History of Christianity Commons^™

John Chrysostom, The Preacher, John H. Fritz

Concordia Theological Monthly

John Chrysostom - the name Chrysostom, the golden mouth, was given him by the Church because of his oratorical ability. He has been known by that name since the seventh century. He was born of noble parentage at Antioch, Syria, on the river Orontes, in 347 A. D. Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Rome were outstanding cities in those days. Antioch was one of the most splendid cities in the Roman Empire. It had a population of two hundred thousand. Though half of the inhabitants were nominally Christians, their Christianity varied from severe asceticism to almost pagan laxity.

Girolamo Savonarola, 1452-1498, W. G. Polack

Concordia Theological Monthly

On May 23 this year, 450 years will have passed since the martyrdom at Florence, Italy, of Girolamo Savonarola, last of the great medieval friars and last of the so-called forerunners of the Reformation. Columbus had discovered America six years before. Martin Luther, 15 years old, was attending the school of the Brethren of the Common Life at Magdeburg when Savonarola died. Thirty years later Luther published Savonarola's exposition of Psalm 51-an exposition written while he was awaiting execution - as an example of evangelical doctrine and Christian piety. To understand the background of the martyrdom of the Monk of …

The Pictish Church, A Victim Of Garbled History, F. R. Webber

Concordia Theological Monthly

As Thomas Maclaughlin made clear almost a century ago the word "saint" in the early Gaelic language meant "missionary" and nothing more. The Celts were not in communion with Rome, and canonization was then unknown. St. Ninian, therefore, is not a man who has been canonized, but the Celts gave him that title to denote the fact that he was a missionary. Few men have been treated so shabbily by historians. Ninian was the great evangelical pioneer in the North of Europe, and certainly he was as great a man as St. Columba or St. Patrick; yet our leading reference …

The Pictish Church, A Victim Of Garbled History, F. R. Webber

Concordia Theological Monthly

It seems almost incredible that a powerful evangelical religious body could flourish for almost five centuries and then be all but forgotten. Moreover, it was a denomiation possessed of a form of missionary zeal that puts us to shame today; a denomination that maintained a number of powerful training schools from which Christian missionaries were sent out to evangelize the pagans; and (if we are to believe the earliest historians) a religious body that preached Christ Crucified with apostolic fervor. Such, we are assured by painstaking historians, was the early Celtic Church. The Celtic Church, like our larger religious bodies …

The Consensus Of Sandomierz. A Chapter From The Polish Reformation, Jaroslav Pelikan Jr

Concordia Theological Monthly

From April 9 to 14, 1570, representatives of Polish Calvinism, of Polish Lutheranism, and of the Bohemian Brethren met in the city of Sandomierz in southwestern Poland and signed a document acknowledging each other's confessions and doctrines as orthodox and looking forward to the time when all three could be united in one confession and one national Polish Church; that document was the so-called Consensus Sendomiriensis, the Consensus of Sandomierz. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the conditions which produced it, and to explain the circumstances under which it was adopted.

History As A Weapon In Controversy, W. Spitz

Concordia Theological Monthly

Eduard Fueter, ascribing the development of modern historiography to the Lutheran Reformation and more particularly to the purposes of polemics, declares that Protestant church history was created solely for the needs of confessional polemics. Ancient church history was to furnish the proof that Protestantism, in contrast to Catholicism, had preserved the original purity of Christianity. Medieval church history was to expose the terrible darkness to which the rule of the Antichrist had led.

Lund, W. Arndt

Concordia Theological Monthly

During the first week of July all eyes were focused on the little town of Lund, Sweden, entertaining the World Convention of Lutherans. It is a town that is entitled to honorable mention in its own rights. Pleasantly situated in the maritime plain of southwestern Sweden and twenty miles distant from the port of Malmoe, it is the seat of one of the two Swedish universities and can justly claim to be an important center of scholarship and learning.

