An Exegesis of 1967 LCMS Resolution 2-02

This year marks the 45th anniversary of a convention resolution (1967 Resolution 2-02) by the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod that "commended" a rather remarkable document: A Lutheran Stance toward Contemporary Biblical Studies.  Two years earlier the Synod had authorized its Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) to form a  committee to  "conduct a comprehensive study of Biblical hermeneutics," that is, to examine the principles and methods of biblical interpretation.  

The eight individuals who formed that committee and who prepared the report that was commended in 1967 were Walter Bartling, Robert Bertram, Martin Franzmann, Heino Kadai, H. Armin Moellering, Robert Preus, Walter Roehrs, and Raymond Surburg. Ralph Bohlmann and Richard Jungkuntz also participated in the work of the committee. Anyone familiar with that period of synodical history knows that these ten individuals represented the two basic theological camps within the synod at that time, one that was oriented toward seventeenth-century Lutheran Orthodoxy (with its rather novel notion of "biblical inerrancy") and the other oriented toward post-enlightenment theological developments and toward an understanding of biblical authority that rested on the Bible's dynamic witness to law and gospel. And yet, at the end of the day, all ten professors, from  Bob Bertram (my teacher at Chicago), on the one hand, to Robert Preus and H. Armin Moellering (my teacher in St. Louis), on the other, signed off on the report that was eventually "commended" to the Synod's membership.  

Between January 1966 and April 1969, the committee met 12 times. Seven essays from the group were published by the CTCR in the 1969 booklet, A Project in Biblical Hermeneutics, edited by Jungkuntz. At the Synod convention that year, the delegates "received" a further CTCR document, "Answers to Questions Raised Regarding the Document A Lutheran Stance toward Contemporary Biblical Studies," which basically addressed a few minor criticisms of the original report. The Synod also encouraged further study of the original 1967 document (see 1969 Resolution 2-04). Speaking for the CTCR committee, Dr. Jungkuntz wrote that year to the Synod: 

"The committee is fully convinced that the basic hermeneutical issues which appear to be the source of tension and confusion in our church today are not uniquely a problem of The Lutheran Church -- Missouri Synod and that their solution or removal from the area of Christian concern will not be achieved by our unique contribution alone. At the same time, however, we also believe that the action of the Synod in authorizing this comprehensive study and the work that has been done on it so far furnish our church with an opportunity for growth in Biblical understanding and mutual edification which would now be abandoned only at great loss to ourselves--loss of courage, loss of freedom, loss of trust in the power of God's Word to overcome our darkness with His light" (1969 LCMS Convention Workbook, 66).

Yet, just four years later, after Dr. J. A. O. Preus was elected president of the Synod at that same 1969 convention, a slim majority of synodical delegates to the 1973 convention acted by resolution to condemn 40 of 45 faculty members at the Synod's Concordia Seminary, in part because they had been utilizing the very principles and methods of biblical interpretation that had been deemed "legitimate" by the ten-member CTCR committee and had been "commended" to the Synod in 1967 and further commended in 1969. Looking back on that 1973 convention action, in light of how those contemporary biblical principles and methods ("the historical-critical method," as it was then called) had been commended to the Synod in 1967 and 1969, one is reminded of that scene in the film Casablanca where Claude Rains' character, the police chief, is forced to shut down Rick's casino. As his men are doing this, he declares to Rick, "I'm shocked! Shocked, to learn there is gambling in this place!" And then the chief is presented with his winnings from the evening. The 1973 Synod seemed to be saying, "We're shocked! Shocked to learn that you faculty majority have been using the historical-critical method and contemporary principles of biblical interpretation!" ("Leave aside the fact that we commended this method to scholars in the Synod and have benefited from its use in our Synod...")

