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Exegetical Theology: God’s Plan for Preserving His Word
We can learn much about the canon of the Bible from the Bible itself. God first commanded his Word to be written down in Exodus 17:14. God then repeatedly commanded Moses to write down everything from the Ten Commandments (Exod. 34:28) to the stages of their journeys in the wilderness (Num. 33:2).
But how would that new written Word be preserved? How could future generations of Israelites—along with future Christians—continue to read the Word of God?
God had a very specific plan for the preservation of his Word: “After Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end, he gave this command to the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD: ‘Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God. There it will remain as a witness against you’” (Deut. 31:24–26).
While the Ten Commandments were to be placed inside the Ark of the Covenant (Deut. 10:1–5), the Book of the Law was to be placed beside it. It is safe to assume that the official copies of God’s Word were always to be kept wherever the Ark of the Covenant was kept. That this was the case, even centuries later, is confirmed when Hilkiah the high priest found the Book of the Law in the temple in the days of King Josiah (see 2 Kings 22). The Word wasn’t really lost. It was exactly where it was supposed to be!
It was never God’s plan to have just one copy of his Word. Future kings of Israel were told: “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life” (Deut. 17:18–19).
Again, we hear that the Levitical priests were responsible for the official copies of the Word of God. What’s new is the command that a copy of the Book of the Law was to be made for the king. Clearly, copies of the Book of the Law were the Word of God, just as certainly as the original manuscripts were.
When you study the Bible’s formation according to the Bible itself, you realize that it was far from haphazard. Already in the days of Moses, the people of God had a canon of Scripture, which was authoritative from the very first day it was written down. They were to carefully store it next to the Ark of the Covenant and carefully copy it as needed for the instruction of their kings.
When it was time for his Word to be written down, God had a perfect plan for preserving it for us.
Rev. Nathan Nass serves at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Tulsa, OK. You can check out his blog at upsidedownsavior.home.blog.
Systematic Theology: Gender Identity, Part One
“Teach me what I cannot see” (Job 34:32).
Attempting to define the human race is one of the favorite pastimes of the human race. To say that history is replete with these attempted definitions is an almost comic understatement. It apparently occurred to every culture on earth to think about itself. It’s one of the premiere thematic threads running through world history, complete with a surprising amount of range. From Diogenes throwing a featherless chicken at Plato1 to a private company integrating lab grown brain cells onto silicon chips and using them to play Doom all day2—we like thinking about ourselves. We put time and effort into considering what we are and categorizing what we are not.
But therein lies the problem. Our loving God created us to be intelligent, emotional, and dynamically rich beings. What is more, he created us to be conscious beings, self-aware of the richness in ourselves and those around us. But with the fall into sin came a painful detachment of all this from its safe anchoring in God. Doctrinally, the results of the fall were damning. Consciously, they were catastrophic. Now, because of sin, even our own self-awareness can be a regular source of pain, as Scripture testifies.3
But in his Word, God restores our knowledge both of himself and of ourselves. The passage generally cited as the traditional sedes doctrinae for the scriptural definition of human beings is Genesis 1:27. And while it may not be a scientific definition, it is most definitely a direct categorization of the human race. We are told who we are and whom we stand in relation to—and our conceptual reality is re-anchored. We were created in the image of God (בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ) and in his likeness (כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ). And though we lost this in the Fall, Jesus came to retrieve it. Through the pain Jesus suffered for us on the cross, he restored us to our place, putting us back into the category of perfection. Now our self-awareness is a blessing again—we are conscious of ourselves in Christ.
But sadly, this Gospel-anchored self-awareness is often lacking, taken away, or muffled to silence. When this happens, what follows should be the least surprising thing in the world: The individual in question will revert to humanity’s old pastime, the game of defining humanity.
In the following articles, I will be discussing this truth, especially in relation to transgenderism and gender identity. I am aware that contact with this issue is highly uneven for the brothers of our synod’s ministerium. Some have dealt with it multiple times, others not at all. Wherever you find yourself, I encourage you to approach this topic with both the compassion and the steadfastness of the Spirit. If God allows you to work with someone struggling with their gender identity, then lovingly work with them. Don’t fall prey to shock and surprise. It should never surprise us that when a human mind is left to its own sinful self-awareness, it will eventually play Doom all day.
Rev. Joshua Zarling serves at Living Hope Lutheran Church in Waukesha, WI.
1. Plato tried to define a human as a “featherless biped,” so Diogenes plucked a chicken and tossed it at Plato shouting, “Behold! I’ve brought you a man.”—Ed.
2. Cf. Cortical Labs, a biological computing company based in Melbourne, Australia, known popularly as the “Doom Brain” company, after the popular 1990s game Doom.
3. Romans 7:9, 23; Psalm 69:6–8; 119:83; et al.
Historical Theology: Perspectives from Moldehnke’s Five Years in America: Truth in Faith and Practice
In 1861, when Moldehnke sailed to the United States with his young family for service in the Wisconsin Synod, he admitted that at that time, “The Confessions and decisiveness in doctrine were completely foreign to me.” Instead, he had consumed the “new, watery theology” which did not quench his thirst for truth. Having come from the Prussian Union and the Berlin Mission Society, he had studied the Confessions, but no one had ever asked him if he believed what they said. During his travels, he frequently encountered harsh and arrogant Old Lutherans. While many strove for pure doctrine, ironically, they often demonstrated to Moldehnke their ignorance of various confessional Lutheran concepts. Even on the ship to America, one such individual told Moldehnke, “You’re no good for America. You’d better turn around right away.” Moldehnke sarcastically replied, “I would be very glad to, if I had to think that all Lutheran preachers in America were like you!”
