ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q00A JANUARY 2005 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 LOMBARD, IL 60148 * * * * * This text is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * >> DR. CHARLES P. ARAND: Hi. I'm Dr. Charles Arand. I'm a professor of systematic theology here at Concordia Seminary, and I've been here teaching at Concordia Seminary since 1989 when I was, I guess someone would say a young whippersnapper around here. Prior to that, I served a congregation in southern Illinois, St. John's *New Minion and St. Luke's Covington for about three and one-half years. I went to those parishes immediately upon leaving the seminary in 1984. Part of that, four years of seminary here in St. Louis. I graduated from Concordia College in Milwaukee. I went through Milwaukee Lutheran High School and St. Peter�s Lutheran Grade School. So I�m a system product you might say If you're interested at all in my personal life, I have a wife, one wife, and two children, a son who is now in college and a daughter who is in high school. My interest in the Lutheran Confessions arose from my studies as a seminarian back in 1980 and 1981. It was when I took the courses of Confessions 1 and Confessions 2 that I came into contact with the Confessions, and I think as the more I got into them, I realized that I was coming into contact with the genius and spirit of confessional Lutheranism you might say. I hesitate to use the language that I sort of fell in love with them, but I developed a passion for the study of the Confessions as a result. I was perhaps also influenced by *Charles Porterfield Crouth who wrote a wonderful book introducing the Confessions called, "The Conservative Reformation and it's Theology." Similarly, another man, *Theodore Schmulk, wrote a book on the confessional principle. I think between reading those and working with the confessional text itself, themselves, I developed a real appreciation for Lutheran theology and became a little more convinced of its truthfulness and its value for us. Well, as a result of that, I have pretty well spent the past 20 years studying the Confessions. Even though I was in the parish, I put together a fairly lengthy bibliography of about 2,400 entries on the Lutheran Confessions and put that out with Dr. David Daniel at the time. I tell my kids this, and they say, well, I was there will dork if that was my hobby. But personally, it was fun, and it made a great foundation ultimately for my dissertation. Since then, when I came to the parish, came to the parish from the seminary, I was assigned, fortunately, classes in the Lutheran Confessions, and at that point, I said, well, I�m going to take a real methodological approach in dealing with them. So I thought I would spend the first five years on Luther's Small and Arch Catechisms. The reason for this is because they were among my favorite things to teach in the parish, and I believe they provide a road bridge between a congregation and the seminary. It's by way of the catechisms that the theology of the seminary often enters into the congregation and reaches the person in the pew. I thought I�d spend five years studying the primary and secondary sources like a good scholar should. After two years, I hadn�t gotten out of the First Commandment. Some much literature and so many dissertations have been written on it. Well, I managed to, after about seven or eight years, work through an initial draft of a book on the Small Catechism about which time I was asked to translate the apology for the Augsburg Confession in the *Kohl edition. That took a couple years, and as a result, I am now trying to put together a book or work on the history and theology of the apologies as well. I suppose, the past 15 years of my life have been basically consumed with those two documents, Luther�s Catechism and the Apologies of the Augsburg Confession. And I have to admit, I am probably happiest when I am working with those texts and struggling to identify and to determine what kind of principles we can use to take these 500-year-old texts and have them assist us or guide us in addressing the issues of our day in a very far, vastly different context of America of religious pluralism and freedom of religion than the 16th century reformers faced. Well, I've probably told you more than you really want to hear, but I've also hopefully given you a sneak preview because as you go through this course, you�re probably going to encounter me in dealing with the Apology of the Augsburg Confession.