TLHP 44 Pieper's Preaching (Or, How Lutheran Preaching Has Changed Part II) with Isaac Johnson

Image: Reinhold L. Pieper (1850-1920)

Isaac Johnson graduated from Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI with a degree in Latin in 2011 and attended Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, IN. During his time at seminary he spent two years studying at the Lutheran theological seminary (Evangelisch-Lutherische Hochschule) in Oberursel, Germany. He was ordained in 2016 and was called to serve Risen Christ Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa. He now serves New Hope Lutheran Church, a mission congregation in Charles City, Iowa. Isaac has a strong interest in homiletics and the German language and is currently engaged in translating Reinhold Pieper's Homiletics textbook (Evangelish-Lutherische Homiletik)

Transcript

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Welcome to the Lutheran History podcast where we cover over 500 years of Lutheran history. We hear new stories examine old heroes of faith and dig into the who, how, what and why of history making. So whether you are Lutheran, seeking to understand your faith rich roots, a history lover or a person looking for stories of trials, tragedies or triumphs, you'll find what you're looking for. Right here. Today's guest is Isaac Johnson, is a graduate of Hillsdale College and Hillsdale Michigan, the degree in Latin. He got that back in 2011. Then he attended Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne. And during his time at the seminary, he spent two years studying at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Oberursel, Germany the even gala should tarisha hawk Shula. He was ordained in 2016, where he was called then to serve at risen Christ Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa. He now serves New Hope Lutheran Church in Michigan congregation in Charles City, Iowa. Isaac has a strong interest in homiletics and the German language, he is currently engaged in translating Reinhold Pipers homiletics textbook, which is something we talked about one of our previous podcast episodes. So Isaac, thank you for joining us today, Pastor Johnson. First question for you is how did you get started on this topic? Yeah, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Well, I suppose I've been started on this, or I've been engaged with this topic most of my life, because I grew up with a very strong law gospel, Christ centered preaching for which I'm extremely grateful. And that without a doubt, had the most profound impact on shaping my own preaching. But over the last few years, there have been some articles that have been written, say, two articles by Dr. Adam Koontz, another one by Dr. Ben Mays before that, and then several years before Dr. Mayes, I believe it was 2010, Dr. David Schmidt, of St. Louis wrote an article as well, which said, and this is very broadly and generally speaking, kind of criticized a formulaic log gospel kind of rut that we've fallen into. And in the paper that we're discussing today, I kind of dissect some of that problem as well. But as you can imagine, that really hit home for me, right? Because, like my whole life, I've been trained to look at the text and say, Where's, where's the cross? And again, that's a wonderful thing to do. And then to say, and then to say, what is the law in this text? And what is the gospel in this text, and that provides all the material for a sermon? And here are some guys who are saying, well, maybe there's a different way to do it. And I saw, I read, I read those articles, it felt like to me the beginning of the conversation, this relationship between say, blog gospel preaching and what some other suggested as an alternative, which would be, say the fivefold use, preaching, which historically is how Lutheran preached at least before say 1940 And, you know, comes from Second Timothy three, and Romans chapter five, referring to the teaching are all scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, training and righteousness and consoling or comforting. So I basically got started on the topic by my own experience and said, Okay, I need to figure out exactly what's going on here so that I can continue preaching. Yeah, that's interesting. Now, you and I come from different Lutheran backgrounds who are part of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and I am part of the Wisconsin Senate. But historically, we talked about this. It seems like every other episode, you know, that was all part of that historical Synoptical conference, and that, I would say, the preaching mindset, the preaching heritage, is something that I would I would agree that from my perspective, too, it was where's that log gospel in each and every single text that seems to be something that although our sentences have gone separate ways, 60 plus years ago now, that is something that continued its own thread and both from my, my kind of personal perspective, but also kind of a historical reckoning to, which is also interesting because prior to that both of our sentence had some pretty strong peeper influences. Of course, Francis France paper was while they were all in the Wisconsin Senate originally, but France Francis paper wrote the famous dogmatics text and of course, was president of the Concordia Seminary for a while. And now you're looking at Reinhold peepers homiletics book? Well, agus peeper was a professor at our seminary so that there's kind of that common heritage, but it's interesting, both a before and an after. So you explain why have you got on this topic because it was relevant to you and how you viewed preaching. And, you know, just reflecting what I've seen, it did kind of seem like there's only one right way to approach a text only one right way to generally formulate a sermon. But that has been challenged now, just thinking about homiletics in general. But now we looking at the historical angle realize there's a different historical perspective that also filters Oh, is that really the only cookie cutter now as a cookie cutter because that or stencil is you might use a very particular way to do something. So I guess my question is, now we tie this together, and if you want to add anything on top of that, but what value is there for contemporary Lutherans and becoming familiar with say, for example, Reinhold peepers preaching theology? Well, Reinhold peeper is of primary use and