2024-10-09 1423 hours

Jesus Heals a Paralytic

St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, encourages his readers to be renewed in the spirit of their minds; to put off the old man; to put on the new. He calls and encourages us to act according to the new creation that God has made us into in Christ. He’s telling the Ephesians, and us, what is truly important. And the important thing is not trying to gratify the desires of our flesh, and running after the things of this world. The things we are to focus on and purse are of eternal significance: eternal life and the forgiveness of sins that comes by the person and work of Jesus Christ. This is what Jesus demonstrates in this Gospel reading.

St. Matthew records in chapter nine of his Gospel the healing of a paralyzed man. Jesus goes back to His hometown. He is apparently teaching there when some men bring to Jesus their paralyzed friend. The reason that they bring this guy to Jesus is obvious: he doesn’t want to be paralyzed anymore. He’s looking for physical healing. Matthew doesn’t mention the details of how his friends got him in front of Jesus, but St. Mark does. He records that his friends cut a hole in the roof and lowered the man through it to get access to Jesus (see Mark 2:3-12). And we might expect Jesus to just zap this guy with a healing miracle right away, but He doesn’t. He tells the man that his sins are forgiven, and it looks like that is all that is going to happen. Why does Jesus do this? Click HERE to continue reading...

THL

2024-10-08 0941 hours

Pieper on the God-Man

Men also reject the literal deity of Christ because the concept of the God-man makes it impossible for men to earn salvation by their own good works. If salvation could only be procured by God taking on human flesh to be the propitiation for the sins of the world, that only shows how utterly worthless our own efforts to earn God's favor are. (Pieper, 1951) If, however, Jesus is only a man, He then becomes our moral example, and nothing more. He is a guide to show us the kind of works to do in order to please God, and does not stand in the way of us seeking to gratify the desires of our flesh.

Pieper, Francis. 1951. "Christian Dogmatics, Vol. 2." St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, p. 63.

THL

2024-08-10 1741 hours

Walther's Seventh Evening Lecture

Walther reiterates that distinguishing between Law and Gospel is not easy. One cannot do it by the power of our own reason. The ability to properly distinguish Law and Gospel, Walther says, comes from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Christian, and what he calls "Christian experience." What Walther means by "Christian experience" is having experienced the crushing of the Law and the comfort of the Gospel personally. Walther says that the purpose of saying this, and all his lectures, is not to discourage men from becoming pastors. It is to humble those who are proud, and think they have mastered this skill...To continue reading, click HERE.

THL

2024-08-10 1253 hours

On Practicing Sin and Falling Away

There is a difference between the Christian who "stumbles", i.e. acts according to the desires of the Flesh and commits sin, and is then rebuked by the Holy Spirit through the Law, and finally comforted by the preaching of the Gospel, and the man whom Luther describes in the Smalcald Articles as having fallen into "manifest sin." The first man is an example of the one whom St. John describes in his first epistle when he writes that the one born of God does not continue to make a practice of sinning. The second man is one who has fallen away; who says that he has no sin and the truth is not in him...To continue reading, click HERE.

THL

2024-07-27 0942 hours

Pieper on the Church

The Church is universal. It is composed of all people, of all eras and places, who had faith in the remission of sins because of Christ's vicarious atonement. This is not something invented by the Reformation fathers. Paul uses the Old Testament scriptures to prove justification by faith without works. He says in Galatians 3 that all who believe it are, like those who believed likewise before Christ, Abraham's seed.

There can be, and are, Christians in heterodox churches. The thing that makes a man a Christian is believing that God is gracious and merciful to him because of the vicarious atonement of Christ. To say otherwise is to deny the doctrine of Justification (Pieper, 1953). Such a situation is certainly not, however, ideal for the Christian who finds himself in it.

Pieper, Francis. 1953. "Christian Dogmatics, vol. 3 The Attributes of the Christian Church." St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

THL

2024-07-23 1357 hours

Thoughts on a Quote From Joseph Campbell

Scrolling through Facebook recently, I saw the following passage, a quotation attributed to Joseph Campbell:

"The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle? One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another - but it's predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness, rejoins consciousness. It is no longer in this particular environment." (Attributed to Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth.")

