The Word at Work magazine - Spring 2015

Spring 2015 Vol. 4. 1 & 2

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Board of Directors Honorable G. Barry Anderson Senior Justice, Minnesota Supreme Court

Rev. Dr. Fred Baltz Pastor, St. Matthew Lutheran Church, Galena, IL

Dr. Eugene Bunkowske Emeritus Professor, Concordia University, St. Paul, MN Retired Missionary Rev. John Bent Pastor, Christ Lutheran Church, Whitefish, IL

Debra Hesse Agribusiness Owner and Manager, Moses Lake, WA

Staff Dennis Bielfeldt – President president@ilt.org Fred Baltz –Evangelism and Missions fbaltz@ilt.org Mary Cobb – Library Assistant mcobb@ilt.org Carl Deardoff – Web Development and Video Productions cdeardoff@ilt.org Doug Dillner – Classroom Technical Support ddillner@ilt.org Threasa Hopkins – President’s Office thopkins@ilt.org

Dr. Hans J. Hillerbrand Emeritus Professor of Religion, Duke University

Leon Miles – Finance Office and Admissions lmiles@ilt.org

Dr. Mark Mattes Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Grandview University

Denia Murrin – Office Assistant dhaynes@ilt.org

Rev. James T. Lehmann, STS Pastor, Immanuel Lutheran Church, Thomasboro, IL

Rev. Janine Rew-Werling Pastor, Hosanna Lutheran Church, Watertown, SD Fred Schickedanz Real Estate Developer, Calgary, Alberta Dr. Phil Wold Retired Physician, Mankato, MN

Doug Morton – Certificate Programs and Communications dmorton@ilt.org

David Patterson – Librarian and Registrar dpatterson@ilt.org Colleen Powers – Library Clerk Tom Sandersfeld – ILT Ambassador tsandersfeld@ilt.org Marsha Schmit – Communications Facilitator mschmit@ilt.org Constance Sorenson – Congregational Relations csorenson@ilt.org Jonathan Sorum – Dean of Academic Affairs jsorum@ilt.org Kara Swenson – Library Assistant

Timothy J. Swenson - Dean of Chapel and Student Life tswenson@ilt.org

605-692-9337 www.ilt.org Fax: 605-692-0884 910 4th Street Brookings, SD 57006 2

Eric Swensson – Social Media and International Relations eswensson@ilt.org Ethan Wiese – Print Productions ewiese@ilt.org

A Letter From The Editor

The above words come from the Nicene Creed. They point to God’s action in Jesus for us. The Father sent the Son for us. The Son was born, lived, suffered, died, rose, ascended and will come again for us. Scripture speaks of this when it says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17; ESV).

The Rev. Timothy Swenson, in his lead article entitled “Was Made Man,” delivers to us the Son of God who was made man in Jesus Christ for us. The Rev. Eric Swensson, in his article “Luther the Hymnologist,” points us to the importance in Luther’s life of music and hymns for getting across what God in Christ has done for us. The Rev. David Patterson, in his article on John 10:10, shows how the Christ, who came for us, did so for the present as well as for the life to come. The Rev. Douglas Morton in his article “To Good NOT to be True” describes the unconditional promise in this Christ for us. Constance Sorenson’s article, “Equipping the Saints,” warns us that the devil hates the “for us and for our salvation” message and seeks to do everything in his power to make sure it fails to reach people. However, she notes, you and I who have “been baptized and marked with the cross” are given power to stand firm in our faith. New to this issue is a Bible study section that can be used for both group and/or personal Bible study. “For us and for our Salvation” is a Bible study on 2 Corinthians 5:14-21, written by Leon Miles. Also, with this issue, we begin a series on the Apostles’ Creed. The series is written

by ILT’s Academic Dean, the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Sorum and is entitled “I Believe.” This first article in the series leads us into the meaning of the opening sentence of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” We are please to introduce an article from the Rev. John Spaulding entitled “Christians Meeting Muslims.”

Finally, you will find a section entitled, “A Word for the Theologian” written by ILT’s president, the Rev. Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt. Meaty and deep, this section seeks to help pastors and theologians think clearly through the issues confronting the church today.

So, welcome to the current issue of The Word at Work, the magazine of the Institute of Lutheran Theology.

The Institute exists to educate and train the next generation of Lutheran pastors, teachers, church workers and laypeople, who desire to be faithful witnesses to God’s truth in Jesus that is given to us through the Holy Scriptures and expounded upon in the Lutheran Confessions.

In Christ, Rev. Douglas V. Morton Senior Editor, The Word at Work

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Contents Pg. 3 – A Letter From the Editor Rev. Doug Morton Pg. 5 – Was Made Man Rev. Timothy Swenson Pg. 6 – I Believe (part 1 of 12) Dr. Jonathan Sorum Pg. 8 – Luther the Hymnologist Rev. Eric Jonas Swensson Pg. 10 – Equipping the Saints Constance Sorenson Pg. 12 – Abundant Life Rev. David Patterson Pg. 14 – ILT News Pg. 19 – Christians Meeting Muslims Rev. John Spaulding Pg. 20 – For Us and Our Salvation A Bible study on 2 Corinthians 5:14-21 Leon Miles Pg. 22 – Too Good NOT to be True Rev. Douglas Morton Pg. 24 – Saying the Same Thing but Meaning Something Different Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt 4

Bam, Bam, Bam, BAMM! The concussive sound of hammers driving nails home into wood frequented my childhood. The men of the farm – my dad, his brother, and their neighbors – often gathered, helping one another build barns, granaries, and sheds, those buildings vital for their farm’s livelihood. We kids, from the time we could run, would run nails to those hammer-wielding men driving home the nails.

Bam, Bam, Bam, BAMM! Hammer-wielding men setting the nail with the first Bam, then, driving it deep with successive strikes--Bam… Bam…, and last, hammering the nail home with a final stroke, BAMM, seating the nail firmly in the wood and leaving a slight dimple the size of the hammer’s face in the wood’s grain. The sound of hammers striking nails was a sound of competent men doing what they were good at and I got to help them. As I grew in years, my turn came at the hammer and I, too, became competent at driving nails into wood, striking them squarely, and seating them deeply… Bam, Bam, Bam, BAMM! I was comfortable taking my place among competent men doing what they were good at.

During those years my family worshiped in our community’s Lutheran Church. Once a month we had Holy Communion and confessed together the Nicene Creed. Over the years I began to hear a rhythm within those words as well. “For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven… and was made man.” Those four words describing Christ’s descent into the flesh took on the rhythm of those hammer-wielding men of my youth: Bam, Bam, Bam, BAMM! And. Was. Made.

MAN! I began to hear in the rhythm of those words the

reality of the Son of God becoming human and going to the cross… the son of the carpenter being subject to the nails himself. Hammer-wielding men driving the nails through his flesh and deep into the wood. Bam… Bam… Bam… BAMM! For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven… And… Was… Made…

MAN! The rhythm of the creed… the rhythm of my confession aligned with the remembered sound and sight of hammer-wielding men and drove home the particularity of my participation in the crucifixion of my Lord Jesus Christ. The creed preached to me with the particularity of Peter preaching to the men of Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost: “You killed him!” I was transfixed by accusation just as surely as Jesus was transfixed… nailed… to the cross. Just as I was eager to run nails to those driving them… just as I was eager to join the ranks of those hammer-wielding men doing what they were good at, just so was I an eager and willing participant in the sin that crucified my Lord. Not only was I eager and willing but, I was competent and good at it.

And… Was… Made… MAN! Surely, if the Son of God would submit to being the son of a carpenter becoming subject to the nails himself, I and all the world must be deep… deep sinners with no other recourse but for our God to die at the hands of us sinful men so they, and I, would know the depths of his love for them. The world would not have a God whose glory was hidden so deep in the flesh that even nails could not drive it into visibility. No, for the time being, the majestic glory of the Savior of the world remains hidden deep within the body of Christ… deep in the flesh of his people the church. For the time being the awesome glory possessed by the one through whom all things were made comes to you… comes to me… in the simple things of creation, the bread and wine of the Supper; the Word and water of baptism; the spoken declaration of your preacher: “Your sins are forgiven for Jesus’ sake!”

Yes, sins! Your sins. Your sins forgiven because he came down from heaven… And… Was… Made…

MAN!

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Lots of people believe in God. Almost all the religions of the world teach that there is a God, who ought to be worshipped and obeyed. Even non-religious people tend to believe, however vaguely, that there is some Power higher than themselves. This belief often comes out when they are in trouble and they find themselves praying, even though they may not be especially clear about who, exactly, they are praying to.

But when we confess “I believe in God, the Father,” we know who we are talking about. We are talking about Jesus’ Father, the one he called his “Abba,” (which means “Daddy”), the one who raised him from the dead. And since Jesus has made us his brothers and sisters, his Father is also our Father. The Holy Spirit makes us certain of this. “When we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. . .” (Romans 8:15-16) We are members of God’s family and so we will inherit what Christ has—a resurrection to eternal life!