importance for contemporary Lutheran preaching, because of how he goes about the task of training preachers and homiletics in his textbook, and he specifically doesn't just create something new, but he is extremely well read. And I would say fluent, by the way that he uses it in in a corpus of homiletical teachings, from especially in Lutheran in Luke, the history of Lutheranism. But then going back, of course, to the ancient church, fathers, Luther, the ancient Church Fathers and then back to Biblical preaching. If you read his textbook, what you'll find is that about this is just a spitball number, but say 50% of the book is him quoting other people, and at least 50% maybe up to 65 or more percent, and then the rest of it would be his own editions. So what does Reinhold peeper represent? He represents a synthesis of Lutheran teaching on preaching for especially the past several centuries, say, from the 16th century through the very beginning of the 20th century, including, you know, a rich tradition of preaching before that. And the reason why paper is of particular importance is because all I mean, I did not even know he existed two years ago, and I did not know that the people of the people he quoted, right, he talks about a man named Hutto, he talks about growth different. He talks about shot, he talks about homes. And I mean, maybe I had heard one or two of those names before, but I had no idea that they wrote these extensive books and textbooks on preaching, and Reinhold, deeper and of course, JJ rombach is like the main one by his homiletical teachings. He takes all of that just read it very thoroughly synthesizes it and just presents it to the American Evangelical Lutheran Church. Not in the sense of the the church body, but the Evangelical Lutheran Church of that is in this country. There you go. There's so many acronyms you have to watch out. You might actually talk about a real group, but yeah, good. You're saying Yeah. So he's providing, you know, just to kind of speak back to what you've been telling, telling me and see if I get it, right. But he's basically providing this treasure trove of this is our Lutheran historical preaching tradition from the past 400 years. Let me summarize it for you. Let me boil it down to the to the gems, but you know, he's not really reducing it that much. It's still a pretty substantial work. By today's standards. I think an editor would pull his hair out looking at Wow, it's a lot of quotes. It's kind of tough to read just a lot of other people. But as a resource, you know, he was already been a historian of preaching in a certain sense he had it was a practical theology book. But they saw practical theology and historical theology all rolled into one. And again, lost you there for a second, but I think you're back here. All right. Yeah. Good. So I basically said though, he rolled practical theology into historical theology. And, and maybe that's kind of lost. Maybe we tried to divide that a lot today. Is it practical? Or is it historical? But really, it's all interconnected? In my point of view? Yeah, absolutely. peeper very heavily emphasized the heavily emphasized the practical, the practical nature of the of the theology, right. Yeah. So what we're talking about today is kind of two projects of yours. The big one is the translation of this homiletics textbook. So you are intimately familiar with it. I'm just curious, what stage are you at, in translating this text? But I'm down to the last, I don't know, 50 pages or so. So I have about two chapters left. After that, I'm working with excellent translator, Matthew Carver. He's giving me showing me the ropes and really helping me to to improve what I'm doing, then it'll probably be at least a year of going back and re editing everything. And I'm working with CPH right now. And they haven't we don't have anything official going right now. But I hope that comes to pass. If not, I'll definitely be working with another publisher. But yeah, so I would say yeah, at least another year. Okay. It's done. Yeah. But that would be rather rather important volume to add to any Lutheran pastors library I, in my opinion, so I'm eager without a doubt. And actually I was when I was looking for professors to endorse this translation when I was submitting to CPH. Dr. Kuhn said something that struck me is fully true. That papers homiletics textbook is as essential for Lutheran homiletics as Francis peepers dogmatics is to Systematics. Yeah, and that's and for those for those in our audience who maybe don't know that, but like I was saying earlier, peepers dogmatics texts are still, although it's about 100 years old, and the translation has been out for I don't know, 50 6070 years now. It's still considered pretty much report, you should at least have looked at it. Seriously, if not, had it taught as the classroom textbook on Doug dogmatics. Right. There are others that have come out more recently more resources, but the theology shouldn't have changed from Francis peepers. dogmatics right. So yeah, it's kind of the gold standard. So that's it. That's a pretty major statement to say, that Reinhold peepers book on homiletics should be right up there with his brothers. And now that's it. There's another statement built into that, that you haven't you didn't hear about it until two years ago. Is I think that's what you said. Right. And I didn't hear about it until a few months ago, probably. Yeah. So that's kind of a little litmus test of how many people are really familiar with it. And part of this is the tragedy. Well, maybe tragedy is too strong of a word. But the huge challenge that happened when the language shift took place, from German to English, and that's why this translation work is so valuable if this book is really that important. It's well worth a person's time like like yours to translate and make it available to the original audience, the Evangelical Lutheran Church located in America, I think that's right. I'm sure there's an there might be one out there. Yeah. No, I'm we were to my understanding, afraid that the transition from German to English would be a catastrophe. And although I don't regret that we're speaking in English right now, there are some respects in which it actually was a catastrophe, in the sense that much of our heritage, just stayed on the shelf and became that not only did students have the, the, the hindrance of needing to take up the book and read