Queen of the Sciences

I talk to Dad about his book Luther for Evangelicals: A Reintroduction. (Non-Evangelicals warmly invited to eavesdrop.)

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Last time we talked about the job of the pastor, so this time we're discussing the job of the congregation, which is a bit like the old Atari video game Pitfall—look out for those alligators, especially if you're one of Jesus' sheep. But most of the time it's just the sheep learning to bear with one another, and bear one another's burdens: a whole zooful of grace, evidently. Also, what to think about the roof, and how to navigate the inevitable requirement these days of being a church shopper.

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Notes:

1. Hari, Lost Connections

2. For background on this episode, have a (re-)listen to One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church: The Worst Thing in the Best Words.

3. Dad has been talking about beloved community for a long time now: see Luther and the Beloved Community and plain ol' Beloved Community

4. Luther, without a trace of irony, calls the church "a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ, called together by the Holy Ghost in one faith, one mind, and understanding, with manifold gifts, yet agreeing in love, without sects or schisms" in the Large Catechism.

5. H. R. Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism

6. Not discussed here but relevant: The Church Has Left the Building; Rebuilt; Christianity Rediscovered

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Dad talks to me about my "poetic paraphrase" of the Sermon on the Mount.

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Less obvious than you might think! The pastoral office functions like a magnet, attracting an infinity of valuable tasks without knowing how to shed them when it gets to be too much. In this episode we address the distinction between lay and ordained ministries, attempt to clear away some of the aforementioned well-intentioned clutter, and chart out a triage approach to the pastor's true calling. Hopefully helpful to burned-out and compassion-fatigued pastors, lay folks may also appreciate this reminder of what their pastors are actually for.

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1. Dobbs, “The Coming Pastoral Crash”

2. Stephen Ministries

3. Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation

4. Heinrich Heine, not Voltaire, said: “of course God will forgive me; that’s His job”

5. Jan-Olav Henriksen, Christianity as Distinct Practices: A Complicated Relationship

6. Check out what our gifted friend Pastor Natalie Hall is doing at St. Mary Magadalene Lutheran Episcopal Church as well as her excellent confirmation curriculum.

7. See Dad’s book of sermons, Preaching God's Word according to Luther's Doctrine in America Today, and his discussion of issues surrounding the pastoral ministry in Beloved Community pp. 355–382

8. You might be interested in my essay on “Sources of Authority according to the Lutheran Confessions” and a rather melancholic rumination on my first call in The Church Has Left the Building. My sermons for Tokyo Lutheran Church are on YouTube.

9. We didn’t get around to discussing these, but two of my favorite books for re-envisioning a faithful pastoral ministry in the midst of hugely different cultural settings are Vincent Donovan’s Christianity Rediscovered (lousy title: it should be more like Church Reimagined) and Michael White and Tom Corcoran’s Rebuilt, both by Catholic clergy.

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How could anyone possibly feel "meh" about Isaiah? Well, that was me, before digging in deep to prepare for this episode. I have since come around (whew) and, if not quite as excited as about Leviticus, I'm still pretty jazzed now about both the prophet Isaiah and the book named for him. In this episode Dad and I discuss both the text in its own time and the text in the hands of Jesus and the apostles, and wrap up with ruminations on how not to exploit Isaiah and other prophets as a soapbox for a preacher's pet concerns.

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Notes:

1. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho

2. Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews

3. Dad on Divine Simplicity

4. Hays, Reading Backwards

5. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel

6. Dahl, Jesus the Christ

7. Juel, Messianic Exegesis

8. Witherington, Isaiah Old and New

9. Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture

10. The Septuagint (LXX) is the Greek translation(s) of the Old Testament, which took its final form in the first century after Christ’s birth. Here is one common English translation.

11. Stuhlmacher, The Suffering Servant

12. I recently did a short sermon series on: Isaiah 6, 9, and 25; Isaiah 43, 52–53, and 55; and Isaiah 56, 61, and 66.

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I get Dad to talk about his new book, Lutheran Theology: A Critical Introduction. Fact: Lutheran theology is NOT the same as Luther's theology! Shocker, right?

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Generally you should run screaming in the opposite direction when someone starts talking about her dissertation, but we promise this is a good one. French Orthodox theologian Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907–2005) knew pretty much every important Orthodox theologian of the 20th century, pioneered Russian hagiography, co-edited a journal, was active in the ecumenical movement, and supported the possibility of the ordination of women in the Orthodox church. Wait, what? Yes—but not until she was 75! And she kept at it until her death at the age of 98. We review her atypical support for women in ministry (atypical in many ways) and draw out some larger lessons for thinking about sex and gender in light of the Christian faith today.

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Notes:

1. Some useful background to this episode was already covered in our earlier episode on What Is a Person?

2. Among the books by Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, check out: The Ministry of Women in the Church, The Place of the Heart, Discerning the Signs of the Times, The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church (with Kallistos Ware), and Lev Gillet: A Monk of the Eastern Church.