This is not to suggest that the use of the historical-critical method is on the same moral level as gambling, although I suspect there are some who would argue that it comes close. Certainly the vast majority of Bible students for the past several centuries have benefited greatly from the scholarly results of such historical and literary investigation of the Scriptures. In my view, the pay-off of this scholarship has been much, much greater than whatever winnings the police chief got that night at Rick's. Each week that I prepare a sermon or a Bible study, I benefit from the 27th edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament (as does even the most "fundamentalistic" of Bible scholars), the Stuttgart edition of the Hebrew Bible, the great historical-critical work that was done by the German scholars who produced the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, the Greek lexicon that was edited by former LCMS scholar, Fred Danker, and by those scholars who worked on the Anchor Bible Dictionary and all those who have produced the ocean of critical commentaries on the biblical books, and the list goes on.

Remarkably, there was a time in LCMS history when contemporary tools of biblical study, including the legitimate use of the modern historical-critical method, were commended to the Synod's own membership. In the CTCR committee's report to that 1969 convention, the ten-member group could even write publicly:

"Our church too must critically examine the methods and products of modern biblical scholarship. It is a matter of record that in recent decades there has been a shift away from the crass theological liberalism that was rampant earlier in this century in the direction of a more conservative, more Biblical theology. With this shift has come, on the part of many Biblical scholars, a more responsible use of the historical-critical method of Bible study. It is therefore not a foregone conclusion that all the presuppositions and conclusions of current scholarship are necessarily the same as those against which our fathers rightly protested. Hence it must not be assumed in advance that our church's present judgment needs to coincide at all points with that of the fathers, although it should indeed proceed from the same theological perspective" (1969 LCMS Convention Workbook, 5). Remember, the names that stood behind these words included Robert Preus, Raymond Surburg, H. Armin Moellering, and Ralph Bohlmann. 

A Lutheran Stance toward Contemporary Biblical Studies sets forth basic presuppositions for a faithful interpretation of Holy Scripture, "the basic and legitimate elements of the so-called historical-critical method," and "necessary controls" for the rightful use of that method.

Within the section on presuppositions, the committee stated the following:

"In hearty agreement with the Lutheran Confessions we affirm that the right understanding of the Gospel (including the proper distinction of Law and Gospel as grounded in the article of justification) is the key that finally unlocks the meaning of Sacred Scripture (Apology, IV, 2-5; FC, SD, V, 1).  We therefore hold that all theological questions raised by any interpretation must be posed and answered with reference to this central concern of the Scriptures.  We also hold that those technical questions involved in interpretation which neither aid nor impair the right understanding of the Gospel (in its full sense) ought not become a matter of controversy in the church" (A Lutheran Stance toward Contemporary Biblical Studies, pp. 8-9).

Then there came a section that gave a basic description of "the historical-critical method" of biblical interpretation and how that method is to be legitimately used:

"We consider the following to be basic and legitimate elements of the so-called historical-critical method (cp. 'Guiding Principles for the Interpretation of the Bible' as accepted by the Ecumenical Study Conference, Oxford, 1949):

1. Establishing the text. This entails the sensitive use of both external and internal criteria (i.e., the evidence of manuscripts, ancient versions, lectionaries, patristic quotations; and   the evidence of style, language, thought) for detecting any alterations which the text may have suffered through the process of transmission by human hands, and thus to determine the original reading as accurately as possible.

2.  Ascertaining the literary form of the passage. This entails, as an aid to better comprehension, analyzing the Biblical passage in terms of its formal structure and character at the hand of such questions as these: Is it prose or poetry? Is it an address, a prayer, a monologue, a treaty, an edict, a letter? Is it an oracular saying, an invective, a lament, a liturgy, a proverb, a parable, a creed, a hymn? and so on.

3.  Determining the historical situation. This entails discovering, so far as possible, the original setting—in time and place and circumstances—of the document, its author, and its readers.

4.  Apprehending the meaning which the words had for the original author and hearer or reader. This entails careful investigation of the actual linguistic usage and idiom (together with their overtones conditioned by the social context in which they appear) of the author and his contemporaries in the light of the Biblical data and also of such extra-Biblical literature as may belong to the same social context.