it, which is sometimes too much for us in our work. In our weak flesh, but now it's also in a German language they don't understand. So it becomes almost entirely inaccessible to almost everybody. Now, the effect that that has is, we have all the same theological needs. And so if we can grasp back into our theological history, we go elsewhere. And so you see a profound, profound influence in Lutheran homiletics coming from the English tradition in America. Yeah. So and that's, that's a whole nother can of worms, you know, you get the net, probably not so much like an Anglican influence, but definitely more of like a Calvinist or Evangelical, so to speak for American evangelicalism. And that's something that others have pointed out. You know, I always say, and I keep on saying it more, you are what you eat, right? If you're only consuming non Lutheran material, yeah, can they have something to offer? Absolutely. But as the main substance or analysis study theology more deeply, their theological presuppositions are built into how they view everything. And that's how they're going to preach that those assumptions that are often in error, they're not scriptural. So yeah, it is affected the culture. In American Lutheranism, whether you claim to be strenuous confessional or not, if you're not reading the Lutheran material, you're gonna lose base, or lose touch with some of that. And the danger, of course, is that the theological presuppositions underlying their applications are not always immediately apparent. So you say, Oh, that's a useful thing. That sounds good. I'll do that without pre meditating on, you know, the theological underlying supposition when so you end up doing something when in fact, if one had considered it, you know, previously, they wouldn't have done it. Right. It's almost you know, what, not so much. Is there anything wrong with what is being said? But are we missing? Are we losing out on something what isn't being said, and I think that's maybe kind of the issue here with the stencil of law gospel, how it's been assumed. And for those of you if you if you are kind of wondering what we're talking about, there's a previous episode on his Lutheran preaching change, and we talked about related issues you may want to listen to, but yeah, and is the way that the cookie cutter, stencil law, gospel preaching, which in your paper, he said, sometimes it's, it's a bit of a stereotype to the way people go after it. But it seems to me in my opinion, is just my opinion, it seems to be geared towards evoking almost always any emotional response. I know the audience, make you feel bad, that will make you feel good and make you feel bad if the law make you feel good with the gospel. And as we're saying, this is kind of being influenced by broader American Evangelical Christianity. That kind of harkens back to the Second Great Awakening where it was, we're preaching to get an emotional response, to get you to embrace Christianity in a specific way, based on an emotion we've given you. Not that emotions are always wrong or bad. But historically, I can kind of trace that that line of thinking, and maybe that's fair, maybe that's not that would require more study? Well, I think it's, you know, it really comes down to a balance of those things. If you go back to Aristotle's rhetoric, of course, he has these three parts to to rhetoric, which I think are is to my, my experience, or in my opinion, is a faithful representation of the way God has created speech, that there's a logos and ethos and pathos, meaning that there's a Lagace a logical argument to what's being said, there's a path OS, there's an emotional argument that's being made. And then there's the ethos, which is somewhat different than the first two, but just as necessary, which is that the speaker needs to have credibility, right, the credibility of the speaker. And so when you get an overemphasis in any of these respects, you end up with problems, right? If you have an overemphasis on the ethos, then you get a cult of personality, if you so what I mean is like, if it's all about this person's credibility, right, if that's the only reason you believe it, then you end up with an authoritarian society. And here I'm just talking about worldly rhetoric. But I think the same applies then to spiritual rhetoric, because then you get these churches that are entirely built on charismatic creatures as a brain of Christ. But then you get if you get an overemphasis in the overemphasize I speaking too much Greek, Greek a private over emphasis in the past hos then you get, you know, save like Great Awakening types of preaching, perhaps the the, you could identify a lot of gospel preaching as more geared at the epi emotions. So if you get an overemphasis, if you get an over emphasis in the path OS, then you get something like the Great Awakening where it's all about evoking emotion in the individual. But there's also a problem if you overemphasize the Lagace. And this is what you get with some of the critics of classical Lutheran preaching is that it was overly didactic, in the sense that you go to church, and it is that the preacher presents a thesis with proving arguments in order to persuade you to intellectually accept the theological argument that they're making. Now, if that's, that's okay, right, and it needs to be done. But if it's overwrought, or over emphasize what Duffner said this, and I think Schmidt also said it is that it becomes like, lethally dull, right? So there needs to be there needs to be a balance in these three aspects. Now, granted, I'm talking about a pagan when I refer to Aristotle, but I think that it does shed quite a bit of light on the the movement that preaching and homiletics has taken, because in the end, you know, this, the way that we speak and the way that people listen, although in many ways corrupted by sin is the West something that God has created, right, and he's a God of order, he created it to work in a certain way. So just as music, that there are pleasant harmonies, and there are discordant harmonies. So also there's speech with which is harmonious with the listener and speech, which is discordant with the listener speech, which communicates well, speech, which doesn't communicate well. So I think it's a balance between those three aspects that has been that has kind of went heavily from the didactic be pre 1950s, and 60s, and then went pretty heavily into the experiential