And this Father, who is also our Father, is almighty. To say that he is almighty is simply to say that he is truly God. He has all power and is in control of all things. If we didn’t know God as our Father through Jesus, his Son, the statement that God is almighty could be terrifying. After all, if God controls everything, why doesn’t he stop all the evil and suffering in the world? If we only look at the evidence we can see with our eyes, it would seem that God doesn’t really care what happens to us. But we look to Jesus, and so we know that God is our loving heavenly Father. And when we confess that he is almighty, we are saying that he is using every bit of his almighty power for our good, even if we can’t see how right now. The fact that our Father is almighty is

tremendous news. It means that he can’t lose. He’s going to succeed in bringing in his new world and making us part of it!

For he, and he alone, truly is God, the creator of heaven and earth. He brought everything that exists into existence out of nothing, by speaking his Word. And since he is our loving Father, we can trust him to give us everything we need—food and clothing, peace and safety, life and health, and all good things. He showers us with his gifts every second. And in the end, God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth, will bring us into his new creation. In fact, we already are there with him, just as surely as he has already raised his Son Jesus from the dead.

So we joyously proclaim: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. The one and only God is the Father of Jesus; there is no other God. All other supposed gods, who are not Jesus’ Father, are nothing. But the one true God, in his unfathomable love for us, has given us his Son, so that we can know him as our Father and be his children and heirs.

This is most certainly true!

Note: The article begins a series on the Apostles’ Creed, which will be printed in “the Word at Work” over the next eleven issues. The Apostles’ Creed developed in the first centuries of the church as a summary of the Christian faith that new believers confessed before they were baptized. We continue to use it as a brief way of stating what we believe and a tool for teaching children and adults the content of the Christian faith. We’re used to dividing the Creed into three “articles,” one each on the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But the creed can also be divided into twelve articles. An old legend relates that each of the twelve apostles contributed an article to the creed, which is why it is called the Apostles’ Creed. Even though this legend is probably not true, it does underline the fact that the creed teaches exactly what the apostles teach in the New Testament. To learn the Apostles’ Creed is to learn what it means to be a Christian.

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“After all, the gift of language combined with the gift of song was only given to man to let him know that he should praise God with both word and music, namely, by proclaiming [the Word of God] through music and by providing sweet melodies with words.” 1

Good hymns proclaim and teach the faith. They also trick us into remembering it. In the preface to the Wittenberg hymnal of 1524, Martin Luther reminds us that we sing “so that God’s Word and Christian teaching might be instilled and implanted in many ways.” 2 Setting words in meter and verse, and attaching it to memorable music, opens up our spirit, give us a desire to embrace this liberating knowledge, and perhaps most of all, helps us to remember the message. For example, a great number of people in this world know that God is a “Mighty Fortress.”

Luther knew the pedagogical (teaching) power of hymn-writing and

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used it for this purpose.

He also recruited other reformers into a project of using hymns to spread the faith. The hymn became one more tool to teach the principles of the evangelical faith to the world.

Had Luther not realized the pedagogical power of hymns, he probably would still have written some hymns because he loved music. For instance, read in the following lines how he lavished praise on music:“Music is God’s greatest gift. It has often so stimulated and stirred me that I felt the desire to preach.” 3“Music is an outstanding gift of God and next to theology. I would not want to give up my slight knowledge of music for a great consideration. And youth should be taught this art; for it makes fine, skillful people.” 4 As much as Luther loved music, when we look at all of the many hymns he wrote, it becomes clear that he did not write impulsively but for a purpose. Luther wrote his first hymn to commemorate the martyrdom of two Augustinian monks who were killed for embracing Luther’s biblical teachings.

It seems that once he laid his hands to hymn-writing, he saw its usefulness and did it purposefully in order to teach the evangelical faith.

Often his hymns are plainly pedagogical. For example,

after the introductory stanza of his hymn “Our Father in the Heaven Who Art,” he made the remaining stanzas correspond exactly to his teaching on The Lord’s Prayer in his Small Catechism. 5 A person could write extensively on Luther’s hymns, however, in the remaining space available, we shall look at one hymn in particular. This is Luther’s hymn for Easter, “Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bonds” (Christ lag in Tod­es­ band­en), and we will do so looking at what it shows us concerning Christ’s work for us at the Cross.

This hymn was written for the people of God to sing on Easter. We who sing the hymn view Jesus in heaven at the right hand of God. We praise Jesus for sending new life from heaven, and

we sing our Easter hymns robustly on account of all that God has done for us in Jesus!

The sacrifice Jesus made was necessary because the whole earth is in bondage to sin. God became incarnate in Jesus and became the Paschal Lamb in order to deliver us from sin.

The Cross of Christ broke Satan’s curse and death’s sting has now lost its power.

Luther teaches us about God’s grace, and he does it in a way that sounds very familiar to us. However, we need to remember how new this message was to many people in 1524.

I close this article with the words of the hymn itself.

The arrangement of the hymn below comes from J. S. Bach some 200 years after it was written by Luther.

Christ Jesus lay in death’s strong bands, For our offenses given; But now at God’s right hand He stands, And brings us life from Heaven.

Wherefore let us joyful be, And sing to God right thankfully Loud songs of Alleluia! Alleluia!

Here the true Paschal Lamb we see, Whom God so freely gave us; He died on the accursed tree— So strong His love!—to save us.

See, His blood doth mark our door; Faith points to it, Death passes over, And Satan cannot harm us. Alleluia!

No son of man could conquer Death, Such mischief sin had wrought us, For innocence dwelt not on earth, And therefore Death had brought us Into thralldom from of old And ever grew more strong and bold And kept us in his bondage. Alleluia!

So let us keep the festival Where to the Lord invites us; Christ is Himself the joy of all, The Sun that warms and lights us.

By His grace He doth impart Eternal sunshine to the heart; The night of sin is ended! Alleluia!

But Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, To our low state descended, The cause of Death He has undone, His power forever ended, Ruined all his right and claim And left him nothing but the name, His sting is lost forever. Alleluia!

Then let us feast this Easter day On the true Bread of Heaven; The Word of grace hath purged away The old and wicked leaven.

Christ alone our souls will feed; He is our Meat and Drink indeed; Faith lives upon no other! Alleluia! 6

It was a strange and dreadful strife When life and death contended; The victory remained with life; The reign of death was ended.

Stripped of power, no more it reigns, An empty form alone remains Death’s sting is lost forever! Alleluia!

Endnotes Martin Luther, “Preface to Georg Rhau’s Symphoniae iucundae (1538)” in Luther’s Works, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann (St. Louis: Concordia and Philadelphia: Fortress, 1958-86), 53:323-324.

2 Martin Luther, “Preface to the Wittenberg Hymnal (1524),” 316.

3 Ewald M. Plass, What Luther Says: A Practical In-Home Anthology for the Active Christian (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959), 982 4 Ibid, 979.

5 Martin Luther, “Our Father in the Heaven who Art (1539)” in LW 53:297-298.

6 http://www.hymnary.org/text/christ_jesus_lay_in_deaths_strong_bands, 1/04/2015.

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ne of my passions is learning, especially learning about our Lord.

This makes my position as Congregational Relations Director very enjoyable! I believe it is vitally important to educate, inform & equip the people in the pew with God’s Word. Why? Well, you wouldn’t dream of sending your military out to war and do battle with the enemy without proper weapons, armor or necessary artillery, would you? I think not. Yet God’s people are living and working in a world ruled by the Prince of Darkness each and every day. Are they wearing the breastplate, helmet and sword Paul is talking about in Ephesians 6:11-17?

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Ephesians 6:11-17 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 11

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utherans are not known for their ability to defend the faith (apologetics). Rather, they tend to be known for their hospitality, friendliness and of course, potluck suppers! There’s nothing wrong with any of these things, but once we have come to know Christ we become a part of His body, the Church. When this happens, do we remember that we need to be armed with His Truth as we live “in the world but not of it?”

The battle lines are becoming more vivid and real as we hear about fellow Christians who are being persecuted and children being beheaded because they will not deny their faith in Jesus Christ. This is difficult for us to believe as we take many of our freedoms for granted.

Blood has been shed for the freedoms we still have in America, but is there any danger that we might be losing them? Of course, as we become complacent and deny what is happening in our country, that is definitely a possibility.

What can you or I do to help equip our fellow Christians for this daily battle? As pastors, you offer Bible studies and Adult Education, as well as your weekly message of God’s Word. We, at ILT, offer courses for the laity that are FREE for you to use. We continue to add classes that will serve you and your congregations.

Pastor Scott Grorud has taught a class on Luther’s Catechism. This can be used for your confirmation class, new member class or an Adult Ed refresher course. Sessions on the Ten Commandments are available now, and will have The Creed later this

year.

We are also offering classes on counseling, such as a class on conflict management and one on communications. These classes are tremendous tools that can be used in classrooms as well as individually.

The tools Dr. Buddy Mendez offers are invaluable for those who choose to view them in the privacy of their home and implement them in their family situations.

By improving and strengthening the family unit, it will in turn serve to build up the Body of Christ, the Church.

We live in troubled and perilous times, yet nothing has really changed. The prophets warned God’s people of trouble ahead because they had forgotten their God and relied on their own power to deal with life.