5.  Understanding the passage in the light of its total context and of the background out of  which it emerged. This entails consideration not only of the text’s antecedent and contemporary circumstances—religious, cultural, historical—but also of the full range of the  Biblical witness in both the Old and New Testaments" (ibid., 9).

Among the "controls," one finds the following:

"The problem of 'history' needs to be handled with extraordinary sensitivity by the Christian interpreter. He cannot adopt uncritically the presuppositions and canons of the secular historian. In his use of historical techniques the interpreter will be guided by the presuppositions of his faith in the Lord of history. It is indeed true that Christian faith rightly sees in the historicalness of God’s redemptive work (His entry into and participation in our saeculum) a divine warrant for the use of “secular” means and methods in the study of His Word, including linguistic, literary, and historical analysis of the texts. But at the same time faith recognizes that there is more to history than can ever be adequately measured by “laws” derived exclusively from empirical data and rational observation… " (ibid., 10).

"The undeniably necessary effort to hear a text of Scripture first of all in its particularity, its meaning 'then and there,' must be balanced by an equal effort to hear the text both in its integral relation to all the rest of Scripture and in its meaningfulness for all who hear it today. This effort does not require an arbitrary flattening out of the rich variety of the Biblical witness into a dull one-dimensional uniformity…" (ibid.).

"Whatever cognizance needs to be taken—as indeed it must—of the connection between Biblical materials and their background in the whole complex of social, cultural, political, economic, and religious factors of their day, a clear distinction must nevertheless be maintained between the unique, divine, and revelatory character of Scripture and the sheer human and contingent character of Scripture’s earthly milieu. Parallelisms between extra-Biblical materials and the form or substance of Scripture do not as such constitute causal or substantive relations. This is not in the least to deny the genuinely human and earthly dimension of Scripture itself…" (ibid.).

The hermeneutical principles and "the basic and legitimate" historical-critical method that this CTCR committee defined for the Synod in 1967 and which were commended that year by the Synod and further commended in 1969, strike me as still valid and useful for our own contemporary situation some forty-five years later. I certainly could not teach theology very well in my university or parish setting without using and relying on tools and resources of historical-critical investigation.

It seems to me that paragraph two (on literary form and genre) and paragraph five (on the historical context) have been largely neglected in synodical biblical interpretation and theological understanding since 1973.  The same can be said for the language about "an equal effort to hear the text both in its integral relation to all the rest of Scripture and in its meaningfulness for all who hear it today."

A good example with respect to paragraph two and the sensitivity to contemporary "meaningfulness" is the apparent refusal within the contemporary LCMS to acknowledge the distinct genres that are present in the first chapters of Genesis and to accept the fact that none of these genres fits with modern notions of "historical report" or "modern scientific description." Such a conclusion is easy to make if one takes the time to compare the stories of origin in Genesis 1-11 with other, similar stories from the ancient Near East, including the Babylonian epic of creation (Enuma Elish), the Akkadian epic of Gilgamesh (e.g., flood, serpent, tree of life), other Akkadian epics and myths, Ugaritic myths and epics, Sumerian epics (e.g., speaking snake), myths of primeval time among African peoples (including the Egyptians), Greek tragic mythologies, and other ancient Near Eastern myths and legends. By discerning the genres in these early chapters in Genesis, a key task of the historical-critical method, one is less likely to force the text into a genre that is foreign to it, e.g., thinking about it as "pure myth" (as in "false story"), or as "historical report" or modern "scientific language."

