Prolegomena

Greetings and Salutations,

I'm currently about 90 pages into Hoenecke's prolegomena in volume 1 of his monumental Evangelical Lutheran Dogmatics and I'm all Schleiermacher-ed out. Now I know why my agnostic philosophy professor in college wanted to skip over Schleiermacher and talk about idealists like Hegel. Agree or disagree with Hegel, at least he was coherent! Schleiermacher is about as clear as split-pea soup.

Schleiermacher Soup

I still have quite a bit of prolegomena to go and as much as some of it gets technical-schmecnical for me (yes, even for mildly pedantic me) I got to give Hoenecke high marks for writing such a magnum opus and paying so much attention to the history and details of the evolution development of Lutheran theology and the philosophical trends that shaped and affected it.

It will be nice to get past it all though and get on to the actual dogmatic theology.

TTFN & God Bless,

Jim

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My Shelf Runneth Over

Greetings,

Lately I have acquired quite a few new books to read. I sort of have a plan for reading. I want to read certain New Testament Bible commentaries together (Lenski, ACCS, People's Bible, Concordia) and also read through several of the books on Dogmatic and/or systematic theology that have been written by Lutheran authors, especially those of the Synodical Conference.

Going back to school is still a year + out there and I want to be ready. I want to be drenched in good, Christian works on the Bible & Theology. My Pastor was cool enough to recently invite me to join Shelfari (see above) which is helping me log my reading.

Join me there sometime!

TTFN & God Bless,

Jim

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Lutheran Online Education and Other Moments in Wishful Thinking

Greetings,

I have been very bad at keeping up this blog but I have also been very busy. I have focused most of my energies over the last umpteen years on the political realm and am growing tired of it. I have witnessed over 30 years of tumultuous change from the failed years of the Jimmy Carter presidency up to the present and I see humanity making the same mistakes over and over and repeating the same temporary remedies over and over and find that the words,

the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever

and

. . . vanity of vanities; all is vanity. What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun? One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever

have become very meaningful to me. I see a lot of striving back and forth and improvements to the human condition are fleeting and temporary when they do come. My own feeling is that while public opinion sways back and forth no real foundational changes (not any of the positive sort any way) for the better are taking place. No, what is occurring is partisans are only fighting back and forth for persuadable people rather than making life-long converts. The result? Very little substantive change but a good deal of fighting.

Over the last few months I have been reading several commentaries on Romans (Luther, Franzmann, Lenski, Panning, & Bray) and also I have been carefully reading Russell Kirk's magnum opus The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot and have found my mind wandering more and more to the transcendent, permanent & eternal over and against the immediate, evanescent & finite.

While I have been reading these various works and resultantly, evaluating my life, I have decided that soon I must go back to school and pursue a Masters Degree and then put those credentials to work immediately for the benefit of the Church. Economies will crest and crash, societies will ascend and topple - and the pendulum will swing back until the end of time.

In the mean time I have looked online for a online Lutheran Masters program in the form a MAR (Master of Arts in Religion) or some other similar degree. There are schools aplenty in the Baptist, Reformed and other Protestant traditions but very little in the Lutheran tradition. So far, to the best of my knowledge, all the confessional Lutheran synods (ELS, WELS, LC-MS) have little or no online degree programs. If I were Anglican, Baptist or Presbyterian I'd have some choices. Sigh.