We know how that played out! Yet God in His mercy preserved a remnant. He is faithful and just. He made a promise in Genesis 3:15 and He kept His promise. He sent His Son to redeem and save us. Have we lost our focus? Lost our way? Do we need the prophet’s voice to remind us of trouble ahead? Have we forgotten Him and His promises as the Israelites did? It is time to put on the armor of God and stand firm as Paul tells us in Ephesians. We don’t have to look for a fight or for a battle. They are there every day where the Evil One is ready to defeat us and to tempt us to deny the Christ to whom we belong.

We have been baptized and marked with a cross.

We are His children. Take up arms. Be ready. Stand firm in the faith and do battle for His sake!

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ave you noticed that there appears to be a connection between how long the people of a society – on average – live and the level of general apathy in that society toward eternal matters like salvation, justification, redemption and eternal life? This is true in North America.

It is also is true in Western Europe.

In all places where people tend to live longer there is less and less concern with what comes next. So is it at all surprising that the Lutheran shibboleth of Salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ seems to resonate less and less in North America and Western Europe, while in those parts of the world where life – on average – remains brief and full of struggle, this Word of hope for salvation and resurrection rings out loud and clear? Does this mean that we should reject our confessional moorings and find a new Word for a new time in this new world?

Does this mean that we should continue to just preach the same Word we have always preached as the Body of Christ in North America continues to whither as its members live on? NO! Neither is an acceptable option. Rather we must proclaim afresh and again with our Lord – the Word of God Himself – why He in fact came. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10, ESV).

You see, I have noticed that in addition to the correlation between life span and apathy noted above, there is another correlation that exists right beside this one. As life spans in a society increase, so does the obsession with filling that life with things. Thing to occupy that time; thing to distract us; things that might give more flavor. The longer we live – as a society – the more we become obsessed with materiality and trivialities. Have you ever wondered why?

I have. And something simple and obvious has occurred to me, that in living longer, we have less life. When God created man, He formed us of the dust and breathed His breath of life into us, giving us that life (Genesis 2:7). That life was something more than the result of the “stuff” from which we were made. That life was more than just the functioning of our bodies. Other animals also function as we function and yet, God did not share with them this breath of life.

So the life we have been given is something more than the functioning of our bodies. The life we have been given is something that fills us through the span of the functioning

of our bodies. Life is what fills us as we live. But here’s the problem, while the span of our living has increased, the life that fills it has not grown to replenish it – to fill that expanded capacity for living with a greater reservoir of life. We become like Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings when he said, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread” (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring). While the living was brief, our concern remained focused on the continuation of that living or the renewal of that living.

When the living is brief, that Word proclaiming resurrection and new, continuing living was heard as a Word of hope. But as that living continues and stretches longer and longer there is less life to give that living savor. So to a people for whom this greater living has less and less flavor, this Word of resurrection and new, continuing living seems dryer and less and less palatable, all the while they spend more and more of their living obsessed with adding flavor to the tasteless living they seem forced to endure.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. You see, Jesus Christ did not just come to save us from the cessation of the functioning of these bodies. He did not just come to save us from the dying that lies ahead of us. He came to save us from the death that fills our living as the life we’ve been given is stretched thinner and thinner. Jesus Christ came for us and for our salvation. He came for us here and now to bring us life here and now. For the Word of salvation and resurrection to become a Word of hope again, it must be spoken fully with the Word of salvation from a living starved of life. Through sin, we have been cut off from the source of life that fills this living. Jesus is the source of the life that fills our living (John 1:4) and Jesus came in order to restore our union to that source of life. He came that we might have life and have it abundantly. He came to bring us an overflowing supply of life here and now that will fill this living with its true flavor.

He came to bring us eternal life not just for the future, but here and now. By the grace of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, our sin is forgiven and we are rejoined to the source of life itself and through faith in that source of life, our living is once again filled with life so abundantly that it overflows this living bringing us – through Him – new, eternal living filled with life!

Abundant Life Rev. David Patterson

“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10, ESV)

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Free Educational Resources for Congregations and Individuals Word at Work

☐ The Word at Work magazine ☐ Word at Work courses for congregations and individuals ☐ Word at Work events in congregations

Table Talk ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐

Downloadable weekly devotions Based upon each Sunday’s lectionary readings Emailed weekly upon request May be copied for congregational bulletins

Word at Work and Table Talk may be accessed through the Resources tab at www.ilt.org.

Contact Constance Sorenson for any of your congregational resource needs;

Constance Sorenson Congregational Relations csorenson@ilt.org 949-294-6360

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ILT NEWS New Faculty Member Brings “...passion for communicating the Gospel.”

By Carl Deardoff

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he Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) is pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Jo Kinnard to the faculty. She will be teaching EPR 320: Theology and World Religions. Dr. Kinnard brings incredible life experiences and knowledge to the classroom.

“As a Lutheran Christian, I understand the value of theological education. As a former Hindu and an adult convert to Christianity, I am only too aware of the dire need and challenges of effectively proclaiming the Gospel in a religiously-plural and politically-charged world,” said Dr. Kinnard. “As someone who has taught at the graduate level, I am excited that ILT is diligently engaging current technologies in a thoughtful and successful way to train future pastors. I am excited to support the ILT mission.”

Dr. Kinnard holds a B.A. from Madras Christian College

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(India), an M.A. from the University of Madras (India), an M.A. and an M.S. from Temple University, an M.Div. from Wartburg Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from the University of Madras (India). Next Spring she will be teaching EPR 320: Theology and World Religions.

Personal experiences helped Dr. Kinnard write her own story in a well-received book entitled, “Out of the Fog, Into the Sun: My Journey from Hinduism to Christ.” Dr. Kinnard hopes to share her personal testimony to enrich student’s understanding and knowledge of Lutheran theology.

“For life-long Christians, learning about other religions enriches one’s appreciation for the gift of Jesus, and strengthens the call to proclaim the Gospel, both within and outside of one’s immediate faith community. To reach people with the message of

the Gospel, it is important to engage with them in dialogue, and feel where they are in their journey,” said Dr. Kinnard.

Apart from her personal story, Dr. Kinnard looks forward to engaging in theological conversations with ILT’s live, interactive, classrooms.

“I’ll bring my own struggles and conversations with God, from outside the fold, and then as a disciple of Jesus Christ. I’ll bring insights from discussions, on Christ’s teachings and evangelism, drawn from classrooms, Bible studies, and workshops with diverse audiences…And most of all, I will bring my passion for communicating the Gospel.”

Photo: Jo Kinnard with her mother and her daughter in India (1989)

ILT Seeks to Educate Immigrant Pastors and Church Workers

By Leon Miles

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t’s begun! On Saturday March 7, ILT Certificate Instructor Leon Miles traveled to Falls Community Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in order to begin the educational training of the pastors and lay leaders who serve there. This is a “Pilot Program” for ILT’s new Elijah Project “Ministry Certificate.” The class began like every other class at ILT, with a couple of exceptions. The first big exception is that none of the students were online. Rather, they met in a classroom in their church building. This is a special case for ILT because most of the school’s students attend classes through its interactive synchronous online platform.

Also, the vast majority of ILT’s students are from North America, with a few students living in other parts of the world. However, in the case of our classes held at Falls Community Church, it is important for the instructors and the students to meet together

in order to bridge the cultural and language gaps that exist.

The second big exception is all the different language translations of the Bible in use by those who came to learn. While all the students are from the Sudan in Africa, they come from different tribes that speak different languages.

Each student sat at the table using the translation of the Bible most familiar to him or her. “It was an interesting and enlightening experience for us to look at the different ways in which the Bible was translated.

It showed the differences and similarities between our languages,” noted Leon Miles Falls Community Church is a Sudanese congregation affiliated with Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ. They own their own church building and are currently in the process of remodeling it. Many of the congregation’s members came to the United States as refugees

over the past 20 to 30 years.

While they know English very well, and are well acclimated to life in the United States, they yet have a deep sense of their own community, and hope one day to return home to bring the gospel to those who have not heard it.

Photo: (Left to right) Oyet Michael, Onbee Peter, Julius Badego, Acuil Acuil, Leon Miles

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ILT NEWS New Academic Catalog Available!

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he Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) is pleased to announce the release of the 20152016 academic catalog. The new catalog contains information about graduate and certificate programs, course descriptions, faculty, and ILT’s new Doctor of Ministry program.

“In our new catalog, you will find a complete description of our new Doctor of Ministry program, which focuses on reaching the unreached. This program is unique: it focuses on the tasks of apologetics, evangelism, and catechetics from the perspective of a Lutheran theology of the cross,” said Dr. Sorum, Dean of Academic Affairs.

The academic catalog is designed as a simple tool for students to use as they plan their studies.

The catalog also contains academic information and helps students understand the mission of ILT. “The new catalog also contains suggested ‘three’ and ‘six-year’ pathways to the Master of Divinity program to help students see their way through to completion. The catalog has been revised and clarified throughout to make it even more useful and informative…The catalog presents ILT’s academic programs clearly and simply. It’s all there at a glance,” said Sorum.

The academic catalog is available in print or online at www.ilt.org!

