When Martin Luther visited the churches of Saxony, he discovered that everyday people knew very little about the Christian faith. To help pastors and parents learn the basic truths of the Christian faith, he wrote a little book called The Small Catechism.
A catechism is a book which uses questions and answers to teach people about the faith. One of the most common questions Luther asked in his catechism is: “was ist das?” which means “what is it?” or “what does this mean?”
This blog is named for this question. Our goal is to share the Christian faith in an organized way. We hope to provide for you a way to remember the details of what Christians believe, to make sense of more formal writings in Christian theology and understand how such teachings relate to each other. In scholarly language, this is called systematic theology. We also will touch upon other disciplines of theology: Exegetical Theology — making sense of the Bible and how to interpret it, Historical Theology — how God acted through his people in history and pastoral theology — how to apply other branches of theology to the practice of the art of ministry.
In order to be straight with you, let us tell you a little bit of our backgrounds.
Meet Rev. Robert E. Smith
Meet Rev. Jacob Hercamp
Meet Rev. Brent Keller
Meet Rev. Jason Kaspar
Meet Rev. James Peterson
Expect that our assumptions, viewpoint and leanings will come from our backgrounds. While our comments here will be faithful to the Bible, Lutheranism’s confessions as contained in the Book of Concord, and the doctrinal statements of our church body, this blog is not an official statement of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod or her seminaries. These words are solely ours.
Comments are always welcome here or by email at cosmithb@gmail.com.
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