Messages

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 20, 2023, 02:23:46 PM »

P.S. I’ve heard my friend, Dr. Richard Stuckwisch, now the President of the Indiana District, capture Hollaz’s insight there with the catch phrase: “sacrifice as noun, not verb.”

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 20, 2023, 02:20:18 PM »

From Schmid’s *Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church* (an amazing compendium of the chief dogmaticians):

David Hollaz, born in 1646, pastor at Jacobshagen, rector at Colberg, died in 1713. His *Examen Theologicum Acromaticum* (1707) recapitulates with great clearness and compactness the results attained by his predecessors, under the form of questions and answers. It is “especially happy in its definitions,” but in addition some of the faults of scholasticism in Quenstedt, it possesses already some of the characteristics of the succeeding period. (P. 671)

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 20, 2023, 01:17:18 PM »

No, not available on line. Here’s the omitted part: “as He did as the paterfamilias on the first Holy Thursday.” That’s all. By the way, I’d disagree with the statement that the Sacrament of the Altar is not in itself a sacrifice. The great dogmatician, David Hollaz, would too:

If we view the matter from the material standpoint, the sacrifice in the Eucharist is numerically the same as the sacrifice that took place on the cross; put otherwise, one can say that the things itself and the substance is the same in each case, the victim or oblation is the same.  If we view the matter formally, from the standpoint of the act of sacrifice, then even though the victim is numerically the same, the action is not; that is, the immolation in the Eucharist is different from the immolation carried out on the cross.  For on the cross an offering was made by means of the passion and death of an immolated living thing, without which there can be no sacrifice in the narrow sense, but in the Eucharist the oblation takes place through the prayers and through the commemoration of the death or sacrifice offered on the cross.  (Examen theologicum acroamaticum, II, 620)

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 20, 2023, 12:49:10 PM »

Father,

From Synod’s relatively new *Companion to the Services*: “Thus, Jesus is the nexus point between heaven and earth not only for the delivery of God’s gifts but also for returning human praise to God. Because He is truly present, because He is the temple into which we are incorporated as living stones, our praise is enacted with and through Him. There is both a Christological and trinitarian dimension to this. As true God, Jesus is the right object of praise but as true man, He is also its most perfect subject. As firstborn among many brethren, Jesus leads the chorus of praise to His Father by granting them His Word and Spirit. As He presides at His supper, He continues to lead the thanksgiving…. Though the Sacrament of the Altar is not in itself a sacrifice, it is the center focus of our sacrifice of praise.” Page 38.

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 20, 2023, 12:10:22 PM »

Richard,

I’m Missouri Synod; I’m FINE with idiosyncratic. “Divine Service” communicates both the high esteem in which we hold the Eucharist AND it communicates: “Oh, Missouri Synod, eh?”

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 20, 2023, 12:00:49 PM »

I just don’t understand what you think would be confusing about it, Charles. I mean, the only confusion is who is serving whom and since it actually is true both ways, it’s not confusing at all. I do like to stress that worship is a W not an M. It starts with God and His giving, bounces back to Him, and then back to us and then back to Him. He speaks His Word and commands us to bring bread and wine. We bring and offer them and He takes and transforms them to Body and Blood for the forgiveness of our sin, which we receive with awe and thanks and praise. He to us, us to Him, He to us, us to Him. The M sort of worship would start with our movement toward Him, and that is invariably the signature of idolatry.

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 20, 2023, 11:41:08 AM »

Not exclusively so, Father. To cite from the Intro to the old Lutheran Worship: “God speaks and we listen; His Word bestows what is said. Faith that is born of what is heard acknowledges the gifts received with eager thankfulness and praise. Music is drawn into this thankfulness and praise enlarging and elevating the adoration of our gracious giver God.” The accent is first and foremost on God’s service to us as Fletch notes: “I am among you as One who serves.” But this in turn ignites a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise on our part. Divine Service embraces God’s gifts and our grateful response together.

