New Lutheran Quote of the Day

To common sense it may well seem that one must choose between the whole church and the whole truth. The more people are to be included, the more the truth will have to be diluted to what they hold in common. On the other hand, the more truth is salvaged, the more people will have to be defined out of the church. But this inverse proportion is deceiving. AC VII defies the illusion by keeping the whole church firmly anchored in the whole truth. That is, of course, biblical. Since there is one God, one truth, and one faith, and since faith is in every case the work and gift of the Holy Spirit, it follows that the Holy Spirit works the same faith in all believers. To the extent we are Christians at all, we are true Christians. Whatever is in us above, beyond, or against the one faith does not come from the Spirit, and is therefore not faith but a mere conceit of the flesh.—Prof. Kurt Marquart, The Church, p. 68.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

Thus Christ also calls Himself the vine, and His believers the branches. Faith unites a person with Christ, binding them together as a branch to the vine. So it is not faith that does great things, but Christ, who is grasped through faith.—C. F. W. Walther, God Grant It!, p. 870.

Patristic Quote of the Day

Pardon's frequency shows us that in our case there is never a time for anger, since God pardons us for all sins in their entirety by His gft rather than by our merit. Nor should we be excused from the requirement of giving pardon that number of times, since through the grace of the Gospel God has granted us pardon without measure.—St. Hilary of Poitiers, On Matthew, 18.10.

How to make a beagle happy?

Do her regular half-hour walk twice! After a tasty dinner of eggplant parmesan and fried apples, Cindi and I put her harness and leash on and headed out. It was the perfect evening for it. The sun was just beginning to set, the sky was stunning. Cirrus clouds looked like feathers that had been dipped in orange and red. And Lucy wasn't really walking tonight. She was prancing. For a bonus on the final round? She got to see a rabbit. Which means, of course, that she had to be DRAGGED home the rest of the way. No prancing then. Now she's completely worn out and snuggling in her bed beside the fireplace. And we enjoyed an hour's walk and conversation as we watched the hound having a jolly good time.

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

The lines of church fellowship, it will be remembered, run not directly between individuals, but by way of the uniting center, that is, the church's pure marks. Individuals are in fellowship with one another by way of their pulpits and altars.—Prof. Kurt Marquart, The Church, p. 66

[Weedon caveat: did he leave out the font on purpose? It complicates and muddies matters, but the font must also be considered.]

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

He [our Lord] is the eternal Wisdom whom nothing outwits and the eternal Might whom nothing can overwhelm.—C. F. W. Walther, God Grant It!, p. 827.

Patristic Quote of the Day

You appear to yourself to be rich. Yet if you have not God, what do you have? And a poor man, if he has God, what does he not have?—St. Augustine, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament, 28.5

On Romans 3

We also hosted a local pericopal study at the IC today and Dr. Fritz Baue held forth on the epistle for the Reformation festival: Romans 3:19-28. It struck me in a way that it had not previously that the "surprise" in these verses is that GOD sets forth the propitiation/hilasterion. In Paganism one thinks of it working the other direction: you propitiate the offended Deity. But St. Paul actually inverts that. God puts forth the Propitiation, namely, His Son, so that by faith in His blood we be justified. The directionality is Him reaching us salvation in our Lord Jesus, not vice-versa.

In today's Office of National Mission Devotion

we were working through Augsburg Confession XXIII: the marriage of priests. It struck me how utterly powerful the Scriptures were to these men and how what the papal party was proposing simply could not overcome the clarity of God's own express words.  Think of it:

from 1 Corinthians 9:  "Have we not power to lead about a sister a wife as other Apostles, and as the brethren of The Lord, and Cephas?"

from 1 Corinthians 7:  "Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband... But if they cannot contain, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn."

from 1 Timothy 3: "A bishop, then, must be blameless, the husband of one wife..."

from 1 Timothy 4:  "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils...forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving."

from Hebrews 13:  "Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled."

Just as exactly with their challenge in Article XXII to the withholding of the chalice, so here: Scripture is simply abundantly, expressly, incontrovertibly clear. And if someone in the name of the Church dares to controvene what Scripture expressly teaches, so much the worse for that fellow. We abide by the Sacred Scriptures.

Well, mate...