3. Olga Lossky has written a wonderful biography of Behr-Sigel entitled Toward the Endless Day, which I reviewed here.

4. My book is entitled Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in the Trinitarian Theology of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel; there’s an interview with me about it here. I co-edited a collection of essays about Behr-Sigel entitled A Communion in Faith and Love, which includes Elisabeth Parmentier’s essay about Behr-Sigel’s education at the University of Strasbourg and one from me on “Behr-Sigel’s ‘New’ Hagiography and Its Ecumenical Potential.” I’ve more recently contributed to Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church with the essay “Elisabeth Behr-Sigel’s Trinitarian Case for the Ordination of Women.” I created an archive of my collection of Behr-Sigel’s books and articles at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France.

5. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 vols)

6. Among the other Orthodox theologians mentioned in this episode are Alexander Schmemann, Kallistos Ware, John Meyendorff, and John Behr.

7. Our friend Michael Plekon is the author of (among other things): Living Icons, Uncommon Prayer, Saints as They Really Are, The World as Sacrament, and Hidden Holiness

8. Paul Evdokimov’s main books on women are Woman and the Salvation of the World and The Sacrament of Love

9. See Dad’s essay “Whose Church? Which Ministry?” in Lutheran Forum 42/4 (Winter 2008): 48–53

10. For further detail on some of the topics discussed here, see my contribution to the Lutherjahrbuch 2017 and also the Lutheran Forum essays “The Epistle of Eutyche,” “The Face of Jesus, Part One” and “The Face of Jesus, Part Two,” and “Where Have All the Women Gone?”

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The party never stops at the Queen of the Sciences podcast! Coasting on the generally optimistic, cheerful, and devil-may-care attitude of a world gripped by pandemic and the various cultural and political responses to it, we break out our kazoos and streamers for the wrath of God. In this episode we talk about what it is, why it matters still to talk about it, and why (gasp) it may even be a good thing.

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Notes:

1. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America

2. The hymn I mentioned is “He Is Arisen, Glorious Word”

3. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God

4. If you haven’t already listened to them, you'll find our episodes on Anselm and Kazoh Kitamori deal with some of these same issues. 

5. Lactantius, De Ira Dei

6. See in Dad’s Divine Complexity the subsection entitled, “Theology of Redemption,” chapter 6, pp. 212–222, and in Beloved Community the subsection entitled “God is the Eschaton of Judgment” in the Conclusion pp. 865–878, which take up these topics further

7. See also my final sermon on the Sermon on the Mount and essay “Peace, Peace, Where There Is No Peace” 

8. Oswald Bayer talks about God’s Umsturz in Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, p. 215

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No, not a glam metal band, but a martyr of the second century and one of the first post-New Testament writers whose works survive. In the episode we take a look at the first heresies to erupt in Christianity—first analyzing just what counts as a "heresy" and why the concept remains a useful one—namely, Ebionitism and Docetism. Ignatius en route to Rome as a prisoner elucidates for us just why it matter so much that God really took flesh in Jesus Christ, and that his flesh was really crucified, and that his crucified flesh was really raised... just as Ignatius himself was really in chains and was really going to be devoured by the wild beasts.

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Notes:

1. You can read the seven extant letters of Ignatius here. Note that only the shorter version of each paragraph is authentic—the longer version is probably an expansion by later authors/editors.

2. Dad's Divine Complexity, ch. 2, discusses the formation of the New Testament canon in light of the martyrological witness, not least of all Ignatius's. If you've been interested in picking up one of Dad's books but don't know where to start (or are nervous about committing to 900 pages), start with this one—it'll give you a great overall read on the development of Christian theology and how it completely remade the way we think about God.

3. For a little taste of my learning about the nature of the church from being a missionary in Japan, take a look at this short piece, "Dispatch from a Bewildered Missionary in Japan."

4. Here's some info on the exchange between Pliny the Younger and Emperor Trajan about the wacky sect of Christians.

5. We talked more about martyrdom's "agency" in the face of suffering in the episode on Perpetua and Felicitas. See also the Martyrdom of Polycarp.

6. William R. Farmer and Denis M. Farkasfalvy, The Formation of the New Testament Canon

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The terrible killing of George Floyd and the resulting protests and riots around the country have prompted us to record this bonus episode, in which we reflect on our experiences and theological interpretations of being "white," American, and Christian.

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Notes:

1. Much of what we say in this episode presumes topics we've covered already; you may want to check out What Is a Person?, Faith to the Aid of Reason, Two Kingdoms: 16th-Century Edition & Two Kingdoms: 20th- and 21st-Century Edition, and The First Two-Thirds of Acts.

2. See Dad's Mission to the Catskills: A History of Immanuel Lutheran Church of Delhi, New York and his discussion of Martin Luther King Jr in Luther and the Beloved Community, informed by teaching a course on MLK for many years at Roanoke College.

3. A little info about my forthcoming memoir here

4. Review of Albion's Seed

5. This is a thoughtful reflection from a Christian in the South coming to terms with his ancestors and their history.

6. Bonhoeffer talks about the ultimate and penultimate in Ethics

7. Cornel West, Race Matters

8. James Cone, God of the Oppressed

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