or the, the the path loss argument, from their bleeding to today. Yeah, and historians like to often use that that pendulum of a clock to illustrate kind of shifts over time like, well, maybe the pendulum was way too far in the the logical reasoning, we're just going to lay out the facts, and here's why. And now go to the other. And of course, you're always going to find exceptions to those those generalizations. But yeah, I think correct generalizations are also useful, because they are generally true, or generally reflect what was was reality. Yeah. Interesting. So yeah, this is, this is really hard to divide this from just to be purely a historical discussion, because it is talking about, in a way how things are today, and maybe how, how they affect people in the present, right. But of course, we gain so much from looking at the history of the past to where would we be if we had no perception of what it used to be like before the year? 1950? Right, that would be kind of Yeah, absolutely. We'd be pretty aimlessly wandering, I would think so. Yeah. Again, this is really a valuable project here. So let's get into a little bit more of the content then of Well, we talked about paper and explain how things are different back then. But what was his definition of preaching? Yeah, peepers definition of preaching was something that I had never heard, or at least I had never heard it put that way before. He defines it as spiritual eloquence, okay, or spiritual oratory, or spiritual rhetoric, you could translate it that way as well. And in so doing, he actually does connect it to the classical tradition and rhetoric, originating with Aristotle maturing, I would dare say with quintillion. And then continuing on with and also with Cicero, of course, and then on from there, so yeah, he but he calls it specifically spiritual rhetoric. And the way that he defines that is basically it's a capacity for talking about things in the Scripture. Well, speaking about them well, for two reasons. One is to lead the listeners to the knowledge of and adoption of the truth. So it's not just intellectual, but it is. It's not just I believe this truth, but I adopt this truth, right, I act out this truth. And then and then it has the second goal of course of leading the listeners to salvation. So with that definition of preaching, how did he view the task of the preacher how is he supposed to connect his sermon with that biblical text is an assigned text right the reading for that Sunday is generally you had two or three options, right? But that was the pastor meant to interact with that. Right? So how is the preacher to interact with the biblical text? And how is he to look at it? This is some something that absolutely this is how I should say, peeper completely grasped my grasp my heart and got my intention, and really began to persuade me, because he speaks so emphatically and convincingly of the primacy of the biblical text. That is, basically take that spirit and lay it throughout all of his homiletics textbook, and apply the whole enterprise of homiletics and preaching, preaching to sinners. And and that's what peepers homiletics textbook is, when he so practically applied, then, how do you use the text? Or how are you to view it first, while he says that? It is that which legitimizes the preacher before his hearers. It is the the fact that he's preaching on the biblical text is the only thing that makes this a spiritual rhetoric, and not just merely a worldly speech. So the primacy the big biblical text is that it must be the foundation. But then he goes beyond that. And I think this is of first importance in our conversation now is that, he says, granted, he says, as much as possible, is to be taken from the text, not as the as building material for the sermon. So it's not just the foundation, but the biblical text is also the building material for the construction of the sermon. So in terms of how one is to, and then we'll perhaps we should talk about the function, the function of the biblical text as well. Basically, he says that the biblical text provides three things to the preacher first, it provides his material. The Secondly, it leads him deeper, and deeper into the scriptures. So there's a meditative devotional aspect to it. And finally, it restricts the pastor, the preacher, which again, is of first importance for the conversation of how, how is to one go about preaching and text, one of the primary, and how is a preacher to look regard his text, the way that paper talks about it in one chapter is that the text is to put up the boundaries for a preacher, and he has to move within those boundaries and not to step over those boundaries. And his belief is that if you step over the boundaries that a text puts for you, then he calls it human intervention. because how else does the do the people know that the word that you're speaking as a preacher is the divine Word, unless it is based on and constructed out of the biblical text? Now, of course, there's all sorts of ways to unravel that and unfolded in the application of building a sermon. But I think it's a profound statement. Yeah. If there's kind of a restrict kind of there is a certain restriction that he's giving you are restricted to this text in some way. Yeah. So I guess the question I have Then does that mean, let's say, Well, I don't want to have you like write a sermon for me. But a couple weeks ago, we are already preached on this the woman at the Samaritan woman at the well, for example, what would people say you have that text, and now it's forming the whole sermon, in a certain way, does even like the order of the sermon, it should kind of follow the order of that conversation Jesus had with a woman and kind of wondering now, how would I practically apply that? Is that is that as narrow as he wants it to be? Or simply, only the theological themes brought up in that text are the ones you should be addressing? It's more the latter. He incorporates basically two kinds, two general categories of sermon construction. One is what he calls analytical. And another is what he calls synthetic. And then there's a third actually, that's analytical synthetic, but he kind of just throws a paragraph after and says, you know, just use the first year. That's a paraphrase. But analytical is basically your theme and your sermon is based Find your text. And your sermon has the same goal that the text has. It's trying to do the same