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Hardness Of Heart: A Study In Biblical Thematic, Frederick W. Danker

Concordia Theological Monthly

Lack of ready acceptance of the Gospel by all people was a perplexing problem, especially so for the early church. At stake were not only the credentials of Jesus as the Christ but also the authority of the apostolic message. If God's own people rejected Jesus, could He still be considered a viable candidate for Israel's highest office? And if the church's heralds were the instruments of proclamation of the Word of salvation, why was response to the message so spotty and relatively fruitless? Earnest assessment of the problem led early theologians to their customary quarry, the Old Testament, for …

What In Scripture Speaks To The Ordination Of Women?, John Reumann

Concordia Theological Monthly

"Ordination," it is well to remember, does not appear, full-blown and in our sense of the term, in the Scriptures.

The Inspired Community: A Glance At Canon History, Everett R. Kalin

Concordia Theological Monthly

The leaders of the Early Church who gave us the first lists of New Testament Scriptures asserted the inspiration of these books but did not regard inspiration as the basis of their uniqueness. They saw the inspiration of the Scriptures as one aspect of a much broader activity of inspiration in the church. This article investigates the interrelationship between inspiration and canonicity and attempts tentative contemporary applications of the fathers' perspective.

The Secret Of God's Plan: Studies In Ephesians Part Three, Martin H. Scharlemann

Concordia Theological Monthly

Our first study in Ephesians in the present series dealt with the content of God's eternal plan of redemption. The second study was devoted to the implementation of the mystery of God's will. In this third part we must turn to a consideration of the opposition to what Luther called the "good and gracious will of God."

The Early Dark Ages Of The Church-Some Reflections, Edgar Krentz

Concordia Theological Monthly

The period of history from the Resurrection to the oldest document in the New Testament is in many ways the darkest in the history of the church. No document in the New Testament antedates the year 50, the generally agreed-on date for 1 Thessalonians. Even if we would date Galatians early, say A. D. 48/49 on the South Galatian hypothesis, we would push our knowledge back only a year and a half. The only other possible candidate for an earlier date is the Epistle of James, placed by a minority of scholars at a time prior to the Pauline Gentile …

Reading Programs In Theology: Forms Of Church And Ministry, Erwin L. Lueker

Concordia Theological Monthly

The study of the church can begin with almost any point of philosophy or theology. The church is Christology-Christ taking form in the world. The church is anthropology - people growing into the full stature of manhood. The church is sociology-the really beloved community forming as the body of its Lord. The church is wisdom-the pillar and ground of truth. The church is semantics-the Word taking form not in sign or sound but in flesh and blood. The church is eschatology-the little flock which has received, is received, and will receive the Kingdom. The church is family-a mother nourishes her …

The Particularity Of The Gospel: Good News For Changing Times, John H. Elliott

Concordia Theological Monthly

Change and decay in all around I see; O Thou, who changest not, abide with me." In this transitional period of modern history when change and change by revolution are the order of the day, the plaintive plea of the popular hymn seems to assume an ever more urgent note. But the question is this: How effectively, if at all, can the notion of the unchangeableness of God expressed in this hymn aid an atomic age society in coping with population explosions, sexual, racial, and campus revolutions, and the threat of worldwide nuclear annihilation? Can men of our time indeed …

Four Correlations Of The Revelation Of God And The Witness Of God, Arthur M. Vincent

Concordia Theological Monthly

Christian scholars of many ages have often found "the revelation of God" and "the witness of God" among the major concepts needing study and application to their times. Modern theologians, under the influence especially of Karl Barth, have shown some of the depth and breadth of these topics. Now the Second Vatican Council with its pronouncements, including the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, has brought these subjects into the limelight for current consideration.

Notes On "Spirit-Baptism" And "Prophetic Utterance", Victor Bartling

Concordia Theological Monthly

The two subjects in the title fall into the difficult area of Pneumatology and are prompted by what is called the modern "charismatic" or "Pentecostal" movement. Both subjects deal with the exceptional gifts of the Holy Spirit in the early church usually called "charisms" (charismata). Strictly speaking all gifts of the Spirit are supernatural, Spirit-given, hence charismatic, so, for example, also the three basic endowments granted to all Christians: faith, hope, love. In the following notes, for the sake of convenience, we shall call the exceptional gifts (for example, "speaking in tongues" and "prophecy") "charismatic," and the spiritual endowments granted …