The Historical Background Of The Westminster Assembly, Th. Hoyer

Concordia Theological Monthly

The Presbyterians are this year observing the tercentenary of the Westminster Confession. The Westminster Assembly, the body which formulated the chief Confession of the Presbyterians, was called into being by an ordinance of Parliament, June 12, 1643, for the avowed purpose of establishing a form of church government, "most agreeable to God's Holy Word, and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the Church at home, and nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland, and other Reformed Churches abroad." To this end it was "thought fit and necessary to call an Assembly of learned, godly, and judicious Divines, …

Ludwig Ernest Fuerbringer, 1864-1947, J. H. Fritz

Concordia Theological Monthly

In the early morning of Tuesday, May 6, the Lord called Dr. Ludwig Ernest Fuerbringer to his eternal rest. More than fourscore years he was permitted to live and labor on this earth. His ministerial training he received at Concordia College, Fort Wayne, and at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. After a pastorate at Frankenmuth, Mich., from 1885 to 1893, he served on the faculty of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, for a period of fifty years. The theological faculty of our sister synod in Australia honored him with the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and Valparaiso with the degree of Doctor …

Thomas Chalmers, The Walther Of Scotland, F. R. Webber

Concordia Theological Monthly

The year 1947 marks the centennial of the death of Dr. Thomas Chalmers, perhaps the greatest man that Scotland ever produced. His life and his conflict with a corrupt State Church offer many striking parallels with that of Dr. Walther of our own Synod. Moreover, religious conditions in Scotland a little over a century ago were of such a nature that one needs only to change names and a few details in order to have a picture of religious conditions in Germany just before the Saxon emigration to America.

The Melanchthonian Blight, Richard Craemerer

Concordia Theological Monthly

Luther's Reformation was a movement of truly spiritual vitality. He restored to light some of the most powerful impulses of the Christian religion - salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the royal priesthood of all believers, the divinity of the Christian calling. Somewhere around 1525, however, this vitality seems to wane. The German princes begin to dominate in the Lutheran movement, and they retain most of the pagan characteristics of their contemporaries. Theologians expend their best efforts in many decades of acrimonious controversy. The German people lag behind their neighbors in cultural and political progress, almost succumb to …

Timelog Of Jesus' Last Days, W. Georgi

Concordia Theological Monthly

The last period in the Life of Christ comprises eight days, passed in or near Jerusalem, from Friday to Friday, Nisan 8-15, 30 A. D.

Henry The Eighth's Divorce And Luther, William Dallmann

Concordia Theological Monthly

On June 21, 1529, the King and the Queen of England stood at the bar of Cardinal Campegi, an Italian judge. The Queen appealed to Rome and walked out on him!

The Kaiser “tumed on the heat" and the Pope called the stenchy mess back to Rome and thus broke his papal promise given again and again and again. In other words, he bade Campegi return without publishing the decretal bull declaring Henry's first marriage null and void.

Nothing new. When Benvenuto Cellini rebuked him for breaking a solemn promise, the Vicar of Christ ironically joked he had power to …

Henry The Eighth's Divorce And Luther, William Dallmann

Concordia Theological Monthly

“Luther gave the green light to divorce." - Rev. John Toomy in the Jesuit America of August 14, 1943.

“Luther teaches any man who is tired of his wife may leave her for any reason whatsoever, and, forthwith, the marriage is dissolved and both are free to marry again." - Right Reverend Monsignor Patrick O'Hare, D. D., LL. D., in Facts About Luther, p. 333. Pustet, 1916.

It is a rehash of stale stuff. Four hundred years ago, on May 19, 1536, Eustace Chapuys, Kaiser Karl's ambassador to London, wrote Karl's minister Granvelle: “Many think that the Concubine [Anne Boleyn] …

Outline For A History Of The Old Testament Canon, Rudolph Gehle

Concordia Theological Monthly

There is one final question which is of importance in this study. The question is this: What Books Belong to the Canon, and How Are They Identified and Distinguished From All Others? This question will be discussed in three sections, namely: 1. The Canon of the Jews. 2. The Canon of Christ and the Apostles. 3. The Canon of the Christian Churches.