...here are two sites from Down Under that are sure to bless your socks off. Enjoy!

The work of our beloved Dr. Kleinig.

Liturgical goodies from the Lutheran Church of Australia.

Yeah, he's adorable...

Chapel Homily for St. Luke's Day by Dr. Stephenson

St Luke 2012
Lk 10:1-9


Lots of people regard the quarter of the New Testament that comes from Luke’s pen as much more the work of a novelist than of a historian. Oh, yes, as fiction they’ll rate the Gospel and Acts up there with Tolstoy and Tolkien, but any suggestion, however diffident, that Luke is recording hard fact will produce temper tantrums, to say the least.


On these premises and in this company, confession that Luke was a diligent researcher who told it how it is and even personally witnessed some segments of his narrative will produce cheers, not jeers; so, unless I repeat this claim on public television or a university campus, it’s a rather cheap statement to make.


But is the issue of Luke’s accuracy as a reporter such a big deal anyway? Didn’t a famous industrialist once dismiss history as “bunk”? …Okay, mindboggling stuff might have happened long centuries ago, but isn’t it, by definition, passé, boring, one big yawn?


Well, the philosopher Lessing was less than honest when he said that, even if Jesus did rise from His grave on the third day, this fact would have no relevance for our view of the world. You don’t need much of an IQ to see through the holes of what isn’t even an argument. Lessing here belongs in the same ballpark as a politician who crosses his heart and assures us that he accepts, de fide (as a matter of faith, no less!), that human life in the image of God begins at conception, but nevertheless adamantly refuses to persuade anyone of this fact and aggressively insists that he will do all he can to keep the abortion industry going at full blast.


In fact, Luke put his personal integrity and even his life on the line when he released his two books under the heading of history plain and simple. Just as fury, violence, and even death met Christ and His apostles when they claimed to speak truth, so the tradition makes sense that Luke sealed his witness with his blood, dying as a martyr at the ripe old age of 84.


What Luke writes about the past surges up with tremendous force to impact the present. Is it an accident that many pious Christians know by heart the songs of Zechariah, Mary, and Simeon from the infancy narratives, so that we should blush if we can’t sing these canticles without a hymnal? Do not the Benedictus, the Magnificat, and the Nunc Dimittis rejoice in an abiding gift that will endure forever?

Why has the Church, since time immemorial, read a little snippet from the mission of the Seventy as the Gospel for this day? Weren’t the labours of the Seventy a mere flash in the pan, the doings of a few weeks at most? After all, those sent out in the mission that began at Pentecost are allowed to carry luggage and extra clothing?


Well, even though the mission we just heard of lasted only a short time, the Seventy themselves most likely continued in active ministry throughout the first generation of the Church. According to Eusebius, Matthias, who replaced Judas, began his public service of our Lord in this group. And as the very number Seventy kindles memories of the nations dispersed from Babel and thus gets us attuned to the worldwide mission commissioned by the risen Christ, it somehow goes with the flow when Eusebius reports that the apostle Thomas dispatched another member of the Seventy to the kingdom of Edessa.


And today’s focus on the Seventy beautifully fits into Luke’s overall picture of the Exalted Lord’s only having begun, during the brief years of His earthly lifetime, to do and to teach (Ac 1:1)! Jesus still sends out authorised labourers into His harvest, He still gives evidence through the spoken and sacramental Gospel that the Kingdom of God has arrived in such a way that it can’t be turned back. In our small way, ACNA and the Missouri Synod are instruments in this ongoing speaking and acting of Christ Jesus; our communities are part of the church history past of which Luke wrote the first chapters and also active players in church history in the making.


As we give thanks for Luke this day, we would do well to plunge ourselves with vigour into the true tale he tells, acknowledging that his two volumes of history make all the difference in the world for our present; rejoicing that, as we permit the Lord to keep the narrative going through our feeble efforts, we enjoy blessed communion with Luke and all the characters he depicts; and realising that, as we look forward to someday enjoying his company and sharing in his reward, we may also share his fate here below.

On Sanitive

Just a thought: there is a breed of modern Lutheran that is rather allergic to the sanitive lingo for salvation despite its use in the Symbols and throughout Church history and much of the history of Lutheran preaching. They oppose to it the death/resurrection language instead.