I see these types of things on Facebook all the time. I know nothing about Joseph Campbell, or the page where it was posted (called "Philo Thoughts"). It just struck me that I should organize some of the many thoughts that came flooding into my head when I read it, particularly after I saw who had posted it...To continue reading, click here.

THL

2024-07-21 1253 hours

Bulletin Board Update

My apologies for all the confusion. 

Over at my personal blog (scoopsblog.com), I have created...you guessed it, another bulletin board. This one, however, I like a ton more than the one connected to The Hodgkins Lutheran Blog. So, I have connected this page to that bulletin board. Please check it out. If you were registered here, you will have to register again. Sorry, I'm still not good at this LOL.

Here is the direct link to the board. 

I think I have all the links changed so you wind up in the intended location.

THL

2024-07-19 1615 hours

Calvin's Real Presence is different...

Calvin sounds like he confesses the Real Presence, but he does not. His Christology won't allow him to. That's because, to Calvin, since Christ is locally present with the Father in heaven, it is impossible for Jesus to be in the Supper on many altars simultaneously. According to Calvin, the communicant participates in Christ's body and blood with their faith, not their mouth (Stephenson, 2003). This is in direct contradiction to what St. Paul says to the Corinthians, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16). The word translated communion here is κοινωνία

Stephenson, John R. 2003. "The Lord's Supper Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, vol. XII, pp.58-60." Northville: The Luther Academy.
 

THL

2024-07-16 1634 hours

True Apostolic Succession

The Church is apostolic, but not because there is a physical line of succession from the Apostles to the pastors and teachers of today. The true apostolic succession is in the teaching. Pieper writes that all those who faithfully profess and teach the Gospel, the word of the Apostles, are heirs of the Apostles. Just as scripture tells us that the true children of Abraham are those who share Abraham's faith, so the true successors of the Apostles are those who hold fast to the Apostles' doctrine (Pieper, Francis, 1953).

Pieper, Francis. 1953. "Christian Dogmatics," vol. 3. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

THL

2024-07-16 1611 hours

Church Membership Does Not Save

The Church has been described throughout the New Testament scriptures and throughout its history as individual believers with Christ as their Head. Pieper writes that this dissuades sinful man from imagining that his mere membership in a church organization or denomination is what guarantees his salvation. Christ's kingdom is not of this world; it is righteousness of heart and is a gift of the Holy Spirit (Pieper, Francis, 1953).

Pieper, Francis. 1953. "Christian Dogmatics," vol. 3. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. 

THL

2024-07-13 1938 hours

Look mercifully, O Lord, we beseech Thee, on the affliction of Thy people, and let not our sin destroy us, but let Thine almighty mercy save us; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord. Amen. 

THL

2024-07-12 1110 hours

St. Ambrose on Baptism

Ambrose says that what happens in baptism is like Christ's healing of the blind man in John 9:1-7. Baptism opens the blind eyes of a man's heart so that he can see the things of God. The confessing of one's sins was as though Christ smeared the eyes of one's heart with the mud made with Christ's spit. Christ thereby commands you to go to the pool, that is, the baptismal font. There, He will wash you clean from your sin, and your heart's eyes will see those mysteries to which they were previously blind, namely the sacraments themselves.

Deferrari, Roy J., PhD., tr.. 2016. "St. Ambrose: Theological and Dogmatic Works." The Sacraments, Book III, Chapter 2, 8-15." Ex Fontibus Co.

THL

2024-07-02 1050 hours

A Spiritual View of the Sacrament

A spiritual view of the Sacrament (i.e., Christ's body and blood are not present with the bread and wine) was a late development in the theology of the Lord's Supper. It was not the view of the ancient church. Herman Sasse explains that Barengar was the first to articulate an entirely spiritual view of the Sacrament in the 11th Century. The Church reacted negatively to his view. Barengar argued, according to Sasse, that the physical body of Christ was in heaven; it would not return until Christ's second coming. In support, Barengar cited St. Augustine, and his statement that the Lord's Supper is only an outward sign; that only believers receive an inward spiritual blessing from the supper (Sasse, 1959).

