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An Examination Of The Left, Right And Center Parties In The American Lutheran Controversy Of The Mid-Nineteenth Century, Philip Hendrickson

Master of Art Theology Thesis

James Voelz recently published a two-part essay in Concordia Journal entitled, “Contemporary Americans Make Poor Confessional Lutherans."! In his essay, Dr. Voelz points out that the rampant liberty that permeates American life is constantly at odds with the desire of Lutherans to remain confessional, doctrinal and liturgical. He states, "All of the factors involved in such a church, viz., doctrinal formulations, confessional statements, and uniform liturgical practices, are restrictive and non-libertarian. They rub against the grain of every contemporary American. Which means that to embrace them is to be truly counter-cultural.”

This tension between being Lutheran and being American is …

Hermeneutical Implications Of Certain Pre-Pauline Passages In The Pauline Corpus Of The New Testament, Inta Ivanovska

Master of Art Theology Thesis

Postmodern linguistics and philosophy have challenged the possibility that an author, a text, or a reader of a text possesses or can possess complete objectivity. It claims that an "independent, objective, reason-driven reader" is merely a "communally dependent, subjective, presupposition-bound agent." Similarly, an author is regarded as subject who through the text merely expresses the perspectives he has acquired through his own, contextually-shaped experiences. Moreover, once created, a text is not to be regarded as an entity which bears its own intrinsic meaning; nor is a text the expression of an "original," authorial intent. Rather, a text is merely a …