A good example with respect to paragraph five of the CTCR committee's report is the apparent refusal in the contemporary Synod, post-1973, to acknowledge that the Scriptures are in tension with one another with regard to their teaching about men and women within the church. The few NT commands that "women be silent in the churches" and that women are not "to exercise authority over men" must be understood in the light of the Bible's "total context and of the background out of which it emerged. This entails consideration not only of the text’s antecedent and contemporary circumstances—religious, cultural, historical—but also of the full range of the Biblical witness in both the Old and New Testaments." When one does that, one realizes that the Bible contains some apparent contradictions on the same issue, in this case what women may or may not do in the churches in the first century, since some women spoke authoritatively within the churches and exercised leadership over men (in both the OT and the NT) whereas in a few other places women were severely restricted. When one attends to historical and cultural contexts and acknowledges the distinction between abiding principle ("all things must be done decently and in order") and temporal/transitory application ("women should be silent"; "women should not exercise authority over men"; "women should have an authority on their head"; etc.), then there is freedom to discern how a given Scriptural text should be understood and applied in the contemporary situation. The application today might even be the exact opposite of the application that some used in the first century. It is not a coincidence that the Synod voted in 1969, finally, to allow women to vote in congregations and to serve in leadership positions, just at the time that it was commending the historical-critical method, since most scholars within the Synod at that time readily used this method to point out how the Scriptures really do not prohibit such actions for all times and places. Even then, there were a few synodical scholars who, as a result of their historical and literary investigation of the Scriptures, had come to the conclusion that the prohibition on women serving as theologians and pastors is not really biblically supportable either.

What the Synod commended in 1967 and 1969 still needs to be commended today. The reaction against the hermeneutical principles and the legitimate use of historical-critical methodology that the Synod took in 1973 and later--over against the synodical commendations of those same principles and method in 1967 and 1969-- was a mistake. It was a mistake for that faculty majority to have been condemned for using the very biblical tools that the Synod had earlier commended.

If one argues that the Synod changed its position on Scripture and the interpretation of Scripture between 1967 and 1973, I can accept that argument, but I would simply respond then by saying that the Synod commended a better position on Scriptural interpretation in 1967 and 1969 than it adopted in 1973 and later.

Sure, there is more to this story than what I am presenting here. My friend, Ed Schroeder, one of those who was condemned in 1973 and who lost his synodical calling as a result, has written about some of the other dynamics in play here, as has another friend, Fred Danker, one of the most able of historical-critical investigators in the twentieth century. (One the ironies in this story is that two of the earliest proponents of the use of historical-critical methodology within the Synod, namely, Horace Hummel and Martin Scharlemann, later took up defensive positions "on the other side" and acted against those who used the very method that they had earlier helped to introduce into seminary education within the Synod. I remember thinking to myself, after hearing Dr. Hummel lecture on "inerrancy" one day, when I was his M. Div. student in the mid-1980s, that the term really was meaningless, since the whole point of his lecture was to kill the term through a dozen qualifications. Same was true with his extremely qualified use of the expression "the historical-grammatical method," which was supposed to replace the forbidden phrase, "the historical-critical method." As he described the former approach, it really didn't seem to be substantially different from the latter. If there was a significant difference it was that the historical-grammatical method encouraged one to maintain the status quo of synodical doctrinal resolutions and not call a synodical understanding into question, whereas "the historical-critical method" did in fact lead one to reject as unsupportable certain cherished positions within the traditional LCMS, e.g., a literalistic understanding of Genesis 1 and an insistence that the first-century apostolic applications about keeping women "silent" and not allowing them "to exercise authority over men" were just as valid today as they were for at least a few in the first century. Because of this difference I became convinced that Dr. Luther would have actually supported the use of the historical-critical method--and there are solid indications within his own biblical interpretation that leads in this direction--because it would allow the Scriptures to be placed over against the church and its received interpretations of the Bible, it would allow scholars to test those traditional interpretations continually against the biblical texts as historically and literarily understood, and it would allow the church to remain open to the possibility that the biblical texts had not been properly understood or applied in its own history.

Pericope of the Week: A Christmas Carol

One of the reference works that I frequently consult is The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning, ed. Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). It is a treasure-house of information about marking time and keeping seasons. Daily reading from this large book--along with a reading or two from that other, larger, more important book--is yet another way one can "number one's days" so as "to gain a heart of wisdom" (Ps. 90).