Sasse, Herman. 1959. "This is My Body: Luther's Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar." Chapter 1 - The Medieval Background. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress.

THL

2024-06-29 1113 hours

Cultural Marxism

What is Cultural Marxism? Marx admired the philosopher Hegel. Hegel believed that history was a series of conflicts wherein a "thesis" and an "antithesis" collided. As a result of the collision, the thesis and the antithesis morphed into something new, which Hegel called the "synthesis." This new synthesis would be the prevailing paradigm until it collided with an antithesis, and the cycle would play out all over again. Marx adopted Hegel's idea and said that all of history was progressing steadily upward toward communism by this means. Watch Dr. Jordan B. Cooper's video about this HERE (relax; it's only about 11 minutes long).

If that's too long, click HERE to read my summary.

THL

2024-06-24 1319 hours

Thoughts on The Chosen

A dear friend and fellow Christian has been, for some time now, trying to get me to watch the show, "The Chosen." A conversation rarely passes with him in which The Chosen isn't mentioned or where some interesting scene isn't described. My friend maintains that I will be hooked if I just consent to watch it once. Thus far, I have avoided an entire episode, though I promised to watch one of his choosing before the summer is out. After watching a 10-minute talk by Dallas Jenkins on The Chosen app, where he answered some common concerns and myths about the show, I decided to codify my distaste. It boils down to these things: 1) Revivalism, and 2) Gospel Reductionism (that doesn't even deal with the fact that Mr. Jenkins apparently thinks that Christians and Mormons worship the same Jesus)...Read More Here.

THL

2024-06-12 2025 hours

AI Preachers in Germany

This story is from one year ago. Apparently, the Germans are now using AI avatars to preach sermons in church. Watch the video here. There is so much wrong with this, but my initial gut reaction was to the first guy they interviewed. He was described as a Lutheran pastor. Ironically, his critique of the AI-led worship service was that it "lacked emotion." He needs to read Luther on enthusiasm. Read the story here.

THL

2024-06-07 2257 hours

Reflections on American Christianity

Christian churches are retreating from American culture. Churches in every major US city are closing or on the brink of closure. Many of these same groups are spending large amounts of money to figure out how to make their congregations viable. The vast majority of the time, congregations opt for some spurious programs to save them and abandon sound doctrine...to continue reading, click here.

THL

2024-06-05 2041 hours

I added a new article link to the page. Check out "Thoughts on Demographics, Higher Criticism, and the Future of the LCMS

THL

2024-05-24 1133 hours

I made some minor edits to the text of this main page. The bulletin board forum has been up for the last four days and seems to be working properly. Check it out, sign up, and post stuff

THL

2024-05-21 1550 hours:

As you can probably see, I have added a link to the bulletin board at the top of the page. 

THL

2024-05-20 1149 hours:

So...forget all that other stuff about the bulletin board. As much as I like retro-computing, I have decided to take it offline. Namecheap offers free software plug-ins, and they have several neat options for bulletin boards and forums. I have chosen "miniBB" to start with. That's where the board is going to be. So go there and post things. The link is also at the bottom of the page.

THL

2024-05-20 2217 hours:

The first night of the bulletin board seems to have been successful. Here's hoping that 1) I can maintain, against all previous evidence to the contrary, a schedule, and 2) people post.

THL

2024-05-20 1716 hours:

The bulletin board is "up" (sort of). Just scroll to the bottom of the page, and you'll see what I mean. - THL ###

THL

2024-05-20 1404 hours:

The site has a new domain name and web server. It is now "hodgkinslutheranblog.com" and is hosted by Namecheap. I decided this would be the best option if I wanted to host a bulletin board, which is still in the works.

THL