thing that the text is trying to do. Okay, so let's take, for example, Jesus Sermon on the Mount. You're trying to comfort the poor in spirit, you're trying to comfort those hungry and thirsting for righteousness. That would be and then you go through all of that. And then, in the analytical sermon, it often does take the form of saying, Okay, the first part talks about this second part talks about this, but it's not even necessarily chronological. It can be structured, restructured, somewhat, but paper does say that one should take into careful consideration, the the ordering that the Holy Spirit gave to this topic in the biblical text, and not to regard that lightly. That makes sense. So and maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here. I previously thought about asking you about how does the texts context allow appropriate flexibility? Right. So now he's, it's restrictive, but then he does say there's there's an area for flexibility. So where does that all balance? How does that all fit in? Yeah, so that actually would kind of lead into his second format. So the first is analytical where it's based on the text and it has the same goal as the text. But then he defines the synthetic sermon as one that is based on the text and is included in the text. But as Doesn't your sermon doesn't necessarily have the same goal that the text has. So for example, take like the, the healing of the official son, I believe I read a Walther sermon, where he makes the argument and the point of the sermon is to say that also in heterodox churches, there are true believers. The fact that this Gentile official had more of more faith than anyone in Israel, right? shows this truth. So it is based on the text and it's restricted to the text in the sense that it is directly there. He's not necessarily talking about the resurrection for the debt from the debt, for example, it is specifically there but it's not necessarily what Jesus is trying to what that narrative of what the evangelist is trying to do with that text. Now, I he says you can do it in both ways. And I think this is an area where more research and development needs to be invested. But I have Reinhold peepers Postel for the gospel texts for the historic lectionary. And he implies exclusively the analytical method, because I think for him now, with Walther, you get the synthetic a whole lot, at least in the Gospel pastels that were recently published. By CPH, you'll get a very often you get the synthetic, where he's just make taking a part out of the text that is in the text, and then just kind of elaborating on that the on that divine truth. But Ryan hold paper, and perhaps this is more of his unique contribution, at least within Lutheranism is very concerned with doing what the text is trying to do. And that's what his his preaching reflects, even though he says yes, you can do a synthetic sermon. And oftentimes, a synthetic sermon might be necessary. For example, if you have some kind of false teaching, that is rampant in your church, and you either choose a text or a text comes up in the lectionary. And yes, peeper was just fine with free texting, that he would rather have a free text than to take a lectionary text and try to apply it to something that it doesn't apply to it always use a different text. Right? But using that, using that free text to refute us for that specific false teaching that's, that's in your congregation. So you know, there's a really important practical application to the synthetic method, although it's in my experience, so far, at least, that Reinhold peeper truly favored the analytical technique. And I find myself agreeing with that notion. Yeah, it definitely is the pros of you know, this is trying to be a lot more authentic verses, I've already pre concluded what I want to say I want to say, as a preacher, the analytic is what what is God really trying to say? And I am just the messenger and I can see how that would be precisely but you know, he does have that appropriate flexibility though, of the audience is part of it, right? It's not that the word is is living and active directed at people and therefore it needs to do that. So can we Talk about how to he regard the audience in the role the formation of the sermon because I think that example of he would take a text to preach his specific need, means he's obviously considering the audience in some way in the polls. And all that. Yeah, absolutely. And although he would, I mean, he puts all the emphasis on the biblical text. He says that, you know, you can't have a sermon without application application is just just as essential as the interpretation, right? So you get these two parts interpretation application. And to be frank, if paper falls into some kind of stencil, if we want to use that word or a cookie cutter, it's kind of the interpretation application stencil, which I think that there are worse ones. But yeah, so she incorporates so much flexibility. Specifically, I'm sorry, can you rephrase? Or can you remind me of your question? Oh, just how did paper regard or consider the audience of sermon prep or delivery? Yeah, absolutely. So they're the other essential elements, right? You've got God's word, you've got the preacher, you've, you've got the congregation. I've just translated the other day, this beautiful passage, very boldly stated, where he said, Yes, God has given us His Word, in His written Word, and His written Word is sufficient in and of itself. But he says, But God also instituted the preaching office, right, and without the preaching offs, and this is the, the, the living proclamation of that written word, to sinners in need of repentance and forgiveness, then, you know, if you didn't have that the church would not exist, right? So he sees it also as completely foundational that there's this transaction that's occurring between the preacher and the audience. And the, the the congregation or the listeners or the heroes are so, so important to him. That everything that the preacher is doing needs to be geared at faithfully delivering the biblical content to the people, right. So he demands that it first of all, that it'd be your manuscript be written out, so that you can go back and edit it to make sure there's no false teaching and make sure that it faithfully represents the biblical text. He also demands that it be memorized for Batum now he says vert leash word for word. And but the goal there is that