The entry for December 25 reminds the reader that this date was observed in ancient Rome as marking the winter solstice and thus was regarded as the day to remember "the birthday of the Sun." Many Romans worshipped the sun as the true godhead, "of which other gods were mere facets, and the authentic guarantor of the Empire." In the third century the emperor Aurelian officially ruled that the date was forever after to be celebrated as "the Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun."

Caravaggio's Nativity with Saints Francis and Lawrence

In the first centuries of what would become the western catholic church, Christians did not celebrate Christmas as a festival on its own. Rather, they acknowledged the birth of Jesus in connection with his baptism, which was celebrated on January 6. Thus, this celebration, "the Epiphany of the Lord," is actually about three centuries older than the first celebration of Christmas. Only after Christian worship was legalized by Constantine the Great in the year 313 did Christians begin to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25. What had been a date that focused on the birthday of "the unconquerable Sun" now was focused on the birthday of "the unconquerable Son." Christians who had previously despised the divine birthdays in the pagan Roman world now transformed the solar feast into the Feast of Christ's Nativity, the birth of "the Sun of Righteousness" (Mal. 4:2). Gradually the new Christian feast spread throughout the Western church, but not so in the east. (Arminian Christians still do not celebrate Christmas.) After the Reformation, many Protestant groups also refrained from observing the festival, ostensibly because it lacked Scriptural support. (Lutherans are not among these. We say, "Why not celebrate the birth of Jesus?")

After a quotation from Dickens' A Christmas Carol ("'…If I could work my will,' said Scrooge indignantly, 'every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!'"), The Oxford Companion presents many poems and tidbits about the modern, secular "holiday" that has replaced the Christian feast, which was itself a transformation of a pagan celebration. There are recipes and customs and nostalgic observations about this and that "yule-tide" tradition. Still, creeping into the secular litany is the occasional hint of the earlier Christian moorings of the date. Near the end of the entry is this marvelous English Christmas carol from the fifteenth century. It will serve as the pericope for this first week of Christmas. (Hint: read it aloud, slowly.)

Ther is no rose of swych vertu

As is the rose that bare Jesu; Alleluya.

For in this rose conteynyed was

Heuen and erthe in lytyl space, Res miranda [a wondrous thing]

Be that rose we may weel see

that he is God in personys thre, Pari forma [with the same form]

The aungelys sungyn the sheperdes to:

Gloria in excelcis Deo. Gaudeamus [Glory to God in the highest. Let us rejoice]

Leue we al this worldly merthe,

And folwe we this joyful berthe; Transeamus [Let us cross over]

Pericope of the Week: Geoffrey Hill

Looking a bit like Walt Whitman, Geoffrey Hill is one of our best poets. He is both beautifully descriptive and biblically prophetic.

While one can find a recent online picture of him standing cordially beside the current Archbishop of Canterbury, he acknowledges the "distance" that has grown between himself and the Church of England. Nevertheless he still confesses that he "adheres to certain old fashioned religious concepts such as the doctrine of original sin" and therefore has "been much influenced spiritually – not necessarily for the good-- by St Paul, St Augustine, Luther and Karl Barth as well as the Hebrew prophets and the teachers of wisdom" (from a May 26, 2011 interview with The Oxford Student).

Geoffrey Hill

This week's pericope is a collection of excerpts from a brief online interview that Hill recently gave the Economist magazine. Earlier this month he appeared at that magazine's inaugural Books of the Year festival.









Click on this link and you'll be taken to that interview:
http://www.economist.com/multimedia?bclid=1213687636001&bctid=1306624228001


The above photo comes from The Oxford Student. For Hill's interview there, go to:
http://oxfordstudent.com/2011/05/26/interview-geoffrey-hill-oxford-professor-of-poetry/)

Giving Thanks

While Christians need not wait until now to express their gratitude and praise to God, November has traditionally been an intentional time for Americans of all backgrounds to "give thanks." Of course in our day, as well as in earlier eras, not everyone gives thanks to God for the blessings of one's life. While "God" and "Jesus" may be on the lips of many, too often those lips are not praising.

