The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relation’s executive staff has issued an important warning against the new version of the New International Version (referred to as NIV2011). I’ve included the full statement for you to read, but please note these key words in the document:

The use of inclusive language in NIV 2011 creates the potential for minimizing the particularity of biblical revelation and, more seriously, at times undermines the saving revelation of Christ as the promised Savior of humankind. Pastors and congregations of the LCMS should be aware of this serious weakness. In our judgment this makes it inappropriate for NIV 2011 to be used as a lectionary Bible or as a Bible to be generally recommended to the laity of our church.

At the time Lutheran Service Book was adopted a number of years ago, the NIV was rejected for continuing use in the hymnal after careful evaluation by the Synod’s CTCR, the Synod’s two seminaries and by the Commission on Worship. The reason it was rejected was because of the already significant weaknesses in the NIV, but now along comes NIV2011, which is completely replacing the older form of NIV. It introduces even far worse problems. I strongly encourage  you to share this statement wide and use it to warn people against continuing use of the New International Version translation.

Here is the statement, which you may download. It is a PDF file.

CTCR on NIV 2011

I’m happy to announce that Concordia Publishing House has released the second, and last, volume on the subject of the Ministry, by Johann Gerhard, part of the ongoing translation project of his entire Loci Theologici. The two volumes on the ministry, combined with his tome on the Church provide, for the first time, an entire English translation of what is the most extensive discussion of the doctrine of Church and Ministry by a Lutheran theologian. In his great work “Church and Office” C.F.W. Walther wholeheartedly endorses Gerhard when he writes in the introduction to the book:

It was, of course, not our intention to present the doctrines of our church regarding church and office [Kirche und Amt] in their completeness. Whoever desires this will find such a presentation in the larger dogmatic works of the teachers of our church, especially in the master works of Martin Chemnitz and Johann Gerhard.

I highly encourage all serious students of Scripture, and of course, all Lutheran pastors, to have Gerhard in their libraries. You may subscribe to the volumes in the series here. I’ve included information about Gerhard and the Gerhard series below the photo.

Johann Gerhard’s Loci Theologici—Now in English

“Gerhard’s Loci is the greatest doctrinal text in the entire history of Lutheranism. By putting these splendid volumes in the English language, CPH ensures access to the solid teaching of the orthodox Lutheran Church in one of its greatest expressions ever penned. And CPH is virtually the only Lutheran publishing house in the world with the capacity, fidelity, and will to produce such gems!”
-Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Johann Gerhard (1582–1637) was the premier Lutheran theologian of the baroque period. Now his Loci Theologici is translated in English for the first time in seventeen volumes of Theological Commonplaces.

The Theological Commonplaces series is the most significant theological work of Lutheran orthodoxy after the Reformation and remains a classic of Lutheran theology. With skill and precision, Gerhard sets forth the Christian faith from Scripture in dialogue with the Church Fathers, medieval theology, Luther, and a multitude of contemporary theologians.

Each hardback volume includes:
• the translation of Gerhard’s Loci (originally published from 1610 to 1625)
• a glossary of key theological, rhetorical, and philosophical terms
• a name index
• a Scripture index
• a carefully researched list of works cited, which presents guidance for deciphering the numerous abbreviations of the other titles from which Gerhard quotes.

Become a subscriber to Theological Commonplaces and each new volume of Gerhard’s monumental series will be shipped to you automatically. Currently, volumes are priced at $54.99, but as a subscriber you will pay only $38.49, a 30% savings. Your subscription starts with the newest volume and you will continue to receive each new volume. As an added bonus, subscribers can purchase previously released volumes at the same 30% savings.

Call 1-800-325-3040

From Weedon’s blog:

What a beautiful volume, it is!  CPH’s The Apocrypha: The Lutheran Edition with Notes is a most worthy companion to sit next to your copy of The Lutheran Study Bible.

When you first open it, you will notice right away the similarities in layout. If you’ve mastered navigating TLSB, you’ll feel right at home in The Apocrypha.  The text employed is the English Standard Version, and once again it delivers a text that is clear and dignified without being overly colloquial or informal.

But WHY? you might be asking.  Why bother?

Well, the Apocrypha is simply part of our heritage as Christians, and specifically as Lutheran Christians. It was invariably published in Lutheran Bibles in Germany, right between the two Testaments and with Luther’s incredibly helpful little note:  ”Apocrypha, that is, books which are not held equal to the sacred Scriptures, and nevertheless are useful and good to read.” These are books that were in the Greek translation of the OT but not found in the Hebrew text.

Putting them between the Testaments (rather than inserting them among the books of the Old Testament) is actually a good reminder that they specifically illuminate for us the time period between the close of the OT and the beginning of the New. Just a solitary example: we read in John 10 that our Lord was in Jerusalem “for the feast of the dedication.” Well, you’d search in vain for this feast in the Old Testament writings and might wonder what this IS that Jesus is attending. The answer to your query is found in 2 Maccabees 10:1-8 – the institution of what we call today Hanukah!