Sexuality, Marriage, And Divorce In 1 Corinthians 6:12-7:16, Walter J. Bartling

Concordia Theological Monthly

No other social institution can begin to compete with marriage as a subject of ethical concern and reflection on all levels and in all periods of Biblical thought (for example, the opening chapters of Genesis, specific regulatory injunctions in the Torah, the ethical message of the prophets, wisdom literature - both canonical and extracanonical, the Sermon on the Mount, the Tables of Duties in Paul and Peter). Equally important for a study of marriage are the varying patterns of marital and familial life reflected in passing references and allusions in historical accounts (for example, the patriarchal family history, the chronicles …

References To Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, And Extrabiblical Literature As Noted In The Outer Margins Of The Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, Trenton R. Ferro

Concordia Theological Monthly

One of the very helpful features of the Nestle Greek text is its outer margins that list passages useful for further study of the text. Frederick W. Danker has written a very useful survey of the wealth of possibilities that lie at the fingertips of the student, only "a few centimeters to the right" of the text. The references in these margins can be used as a small concordance; they can yield historical information; they can be used, in the case of the gospels, as a source for synoptic criticism; or they can yield a host of passages that are …

New Testament Studies, Past And Present, Edgar Krentz

Concordia Theological Monthly

The pastor who picks up a recent New Testament introduction or theology, a study of the Synoptic Gospels or Acts, or a history of New Testament times may well feel that for him the study of the New Testament has become an arcane and esoteric discipline. The questions asked about the Redaktionsgeschichte of a Gospel, the surprising frequency with which the term gnosis or Gnosticism appears in current literature, or the discussion in many circles of "incipient catholicism" may well lead him to suspect that the whole discipline has now changed.

Brief Studies, David Backus, Harry N. Huxhold

Concordia Theological Monthly

Some Sources of Graeco-Roman Features in the New Testament

Faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews

Rectilinear Or Typological Interpretation Of Messianic Prophecy?, William J. Hassold

Concordia Theological Monthly

The purpose of this article is not to argue directly for the correctness of the one or the other interpretation, though the writer's preference will, no doubt, become clear; rather it is to give a historical survey of the exegetical literature of the two synods dealing with Messianic prophecy and to show how these two contrasting approaches were held by men who were in church fellowship with each other in The Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America, all the while disagreeing with one another on this issue. By presenting the argumentation of both sides of the problem, this study …

Scripture, Tradition, And Authority In The Life Of The Early Church, Herbert T. Mayer

Concordia Theological Monthly

Among the many theological topics being discussed in the church today, none is potentially more helpful - and more complex- than the related topics of Scripture, tradition, and authority. What role does each of these basic concepts play in the work in the parish? In the ecumenical movement? How do they relate to each other?

The Continuing Significance Of Luther's Prefaces To The New Testament, Werner Georg Kuemmel

Concordia Theological Monthly

When Martin Luther published his first translation of the New Testament into the German language in 1522, he did not publish the Biblical texts alone. He provided his readers with some help by prefaces to the whole New Testament and to the individual books. These prefaces were reprinted in all the following editions of the New Testament and of the whole Bible until the 17th century, but Luther took one of them out and changed the text of a few of them in later editions.

The Historical Jesus, The Kerygmatic Christ, And The Eschatological Community, John H. Elliott

Concordia Theological Monthly

We are about to discuss a subject that is quite difficult - if not impossible - to treat in completely detached or neutral fashion. For this is a subject which forces a man, every man, to take a position and to make a decision. The earnestness of this decision is to be found in the fact that this is not merely a subject for academic disputation. It is a question of theology and faith. The subject historically has been treated in terms of a question, or a "riddle," as one English scholar has called it. The question or riddle is …

The New Hermeneutic And Preaching, Richard R. Caemmerer

Concordia Theological Monthly

The first unit in this series discussed the implications for Christian preaching of current studies in the philosophy and theology of language, studies which are usually identified by some such term as linguistic analysis and connected with names like Ian Ramsey and Frederick Ferré As we now turn to the contemporary study of the Sacred Scriptures, we do not make a clean break with the preceding discussion. The Biblical studies reveal the dominant question: What is the language of faith? The purpose of this review, however, is not to analyze the field of Biblical studies in general but to assess …

Brief Studies, Frederick W. Danker, Arthur Carl Piepkorn

Concordia Theological Monthly

The New Testament in the Language of Today

"Die Sammlung" Dissolves

Dangerous Trends In Modern Theological Thought, K. Runia

Concordia Theological Monthly

In an article on “The Development of Theological Thought;” contributed to the symposium Twentieth Century Christianity, Dr. Walter Marshall Horton distinguishes four phases during the first six decades of this century.