In the seventeenth century, ragged bands of God-fearing pilgrims and settlers in the New Land frequently set aside a day of "thanksgiving" to God. Before they ate, they prayed. Often overcoming great difficulties and challenges to eek out a living, they had much for which to be thankful. After an arduous year of tending to fields and flocks, they gave thanks to God for whatever harvest they had, bountiful or not. One can imagine them enjoining one another to praise the Lord, along the lines of the old hymn:

Sing to the Lord of harvest, sing songs of love and praise;

With joyful hearts and voices your alleluias raise.

By Him the rolling seasons in fruitful order move;

Sing to the Lord of harvest a joyous song of love.

In the nineteenth century, in the midst of the American Civil War, President Lincoln declared a National Day of Thanksgiving. For the first time, all the states would be encouraged to observe "Thanksgiving" on the same date. That the President did this was largely the result of petitioning by Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (creator of the nursery rhyme, "Mary Had a Little Lamb"), who argued that a sense of national unity could be re-established and fostered among the warring states if they all observed Thanksgiving on the same day. One can imagine Americans in 1863 pausing to give thanks to God along the lines of the old hymn:

Before You, Lord, we bow, Our God who reigns above

And rules the world below, Boundless in pow'r and love.

Our thanks we bring In joy and praise,

Our hearts we raise To You our King.

At the end of the last century, my teacher and friend, Martin Marty, published a little book about "hope." Included in that book of reflections and photos (the latter by his son, Micah) is an entry on "Praise." Marty writes, "Praise usually erupts spontaneously when someone wants to thank God for what has been or to express passion about the now and the here. But how do we praise in the spirit of hope, which means to praise about a future that has not yet occurred? …The long record of praise by people who hope becomes understandable when we recall that what is thereby celebrated is nothing but the character of the God of 'God's people,' who is steadfast in dealing with us also in the times of disappointment. Hence, we praise" (Martin Marty, Our Hope for Years to Come [Augsburg, 1995], 63). Marty's meditation and his invitation to thank and praise God are grounded in the lines of the old hymn:

Praise the Lord! Oh, let all that is in me adore him!

All that has life and breath, come now with praises before him!

Let the amen sound from God's people again.

Gladly with praise we adore him!

On this Thanksgiving Day 2011 my family and I will gather with the faithful from Immanuel, Michigan City, to give thanks and praise to God, not only for the material blessings we have received from his hand, but also, especially, for the gifts of forgiveness, life, and salvation that have been given through Jesus. We, too, will pause, like our Christian forebears of old, to thank and praise God for these gifts. On our lips will be the lines of the old hymn:

Now thank we all our God With hearts and hands and voices,

Who wondrous things has done, In whom His world rejoices;

Who from our mother's arms has blest us on our way

With countless gifts of love and still is ours today.

Through Their Eyes by F. Dean Lueking

One of the joys of teaching theology at Valparaiso University is getting to know people from around the world, both Christians and non-Christians. Over the years I have been blessed to have taught many students from every continent except one. (I'm still waiting for someone from Antarctica.) This semester I'm once again teaching the basic Christian theology course that nearly all VU students have to take to graduate. Among the participants are students from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Kuwait, and Guinea. While some of these international students come from non-Christian backgrounds, a few are Christian. Each provides an informative, non-western perspective on the theological topics we discuss. Of late these international students have helped us to distinguish between "America" and "Christianity" even as they have helped to enrich our understandings of "global Christianity" and the current conflicts between Christians and non-Christians in other parts of the world. The conversation continues.