ILT Attains Applicant Status with Accrediting Agency

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arlier this year ILT received word that it has been granted applicant status by The Commission on Accreditation of the Association for Biblical Higher Education. Applicant status is a pre-membership status granted to those institutions that meet the ABHE Conditions of Eligibility and that possess such qualities as may provide a basis for achieving candidate status within five years.

The Institute of Lutheran Theology has fullycredentialed faculty members and a complete staff to serve students and faculty. We believe that the Institute provides a quality theological

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education equal or superior to that of any graduate seminary. Even beginning the process of becoming accredited has meant significant work and accomplishment for ILT. It has had to address the twenty-two Conditions of Eligibility required by ABHE and demonstrate that it is an established and credible institution of higher education. Much more work remains. With diligent effort, we hope to achieve the next step with ABHE, which is candidate status, within three years. Full accreditation could come two to three years after that.

Presidential Visits from Dr. Bielfeldt

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r. Dennis Bielfeldt, ILT’s president, has recently had an opportunity to visit congregations, speak at a conference, and share ILT’s mission.

On Monday, April 6, he traveled to Sioux City and met with pastoral staff and leaders of Morningside Lutheran Church to discuss concrete ways in which the Institute of Lutheran Theology might partner with Morningside to make theological education possible to people in SE Asia.

In addition, they discussed other ways ILT could assist in offering general theological education within the congregation of Morningside.

He also presented a lecture to the Eastern SD LCMC/NALC pastors on Tuesday, April 7, in Sioux Falls, SD, entitled “Destablizing Theology - - The Contemporary Horizon.” In the lecture, he talked about how the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon makes difficult an understanding of theological language as making truth claims. A healthy discussion ensued.

Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt will continue to visit congregations and speak at conferences that extend an invitation. To have Dr. Bielfeldt speak at an event, or visit your congregation, email the executive assistant, Threasa Hopkins at thopkins@ilt.org.

The Institute of Lutheran Theology Has Reached the GuideStar Exchange Silver Participation Level as a Demonstration of Its Commitment to Transparency

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his past month The Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) received the GuideStar Exchange Silver participation level, a leading symbol of transparency and accountability provided by GuideStar USA, Inc., the premier source of nonprofit information. This level demonstrates ILT’s deep commitment to nonprofit transparency and accountability.

“We have worked hard to showcase our progress toward our mission, and our long-held belief in being transparent about our work, to individuals and congregations,” said Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt, President of ILT. “As a GuideStar Exchange participant, we use their platform to share a wealth of up-to-date information about our work with our supporters and GuideStar’s immense online audience of nonprofits, grantmakers, individual donors, and the media.”

To be awarded the GuideStar Exchange logo, ILT provided the information necessary for the Silver Level of participation. The nonprofit report is found at www.guidestar.org with a search for Institute of Lutheran Theology. Silver level participation requires complete provision of

and transparency of ownership, operational and financial information.

“I encourage you to check out our profile on GuideStar to see what we’re all about,” added Dr. Bielfeldt. “We are engaged in exciting initiatives, and we are thrilled to have another platform for communicating our advancement and progress.”

The GuideStar Exchange is an initiative designed to connect nonprofits with current and potential supporters. With millions of people coming to GuideStar to learn more about nonprofit organizations, the GuideStar Exchange allows nonprofits to share a wealth of up-to-date information with GuideStar’s many audiences.

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2015 Fall Theological Conference Presented by the Institute of Lutheran Theology Fourth Annual Theological Conference Keeping it Real: Living the Jesus Life in a Secular World October 3 & 4, 2015 Frisco, Texas Embassy Suites Hotel & Conference Center Presenters

Dr. Jonathan Sorum “Following Jesus: Bonhoeffer’s Recovery of the Reality of the Christian Life.”

Dr. Robert Benne “The Church’s Public Witness”

Rev. Thomas Jacobson “Vocation: Priests in Our Own Stations in Life” Rev. Jaynan Clark Banquet Speaker

Registration $100 before Oct. 3 $125 at door $60 for Spouse $55 for Student and Pastor Emeritus Register online at www.ilt.org or call 605-692-9337

901 4th St • Brookings, SD 57006 • 605-692-9337 • www.ilt.org 18

Psalm 1:1 comes to mind lately: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers” (ESV). “Sitting in the seat of scoffers”-how routinely we sit, absorbing the irony, mockery and cynicism that fill our screens and permeate our culture. This struck me as I got to know some students from a Middle Eastern country who were studying the Bible with me. They impressed me early on as so earnest, in contrast to almost any of their twenty-something American peers, male or female, Christian or not. Perhaps among their compatriots, in their own language, that perceived contrast would evaporate, but I wonder.

Our politics, our conversation, and even our preaching are modeled on the stand-up comic to an extent not always apparent, until you meet people for whom they aren’t.

Accumulated generations of exposure to manufactured comedy have conditioned us to behave as if anything is potentially a joke. We’ve learned to behave as detached critics of the passing scene, hardening our hearts to admit that nothing is ultimately out of bounds, to somebody. Nothing, perhaps, except to deny somebody’s right to be, to do, or to say whatever he or she pleases, however ridiculous--“ridicule-worthy”-that may actually be. We’ve sat too long with the scoffers and learned from them too well.

I’m thinking about this in light of the recent violence in Paris, where Islamist gunmen killed a dozen staff of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. If you think American media is crude, you should look at Charlie. But my point is not to discuss the limits of press freedom. Instead, it is to reflect on what incidents like this say to us who want Muslims to hear and respond to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Dr.Terence Ascott is head of SAT-7, a ministry broadcasting Christian TV programs in Arabic, Persian and Turkish into the Middle East and North Africa. He writes in a recent article, “Just Because You Can, Does Not Mean You Should!” (http:// www.sat7usa.org/using-freedom-wisely): “Apart from what is allowed, or even considered by the majority in a given society as acceptable in terms of criticising or poking fun at different segments of society, there is also the issue of strategy: what is the point of making fun of someone’s religion? It might make some feel good. It might be genuinely funny and thought provoking. It might be designed to shock and embarrass specific individuals so that certain kinds of behaviour are discredited and eventually discontinued.

But if we consider the Muslim community in Europe, is giving offense going to help change the extremists or instead deepen their feelings of being marginalised and belittled?

Will attacking their religion or prophet lead to them learning to better respect Western democratic values and open debate on

personal and press freedoms? Or will it create stronger resentment and rejection of the perceived excesses of liberty – a liberty that appears to have thrown away any sense of decency, respectfulness or personal and civic responsibility for minorities in our society?”

Ascott notes how satellites allow SAT7 to bypass normal media censorship. But to use that advantage to attack others’ faith would only alienate the potential audience and create backlash against local Christians.

SAT-7 gets the most response in countries with the fewest churches. Why? “Because we are able to offer hope, help and the good news without causing unnecessary offense or turning people away...by insulting or belittling what they have believed and held sacred for generations.”

Freedom to mock isn’t an ultimate value in Christian witness. Mockery comes too easily, and it’s rarely done in love. “Speaking the truth in love” is harder and maybe more dangerous, but it should be our aim.

Rev. John Spaulding directs “Christians Meeting Muslims,” a Minneapolis-based ministry encouraging encouraging and equipping Christians to reach out to Muslim neighbors. He previously served 13 years as a Lutheran missionary pastor in Senegal.

You may email Rev. Spaulding at spaulding. john@yahoo.com.

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For us and for our Salvation By Leon Miles Introduction:

Read 2 Corinthians 5:14 – 21

The Second Article of the Nicene Creed describes Jesus’ work as being, “for us and for our salvation.” The purpose of the work of Christ is defined in this phrase. Christ came by the will and the command of the Father, but not for the Father. Christ came by the power of the Holy Spirit, but not for the Holy Spirit. Christ came of his own accord, but not for himself. He came for us. The purpose of his life, death, and resurrection is “for us and for our salvation.”

In Christ we all have been loved, chosen, and saved by God.

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. 16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (ESV)

Note: This Bible study is designed for use in small group discussion or for personal reflection. Please feel free to make copies of it.

You will also find an answer key. Please answer the questions for yourself before you consult the answer key.

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Study Questions:

Conclusion:

1. In what way does Paul relate the death of Christ to all people?

Read Galatians 3:10-14. God in his mercy has taken the curse of the law away through the blood of Jesus.

In Jesus we have these blessings, not by our obedience to the law, but by faith in Christ, who lived, suffered, died, rose and ascended into heaven for us. All this Christ did “for us and for our salvation.” No one deserves salvation. It comes purely thorugh God’s grace and mercy. It is an act of love in which God reconciles his fallen creation to himself.

2. For what reason does Paul write “ we regard no one according to the flesh”?

3. How does Paul extend his regard of the flesh even to Christ? In John 1:1-18 we learn that Christ came in the flesh. How is Paul’s argument different from that of John? What point do you think Paul is trying to make here?

4. Paul says that Christ came to bring reconciliation.

In what way does Christ bring reconciliation between God and creation?

5. In what way is the speaking of the gospel a ministry of reconciliation? How is the gospel a message of reconciliation?

6. In what way are those who speak the gospel ambassadors for Christ?

7. Think through your Christian life. In what ways have you needed Jesus to be the ambassador for you to bring this message of reconciliation?