Mozley's Tribute To Luther, W. Dallmann

Concordia Theological Monthly

James B. Mozley was appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford by Gladstone. In January, 1848, he reviewed the enemy Audin's Luther, the neutral Michelet's Luther, and the friendly archdeacon Hare's “Vindication of Luther," printed in Essays, Volume I. These works seem to be the sources of his knowledge of Luther. An Anglo-Catholic, who “has everything but the Pope," he is far from friendly to Luther.

The Slavonic Luther, Andrew Wantula

Concordia Theological Monthly

Where the largest and mightiest Polish River, the Vistula, rises, lies a small country known as Cieszyn Silesia (Teschen Silesia). After the last World War two Slavonic sister nations, Poland and Czechoslovakia, shared this land between them. To a large extent the river Olza formed a natural boundary between these two nations, and the old capital, the city of Cieszyn, was divided between them. From 1290 until 1653 this country was an independent dukedom. The rulers were the Dukes of Sieszyn of the Royal House of the Piasts. After the death of the last duchess of Sieszyn, Elizabeth Lucretia, who …

Luther And The War Against The Turks, George W. Forell

Concordia Theological Monthly

Modern psychoanalysis tells us that disease is the touchstone of the healthy mind. What is true in the realm of psychology is not less true in the realm of ethics. The most terrible disease in the realm of human relations is war, and so we can say that war is the touchstone of a healthy ethical system. In its attitude toward war the weakness of an ethical system is revealed. In the war situation an ethical system is revealed as basically unrealistic if it proves unwilling to face the actual situation and therefore uses the escape of absolute pacifism. It …

Some Famous Scottish Preachers Of Post-Reformation Times, F. R. Webber

Concordia Theological Monthly

It is hard to mention a country that has produced more famous preachers than Scotland. In proportion to the total population Wales may have done so, but the sermons of many of the eminent Welsh preachers have never been translated into English.

The Missouri Synod And English Work, H. B. Hemmeter

Concordia Theological Monthly

The Missouri Synod, which is about to celebrate its centennial in 1947, has been known in the past largely as a German-speaking body. Its interest and its activity in Lutheran church work in the English language are not so generally known or understood. The fact is that both the Saxon and the Franconian founders from the very beginning were interested in, and anxious to do, service in the language of their new homeland. Already before the organization of Synod in 1847 the Saxons in 1838 established their Concordia Academy in Altenburg, Missouri, enrolling at the very start one who was …

The Formative Years Of Doctor Luther, E. G. Schwiebert

Concordia Theological Monthly

There can be no doubt that many of Martin Luther's contemporaries realized that he was one of the great men of history. Almost twenty years before he died, his friends began to collect the Reformer's letters and writings, while at different times twelve table companions recorded his conversations with the dinner guests. The three funeral addresses delivered at the time of Luther's death in 1546 testify to this same conviction. Since he had died in his native Eisleben, a service was first held there in the Andreas-Kirche, on which occasion Jonas, who had accompanied Luther on the journey from Wittenberg, …

Was Luther Needed?, William Dallmann

Concordia Theological Monthly

Where all the world, the great in Church and State, had failed for centuries, Luther succeeded almost instantly. How? Mr. Newman says: "He adopted a doctrine original, specious, fascinating, persuasive, powerful against Rome, and wonderfully adapted, as if prophetically, to the genius of the times which were to follow. He found Christians in bondage to their works and observances; he released them by his doctrine of faith." - Lect. Justif., p. 386. He became a cardinal.