there's what he said is that there's so that there's no partition between the pastor and the congregation, right. So although peeper, student of Reinhold, deeper student of welfare, of course, did very much focus on didactic or, or instruction, instructional teaching or instructive teaching. In no way did he advocate for a kind of preaching with the head down. That's really heavy and overly logical, not in any way. Right? He focused on the preaching, but the idea was that the voice, the word choice, the facial expressions, the gestures, he talks about all of these in great detail about how they are all to be used in communicating this divine truth and as a living witness of Jesus Christ, to to the listeners and to the hearers. Now that I can anticipate a lot of pastors who might be listening to this, now suddenly getting really, really eager to see your translation work done, because that that's kind of it's covering all the aspects. Well, I may be missing something, but it seems like it's covering every aspect of preaching, when he seems to have been the purpose of this this book. Yeah. Yeah, certainly all the fundamental aspects of preaching. Yeah. And so and I don't read a ton of preaching books. I know there are other guys who maybe that's more of their their interest in their focus, but sometimes they seem like they're only covering like, one of those aspects of how can you be better at x? How can be better at why this is a little more comprehensive than for sure. Yeah. One way I've heard it characterized, is that recent textbooks have focused very much on form. So again, one aspect of it without perhaps fully elaborating on the underlying theology. And keeper covers all of those bases, which I found again, that just felt like it, it gave me a full diet, I felt like I had at least in terms of homiletics to some extent, I felt like I had a very a dilate a diet homiletical diet that was isolated to a few few case uses, say, you know, the application of long gospel not using a manual grip things like that, that I was concerned with. But then as I began to read, read paper, it really flushed out, flush that out to be a holistic nourishment in terms of homiletics. Yeah, so I guess maybe we could circle back to kind of how this all got started. Is it would it be fair then to say, having now that you are the expert on rental peepers homiletics textbook? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I didn't mean to inflate your ego there. I think that's a fair statement. Right? You're dealing with it. You know what it says? How would he respond to this law gospel preaching kind of as it is understood, generally today? Would he embrace yet long gospel? That's what you need to do? i It seems like maybe no. But you tell me how to deal with that. Sorry. That is a just a fantastic question. So I think he would offer one central criticism is repetitiveness. And so he said that this was also a problem with fivefold use preaching at a time and he quoted rombach saying this that, you know, he said, Okay, you got to use the fivefold views, right? Second Timothy three, Romans 15. But the people at that time, at least this is, this is Randox time, so we're talking 18th century, the preachers had taken it as a mortal sin. That's the Totus xinda. Right? It was a mortal sin, if they failed to use each of the five uses in every single sermon. So imagine how formulaic that would be okay, the woman at the well, what is what am I going to, I'm going to teach my people a little bit, I'm going to refute some heretics. I'm going to do some correcting, I'm going to do some training and righteousness, and we'll end with it a dash of comfort. And they would do that every single sermon, and they felt like it was a mortal sin. If they didn't do that. And that's something that I mentioned my papers like is this is exactly how we feel about while gospel preaching, at least sometimes how I feel is that if I diverge, I am automatically failing at the preaching test. And other people might say that to you, too. Oh, without a doubt, without a doubt. Yeah. And so he I'm sorry, can you bring me back to the question again? Yeah, so I guess I'll rephrase it, maybe keep it simple. What is What does people do with law gospel? If he is it fair to assume he's not going to say you have to stand so law and gospel that seems totally out of character from what everything you've said, but what does he What role does he see law gospel then in his preaching? So indeed, I would think that he would be critical of any form of formulaic or repetitive law gospel preaching, which to be fair, I haven't seen anybody, pro or anti law gospel however you want to say it, right. Who has who has ever advocated for formulaic preaching, right. So, but anyway, I think that would be his. That would be his criticism, and he was critical of overusing the doing an overwrought use of the fivefold use as well. That so that's a good question. How would long gospel work into the sermon for Reinhold peeper? I've heard the argument made a few times that one gospel isn't mentioned all that often in people's homiletics textbook. And that's true. He does not. His premise for the textbook and for preaching is at no point said, How does this text convicts my centers? And how does this text point point the centers to the cross? Like he's just have no edit. I mean, of course, that that works its way in when he talks about the necessary the necessity of teaching repentance and forgiveness, which comes in a particular part, but he does not systemize that the way that we might be used to in our present context in the Lutheran church. I would say that for peeper, Lon gospel is part of that flexibility in the text long gospel is part of the broad context that you need to keep in mind in whenever you're preaching, right. So he basically said, You got to be restricted to the text, but if you preach without the context in mind, you'll probably practice false exegesis and therefore false, you know, that will lead of course to false preaching. So he, goodness, I keep losing my train of thought. That's fine. Well, I guess you know, maybe to follow up not to derail even more, but is this somewhat where he would follow let scripture interpret Scripture with this context thing? You can't faithfully preached in an even an analytical sense of particular text without that the gem rule law gospel. Fundamental doctrine kind of