8. Who were the people in your life who brought this message to you?

9. Can you think of any times or ways in which you were an ambassador of reconciliation to others?

Closing Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, thank

you for the gift of salvation you have given to us through your Son Jesus Christ. Although we do not deserve this gift, you graciously give it to us out of your love for us. Please be with us now as we speak the word of this gift. Make us to be your ambassadors of reconciliation. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Answers 1. Paul concludes that because of the death of Christ, all those who are bound to Christ by faith have died in Christ. This is specifically for those who will no longer live for themselves, but who live for Christ. In this way, and for this reason, we all are controlled by the love of Christ.

2. Paul uses the word “flesh” many times in his letters to signify that which is sinful, evil, or corrupt in the human being. Here Paul says that he does not regard anyone “according to the flesh.” He chooses to think of people as they are in Christ: a new creation.

3. Paul also speaks of Christ “according to the flesh.” Paul is not speaking about Christ as having the corruption of sin that the fallen creation has.

He is God and is not subject to corruption. Paul is making a distinction between Jesus before the resurrection and Jesus after the resurrection.

Before the resurrection, God is hidden in the flesh of Jesus. After the resurrection, Jesus is the risen Lord of the Church, seated at the right hand of God. This is how Paul regards Christ, not as baby Jesus in the manger, but as the risen Lord of all creation.

4. In short, Christ has brought reconciliation. He does this by not counting our trespasses against us. We all know we have sinned. Paul says this much in Romans 3:21-26. Here Paul says, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (ESV) Yet, in Christ God has reconciled his fallen human creation to himself.

5. Paul uses the word reconciliation to describe the reuniting of two parties.

The relationship is healed, the debt is forgiven in Jesus Christ. There no longer exists a divide between God and his fallen creation.

6. In Romans 10:17 Paul says, “So faith comes through hearing and hearing through the word of Christ” (ESV). All of us have important people in our lives. Think of the pastors, parents, Sunday school teachers, and friends who have been there for you and have spoken the word of God to you. In this way God brings his message of reconciliation to the world, by placing the word of Christ on the lips of his people.

7. Read Romans 3:9-12. Paul excludes no one. He says all people are sinners. We cannot escape the sins we have committed in our life. All of us have things we have done in the past which still haunt us with guilt. God sent Jesus to die and to rise because we are all guilty of sin. However, in Jesus all the guilt separating us from God is washed away.

8 and 9. Personal Reflection

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By Rev. Douglas Morton

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monster dwells inside us! Inside each human being is the opinio legis, the opinion of the law convincing us that we must do something if we are to be saved.

This is the rock from which all self-made religions are hewn.

It does not matter what name you give the religion. Every self-made religion is law-orientated. It emphasizes what we must do in order to be reconciled with God. Then, there is the Gospel religion. It has nothing to do with anything we do or don’t do. Instead, it emphasizes what God has done in bringing us the forgiveness of sins through Christ. It makes absolutely no demands. For the Gospel is “the gracious promise of the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake – this, and nothing but this . . .”1 Yet, to us, the Gospel News seems too good to be true.

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his Gospel scandalizes us because it speaks of the utter graciousness of God’s salvation given us in Jesus Christ. It goes against the grain of the opinio legis inside us. We become scandalized because we want to do something to make sure God is really and truly on our side, that we truly have forgiveness of sins. We want to “seal the deal” with God by something we do, no matter how small.

Yet, the Bible lays down for us the absolute freedom of salvation. Read what Paul has to say to us. “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”(Romans 4:2-3; ESV).

Paul goes back to Genesis 15 where God makes a specific promise to Abraham. “And he brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be’”(Genesis 15:5; ESV; italics added).

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Notice, God does not say, “If you progress so far in your faith, then so shall your offspring be.” Nor does he say, “If you are truly sincere, or if you are doing well in your sanctification, then so shall your offspring be.” No. He simply makes an unconditional promise: “So shall your offspring be.” There are no “ifs, ands, or buts” to this promise.

No conditions at all. And this unconditional promise has an effect on Abraham. “And he believed the LORD and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6; ESV).

God then makes a covenant with Abraham—an unconditional, one-way covenant. Normally, covenants imply two parties acting out their part. Yet, God makes a covenant with Abraham where only God acts. In ancient times covenants were “cut.” Animals were cut in pieces and the two parties walked between the cut up parts. By doing so they were pledging themselves to do their part. Each party was basically stating, “May I also be ‘cut up’ like these animals if I fail to fulfill my part of the covenant.”

We see the results of covenant breaking in Jeremiah 34:18, where God speaks to those who have broken the covenant they personally had made with Him. “And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts” (ESV).

However, as stated above, the covenant in Genesis 15 is one-way, from God to Abraham. Thus, only God walks between the cut up animals.

“When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land . . .” (Genesis 15:17-18a; ESV).

The “smoking fire pot” and the “flaming torch” are, one author notes, “a dramatic theophany—a visible manifestation of God.”2 God, not Abraham, walks through the cut up animals. God takes an oath. By passing through the cut up animals God is saying, “’Abraham, if I fail to keep my promise to you, may I be cut asunder just as those animals have been torn apart.’ God put His eternal being on the line.”3 Abraham does not participate in making this covenant. He simply believes God’s promise made in the covenant.

Here is where the scandal lies for us. As natural born legalists, we think we must do something, no matter how small, in order to obtain the promise, or at least in order to keep the promise once it has been obtained. Thus, being scandalized by the Gospel we run back into the religion of

the Law, even though we still speak about “the Gospel.” The sinner in each of us cries out, “But I must do something!”

On the other hand, Paul states, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19; ESV, ).

Note well, God reconciles “the world to himself.” This world is not only certain people, but, rather, all people. It is universal, taking in every man, woman and child who has ever lived, lives now, or will live. This reconciliation comes because of God “not counting their trespasses against them;” in other words, because of God’s unconditional forgiveness in Christ. And, this is the message God entrusted to Paul and continues to entrust to the church.

This universal reconciliation does not take away the fact that those who reject the Gospel promise are ultimately lost. For, the same Bible that teaches God has reconciled the entire world to himself by “not counting their trespasses against them,” also declares, “but whoever does not believe in him is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18b; ESV) and “whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:11-12; ESV). This is Law and it must be declared to people. However, as soon as the Law crushes a person, we go directly to the faith-creating and life-giving Gospel that says, “Your sins are forgiven in Christ!”

Let’s take a look at this from another angle. Why is the unconditional promise so important even though those who reject it miss out on its benefits? Imagine me saying to my wife, “Honey, if you believe that I will love you, then I will love you.” Compare that with me saying, “Honey, I love you!” The first statement is conditional. In it my love for my wife depends on her response, on her believing I will love her. In making this conditional promise to her, I am leaving the door open for her to doubt my love for her. What if she does not believe strong enough in my love for her, or what if she cannot muster up the right amount of sincerity to be assured that I love her? She then will never be sure of my love because it has something to do with her performance, even her performance of believing. This is Law. On the other hand, the second statement is unconditional. It states that I simply love my wife—period! There are no strings attached, and this, in and of itself, has the power to kindle her belief in my love for her. It is Good News and brings with it the assurance of my love because it depends on me and not on something my wife does or believes.

The same holds true with the Good News of the Gospel. A Gospel that makes my acceptance with God based upon anything I do–even my believing–is no Gospel at all.

Either Christ has done it all, or I will never be sure if I have done enough. Have I repented enough? Is my faith sincere enough? Is it strong enough? On the cross Jesus declared, “It

is finished” (John 19:30). Finished! What Jesus did is done and nothing needs to be added. But, what about faith? Where does it come in? Don’t I have to believe? It is important to understand that it is not my faith that finishes the work of Christ, but rather the work of Christ that finishes everything for me. And, rather than getting rid of the need for faith, the finished work of Christ on the cross creates faith in me by the Holy Spirit’s power. I am not downplaying faith. I am simply describing faith as Spirit engendered trust in an objective and unconditional promise. God’s promise is, “Your sins are forgiven in Jesus. Period.” Faith does not look at itself, but only to the Word of God that does not lie. In other words, faith simply holds on to the promise.

Over 130 years ago an aged professor spoke to his class of future pastors concerning how the Gospel makes no demands whatsoever. Anticipating his students’ response concerning the Bible’s call to faith, he spoke thus: “Don’t think, ‘But the Gospel does demand faith.’

Imagine you are inviting a hungry person to come to the table and eat. He surely will not say, ‘I don’t have to take orders from you!’ He will accept your “command” as a kind invitation. So it is with the Gospel. It is a kind invitation to partake of heavenly blessings.4”

The unconditional Gospel becomes the rock on which we stand and find a gracious God. Our own Lutheran Confessions state, “Especially amid the terrors of sin, a human being must have a very definite Word of God to learn to know God’s will, namely, that he is no longer angry.”5 The Gospel is that “very definite Word of God” for us. In it we receive Jesus and his forgiveness. Does this do away with faith? By no means!

Rather, the Holy Spirit uses the Gospel to create faith in us so that we also believe God’s promise, and thus, it is “counted” to us “as righteousness.” The unconditional Gospel becomes the Rock on which we stand and find a gracious God. What a wonderful Gospel for you and me who are crushed by the Law with its accusing demands. Also, what a wonderful Gospel to share with others. Rather than being too good to be true, this Gospel is actually too good NOT to be true!

