I started enjoying my Halloween treat from CPH over the weekend: The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology by Dr. Charles Porterfield Krauth.
I wish that someone had warned us that this book was such a monstrous tome! I had to get a dolly to wheel it in off of my front porch (...okay, not really but I was sure to lift with my legs when I picked it up.) I am barely through the preface of what the introduction admits is a "mammoth offering".
This Everest is worth the read. The introduction provides samples from his other works which reveal that Dr. Krauth draws from an endless well of thought-provoking insight:
"It is not the division which pains, but their discomfort of it. Sects are sorry, not for the sin [of sectarianism], but for the penalty it brings, and the unionism of the day is trying to escape from God's punishment of the sin of sectarianism without abandoning the sin itself. Unionism does not mean to remove division, but to perpetuate and hallow it." -Dr. Krauth, Religion and Religionisms, p. 237.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Krauth on Unionism
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2 comments:
I've got a late 19th century copy of the book, which makes it even more of a tome.
I am not sure where it is, but at some point Krauth does this great analysis of liberalism, to wit: at first they just want acceptance. Once they've gained acceptance, then they want equality. Once they've gotten that, then they expect superiority. Since this sounds exactly like what activists homosexuals have been doing for some years, it is striking that the same tactics have been around so long.
The modern political climate has really ruined the true understanding of what conservative and liberal means. Krauth provides some wonderful clarity in this book that can be applied both in and out of theological circles.
The key to understanding Lutheranism is that it is preservitive. There is one, holy, apostolic faith. Lutheranism seeks to preserve that faith as best she can. There should be no movements in Lutheranism. Lutherans should gather at the cross, hold up the Word, and defend it to the death.
As Luther put it, "Here I stand." (not "This is were I am going.")
btw, Bruce, this is one of the 30 books that I had in mind in our conversation about the Timotheus Verinus on your blog. If you know the value of what Krauth is talking about, you instinctively identify and reject most Pietism.
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