I am also grateful for how these non-western students have encouraged the American, mostly Christian students to take the subject matter of the course more seriously than might otherwise have been the case. Some weeks ago one of my American students told me that she felt compelled to learn more about the history of Christianity, her religious background, because she had met a Muslim student here who knew the history of her tradition better than she did. She told me that she felt embarrassed by her ignorance and thus wanted to overcome it. She has come to see that "the Christian tradition," the actual title of the course, is far more complicated and complex than she initially thought. Not only is "the tradition" much older and deeper than she had heretofore been led to believe (hence, we might be better to speak realistically of "traditions"), but it is also more ethnically and culturally diverse than her exposure to it, via the Sunday-morning services at her local congregation, has indicated.

Pr. and Mrs. Lueking

To help students to see the complex texture of the global Christian church more fully and to help these students connect with Christian people who are separated from them by both space and time, I am having them read Dr. Dean Lueking's new book, Through Their Eyes: A People's View of the Global Church, Foreword by Martin Marty (Chicago: Tyra Books, 2011; $25.00).

In the interest of full disclosure: Dean is a friend who has been a great support to me personally, both when I was a graduate student at his alma mater, the University of Chicago, and when I have come under ecclesiastical pressure for my theological investigations and publications. He has been a role model for me in so many ways...)

I can easily envision this 472-page book as the centerpiece of a multi-week adult forum, especially within a Lutheran congregation. One would be hard-pressed to find more engaging, flesh-and-blood stories about contemporary Lutheran Christians throughout the world than those conveyed here. As Marty notes in his Foreword, "Most of Lueking's featured people are…pastors, teachers, ministers, catechists, nurses, and the like. I'd like to meet more of them personally and cannot forget most of them, even if I've greeted them on only a half-dozen pages here" (xiv). While most of these are Lutheran, which is what one would expect, given that the Luekings are Lutheran, there are also a few non-Lutheran Christians who crop up as well. Perhaps the model of this book will inspire others to write similar accounts for folks in the rest of the 35,000+ Christian church groups in the world today.

The book is divided into nine geographical parts that take the reader from Palestine (Bethlehem) through Africa (eastern only), eastern and western Europe, central and south America, northern Asia and India, Southeast Asia, and finally to New Guinea and Australia. Along the way, the reader encounters stories of hope, courage, struggle against hardship (especially against economic poverty and the poverty of spirit), new and renewed conversions to Christian faith, joy in the midst of suffering and persecution, stories of Christ-living-in-community (to paraphrase Bonhoeffer). The book seeks to provide a global picture of the church "through the lens of the individuals who gather regularly in congregations, who know the ups and downs of Christian discipleship in their daily lives in the world" (xix). Yes, Dean and his wife, Beverly, appear as important characters in these stories, too. After all, they were blessed to receive them first-hand as a result of their missionary experiences. But their presence is not intrusive: their words and actions give way to those of the central characters. Photos of the latter help to connect faces with the stories.

One other thing is clear from reading this book: Dean and Beverly Lueking are missionaries. The heart of their mission is sharing the gospel of Christ's love and mercy with all who will receive it, and doing so in gentle, humble, creative and patient ways. While Dean thought that he might be called after seminary (he graduated in the same class as my uncle Bob, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, 1954) to serve as a Lutheran missionary in Japan, he was instead called to serve as an associate pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest, a position that then allowed him to complete a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. (His research focused in part on the Christian mission in the global church.) Dean would remain at Grace as pastor until his retirement several years ago. During this long pastorate he and his wife were also able to engage in further missionary work abroad. Grace granted them two sabbaticals: one in '83 to study churches in Africa and Asia and the other in '91 to study churches in the Southwest Pacific. Throughout their ministries, Dean and Beverly have been bridge-builders and care-givers. Near the end of his pastoral ministry Dean was encouraged by foreword writer Marty to write this book in which he would recount visits and revisits with Christians from around the world that he had met or had come into contact with during his various travels.