How Dr. Martin Luther Died, Theo. Hoyer

Concordia Theological Monthly

Since 1883 Lutherans, and generally all Protestants, have observed the 400th anniversary of the chief events in the life of the great Reformer: Luther's birth; the posting of the Ninety-five Theses; the Diet of Worms; the publication of Luther's two Catechisms; the Diet of Augsburg; the preparation of the Smalcald Articles. This year we reach the end; the 18th of February marks the 400th return of the day of Luther's death. Judging by past experience, notice of this anniversary will be taken in most church periodicals. Not all of it will be friendly; old legends will be warmed up, old …

Luther The Reformer, Th. Engelder

Concordia Theological Monthly

Luther would say: I did not reform the Church. He said: "It was God's Word which, while I slept or made merry, accomplished this great thing." (XX: 20.) The gracious and almighty God accomplished this great thing. "What is now going on in the world is not my doing. It is not possible that a mere man should begin and carry forward such a movement. . . . Another man is at the wheel [Ein anderer Mann ist's, der das Raedlein treibt]."

Soeren Aaby Kierkegaard, John Theodore Mueller

Concordia Theological Monthly

Essays on Kierkegaard (just as such on many other great men) usually tum out to be no more than mere glimpses of the man and his work given by writers who are either for or against him, just as their studies have led them to see in him either a very great man or (to say the least) a very great enigma. It is therefore extremely difficult to arrive at an objective judgment of Kierkegaard by the study of biographies and historico-doctrinal monographs, no matter how many of them one may read. But to peruse his original writings is to …

Veit Ludwig Von Seckendorf An Orthodox Defender Of Pietists, L. W. Spitz

Concordia Theological Monthly

The Thirty Years' War, which had caused the Holy Roman Empire to disintegrate into several hundred little despotic states, virtually destroying the sentiment of national unity and creating a state of chaos in its social and economic life, was equally desolating in its effects upon religion. By way of contrast with this deplorable condition of the empire, France had its day of military and social glory. No wonder that for decades to come German men and women, disgusted with conditions in their homeland, were fascinated by the splendor of their illustrious neighbor across the Rhine. Under such circumstances it was …

Veit Ludwig Von Seckendorf: Statesman And Scholar, L. W. Spitz

Concordia Theological Monthly

In the foreword to his history of Lutheranism, Seckendorf has stated his view of a historian's task and his essential qualifications. For the task of a historian, he believes, should be selected the most able councilor or minister, vivid of mind and of pen, one who has been exercised for some years in the greatest and most weighty affairs, diligent, and of approved virtue, piety, and faithfulness, and to whom all secrets can be safely entrusted. To a man having such qualifications should be committed the writing of historical commentaries, not with diminished, but with enlarged income and advanced position …

The Marburg Colloquy Of 1529: A Textual Study, George John Beto

Concordia Theological Monthly

The primary sources on the Marburg Colloquy are comparatively numerous. While an official transcript of the proceedings was not kept, certain observers took notes and immediately after the conference supplemented these notes with the material they had retained in their memories. All of the sources are untranslated and are found in either German or Latin.

William Herman Theodore Dau, W. Arndt

Concordia Theological Monthly

This issue of the CONCORDIA THEOLOGICAL MONTHLY, thanks to the generous cooperation of Concordia Publishing House, can present a picture of the sainted Dr. Dau together with a facsimile of an outline written by him in 1910 for a sermon preached in Messiah Lutheran Church, St. Louis, Mo. The neat, careful chirography, thoroughly characteristic of the man, will be noted. The original of the outline was in possession of the Rev. W. F. Lichtsinn, President of the Central District of our Synod, who kindly placed it at our disposal

Geography Of The Bible In Relation To Inspiration, Carl Eberhard

Concordia Theological Monthly

The connection between geography and the doctrine of inspiration, at least as far as this group is concerned, seems to be the sentence in the first paragraph of the Brief Statement of Missouri, which reads: "Since the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God, it goes without saying that they contain no errors or contradictions, but that they are in all their parts and words the infallible truth, also in those parts which treat of historical, geographical, and other secular matters, John 10: 35."