The American Interim
In our country, the Church is pressured to refrain from teaching the whole counsel of God’s Word when it contradicts the informal, but still real, American religion. I term this attempt to place the Christian Church on a reservation The American Interim.
Are Rulers to Uphold Both Tables of the Law?
Luther consistently maintained that no one could force faith; however, outward suppression of blasphemy and the preaching of false doctrine were distinct from compelling faith. Luther believed that only the Word of God could cure heresy, and that private false belief was an inward matter not to be dealt with by the magistrate.
Immigration and Christian Conscience
Once we allow the teachings of men to subsume and replace God’s commandments, we may allow anything. Once our smartphones teach us more than the Bible, we may be taught to obey or to think or to feel or to denounce anything. If we are the world’s mouthpieces, we will not speak for God.
A Defense of Christian Culture in the Post-Pandemic Era
The outlandish argument that the Two Kingdoms somehow coexist as two self-contained silos was foreign to our fathers.
Defend the Rights of the Poor and Needy
Interposition is neither insurrection nor complicity in evil. It is a full and free exercise of one’s vocation to do always, and only, the right thing.
Eighty Easters Ago: The Mass Resignation of Lutheran Pastors from the Nazified Church of Norway
On Easter Sunday, 1942, the moment of truth arrived. Ninety-three percent of the clergy resigned from the Church of Norway in order to fulfill their oaths of ordination and serve the people whom God had entrusted to their care.
Lessons from Magdeburg, Part 2
“When [magistrates and parents] openly persecute true godliness and virtue, they remove themselves from the offices of magistrate and parents before God and their own consciences, and instead of an ordinance of God they become an ordinance of the devil, which can and ought to be resisted in an orderly manner according to one’s vocation.”
Lessons from Magdeburg, Part 1
“The truth is not conquered by strength of arms. Military victory cannot change anything about what is true nor does it always accompany the truth.”
Concerning Civil Government Ordering Masks in Church
The authority of the civil government is not absolute. We do not recognize the civil government’s authority to order our churches to require masks.