13 October 2007

Ack! I Was Warned!

Pastor McCain told me that the reading guide in the first edition of the Concordia had some problems, but I've been cruising along and not noticing any. Until I looked toward the end of the year and counted the weeks and realized that I had more weeks in Concordia than the calendar has to finish out the year. THEN I saw the problem. There are TWO week 14s and TWO week 21s listed. So, if you've been faithfully reading your BOC according to its schedule and you have the first edition, and you plan to finish up by the year's end, realize that you will need need to DOUBLE UP several times.

Right now I'm in the Formula, SD on original sin - some really, really good stuff. This week we passed the infamous garlic juice! What I continue to find utterly neglected in typical Lutheran lingo is the language of our symbols regarding original sin as an infection and a disease, a "spiritual leprosy," and how the human nature itself is what God sets to work HEALING through Holy Baptism, a healing only begun in this life and not perfected until the life to come. If there are folks who think the sanitive lingo is sub-Lutheran, they are being sub-Confessional! It's part of the pattern of sound words our Symbols give us (from AC II to the FC I!).

6 comments:

Rev. Paul Beisel said...

Good point Fr. Weedon. I find that whenever I read Luther or the Confessions, the language has a way of norming my speech and finds its way into sermons and Bible studies. That has happened with the Formula as well on that point. In fact, this week's homily has some of this kind of lingo in it. Thanks for pointing that out.

Christopher Esget said...

I found it striking, when I began to read the confessions in German, to see the word "seuche" used to describe our sin-condition. Contagion, disease, epidemic, plague - this is what afflicts us. Your post brings out the ramifications of this--both negative and positive--quite nicely.

Rev. Paul T. McCain said...

Deepest apologies, the editor who was charged with that reading guide feels particularly bad about it.

All the more reason to obtain the wonderful second edition, which, in addition to correct boo-boos like this, includes a lot of new and better features.

Sorry Pr. Weedon!

You might want to use that 2nd edition I happen to know you have!

Rev. Paul T. McCain said...

Dr. Robert Preus was such a treasure as a professor. I fondly recall the classes I had with him at the seminary, truly some of the best.

He loved to point out how the Confessions themselves commend us to conform to the "pattern of sound words" and then he would love to quote the Greek word: "hypotuposis" [apologies for the crummy Green transliteration].

Our Confessions wisely note, commend and encourage sticking with the very words used to confess the truths contained in them, and not to depart from them, for often error and confusion is masked and slipped in under the cover of using the same words and giving them new meanings, or ... latching on to ways of expressing doctrines that are not in our Confessions.

I know we all like to do this from time to time to try to make things "fresh" and to cause people to pay more attention and taken notice, but I'm always uncomfortable when this happens.

Rev. Paul T. McCain said...

One more thing....Robert Preus always loved to show us how the Confessions do embrace a wide range of expressing essential truths, such as justification.

He would fill the chalk board with Greek and Hebrew, Latin and German, showing all the expressions the Scriptures use to teach justification, and also sin, etc.

His point was always that we can use a variety of ways of describing the same doctrinal truth, but not play one use off the other, or use one to say, "See? It doesn't really mean that, it means this."

Anonymous said...

P.S. you're LOSING at your game!
Give it up...you ALWAYS loose!
Why?
You're male.