Endnotes 1 Herman Sasse, Here We Stand: Nature and Character of the Lutheran Faith (Harper & Brothers, 1938), 111.

2 R. C. Sproul, One Holy Passion: The Consuming Thirst to Know God (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1987), 154.

3 Ibid, 154.

4 Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther, Law & Gospel in Selected Writings of C.F. W. Walther. trans. Herbert J. A. Bouman (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1981), 16.

5 Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article IV, paragraph 262 in The Book of Concord, trans. & ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 145.

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Saying the Same Thing but Meaning Something Different

By Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt

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“Grace,” the speaker said, “Let us preach grace. The world already has enough law.” I listened quietly, but had heard it all before. The assumption behind the comment was patent: Many people have a problem with selfimage, and preaching the law simply exacerbates that problem. “Give them some grace already,” shouts the caring soul, “and tell them God loves them, and their self-image will improve.”

Perhaps with all of the negativity in the world, it is important to hear some good news for a change. “God loves you! Can you not hear?” thunders the preacher.

I have heard these phrases so many times that I simply can no longer remain silent. In this short article I want to discuss the age-old issue of law and grace with an eye on a question often unnoticed in today’s facile declarations of grace. Specifically, does our language pronouncing grace declare what was once declared in its proclamation? I believe that most contemporary preachers of grace do not notice that what is said in preaching grace is semantically discontinuous from what was said in previous ages, e.g, during the time of the Lutheran Reformation. Nor do these preachers understand that the roots of this discontinuity lie in the eclipse of the law, an eclipse characterizing much of the contemporary Church and its theology.

What do I mean by “semantically discontinuous?” I refer to the simple fact that the words of grace do not have the same meaning, or are not afforded the same interpretation, as they had previously.1 Simply put, the words have a different semantic content, and are concomitantly spoken for different purposes than once was the case. While the syntax of the expressions remains the same - - the words are the same and are spoken in the same order - - their intepretation has changed. While we say the same words today as might

have been said 500 years ago, we mean quite different things in the saying.

Simply put, even though the language may remain the same, different truth claims are being made today than was formerly the case. Moreover, since the truth claims are different, the words themselves are doing different work, i.e., they have different effects on their hearers than they once had. Since contemporary preachers are often unaware of the semantic gulf separating their time from that of the Reformation and before, they do not realize that merely retaining the same language as a former time – I am thinking specifically about the language in our Lutheran Confessions – does not mean one is making the same truth-claims as the Reformers made.

This brief article has three more sections. I have only given a summary of Section II in the main text. A much more indepth look at it is continued in the Addendum at the end of this article. Section III argues that sixteenth century declarations of grace are discontinuous semantically with contemporary declarations because of a changed cutural sense of the reality of God and the nature of God’s law. Section IV offers a sumary and concludes by pointing to a contemporary example of the failure to distinguish the syntax of theological language from its semantics, a failure that, I believe, violates the rational canons of theology itself.

In theology, there is oftentimes confusion between syntax and semantics. For instance, to utter ‘God loves His people’ is to make no statement at all until an interpretation is given to the terms ‘God’, ‘loves’ and ‘people’. In the next section I suggest that expressions like ‘God loves His people’ can be given -and have been given -- radically different interpretations, and that the meanings of such expressions do change historically within overarching

theological paradigms and theories.

Accordingly, ‘God loves His people’ sustains a “semantic shift” from one age to another, the result of which constitutes a semantic discontinuity of fundamental terms within such theological theories. Applied to the topic at hand, within Lutheran circles ‘God loves you’ means something quite different in the year 2015 than it meant in 1615. While there are many reasons for this semantic shift, the one I shall highlight concerns the law, and how different notions of the law drive towards different notions of God’s love.

(See Addendum for full argument.)

Expressions like “God loves you,” and “You are justified by grace through faith on account of Christ” play upon vastly different semantic fields today than they once did. We in the churches have been lulled into thinking that by uttering the same vocables, we are asserting the thing about which those vocables once spoke. Take, for instance, the innocuous statement, ‘God loves Peter’. What can be prima facie more clear today than that the phrase states that there is a supreme being having the relational property of loving Peter.

How does this say something different from previous ages?

The terms ‘God’ and ‘loves’ do not have fixed meanings through the centuries, especially when they are used together in the phrase, ‘God loves’.2 The term ‘loves’ when said of God has clearly undergone a semantic shift. (I shall not claim incommensurability with earlier notions, only a “shifting” of original meaning.) What causes this semanitic drift?

First, it is important to realize that sixteenth century Christians lived almost two centuries before the Enlightenment, before that time within European intellectual history that called into question the contour and existence of the primary objects of religious reflection and belief. They

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lived in a pre-critical age, a time long before the rational criticism of David Hume (1711-1776) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) had undermined the plausibility of affirming a causal connection between God and the universe.

Kant famously argued God is best understood as a regulative ideal of pure reason and not as a substance having causal relations with the universe. He influenced profoundly the development of theology in Europe in the nineteenth century and after, especially within Protestant theological faculties. Lutheran theologians on the faculties of German univerisities did theology acutely aware of the challenge Kant’s philosophy posed. While some Lutheran theologians rejected the Kantian starting point, most university theologians struggled to do theology in a post-Kantian key; they fought to make sense of the traditional claims of theology without the supposition of pre-modernity that the term ‘God’ refers to some being or substance existing apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.3 For pre-Enlightenment Christian theologians, the reality of God and God’s putative causal relations with the universe was not an intellectual problem. Clearly, Luther believed that God was real and that God was causally active in the universe.4 The Reformer, in fact, feared God because He had real causal power, because God could at any moment punish him and end his life.5 For believers like Luther, ‘God’s love’ connotes something quite paradoxical and unexpected over and against the reality of God’s power justly to punish sinners. Upon the cultural horizon of a very real despair before the righteousness of God, God’s “love” asserts something unanticipated and in considerable tension with the assumed notion of divine righteousness. If God’s righteousness is understood as a justice by which God distributes “likes for likes,” then His righteousness demands human punishment and, in

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effect, a righteous hatred of the sinner for what he or she has done.6 Given a context in which the sinner is judged by a just but wrathful God, the claim that God loves the sinner establishes a semantic tension. In and despite divine distance, God approaches the sinner in love. Proximity and distance are thereby juxtaposed. ‘God loves’ says something that goes against our original suppositions about divine justice; ‘God loves’ says something utterly paradoxical.

Now consider what ‘God’s love’ means for most Christians today.

Within a horizon of complacency that assumes that an omnibenevolent God must always maximize human well-being, within a horizon that preunderstands that God does not and cannot have wrath towards us since even, in the unlikely event that God exists independently of us, He is nonetheless responsible for making us the way we are – within such a horizon the expression ‘God loves me’ is utterly devoid of semantic tension.7 In a horizon that assumes that God is the most noble part of us and which accordingly thinks that God is without wrath, ‘God loves me’ is naturally interpreted as a statement of support for the divine creative act already done.8 Since previous generations really did believe in original sin and divine justice, they believed that they were deserving of death and punishment by a real God with the power to do whatever He might wish to do with them. In this context the statement ‘God loves me’ connotes that in spite of justly deserving death, God mercifully out of His own goodness, forgives and loves. This former meaning is different than what ‘God loves me’ means in our time. Since our contemporary horizon is unsure of the reality and power of God, ‘God loves me’ comes to connote a transcendent validation of my own being.

While in the first case ‘God loves me’ asserts a loving that is underserved and at odds with my sinful nature, the phase ‘God loves me’ uttered today is

both consistent and continuous with the natural rights I posses. While in previous ages ‘God loves me’ is a synthetic or amplitive judgment proclaiming that the relation of being loved by God obtains even when not entailed, expected or deserved by me, today it becomes an analytic judgment:9 ‘God loves me’ is conceptually entailed by the idea of the self, its rights, and a vague notion of a God that, if existing at all, wants me to be happy, i.e., to flourish as a human being.10 The ramifications of this semantic change are apparent. While earlier generations understood ‘God loves me’ as effecting a change in one’s selfunderstanding before the divine - - and consequently a “dis-placement” of human expectation – recent generations assume that the phrase merely characterizes the general relation that the divine must sustain toward His people: It is part of the logic of ‘God’ that God loves people – including Peter and me. Even theologians are often caught unaware of how the words ‘God loves’ has undergone a semantic shift.

What I am saying should not be too surprising. We are really dealing with a question that has been around for the last couple of centuries: What can words proclaiming salvation mean to those for whom salvation is not at issue? ‘God loves me’ was a salvific statement in former times, a statement that brought with it hope that the underserved can still be saved. Today, however, the expression is no longer salvific; it rather sums up nicely all of those things which I believe I deserve.

While the former says that we are saved on the basis of God’s mercy, the latter assures us that indeed we are naturally deserving of all the best within this life.