(A story in last Sunday's Chicago Tribune is a further example of how the Luekings are "bridge-builders." They recently reconnected with a long lost foster son after reading about how he had reconnected with a family member of his own that had been thought to have been murdered by John Wayne Gacy. See the online article, "One Reunion in Gacy Saga Fosters Another,"

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-schmich-06-20111106,0,7458310.story)

The stories that the Luekings relate in Through Their Eyes are too numerous to recount here. Let me identify three that have stayed with me since first reading the book a few months ago:

After a description of the military occupation of Bethlehem and what that has concretely meant for many hundreds of Palestinians, including Palestinian Lutherans, Lueking asks, "How does one continue to live under such conditions of injustice and humiliation?" The responses to this question by two Palestinian Lutheran clergymen, Rev. Mitri Raheb and Bishop Munib Younan, stick in the mind. Hope for the future for them is anchored in Jesus Christ, "who has made his home with us, especially among the outcast and suffering." According to Lueking, Younan's "prophetic ministry, sealed by the Holy Spirit's calling" is to be "a servant shepherd in a church largely composed of people who need a future governed by hope rather than the pain of what they have lost" (17).

When Pr. Lueking wrote his book, Itaffa Gobena was the president of the Ethiopia Evangelical Church Mekane Yesu (EECMY). In Lueking's book he recounts the struggles of Christians during the Marxist regime in that country in the 1970s and 80s. He himself was arrested, beaten, threatened with execution, "but was spared death by the sudden action by the jail warden who, without explaining why, arranged his release--an experience that to this day Gobena attributes to the intervention of angels" (46). After studying theology at Wartburg Seminary in Iowa, he returned to Ethiopia. His burdens? "Insufficient inward growth in soundness of faith as the church rapidly expands outwardly, conflicts in the church which come from imitating the spurious teachings of sects and self-made prophets, and the difficulty of engaging the Orthodox Church in meaningful dialog." And his joys? "The joy of living as God's child and servant, free in Christ's grace to believe the good news and share it openly… We of my generation have experienced so much blessing that others before us could only foresee by faith--doors opened and believers formed by Christ's Spirit in astonishing ways and numbers. Fifty years ago our parents were tortured, chained, humiliated, and in some cases murdered for the sake of the Gospel. Now we see the fruits of their faith and that is our greatest joy" (ibid.).

Irene Ponce, Adita Torres, Ofelia Davila, and Alicia Cuyotti are among the first women ordained as pastors in the Lutheran Church of Peru. They have served congregations among the poorest of the poor, for example in the slums of Lima and Cusco, in lands that have been affected by Roman Catholicism, Pentecostalism, and indigenous religions. In this trying context these pastors have reached out to troubled youth, have struggled to assist abused women, drug addicts, and the unemployed, and have tried to meet peoples' acute needs of body and soul. The dedication of these female pastors to the poor, as revealed in Lueking's vignette, makes a lasting impression.

I know of no other book quite like this one. We get an "on-the-ground" portrait of central characters in the Lutheran church's mission in and to these various locales. The stories are ultimately encouraging, since the cross and resurrection of Christ are at the center of what is confessed and told. In the midst of death and suffering, there is also life and salvation. The Luekings demonstrate that a little Christian compassion and ingenuity go a long way, that faith, hope, and love really do make a difference, perhaps especially under the most difficult of circumstances. Seeing the church through the eyes of Christians in other parts of the world does amazing things for one's own vision.

So my students are reading the book. As an added bonus, the author has graciously agreed to visit my class next week to discuss his book with them. So they are also busying formulating some questions for the conversation.

[Purchase info: In order to keep the book price at $25, Dean is doing much of the marketing of Through Their Eyes himself. The quickest way to get a copy is to send him a check for $30 ($5 extra covers postage and handling) to Dean Lueking, 829 Lathrop Ave, River Forest, IL 60305 with your name and address. You will have your own copy pronto. In addition, Dean is making a special offer for book discussion groups: Order a box of 12 copies at $15.00 each (40% discount) and receive free shipping as well. Several pastoral friends have found such groups beneficial for broadening a global church awareness. For this offer, please send a check for $180 (12 x $15.00) to the above address.]