Despite such bad impressions, by God’s grace, Moldehnke and the Wisconsin Synod learned from experience that a firm confession of faith was necessary for faithful ministry. Moldehnke recalled, “It soon became clear to me, who was brought up in indifference to the Confessions, that a congregation can only be organized on the basis of the Confessions, and that what does not hold together internally cannot be adequately connected by external cement.” Indeed, while many immigrants “knew nothing of the struggle between the Lutheran Church and the Union,” America provided the place for open discussions of doctrine untainted by political agendas. Moldehnke consistently found that unity of belief was a great blessing to congregational life.
While the Missouri Synod appeared to be more confrontational and its fight for confessional Lutheranism seemed “somewhat bitter and contentious in the heat of the moment,” Moldehnke gave them credit for often leading the way. On the other hand, the Wisconsin Synod, like Moldehnke himself, matured more gradually. Still, the Wisconsin Synod had to fight for pure doctrine too. Moldehnke was sensitive to the criticism coming from his home church in Prussia and the Berlin Society, who claimed that “confessional certainty of doctrine is a comfortable cushion and a means of inertia.” To this, Moldehnke replied, “One must constantly struggle anew to prove, defend, justify, clarify, and fruitfully apply God’s Word. Only then does one possess the truth and need not always search for it in vain…. One possesses the truth in faith and recognizes it with practice.” From Missouri men like Friedrich Wyneken and Heinrich Schwan, Moldehnke learned that the best approach is scriptural—to speak the truth in love.
When Moldehnke’s five-year assignment to Wisconsin was over, he returned to Prussia with promises of a comfortable position. Yet he quickly realized that his experience with unbridled confessional Lutheranism had changed him. Because of this, he reflected that he was “no longer at home in my homeland.” Moldehnke’s perspective and unique accounts of the Wisconsin Synod’s development prompt us, in turn, to strive to possess and recognize the truth (even as it changes us) while also sharing it in love.
Rev. Benjamin T. Phelps serves at St. Matthew Lutheran in Marathon, WI.
Practical Theology: A History of the Advent Wreath
The advent of a new church year in a few weeks brings the music, themes, and customs of the Advent season into our parishes once again. One of the beloved and familiar customs of Advent is the use of the Advent wreath.
Several theories exist about the Advent wreath’s origin. Some have suggested that it developed from pre-Christian European customs, though there is no concrete evidence to support that theory. Another suggestion is that people removed the wheels from their wagons before winter so that they would not become frozen or stuck in the ground; the wheels were then decorated in the home with evergreens and candles. A final theory traces the wreath’s beginnings to Lutheran pastor Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808–1881), the founder of a mission school in Hamburg, Germany. During Advent, he decorated a wooden cartwheel with several candles—a small red candle for each weekday before Christmas, and a large white candle for each Sunday. Lutherans and eventually Roman Catholics adapted this practice in their churches with a candle for each Sunday in Advent.1
When the Advent wreath came to America in the 1930s, Lutherans used white candles for the four Sundays, with some churches eventually adding a fifth white candle for Christmas. Roman Catholics used purple candles for each Advent Sunday except the third, on which a rose (pink) candle was first lit. The colors reflected Roman Catholic liturgical colors for Advent—purple for most Sundays, but rose on the Third Sunday to reflect the joyful tone of that day and a brief respite in Advent penitential practices.2 Many Lutheran churches eventually adopted this color scheme as well. When blue became an accepted liturgical color for Advent among Lutherans, purple candles also changed to blue, but the rose candle often remained.
A reasonable practice for Lutheran churches today is to use four white, blue, or purple candles for the four Sundays in Advent.3 If a rose candle is retained, it could be understood as a reflection of the readings that highlight joy on the Third Sunday in Advent. However, considering rose’s origins as a liturgical color for the Third Sunday in Advent and the Fourth Sunday in Lent—a custom likely attached to the lessening of Roman Catholic penitential practices in those seasons—the argument for retaining the rose candle (or introducing rose vestments) on the Third Sunday isn’t very compelling.4
More recent devotional perspectives of the Advent wreath have attached specific themes to the four candles—hope, peace, joy, and love. Another custom assigns a name to each candle—Prophecy candle, Bethlehem candle, Shepherd’s candle, and Angel’s candle.5 These titles can be devotionally useful, but they are not connected to the history and development of the Advent wreath. Perhaps the best understanding of the wreath, as another candle is lit each week, is as a visual symbol of John’s words from the Christmas Day Gospel: “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world” (John 1:9).
Rev. Johnold Strey serves as pastor at Crown of Life Lutheran Church in Hubertus, WI.
1. Most of the theories in this paragraph are offered by Frank Senn in his Introduction to Christian Liturgy (Fortress, 2012), 111. The wagon wheel theory was offered by a professor in a liturgics class in which I was enrolled at Santa Clara University about twenty years ago. Note that these theories are not mutually exclusive.
2. The historic Introit for the Third Sunday in Advent came from Philppians 4:4 and was known by the verse’s first word in Latin, Gaudete, which is also a shorthand title for the Third Sunday in Advent. In the three-year lectionary, one or two of the readings on the Third Sunday in Advent each year emphasize the believer’s joy in anticipation of our Savior’s coming.
3. White reflects the original practice. Blue or purple would reflect the local congregation’s liturgical color.
4. As a point of comparison: There are weeks in the Season after Pentecost when the lectionary readings have a strongly penitential focus, but the liturgical color is not changed from green to purple. The theme of a non-festival Sunday within a season is not customarily a reason to alter the liturgical color of the season.
5. If a center white candle is included with the wreath and lit at Christmas, it is known as the Christ candle, regardless of any other themes attached to the other candles.