Some of my friends say that justification not all-important. They think there are other things we need to talk about; they seem to agree with the paper Art Just presented at the 2006 symposium (which can be found at the seminary's website.) While working at church last week, I found some Lenten sermon series that Dr Korby was involved with during his years at Valparaiso. The sermon preached by David G Truemper on 4 April 1979 (Wednesday of Lent 6) was the last in a series of sermons on the Six Chief Parts. One of the concluding paragraphs follows.
Recently a fellow theologian took me to task for making so much of the forgiveness of sins. "There's just more to it than that!" he insisted. He had pretty good sense, for it would be a terrible oversimplification to see the Lord's Supper as the forgiveness of sins -- unless we can come to see that the forgiveness of sin IS the whole of the Christian life. And that is precisely what we may come to see. The mystery of our redemption is that our sin is forgiven, our enmity with God is changed to peace and love. The presence of Christ, crucified and risen, is the confirmation of His word, "Cheer up! Your sin is forgiven!" The communion in His body and blood is our share in what He gave His body for, in what He shed His blood for -- "for you, for the forgiveness of sins." The Eucharist or thanksgiving is the celebration of thanks for our redemption. The sacrifice is always only His, in us and through us and for us. As Luther put it, we offer Christ when we plead His merits as the grounds for the Father's forgiveness, and thus when He offers us to His Father as those washed clean in the blood of the Lamb. All is forgiveness, and forgiveness is all.
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I knew David Truemper at Valpo. I am pretty sure he was a friend of my dad's. I say was as I am not sure he is still living. Despite popular opinion there were some great theologians at Valpo. I learned a lot from my Valpo experience.
ReplyDeleteKarin
Truemper certainly had some good things to say. Sadly, he died a couple of years ago. Rather than use the opportunity to preach about forgiveness and the resurrection of the dead at Truemper's funeral, as he desired, Frederick Niedner, Jr. used the opportunity to speak evil of the LCMS. In the sermon, he bragged about thwarting Truemper's wishes and speaking of the rubric from the TLH Agenda, "It is not in the best Christian tradition to eulogize the departed" he said, "This will not surprise many of you, for you know that it is not part of the tradition and ethos of the church body (the LCMS) that formed David, myself, and many others here to speak well of anyone, whether living or dead."
ReplyDeleteWhat doesn't surprise me is that Niedner would use a funeral to speak evil of the LCMS. Sadly, my experience is that the seminex crowd remains bitter and defined by that moment. Perhaps there are some Christian gentlemen from that time and place who know some humility, some shame and regret, but I have never met them. All those I've met are like this man speaking evil about the living and the dead at every opportunity even when it was requested that he speak about Jesus.
I found the sermon by Susan's link: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MDO/is_1_32/ai_n15652779/pg_1
Pr Petersen, I posted the link to the sermon simply because I had NO idea who Truemper was. I figured there'd be other people as clueless as I was. Like you said, even though the preacher said Truemper didn't want a eulogy, he went ahead and gave one, and that's how I found out a little about him. I don't know what Truemper's theology was like overall, but I most certainly did like this particular quote.
ReplyDeleteWhen people tell me that we neeeed to talk about the new creation or salvation or communion with God or eternal life, I have no quibble with that ... unless it becomes disconnected from the forgiveness of sins. When justification is the centerpiece, when justification is always the focus, then all those other things naturally follow, and are indeed talked about. But when we say we need to quit talking so much about justification because there are other metaphors that are just as important, then the warning lights go off. We must "come to see that the forgiveness of sins is the whole of the Christian life."