It occurred to me that the key is to proper use of the sanitive image is to recognize the severity of the illness: it is unto death. I think of the marvelous way that the Preface from the old Swedish Mass put it:

...for all Your benefits and especially for that one Thou didst unto us when we were in so bad a case that nought but death and eternal damnation awaited us and no creature in heaven or on earth could help us, then Thou didst send forth Thine only-begotten Son, who is of the same divine nature as Thyself, didst suffer Him to become man, born of the Virgin Mary, and didst lay on Him our sin, giving Him into death that we might not all die eternally.

So bad a case indeed. There is NO cure, NO human remedy, NO angelic solution. NO hope, NO treatment, NO future.

Apart from Christ. Apart from the Great Physician. For this Physician defeats the sin in us that is unto death and the death in us that is the growth of sin. His "healing" of us is more than a little help so feel better!  His healing of us is literally bringing us out of the shadow of death and into a life that never ends - the life that IS communion with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

It is not enough, therefore, to understand heterodoxy only or mainly psychologically, in terms of human ignorance, ambition, illusion, or even malice. These are trifles compared to the super-human malignities that lurk behind and exploit them in constant counter-thrusts against the saving work of God. Not flesh and blood are the real enemy, but "principalities and power," against which no human ingenuity avails but only the armory of God.—Prof. Kurt Marquart, The Church, p. 67.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

In His Word He offers men Christ's benefactions, in Christ's benefactions the forgiveness of sins and His divine grace, and in His divine grace eternal life and salvation. It follows, then, that the Lord God earnestly seeks their saved, as He reveals in His Word, Isaiah 65:2: "I hold out My hands all the day long to a disobedient people," that is, He woos them ardently to Him and yearns to gather them beneath His wings.—Blessed Johann Gerhard, Postilla II: 211.

Patristic Quote of the Day

The call that is through Christ is to be extended openly throughout the whole world. The net of Gospel preaching seeks to gather together people out of every nation.... Likewise the power of preaching and the marvelous and intricate teaching of the sacred doctrine, which the apostles, as good fishermen, wove together, draw people from every nation and gather them together to God.—St. Cyril of Alexandria, Fragment 171.

Proverbs 17:15

The Lutherans Symbols state that when we come across the word "justify" in Scripture it can mean one of two things: declaring righteous or making righteous.  The Apology famously concludes:  "Scripture speaks both ways."  There are those who have denied that the meaning "declaring righteous" is present. But then, look at Proverbs 17:15

"He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord."

Here "justify" CANNOT mean "make righteous." For he who would make the wicked become righteous would be anything but an abomination to the Lord!  Here it must mean "declares righteous." The human who dares to assert of an evil person: that evil person is righteous is as abominable as the man who says of one who is righteous: "that man is condemned."

But then, how can the Lord Himself do what He condemns? How do you square Romans 4:5 with Proverbs 17:15? I'd suggest that the difference is in the doer of the verbs. God (and so God in the flesh) CAN do what a mere human being CANNOT do. And His "saying" makes what He says so.

Apocrypha Quote

O death, how bitter is the reminder of you to one who lives at peace among his possessions, to a man without distractions who is prosperous in everything and who still has the vigor to enjoy his food.
O death, how welcome is your sentence to one who is in need and is failing in strength, very old and distracted over everything, to one who is contrary and has lost his patience.—Ecclesiasticus 41:1,2

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

By his partaking of the Sacrament in a church a Christian declares that the confession of that church is his confession. Since a man cannot at the same time hold two differing confessions, he cannot communicate in two churches of differing confessions. If anyone does this nevertheless, he denies his own confession or has none at all.—Werner Elert, Eucharist and Church Fellowship, p. 182.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

If we wish to understand the wedding garment as that righteousness which stands before God and makes us acceptable, it is singly and alone the righteousness of Christ that is imputed to us through faith. But if we wish to understand the wedding garment as the entire adornment of the true Christ, then it is faith and its fruits, such as love, humility, gentleness, patience, and the life—for all these are well pleasing to God in those who believe in Him; and it is their beautiful finery. May God grant us all this through His Holy Spirit. Amen.—Blessed Johann Gerhard, Postilla II:214.