true. Sorry, yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's exactly where I was that's on, you need to have the context, you need to have the the narrow context. So the surrounding verses, you need to have the broader context. So the surrounding chapters, and then you need to have the broadest context, which includes the book, the surrounding books, and all of Scripture, and all the entire system in parallel ism of Scripture and doctrine as well. So if you are ever preaching a sermon where law and gospel is not properly divided, then people would not be satisfied with that sermon, in the sense that if I were to make a statement that said, you can fulfill the law sufficiently in God's eyes, or if I were, if I were to communicate that implicitly to the people by say, if I over focused on training and righteousness or something like that, in neglect across entirely, you implicitly could lead the people to thinking that they can earn be satisfactory righteousness before God's eyes with their own works. And likewise, I mean, in paper even goes to the point in here, I think he gets this from author. But I've also seen it in Luther, where he says there needs to be some comfort in in every sermon, right? So I think that you can see the beginnings of some of the the modern usage of the law gospel dynamic in preaching. But I think more than anything for for paper law gospel was like this necessary distinction that needs to be kept rock solid in the mind of the preacher. And that whenever he preaches, that, the he's never to preach in such a way that the people confuse long gospel. So in paper sermons, for example, he does not try to make every point flow in and out of the Atonement, necessarily, but he's bringing it in all over the place. Or he's bringing in other forms of comfort and consolation as well. So I think generally speaking, that long gospel is completely essential to people's understanding of homiletics. And I think sometimes, I've heard I've heard some people talk almost disparagingly about lon gospel, or with kind of you hear a lot of gospel preaching, there's kind of a quirky smile. And we should be we should I think it's important to understand that it's good to create critique and misuse of long gospel, but that long gospel rightly a divided, rightly applied, within the context of, of preaching and of the biblical text is an absolutely necessary necessary light that shines in our minds so that we understand what we're saying, and why we're saying to the people. Good. And I think, you know, I can picture it. You know, there's that pendulum, right, maybe the pendulum in some ways has gone to the formulaic stencil, cookie cutter law gospel very specific, which we've talked about here and the other episode. But people would probably provide us that in the church, the caution, to keep it from going in the other direction, too, and saying, We got to cut cut out this kind of framework, this mindset, he wouldn't be arguing for, for that at all. Let's see. Yeah. Yeah. In no way. Oh, good. Well, I guess we can wrap up the main part of our, our discussion today, I think we got a good feel, for people at least a primer, an introduction to his homiletics, hopefully enough to get many people eager to see it in translation. Of course, if you're fluent in German, I'm sure you can find the German edition somewhere, too. But finally, and this is kind of a hypothetical, of course, but perhaps maybe just a summary of paper? How would he direct Lutheran preachers today to prepare their sermons, you know, in a sentence, a couple sentences or so the task that the preacher has, is to interpret the biblical text and apply it to his listeners. Anything outside of that is not preaching, and everything that a preacher does, it's to serve those purposes, to lead the people to knowledge of adoption of the truth and to suffer Salvation. All right, very clear. You had that you had that very well prepared. I appreciate that. And it was was solid answer. So now we could talk a bit more about you know, this is History podcast. So we talked about meat also the process of history. When can you tell us about your research method? And you can you can answer either in regards to your translation project, which is the bigger project or the article that she wrote, giving us the context and explore meaning this a bit more. research method was quite simple. I started with a question, which was, you know, what is law gospel preaching? What? How is law gospel preaching situated? In the context, historical context of preaching, especially in the Lutheran church? What is this whole talk about fivefold use? What are these people? So it started with that question of relation. fivefold use, or law gospel? Are we misunderstanding what's going on here? And that question was formed out of my reading from secondary literature. And from my practice of homiletics, so it had those two, those two bases. In the process of reading, then I heard first Dr. Koontz, talk about Reindl paper and his homiletics textbook. And I had German and I wanted to translate something, I thought, well, let's go for it. So I just started, started translating. And as I was, and I didn't even necessarily have the goal of writing this paper on this point. But as I was, as I was translating, I just saw so many, like just gems in, in this textbook that addressed this addressed this question. And so I would just take notes as I was reading through the primary source them and how it related to the relationship of those secondary sources. And the question that was kind of the next step in the conversation and how to answer that question. And then that was, then that was my second step. And then my third step was simply to synthesize my resources and findings into an answer to that question and formulate, and elaborate it out into an essay. Yeah, very good. Yeah, definitely. This is a prime example of being able to build on secondary research that's already out there. But finding your own particular area where you can just kind of dig deep and kind of play in your own sandbox, so to speak, right? And bring us something unique, yet still very relevant. What about the translation process? I guess I'm curious is that is that pretty much straightforward for you? The textbook I'm sure is available in print, and maybe even digital. Was it hard? I was I was able to find a hard copy of it. But that was basically a miracle. The other hard copy that I have came from