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| Martin Chemnitz wrote more classics in the Christian faith than most people could read in a lifetime. The Formula of Concord is a good start. |
One clever way to get people away from the treasures of the Christian faith is simply to ignore them. The Lutheran leaders have excelled in this skill for over 50 years, and the current ones are no better.
In the LCA, no one even mentioned Martin Chemnitz. He was never cited. I was confirmed in the 1960s, so there was still a lot of buzz about Luther's works being printed. College and seminary often referred to modern theologians: Bonhoeffer, Barth, and Tillich.
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| Roland Bainton's Here I Stand, A Life of Martin Luther, was a best seller and remains in print. |
Fortunately I had some excellent opportunities, from taking Reformation history in college to Radical Reformation in the doctoral program at Notre Dame. Roland Bainton was a constant the entire time, as a Luther scholar and a Radical Reformation scholar. I also had the chance to hear him lecture and to correspond with him. When Mrs. Ichabod and I did research together, going through theological manuals, we saw that Bainton published everywhere.
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| Jack Preus and his wife gave Chemnitz visibility. The Two Natures of Christ is clear and inspiring. |
Jack Preus began to make Martin Chemnitz a topic in Lutheran doctrine. He was not alone. My real introduction to Chemnitz was reading through Chemnitz' Examination of the Council of Trent to write Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant. The more I studied, the more I realized that the greatest theologians of Christendom were simply ignored - in favor of modern Marxists (Barth), serial adulterers (Tillich), and agnostics (Bonhoeffer).
Seminary education in the Olde Synodical Conference is pathetic. The faculty members are cheerleaders for their own buddies and the glories of their sect's history - told with deception and guile. Below are the authors people should read. I doubt whether anyone has enough years to exhaust the treasures from these men, so why spend time with the plastic jewelry?
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| Tyndale died in giving us the foundation for the KJV. The moderns make money replacing his great work, based on Luther's Bible. |
The best translation of the Bible is the KJV, and it is the foundation of the English language. It is the only translation where the chief writer--Tyndale--was a student of Luther and Melanchthon.
Martin Luther's Sermons are the place to start, followed by his contributions to the Book of Concord, especially the Large Catechism. His Galatians commentary is one of the best books ever written, but so are other commentaries. Nothing is wrong with What Luther Says, although one should not be satisfied with brief quotations alone.
Although Chemnitz did not write all of the Formula of Concord, he was the senior editor, so I suggest becoming familiar with the entire work. Reading it will show how deceptive the synodocrats are today. The nostalgia salesmen like SP Harrison should mention that they are featuring Walther (four year degree in rationalism, devoted to Pietism) compared to men with doctorates in theology, the men who created harmony (Concordia) out of the splits in Lutherdom.
Setting an example for future dictators, Walther picked his own faction to teach the next generation, whose qualifications were normally the fact that they studied under Walther. Freud did the same thing to make sure his own sycophants preserved history (or mythology) his way.
Melanchthon is always neglected today. His doctrinal statements could be concise and brilliant, and his longer explanations models of clarity. How many seminary students - or laymen - read his Augsburg Confession and the Apology? The UOJ Stormtroopers never cite Melanchthon, because he always taught justification by faith.
Chytraeus and Andreae almost completely forgotten, but their work is available in English.
The best American Lutheran writers are not the Walther herd, but Krauth, Schmauk, and Jacobs. The Olde Synodical Conference likes to pile on the General Council leaders because they never kidnapped anyone, never pledged fealty to a known adulterer, never organized a mob to engage in grand theft. No, the General Council leaders do not deserve statues and shrines and votary candles, unlike C. F. W. Walther.
The decline in Lutheran doctrine will continue as long as pastors and members ignore their own spiritual treasures in favor of the plastic baubles paraded about today.
