I have mixed feelings on presenting the English language publications from the old (German) Missouri Synod. Why? It was the German language that Walther and Pieper used in their writings of theology. And Luther used German (along with Latin) in his writings. And these writers were the ones who best "gathered the luminous rays of the Gospel" and are the greatest "helpers of joy" for Christians. Yet the English language removes a huge barrier to our modern world which has virtually abandoned the German language for English (think Internet and programming languages).
Prof. A.L. Graebner was the main early editor and contributor to the journal Theological Quarterly. It was published for 24 years from 1897 through 1920, later replaced by the Theological Monthly (see Part 5). And although I have some reservations on using him as the main source of Christian theology, especially compared to Pieper's Christian Dogmatics books, yet I did find that he wrote fairly well on the Doctrine of Justification. In the issue of October, 1901 (Vol. 5, page 194) appeared the following in the installment "Soteriology – Justification" from his collection of essays under the title "Doctrinal Theology":
But by the same judicial act by which he pronounced him guilty who was the world's substitute, God acquitted and absolved the world whose sins and guilt he laid to the charge of the Mediator. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, NOT IMPUTING their trespasses unto them.(2 Cor. 5:19) That their trespasses were not imputed unto them left them that were sinners in themselves sinless and guiltless in the judgment of God. The imputation of the sins of the world to Christ was eo ipso a justification of the world. And as the imputation of our sins to Christ was general and complete, all the sins, the iniquity of us all, being laid on the Lamb of God, (Isaiah 53:6, John 1:29, 1 John 2:2) so the absolution and justification of sinners in that judgment of God indicated a complete reconciliation of the world unto himself, inasmuch as our iniquities, which had separated between us and our God, our sins, which had hid his face from us, (Isaiah 53:8) were imputed to and atoned for by our substitute.... the resurrection of Christ was a promulgation of the justification of the world.It is this teaching of Prof. A.L. Graebner that caused Franz Pieper to speak the following words at his burial in 1905 (published in Harrison's book At Home in the House of My Fathers, page 618):
He was a true teacher, a gift of God.It is sad that the son of Prof. A.L. Graebner, Prof. Theodore Graebner, became so confused on the above teaching of his father on Justification that he would actually call it into question by questioning Walther's and Pieper's defense of it against opponents... and so end the old (German) Missouri Synod, give rise to today's (English) LC-MS, and end the Synodical Conference.
I see that CPH is still offering A.L. Graebner's book Outlines of Doctrinal Theology in their listing (also Amazon from another publisher). However, it is my recommendation to any readers interested in pure Christian doctrine to first read the books of Prof. Franz Pieper – his Christian Dogmatics.
Other contributors to this English language journal included W.H.T. Dau, Wm. Dallmann, F. Kuegele, C.F. Drewes, Louis Wessel, and Th. Graebner.
What follows are download links for my selections of scanned portions of Theological Quarterly. There are over 2500 scans – about 5000 pages from these 24 volumes... many treasures – all in English! But why only portions? I was too busy spending more time on the German publications... (see above). I found that several volumes are fully available elsewhere and have provided links to them. Here they are – articles on Aurifaber to "Wiclif", articles on Paul Gerhardt, evolution, astronomy and dozens of other subjects. All files except the Table of Contents are PDF files. Many volumes contain indexes at the back for reference on all subjects covered beyond my file of all the Table of Contents:
TQ-Table of Contents.DOC <<– Document containing title of all articles
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The reader is advised to use proper Christian judgment in reading these articles. Although they may be from the time period of the old (German) Missouri Synod, yet I have detected seeds of questionable thoughts from some of the contributors (i.e. from Th. Graebner). For an example, I see that W.H.T. Dau wrote a series on "Faith" beginning in the 1906 volume 10. But I would rather urge the reader get the purest teaching on "Faith" from Pieper's essay on Walther's teaching concerning "Justification and Faith", Part 16 here. Again I say that it was Walther and Pieper (in their German writings) who were the most forceful in defending the pure Gospel.
As mentioned above, the next Part 5 will provide download links to the journal that followed this one – Theological Monthly.
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