Skip to content

What Does This Mean?

Lutheran Theology for the Everyday People

Home
About What does this Mean?
Blog Post Series
Lutheran Worship Services Online
Recommended Online Resources
Sermons

Yelp
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Email

Search

Search for:

Past Lessons

Categories

Categories

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address

Join 395 other subscribers

Follow Us

Recent Posts

Calling God our Father and Meaning it February 22, 2025
The Three Ways God Cares for Us February 21, 2025
What’s a Creed, Anyway? February 20, 2025
God the Jealous God February 19, 2025
The Problem is in the Heart February 18, 2025

Spam Blocked

2,321 spam blocked by Akismet

Blog Stats

330,242 hits

Spam Blocked

2,321 spam blocked by Akismet

About This Site

What is it?

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. My goal is to share the Christian faith in an organized way. I 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.

In order to be straight with you, let me tell you a little bit of my background. I am a Confessional Lutheran clergyman, a member of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. I serve as the Electronic Resources Librarian at Concordia Theological Seminary, a graduate school of theology. We prepare pastors and deaconesses for service in the church and provide advanced education for missionaries and leaders of the church. Before coming to serve here, I served as a pastor for two small town Indiana Lutheran churches. I also served as the Archivist and Historian of the Missouri Synod’s Indiana District. I occasionally write for The Lutheran Witness magazine and other periodicals. I use my Facebook profile (https://www.facebook.com/cosmithb) as a way to be a reference librarian in the 21st Century, sharing resources my Facebook friends find useful.

Expect that my assumptions, viewpoint and leanings will come from that background. While my comments here will be faithful to the Bible, Lutheranism’s confessions as contained in the Book of Concord, and the doctrinal statements of my church body, this blog is not an official statement of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod or my seminary. These words are solely mine.

Comments are always welcome here or by email at cosmithb@gmail.com.

Nothing Found

It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching can help.

Search for:

Proudly powered by WordPress