What has changed besides what one means by ‘God’, ‘God’s love’ and ‘God’s grace’? I believe that at the heart of the matter is a profound change in the meaning of ‘God’s law’, and it is this change which affects other fundamental notions and expressions like ‘God’s love’ and ‘grace’. If the law is the divine intent by a real divine

creator for His creation – and the capibility of this divine being to enforce that intent – then to claim classically that God loves x is wholly consistent with x not acting due to God’s law.

Accordingly, God loves created, sinful beings who are unworthy of God’s love. On the supposition of the reality of the law, asserting ‘God’s love’ and claiming ‘grace’ is consistent with God justly dealing with all who have broken the law. God mercifully saves the unworthy without negating His justice. This is accomplished propter christum (on account of Christ); God saves on account of Christ those whose virtue does not warrant it. The so-called “exodus from virtue to grace” about which Luther speaks suggests that both God’s justice and mercy is exhibited in God’s loving the sinner.11 How different is our time. Without a God existing wholly apart from human beings, there is no law as a divine intentionality upon the universe.

Accordingly, ‘God loves Peter’ no longer means a love that takes within itself the moment of divine wrath, but rather a one dimensional love that every being in the universe deservably receives from the divine. We thus are confronted by two very different interpretations: Let Is be the assignment of meaning to fundamental notions where ‘God’ refers to a divine being apart from human beings, ‘law’ to that real divine being’s intentionality upon the universe, and ‘love’ to that being’s mericiful forgiveness propter christum of all those whose actions violate the law of God. Let It, on the other hand, be the assignment of meaning to fundamental notions where ‘God’ refers to an exhalted notion or power possibly within the self, ‘law’ to that which confronts us phenomenologically as over-and-against-us or a having-notlived-up-to-ness, and ‘love’ to the affirmation of the being of the deserved self which annuls our experience of demand and its concomitant negative self image. Obviously, these two interpretations provide different models each of which satisfy the same set of

theological expressions. Like the very first example in this article. Both Is and It actually assign different referents to the same class of expressions. My contention is that semantic slippage like this happens often in theology.

Lamentably, theologians have often forgotten that in theological disputes the issue is not whether the same words are used in the same order (syntax), but rather the integrity, plausibility and faithfulness of the model the theologian is assuming that satisfies the sentences under consideration (semantics).

Imagine a game of ball where one uses words like ‘touchdown’, ‘first and ten,’ ‘incompleted forward pass’, and ‘safety blitz’. What could these words mean when throwing a little white ball near a man with a bat over sixty feet away? Imagine playing for years with the vocabulary of football only to find that one now played on a baseball diamond with batters and pitchers.

How would the interpretation of the traditional football vocables change when one had only baseballs, bats, gloves and a baseball field?

The condition for the identity of a theological and/or religious tradition is decidedly not a mere agreement on what vocables can be asserted in what context. It is, rather, an agreement about what propositions expressed by these strings are true. Agreement upon the assertability of strings presupposes a common interpretion. Determining whether we can keep the historic faith depends finally upon whether or not we can guard the “semantic drift” of the fundamental assertions of Lutheran theology. Claiming that God exists outside of human awareness, perception, conception and language is a way to control the interpretation of theological expressions. Accordingly, when we say ‘God’, we mean by the word something that is not who we are. To do this we must be clear on the preaching of the law. The words

of grace can mean (roughly) the same thing only if the words of law mean (roughly) the same thing. Without the preaching of the law, the proclamation of the gospel is conceptually impossible.

It has always been this way: The law is necessary, but not sufficient, for the gospel.12 I find it curious that Lutheran crafters of ecumenical agreements (e.g., The Joint Declaration of the Doctrine of Justification in the middle and late 1990s) got excited when they determined that they could “say the same words” as their Roman Catholic brothers or sisters, as if the saying of the same words is either sufficient or necessary for saying the same thing. Luther once said to his foe in a disputation, “It is not about the words, but the thing (res).” Late medieval theologians knew that they had to give a very precise sense to the words they were using so that their readers and hearers could understand exactly what was being uttered. Failure to get clear on the meaning of terms is necessary if one is to determine if there is agreement or disagreement in theology.

Unfortunately, within our postmodern context, this difficult semantic work critical for doing theology well is often simply ignored.

“Even theologians are often caught unaware of how the words ‘God loves’ has undergone a semantic shift.”

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Addendum

Imagine the following set of nonsense expressions: 1.

2.

3.

ArAr and BDX lipponate CAYY CAYY is a RRX Every RRX is a DDX

Let I1 be an interpretation of the above terms as follows: ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐

‘ArAr’ is the name of a man ‘BDX’ is the name of a woman married to ‘ArAr’ ‘lipponate’ = ‘produces or bears’ ‘CAYY’ is the name of a child ‘RRX’ is the set of all male human beings ‘DDX’ is the set of all mammals

On I1 (1), (2) and (3) above become the following.

1*. A man and wife are the parents of a child named ‘CAYY’.

2*. The child CAYY is a male human being.

3*. Every male human being is a mammal.

I1 is a model of (1), (2) and (3) just in case 1*, 2* and 3* are all true on I1 . 13 This seems clear enough, but notice that other models are possible. Consider I2:

☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐ ☐

‘ArAr’ is the earth.

‘BDX’ is Mars ‘lipponate’ = ‘orbits’ ‘CAYY’ is the name of our sun ‘RRX’ is the set of all stars in the Milky Way ‘DDX’ burns through the fusion of hydrogen into helium

I2 is also a model because giving the above interpretation because all of these three sentences are true: 1**. The earth and Mars orbit the sun.

2**. The sun is a star within the Milky Way. 3**. Every star in the Milky Way burns through the

fusion of hydrogen into helium.

Suprisingly, expressions (1), (2) and (3) have an infinite number of models given the interpretations formed through assigning meaning to ‘ArAr’, ‘lipponate’, ‘CAYY’, ‘RRX’ and ‘DDX’. In fact, any set of expressions, even those that are seemingly straightforwardly understandable to us, have an infinite number of interpretations.14 ‘Bob kissed Mary’ means one thing when the word ‘kissed’ means ‘kissed’ and quite another when it means ‘hit’ or ‘hates’. While it seems odd to say that ‘kissed’ can mean ‘hit’, it clearly can when one understands ‘Bob kissed Mary’ as a purely formal

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expression having syntax but not yet an interpretation.

Before an interpretation ‘Bob kissed Mary’ means nothing.

Given an interpretation, however, it can mean many, many things.15 Now let us consider a less abstract example. What is the meaning of the term “mass”? For Newton it is relatively easy to locate the meaning. Mass is the property that objects have such that the product of it and the object’s acceleration equals force. For Newton, ‘m = F/a’, mass equals force over acceleration. Since acceleration is the change of velocity with respect to time, its mass is not a function of the velocity of an object, but merely its change of velocity. The mass of an object does not vary with respect to its actual velocity; an object’s mass is the same if the object is moving at 5 kilometers per second or 299,792,457 kilometers per second.

While mass is invariant with respect to velocity for Newton, it is not so for Einstein. The actual mass of an object equals the rest mass of the object over the square root of (1v2/c2) where v is the velocity of the object and c is the speed of light. Obviously, as the speed of the object approaches the speed of light the denominator approaches 0 and the mass of the object approaches infinity. (As it turns out, the mass of a particle will increase about 1% when it reaches a velocity of 42,000,000 kilometers/sec, about 14% of the speed of light.) That an object’s mass approaches infinity at the speed of light means that the velocity of light is the effective speed limit of the universe.

Given that Newton’s mass is invariant with respect to the velocity of the moving particle, and Einstein’s mass varies with respect to the particle’s velocity, it is tempting to say that ‘mass’ for Einstein is semantically discontinuous with ‘mass’ for Newton. The terms mean different things for the two thinkers. One might say, in fact, that the terms are implicitly defined with respect to the theories in which they appear. Given the congeries of assumptions and practices of classical newtonian mechanics, ‘mass’ is defined in one way; given the congeries of assumptions and practices of relativistic physics, ‘mass’ is defined in another way. While physicists using the word ‘mass’ in 1926 used the very same word Newton used in the 1726, the interpretation of the term changed. In Newton’s day, the interpretation of ‘mass’ was such that it was inconceivable for the mass to change with respect to velocity. After all, mass was an intrinsic property of the object, and the object’s velocity was extrinsic to it.

But this is not so for Einstein. Not only is it conceivable that mass changes with respect to velocity, it does so in actuality.

Now the question arises as to whether mass for Newton and mass for Einstein are incommensurable, that is, whether or not there exists a translation that allows the two notions to be clearly and unambiguously compared. The idea of incommensurability goes back to the ancient Greeks as they struggled to understand notions such as the square root of 2. Prima facie every number ought to be expressable as a fraction involving other numbers. Imagine discovering

2500 years ago that the square root of 2 is not expressible by any fraction p/q. Since the square root of 2 is not comparable to the so-called rational numbers, that is, numbers expressible by the p/q, such a number must be regarded as irrational. It seems to fall out of the number series altogether. In some sense, the square root of two is not measurable or not comparable with respect to the rational number series; it is incommensurate with respect to the set of rational numbers.

Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions created a firestorm of controversy because he used the term “incommensurability” to describe the relationship of one scientific theory to another succeeding it.16 While Kuhn Endnotes for Main Text 1. I shall use the technical term ‘interpretation’ as equivalent to ‘meaning’.

Formal logic proceeds by treating strings of symbols in isolation from what these symbols mean. Given a set of rules, formal logic determines what expressions (strings of symbols) can be generated from other expressions. An expression that can be generated from a set of other expressions on the basis of a set of rules -- the assumed expression together with the rules for combining symbols, and rules for deriving new expressions from old ones, constitute a logical system -- is called a theorem of that system. A semantic model is a consistent assignment of meaning (an interpretation) to the symbols in the logical system such that the primitive expressions, and thus also the theorems, are true. To provide a model for a class of expressions is to assign an interpretation to the non-logical terms appearing in those expressions such that each and every expression in which the terms are constituent is a true statement.

2. While the first example in the addendum claims that a set of sentences can have an infinite number of models giving different extensions or referents for the non-logical terms, predicates and relations, the example from physics of the semantic shift of ‘mass’ seems to speak of a change of intension or sense. An intension is that by virtue of which extension is established.

Accordingly, an individual term’s intension

struggled for the rest of his life to explain what he meant by ‘incommensurabiliy’, many commentators siezed on the notion as claiming that particular scientific theories are incommensurable in the sense that there is no translation possible from those theories into a common background language. The theories are thus radically incomparable; no comparision of one with respect to the other can occur.17 It seems an easy step to say that ‘mass’ for Newton is thus incommensurate with respect to ‘mass’ for Einstein. The idea is simply this:‘Mass’ for Newton gains its meaning within a Newtonian framework of fundamental scientific terms and statements while ‘mass’ for Einstein has meaning within a

relativistic framework of fundamental terms and statements. Since ‘mass’ is implicitly defined in terms of overarching theories, there is no recipe of translation allowing semantic comparability between the two terms.

But as many commentators have pointed out, this dire consequences do not follow. Newtonian mass and relativistic mass are really quite comparable; the first is, in fact, used to determine the second. (As we have seen, relativistic mass equals Newtonian mass over the square root of 1-v2/c2.) While the two concepts of mass are different, they are nonetheless comparable. 18

is its sense while it’s extension is its referent. A monadic predicate’s intension is a property and its extension is the set of objects satisfying that property. A polyadic predicate’s intension is a relation and its extension is the set of all n-tuples satisfying this intension. Finally, the intension of a sentence is the proposition expressed, while the extension of that sentence is its truthvalue. I suggest in this section that it is not merely that the intension of theological terms has changed, but their very reference.

Perceptive readers will understand that this claim is far weaker than the claim that God exists, having the particular ontological contour we ascribe to Him, apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language. Sometimes this second position is called metaphysical realism, while the first option is consistent with moderate, critical or internal realism. For a thorough discussion, see Alexander Miller, “Realism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford. edu/archives/win2014/entries/realism/>.

3. Kant famously argued that although reason naturally seeks the ground of all contingent existing beings, and will not rest until it finds a necessary being that grounds them, the notion of such an ens realissimum is nonethess troublesome and ontologically suspect. Kant writes: “This unconditioned is not, indeed, given as being in itself real, nor as having a reality that follows from its mere concept; it is, however, what alone can complete the series of conditions when we proceed to trace these conditions to their grounds. This is the course, which our human reason, by its very nature, leads all of us (A584/B612; cf. A584/B612n). See Critique of Pure Reason, 1929, trans. N. Kemp Smith, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

4. There are many kinds of realism, and I cannot in this short article argue for a particular variety from among these kinds.

By ‘God is real’ I mean no more than that God exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.

5. Paul Althaus writes that for Luther, “[God] has the will and the power to punish.

God’s wrath is a terrible reality which man cannot bear. God’s wrath is co-extensive with His majesty; like God Himself, it is eternal, omnipotent and infinite. God in his wrath is really “a devouring fire” (Deut.

4:24), and that means that He destroys completely and absolutely.” See Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, Trans. By Robert Schultz, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 169ff.

6. A discussion of the Ciceronian sense of iustitia as reddens unicuique quod suum est (“giving to each what is his due”) can be found in Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification: The Beginnings to the Reformation,(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1986), 11.

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7. Since the semantic tension is gone, the intension of the theological propositions, terms and predicates changes.

8. When thinking about God as the noble part of us, I am reminded of Emerson’s famous line: “Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line, Severing rightly his from thine, Which is human, which divine.”

9. Going back to Kant, a synthetic judgment is that in which the meaning of the predicate is not included within the meaning of the subject. ‘All bodies are heavy’ is a synthetic judgment because ‘being heavy’ is not included within the notion of ‘body’.

Simply put, it is conceivable that a body is not heavy. An analytic judgment, on the other hand, is one where the meaning of the predicate is included within the meaning of the subject. ‘All bodies are extended’ is analytic because ‘being extended’ is included within the notion of ‘body’.

Accordingly, it is inconceivable that a body is not extended.

10. I am thinking here about the Aristotelian notion of happiness as total human flourishing, a flourishing consisting in the cultivation of the intellectual and moral virtues. It would not change the argument, however, to claim that happiness is simply a sentiment or a feeling.

11. Martin Luther begins the scholia to his 1518 Commentary on Romans with this intriguing comment: “. . . the exodus of the people Israel has for a long time been interpreted to signify the transition from vice to virtue. But one should, rather, interpret it as the way from virtue to the grace of Christ, because virtues are often the greater and worse faults the less they are regarded as such and the more powerfully they subject to themselves all human affections beyond all other goods. So also the right side of Jordan was more fearful than the left one. (LW 25:136-37,, WA 56, 158:17-22: “Et omnis egressus populi Israel olim istam egressionem significauit, quam de viciis ad virtutes exponent. Et magis etiam de virtutibus ad gratiam Christi oportet exponi, Cum iusmodi virtutes eo maiora et peiora sunt vitia, quo minus se sinunt putari talia et vehementius affectum humanum sibi deuincunt quam omnia alia bona. Sic dextera pars Jordanis vehementius timuit quam sinistra.”)

Luther is claiming that instead of the term ‘exodus’ signifying, or “causing the mind

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to think” about, a movement or transition of the believer from vice to virtue, as was the case in the medieval tradition, the term should better cause the believer to recall the divine movement whereby God regards the believer as no longer judged by his or her won virtues, but by grace.

12. One would hope this sentence is not surprising to anyone, but in our contemporary context it may indeed strike some as jarring. I would, however, hold it as a conceptual truth. Just as a three-sided figure must have three angles, and just as a bachelor is an unmarried male, so too must the gospel have the law. Accordingly, just as if a figure does not have three angles it do not have three sides, so too if there is no law, there is no gospel.

Endnotes for Addendum 13. Model theory is the study of the interpretation of any formal or natural language by means of set theoretic structures. A model of a set of expressions S is an interpretation in which all expressions of S turn out to be true sentences. If I1 makes all expressions of S true, I1 is a model of S, or I1 satisfies S. One can write that ‘I1 ☐ S’, stating that S is true on interpretation I1, or that S follows as a semantic consequence of I1. S is thus a model-theoretic truth of I1; S is true under the particular interpretation I1. ‘S is true in I1’ is thus a paraphrase of ‘S when interpreted as in I1 is true’. Obviously, model-theoretic truth is thus conceptually dependent upon our ordinary notion of truth.

See Wilfrid Hodges, “Model Theory”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ fall2013/entries/model-theory/>.

14. Hilary Putnam famously argues that if there is any isomorphism (structural similarity) between a set of propositions and the facts such that the propositions are jointly true, i.e., the propositions have a model, then there exist infinitely many isomorphisms (and concomitant models) for the set of propositions. See Putnam, “Models and Reality,” in Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) or Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), Ch. 2.

15. One must abstract away from the seeming immediate meaning ‘Bob kissed Mary’ has for one proficient in English and hear the sounds like one might hear the utterances of speakers in a tribe whose language is unknown. In order to decode the language, one does, in fact, try various interpretations of terms, and in this way endeavor to make what make the expressions the tribesmen seem to be uttering come out true. Imagine what different interpretations the tribesmen might give to our utterances. The LoewenheimSkolem Theorem and the concomitant “Skolem’s Paradox” is used by Putnam to show that our language is semantically indeterminate, that is to say, there is no fact of the matter about that to which the terms and predicates of our language refer. With regard to set theory, he shows there is no single set-theoretic universe over which our quantifiers range, and no single relation refered to by ‘membership’. See Timothy Bays, “Skolem’s Paradox”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2014/entries/paradox-skolem/>.

16 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962).

17.

Interestingly, the clearest formulation of incommensurability among theories and the terms and predicates within them derives from Paul Feyerabend, not Kuhn. For a clear, balanced discussion of the notion of incommensurability among scientific theories see Eric Oberheim and Paul Hoyningen-Huene, “The Incommensurability of Scientific Theories”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato. stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/ incommensurability/>.

18. There are a great many relevant issues here that we cannot discuss in this paper. One might say that while the intension (the “sense”) of mass changes with respect to Newton and Einstein, the extension or reference of the term remains constant. Others reject this as a solution to the problem for various reasons.

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