the St. Louis library, the Seminole Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and I'm so I'm indebted to them that they let me they've let I've had it for over a year now. And they just sent it to me. They've checked it out to me. But and this is the, the wonders of the digital age, as many problems as it comes with, is you can just get the whole textbook in German for free online. In a second. It's on archive.org. So wonderful. As far as the truck translation process goes, yeah, it's, it is somewhat straightforward. And also utterly convoluted. Because there's so many moving parts. And I have this kind of paralysis when I first started because I thought, my goodness, I had really only worked from German to German I've just been in I was either in the German language or as in the English language, because that's how I learned it. Right? I didn't learn it through English. So I had to figure out how to cross that bridge. And I realized I had never done that before. I'm like, Oh, my goodness. So And I figured, I'm just going to make this if I make mistakes systematically, this book is 474 pages long. I'm gonna make like 10,000 mistakes and create so much work for myself. But I thought, You know what, it just got to start. So I got, I got to got to work and just started translating. And in just taking things one step at a time. And then I received quite a bit of help from Dr. Ben Mays at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, who gave me a lot of hints and helps to develop my translation method. And then I also have some received some help and advice from CPH. And then finally, I'm working with Matthew Carver, who's a member of the Missouri Senate, and is just a professional at translating and he has been just an invaluable help to me in in bringing the translation to the next level. Now, fascinating. Well, I hope that you continue to to continue ahead and seems like you've got a little bit left work, but it's well well worth it for the project. So I hope this gives you more encouragement to to keep at it as best you can. So I guess there's so much Yeah, absolutely. They will. And I'm not saying this just to plug it for you but I'll definitely get like a copy as soon as that is available. For for purchase. So we might even do an update here is if people tell me I get feedback, people are interested, I'll definitely make it a little announcement. For that we want to encourage and support ongoing Lutheran historical research through the podcast and as best we can. So I guess my last question then just to wrap it up, and you know this, if we have other people who might be looking for a project or may find areas they can connect with your topic, do you think there are more areas of potential research on either narrowly paper in his dogmatics? Or the history of Lutheran preaching? Even in a broader sense? Yeah, I cannot express how much work needs to be done. I heard there's another humbler Titian who recently received his PhD in Christian preaching from Southern Seminary. Josh, Dr. Josh Cook, again, a Missouri Senate pastor, and he's put it this way, you know, if we had 30, homily, petitions working full time, we would not be able to exhaust it. There's just a very rich heritage is even within just the German German history of preaching, teaching on preaching of the task of preaching. So yes, I mean, I've just kind of seen more and more humble petitions popping up. But we need more, right? We need more people focused on this, because this is the living voice of the Word of God today. And it's couldn't emphasize enough how necessary it is. There are certain men like I've mentioned them before fruitful grow defense shot harms, and many others who wrote textbooks, they had all sorts of things to, to add to the conversation, and people only took what he wanted out of them. And he couldn't include the whole thing. And, you know, why did people choose what he chose? Right? What How did homiletics evolved from rombach in the 1700s, to Walther in the 1800s. And then to paper in the 20th century, we don't know how that evolved, right? And that work seriously needs to be done. Because in the end, and this is the goal, and we mentioned this earlier, just with the task of preaching, or the task of studying history, is that you you dig up the treasures out of the past and bring them to the present. Right? I'm going to paraphrase something Jesus said, he said something like the writer of the kingdom of God is someone who brings out of his out of his treasures, what is old and what is new. Right? That's a bit a bit of a Loose paraphrase. But I think that that's the ultimate goal. And this is what we need. We need somebody or a group of somebodies, to synthesize classical rhetoric, the biblical rhetoric, the rhetoric of the ancient Church, the rhetoric of historical historical rhetoric of Lutheranism, we need people to synth take those, synthesize them with the new homiletics that's come up over the past 50 years, and take all the good and get rid of the dross and produce some kind of product but like a preaching textbook for 21st century, Lutheranism in America, and there no one person could do that. So if anybody's interested by please, we need help. Yeah. Absolutely. But what more can I say? But yeah, amen to that. Right. That's that's a very valuable project. And it shows that history isn't just for history sake, but it always comes into the present and future service of, of the church. Well, I just want to say thank you, Pastor Isaac Johnson for not only coming on this podcast today and and your patients with getting that all set up and following through with that, I appreciate that. But also for like I said, already, your your work that you have been doing, or continuing to do. Thank you so much. Thanks, man. I appreciate that you had me on today? Absolutely. And to our listeners, just a few closing remarks, as some of you have asked if there's way to support the show. And I would say the best way to do that is to share the show to tell people about episodes maybe found this episode fascinating. And you can think of one or two other people who would also like it, you could share the show through social media. We're on Facebook, I don't check Facebook too much. But we do have a Facebook page there. And of course, we have a website@buzzsprout.com and it's tl hp.buzzsprout.com Lutheran History podcast. 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