You’ll also find some interesting “middle” stories between the Old Testament and the New Testament accounts. Numbers 21:4-9 relates the story of the bronze serpent. And our Lord picks this up in John 3 as a type of His own crucifixion: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness…” Between the two accounts, we find this meditation on the event from the Book of Wisdom (16:5-8):

For when the terrible rage of wild beasts came upon your people and they were being destroyed by the bites of writhing serpents, your wrath did not continue to the end; they were troubled for a little while as a warning and received a symbol of deliverance to remind them of your law’s command. For he who turned toward it was saved, not by what he saw, but by you, the Savior of all. And by this also you convinced our enemies that it is you who delivers from every evil.

And, of course, the Lutheran Church has always continued to make use of parts of the Apocrypha in our worship life. An ongoing frustration in the use of The Lutheran Service Book has been its oblique use of “liturgical text” whenever something was used from the Apocrypha. That’s nice, but WHERE IS IT FROM? Be frustrated no longer. Your handy-dandy Apocrypha: The Lutheran Edition with Notes gives you the info in a handy chart (thank you, Peter Reske) on pages 387, 388. Ah, so “When all was still, and it was midnight, Your almighty Word, O Lord, descended from the royal throne”—the lovely antiphon for the Introit at the Christmas Midnight Service—that comes from Wisdom 18:14-15! Or the Introit for Easter Tuesday “He gave them to drink of the water of wisdom”? That’s from Sirach 15:3b-4a.

Perhaps most shocking to the sensitivity of modern day Lutherans is that our spiritual forebears not only continued to read the Apocrypha in private in their homes, but even publicly in the Church services!  A CPH published German Bible I have lists two readings from the Apocrypha on saints’ days:

The epistle for the day of St. John is provided as Sirach 15:1-8
The epistle for the birth of Mary is provided as Sirach 24:22-31

In Lutheran Magdeburg’s 1613 Cantica Sacra, we note that whole swaths of the Apocrypha were read in the daily Matins and Vespers in parts of the post-Pentecost season: Tobit, Judith, sections from Maccabees.

Some of my favorite sections are the “wisdom literature” (Sirach, Wisdom) and the “liturgical” pieces, above all the Prayer of Manasseh (cf. 2 Chron.33:12-13, 18-19):

for your glorious splendor is unendurable, and the wrath of your threat to sinners is overpowering; yet immeasurable and unsearchable is your promised mercy… the sins I have committed are more than the sand of the sea; my transgressions are multiplied, O Lord, they are multiplied. I am unworthy to look up and see the height of heaven because of the multitude of my iniquities… I earnestly implore you,  forgive me, O Lord, forgive me! Do not destroy me with my transgressions… For you, O Lord, are the God of those who repent, and in me you will show forth your goodness; for, unworthy as I am, you will save me in your great mercy.

But the objection is raised:  ”Look, our people don’t even know the canonical Scriptures as they should!  Is it wise to bother with introducing them to the Apocrypha?” It’s a fair question, and I’d certainly not suggest that a steady diet of the Apocrypha or anything else (TV, novels, the internet) be allowed to replace the daily discipline of time in the canonical Scriptures.  BUT, I suspect the folks who’d have the greatest interest in the Apocrypha are precisely the folks who are INTO the canonical Scriptures already. You know, the kind of folks who will have puckered a brow over a “Feast of Dedication” in John 10 and wondered what further information they might have learned about that.

And I’ll be honest: I think for pastors especially the Apocrypha is invaluable. I mean, we make our promise to conduct all our preaching, teaching and administration of the Sacraments in accord with the faith as it is confessed in the Book of Concord, do we not? But this Book specifically references the Apocrypha more than once. At the very least we should KNOW the context of the passages that are cited. Luther’s, Chemnitz’s, Gerhard’s, and Walther’s sermons are peppered with allusions or references to the Apocrypha and I think we’re definitely the poorer when we no longer “get” those.

What people fear, I think, from the Apocrypha is that somehow publishing this again will elevate these books to the level of canonical Scripture – i.e., to texts that can form the basis for the formulation of the Church’s dogma. But such a fear is more than allayed in the very helpful study notes that accompany this version. Even on the very cover page, Dr. Luther’s words to Eck are cited:  ”I know that the church retains this book [of the Apocrypha] as I just said, but the church is not able to grant more authority or strength to a book than the book has on its own.”

The long and short of it: it’s utterly worth each pastor owning and studying in conjunction with the canonical Scripture for the wonderful light it sheds on the intertestamental period, for the place it has historically possessed in our liturgical, catechetical, theological, and homiletical tradition.  It’s also utterly worthy of any laity who are already students of the Word of God, for the exact same reasons. Buy it! You won’t be sorry!

