hand is on the open Bible; the other points […]
Forde got out of Biblicism; you can, too – 18
“The distinctive character of current Lutheranism, however, is largely the result of its continuing search for its own roots in the Reformation and Luther’s thought itself. Beginning in about the 1840s, when J.C.K. von Hofmann appealed to Luther in the argument over atonement, Luther was for the first time set against Lutheran orthodoxy on a […]
Forde Fest 4!
April 29, 2013 The Canon of Scripture: A Guide for the Perplexed “The insistence that scripture interprets itself is simply the hermeneutical correlate of justification by faith alone.”[1] 10:00 – 2:00 p.m. Holy Nativity Lutheran Church, 3900 Winnetka Ave No., New Hope, MN Sign up by contacting one of the three people below: Stew Carlson […]
Steven Gjerde (a.k.a. Rodney King): Can’t we all just get along?
Problem #1: Where’s the beef? Pastor Steven Gjerde, in “Tempering Troublesome Spirits,”[1] faults fellow Lutherans for dealing with “style” rather than doctrine, but he himself has the same problem. He does not want to suggest that “every division is wrong and hateful” (60), but he laments that the NALC and LCMC divide “so sharply over […]