By the way, the Tractatus defines divine service in an unexpected way: “The exercises of faith as it wrestles with despair.”

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 20, 2023, 09:33:21 AM »

Actually, yes. The genitive may be translated in various ways, but Divine Service for God’s Service is certainly the intent of our usage of the term. I have never heard of that stylistic guidance from CPH, and I have always in my writings freely used Eucharist as well as Divine Service or Mass. I think it’s a shame, though, that we lost the “Haupt” that used to be attached to Gottesdienst (as in Synod’s first Agenda), for that clearly denoted the Eucharist as the chief divine service of the Church, but allowed the characterization of “divine service” to extend to other rites as well. In Holy Baptism, we experience God’s service of forgiveness and all that attends it, in other words.

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Your Turn / Re: Keeping Holy-day at Ascensiontide

« on: May 18, 2023, 06:41:18 PM »

Today I taught my last class at our parish school for this academic year. We usually start with a hymn. I had the children sing “A Hymn of Glory” and told them about the Venerable Bede, how as a young lad and he and his abbot had been the only two able to continue the divine office during a time of horrible plague that hit the monastery; how he grew up to be a famous Bible teacher; how he died on Ascension in 735, just having finished up his English translation of John’s Gospel, reciting the Gloria Patri and then breathing his last; and how the Church has rejoiced to sing his Ascension hymn. So it is that: Psalm 145:4 (KJV) One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. So the children sang today words from 8th century England, letting that long ago generation still trumpet forth today the mighty acts of our Ascended Lord!

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Your Turn / Re: Keeping Holy-day at Ascensiontide

« on: May 18, 2023, 10:07:56 AM »

We also have two Divine Services today. The morning one was at 8:20; the evening one will be at 7 p.m. I would normally have attended the morning liturgy with my grandchildren, but the choir is singing tonight at 7, doing a fun piece by Antonio Lotti: “Sing Joyous Christians”, so that’s when Cindi and I will attend. “God is gone up with a merry noise: and the Lord with the sound of the trump.” Psalm 47:5 (Coverdale) Blessed feast day to one and all!

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 17, 2023, 03:04:21 PM »

Father,

I am actually familiar with that hymnal. In the category of “unexpected surprises,” I remember attending a Winkel some years ago and discovering it in the pews of the parish that hosted. I was befuddled then, and remain befuddled, about how or why a Lutheran parish would place a decidedly Roman Catholic hymnal in their pews. Can you see your bishop’s face if he discovered a parish in his diocese with LSB???

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 17, 2023, 02:59:20 PM »

We can give thanks that the Holy Spirit has lead us to no longer require separate parishes, seminaries, and colleges.

Peace,JOHN

On that I dare say you will get a hearty “Amen!” from everyone on the board.

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 17, 2023, 01:30:58 PM »

There is no such thing as a black Christian hymn. If it is Christian, it is also for white people. Just as black people don't have to think of A Mighty Fortress a white hymn.

This X 1000!!!

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 17, 2023, 12:43:54 PM »

Ha! Let me be clearer, then, Bishop: In my opinion, the use of any resource that is not doctrinally pure in ANY of our congregations is not something to celebrate. It does a DISSERVICE to the members on whom it is foisted by suggesting that a little bit of error is not a big deal. This holds true regardless of the skin pigment of said members.

And now that I have your attention, how about you retract or at least back up your statement on that other thread about those who hold to the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God denying communion to those who don’t?

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Your Turn / Re: LCMS Dystopian Future

« on: May 17, 2023, 12:01:37 PM »

Used “with guidance” is to admit that it fails the Constitution test: “exclusive use of doctrinally pure Agenda and hymn books.” Unless you think that exclusively doctrinally pure material requires guidance in use! And, of course, the LCMS participation in the putting together of material has never guaranteed that what was put together would pass LCMS doctrinal norms: LBW? Welcome to Christ?