The Teaching Of The New Testament Concerning The Church, Bruce M. Metzger

Concordia Theological Monthly

Today the word "church" has a wide of meanings. These include: (1) the totality of Christian believers as the Church universal; (2) a local congregation, whether gathered at one place for worship or not; (3) a building used for public worship; (4) a denomination; and (5) the clerical profession. Of these five common meanings. only the first two appear in the New Testament; the others are of later development. For example, though today we speak of "the church which is located on such-and-such a street," the earliest known reference to a church building dates from the second century. During the …

The Voice Of Augustana Vii On The Church, Frederick B. Mayer, Herbert T. Mayer (Translator)

Concordia Theological Monthly

In Europe as well as in the U.S. A. the question concerning the nature of the church is as much alive as the question concerning the nature of the Gospel Fundamentally one's ideas about the church are determined by one's position toward the Gospel. In the United States the Reformed theologians are concerning themselves with the question of the church from two points of view: the theological and the practical. As to the theological aspect of the question, the Reformed bodies offer a variety of answers, among which three stand out.

The Geneva Bible, Carl S. Meyer

Concordia Theological Monthly

On April 10, 1560, the last page of an English Bible was taken off the press in Geneva. To say that it "rolled off the presses" would be an anachronism. The task of printing this Bible had been begun in January 1558. Twenty-seven months therefore were required for its printing - "God knoweth with what fear and trembling we have been for the space of two years and more, day and night, occupied herein," its translator-pressmen testify. This was the famed Geneva Bible, now 400 years old, which only slowly gave way to the King James Version (1611) during the …

The Unity Of Scripture, Walter R. Roehrs

Concordia Theological Monthly

The unity of Scripture is an article of faith. This unity is also an objective fact that exists apart from faith and does not become a fact merely when I believe it (existentialist theology). But it is more than an arithmetic problem. It is not a mere unit sum at which we arrive by adding a number of given parts and fractions into a whole. This means that it is more than the addition of demonstrable facts and figures.

The Unity Of The Church And The Message Of Christ, Carl Fr. Wisløff

Concordia Theological Monthly

I shall try to throw a little light on this subject by presenting for your consideration seven theses. The first four deal with important basic New Testament ideas. The next two set forth important, but often neglected, central truths of the Lutheran Reformation. The final thesis attempts to draw a conclusion.

The Word Of The Lord Grew: The Historical Character Of The New Testament Word, Martin H. Franzmann

Concordia Theological Monthly

The Word of the Lord grew" -three times in the Book of Acts Luke uses this sentence to sum up a period of the history of the first church (Acts 6:7; 12:24; 19:20). These words are a telling expression of the Biblical conception of the divine Word. Our Lord Himself compared the Word to a seed that is sown and sprouts and grows: 'The seed is the Word of God" (Luke 8:11). The Word of the Lord is a power and is active; it "prevails mightily," as Luke puts it in one of the passages just referred to (Acts 19:20). …

Pauline Charis: A Philological, Exegetical, And Dogmatical Study, Raymond F. Surburg

Concordia Theological Monthly

No word is more characteristic of Christian faith than the word χάϱις, grace. It conveys the central and fundamental idea of the Christian religion.1 In Lambert's opinion χάϱις is the distinctive watchword of the New Testament; in fact, the words "grace reigns" might be placed over every page. The New Testament scholar Moffatt asserts that the New Testament is a religion of grace, or it is nothing.

The Eschatology Of Acts And Contemporary Exegesis, Robert H. Smith

Concordia Theological Monthly

For half a century New Testament exegesis has stood at the center of a storm over eschatology, and the eye of this storm is not all calmness. Two different exegetes skillfully and deliberately lay open the same passage of Scripture and arrive at conclusions that collide head on. Scholars disagree not only concerning what the New Testament says but especially about what the New Testament means in its eschatological statements.

Aids To Bible Study The Nestle Text., Frederick W. Danker

Concordia Theological Monthly

Since its first edition in 1898 Eberhard Nestle's Novum Testamentum Gaece has become standard equipment for students of the New Testament. The 23d edition (1957). edited jointly by his son Erwin Nestle and Kurt Aland, who is to succeed Nestle as the editor, has erased some of the blemishes in its predecessors and includes the readings of Papyrus Bodmer 66.

Aids To Bible Study Concordances, Frederick W. Danker

Concordia Theological Monthly

The recent publication of Nelson's Complete Concordance to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible focuses attention on Biblical concordances in general as a necessary tool for vital interpretation. This brief study aims to present a historical survey and answers in some small measure questions frequently asked by students: What is a good concordance? How can I use a concordance profitably?