“Hey, Paul, is there any kind of study guide or something like that for the Apocrypha?” “Hey, Paul, do you have a bulletin insert we can use in our congregation?” “Hey, Paul, do you have one of those sign up sheet things you usually send us for new books like this?”

Why, yes, in fact, I have a study guide for you, a bulletin insert for you, and a sign up sheet for you! Let me give you the links right now:

Study Guide

Bulletin Insert

Sign Up Poster

Oh, wait, there’s more, did you know you can download a nice PDF “sampler” from The Apocrypha? Yes, you can. Click here.

And, by the way, here is a nice graphic you might want to grab and use across your various social media interwebbernet networking twitter book facetweet sites and pages and forums and blogs.

Picked up another interesting post from one of my favorite blogs “History of the Ancient World” which is kind of a clearing house of papers and theses on various topics concerning ancient civilizations. This one caught my eye as particularly interesting, on religious toleration and the Roman Empire, detailing how Rome dealt with various religious groups across its vast empire, Christianity being one of the religious that kept bumping against Roman authority due to its recalcitrant attitudes about the whole “Emperor is God” thing. Here’s a summary of the thesis you can read here (give it some time to load).

“This thesis examines religious toleration in the Roman world throughout the republic and empire and its connection to Roman political power. While studies have examined the role religion played in Roman political success, few have looked at the reactions of the Romans in multiple situations involving religious groups that were incompatible with Roman society in order to draw broad conclusions about the nature of Roman religious toleration and how it was meant to maintain Roman supremacy. By examining a number of such groups, this study aims to outline the place of religion in the Roman political system, to show why certain religious groups were met with various forms of hostility, and finally to consider what these incidences reveal about Roman religious toleration and the place of religion in Rome’s political landscape. This study finds that Roman religion had very specific characteristics and was a pillar ofthe Roman state, so that when a religious group caught the attention ofthe Roman authorities and did not fit the requirements ofthe Roman state religion, it was perceived as a threat to Rome’s position of power. Each group examined received different treatment from Rome depending on other stresses endangering Roman political stability and the structure and practices ofthe group in question. Those that could be made into acceptable Roman cults were permitted to exist in their new form while others were completely rejected. Allowing groups to continue in any form, though, was done so under the supervision of the senate or emperor which shifted power back to the Roman state and re-established its control over the religious and hence political sphere. Such treatment of religious groups should not be called toleration and this thesis helps to correct such misjudgements which deny the importance that religion played in Roman political power.”

Today we commemorate the beheading of John the Baptist. Why? Here’s why, thanks to Pastor William Weedon, whose blog post I’m almost unashamedly copying here.

“From the perspective of the world, it was an ignominious end to John the Baptist’s life. Yet it was in fact a noble participation in the Cross of Christ, which was John’s greatest glory of all… He was the last of the Old Testament prophets and also the herald of the New Testament… And in the footsteps of the prophets who had gone before him – in anticipation of Christ whose way he prepared – this servant of the Lord manifested the cross by the witness of his death.” (p. 670)

The writing for the day was from Dr. Luther: “He allows his prophets and apostles to be expelled and murdered… He allows HIs Christians to suffer want, trouble, and misfortune in the world. He acts as He did in the days of His flesh, when John the Baptist had to lose his head for the sake of a desperate harlot, while He, the Savior and Helper, said nothing about it, departed thence in a ship and withdrew into the solitude of the wilderness… Hence the prophet Isaiah correctly says of God: ‘Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself…’ For in the kingdom of faith God wants to be small, but in the future kingdom of sight He will not be small but great. Then He will show that He saw the misery of His people and heard their crying and had a will that inclined to help them…”

In today’s collect we pray: “You gave Your servant John the Baptist to be the forerunner of Your Son, Jesus Christ, both in his preaching of repentance and in his innocent death. Grant that we…may daily repent of our sins, patiently suffer for the sake of the truth, and fearlessly bear witness to His victory over death…”

A Lost Treasure—Found!
Discover “The Apocrypha” from Concordia Publishing House
The Apocrypha: Lutheran Edition with Notes

AVAILABLE FOR IMMEDIATE ORDERING AND SHIPPING HERE

We pray:

O Lord God, the light of the minds that know You, the life of the souls that love You, and the strength of the hearts that serve You, give us strength to follow the example of Your servant Augustine of Hippo, so that knowing You we may truly love You and loving You we may fully serve You—for to serve You is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Today we remember, honor and commemorate St. Augustine, a giant among all our church fathers, noted preacher, catechist, theologian and leader of the Church. When one reads Augustine’s many writings, one knows that here is a deep and vastly reflective intellect at work. His work was formative particularly for the Western Church, and very influential on Lutheranism, via Martin Luther who was in the order of Augustinian monks. I particularly love reading Augustine’s sermons in a fresh new translation that came out in the 1990 in the series Augustine for the 21st Century. His writings and thought is so complex and rich, he simply defies classification. Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists all try to claim him as one of their own. The painting of Augustine is the earliest known portrait of him, dating from the sixth century. It is a fresco in Rome.

