Wittenberg and Missional Ecumenism

By Matthew Becker Last October an article appeared in the Lutheran Witness that claimed “Luther’s home city (Wittenberg) includes no Lutheran congregation.” The article quotes Matthew Harrison, executive director of LCMS World Relief and Human Care: “There are people with deep Lutheran sentiments in Wittenberg, but there is no congregation organized and operating under the…
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Murray’s Law, Life, and the Living God (Review Article)

By Matthew Becker Law, Life, and the Living God: The Third Use of the Law in Modern American Lutheranism.  By Scott R. Murray.  St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2002.  250 pages.  This book began as a dissertation at New Orleans Baptist Seminary.  The author, Scott R. Murray, is a 1983 graduate of Concordia Theological Seminary,…
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Bonhoeffer (Review Article)

By Matthew Becker DIETRICH BONHOEFFER: THEOLOGIAN, CHRISTIAN, MAN FOR HIS TIMES.  A BIOGRAPHY.  By Eberhard Bethge.  Revised edition.  Revised and edited by Victoria Barnett.  Translated by Eric Mosbacher, Peter and Betty Ross, Frank Clarke, and William Glen-Doepel under the original editorship of Edwin Robertson.  Foreword by Clifford Green.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.  1048 pages.  Paper….
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What Is Daystar?

By Matthew Becker Daystar began in 1999 as a small online network of individuals in the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) who were concerned about theological issues and problems in and beyond their church body. Organized by Professor Robert Schmidt and Professor Matthew Becker, along with the help of two other LCMS members, the network grew…
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Becker’s Self-Giving God (Review Article)

By Karl Wyneken What will be the result if a gifted and erudite German Lutheran theologian on one of the more conservative mid-19th century German Lutheran faculties embraces notions such as the following? Consider— His desire, as he puts it himself, is “to teach old truths in a new way.” The overwhelming focus of his theology…
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32 Theses against Unevangelical Praxis

          One of the theological gems from the history of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod is a set of 32 theses against “unevangelical praxis” that was prepared for the 1862 Convention of the Central District of the LCMS. Unfortunately the original document has never been translated completely into English–until now.           These 32 theses are just…
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Education for the Mission: What Good Is Theology

By Matthew Becker Some years ago a Lutheran editor of a church newsletter asked me to write a brief essay that would answer the question, “What good is theology?” At the time I thought it a bit strange that a Lutheran who writes about and for Lutherans would ask that question. Don’t Lutheran Christians have…
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Talking Points about Doctrinal Authority in the LCMS

By Dr. Matthew Becker Next summer will mark the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of a controversial and divisive document at the 1973 Convention of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). “A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles” appeared in 1972 and was adopted by a slim majority of LCMS convention delegates a year later. When…
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