I encourage you to listen to the sample posted on this web site, of an audio book on Augustine. It is a great introduction to Augustine and his conversion, in his own words.

Augustine was one of the greatest of the Latin church fathers and a significant influence in the formation of Western Christianity, including Lutheranism. Born in A.D. 354 in North Africa, Augustine’s early life was distinguished by exceptional advancement as a teacher of rhetoric. In his book Confessions he describes his life before his conversion to Christianity, when he was drawn into the moral laxity of the day and fathered an illegitimate son. Through the devotion of his sainted mother Monica and the preaching of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (339–97), Augustine was converted to the Christian faith. During the great Pelagian controversies of the 5th century, Augustine emphasized the unilateral grace of God in the salvation of mankind. Bishop and theologian at Hippo in North Africa from A.D. 395 until his death in 430, Augustine was a man of great intelligence, a fierce defender of the orthodox faith, and a prolific writer. In addition to the book Confessions, Augustine’s book City of God had a great impact upon the church throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

What follows is a lengthy biographical summary of his life and work from the Catholic Cyclopedia.

Read more…

A lost treasure has been found!  The Apocrypha, which went missing in action in English speaking Lutheranism, has been restored. Since the time of Luther’s first complete Bible translation, through the hundreds of years that followed, faithful Lutheran theologians, pastors and laity had the Apocrypha as part of their Bibles and spiritual heritage. It was quoted in doctrinal works, devotional works and in sermons by all orthodox confessional Lutherans, down to the days of C.F.W. Walther who referenced it in his writings and sermons. But, when the church here in America, the Apocrypha was lost because it was not printed in English Bibles that were used by Lutherans. Now, for the first time, a special Lutheran study edition is ready for you to dig into.

You may place your order now, by going to this web site.

Since Concordia Publishing House has moved all LOGOS based resources into the LOGOS web distribution method, there are now many titles available as stand alone volumes that once were only available when you bought “collections” in the Concordia Electronic Theological Library [CETL]. You can now purchase any of the volumes listed below as separate/stand alone volumes. The better pricing on them comes when you do buy them in the collections in which the are placed in the CETL, but if you do not wish to do that, you can purchase things now separately, as instant downloads into your LOGOS collection, and of course, if you wish, you can buy all these volumes as a single purchase if you buy the entire CETL Collection, for $475, which provides the following 40 volumes, just under $12 per book. The choice is yours now: purchase it all at once, for the greatest savings, or in  individual collections, or as separate volumes.

In addition to these titles, we are bringing the existing volumes of the Concordia Commentary series into LOGOS, and will be adding the newer volumes of the Luther’s Works extension and the Gerhard LOCI collection. You can see all resources from CPH available in LOGOS by visiting our CPH LOGOS page, link here.  And, by the way, you can also purchase any Luther’s Works (American Edition) as a stand alone volume, or in the entire collection. I listed those titles below, hit the “read more” link to see them.

We pray:

O Lord, You strengthened Your patient servant Monica through spiritual discipline to persevere in offering her love, her prayers, and her tears for the conversion of her husband and of Augustine, their son. Deepen our devotion to bring others, even our own family, to acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, who with You and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Today we honor and remember St. Monica, beloved and blessed mother of St. Augustine. Her experiences as a wife of a man who was a harsh pagan, but who was converted eventually due in large measure to her loving patience with him, are immortalized for us by St. Augustine himself, chiefly in his deeply introspective work of spiritual autobiography, Confessions. Her ardent and continuing prayers for her son and her constant love and support for him saw him move from paganism, to heretical Christianity, while living outside marriage with a woman who fathered him a child, to eventual orthodox Christianity and service as a bishop. Here is The LCMS biographical note about her.

A native of North Africa, Monica (A.D. 333–387) was the devoted mother of Saint Augustine. Throughout her life she sought the spiritual welfare of her children, especially that of her brilliant son, Augustine. Widowed at a young age, she devoted herself to her family, praying many years for Augustine’s conversion. When Augustine left North Africa to go to Italy, she followed him to Rome and then to Milan. There she had the joy of witnessing her son’s conversion to the Christian faith. Weakened by her travels, Monica died at Ostia, Italy on the journey she had hoped would take her back to her native Africa. On some church year calendars, Monica is remembered on May 4.

Here is a longer biographical note about her from “Lives of Saints”, Published by John J. Crawley & Co., Inc.

Read more…