The Gottesdienst Crowd

Jason Braaten

We foster confessional integrity, liturgical preservation, and preaching that doesn’t stink.

  1. 2 days ago

    TGC 620 – The Shape of Psalter: David, Moses, and Christ

    In this episode, Paul Schultz talks with the Rev. Dr. Adam Hensley, Associate Professor of Exegetical Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, about the deliberate ordering of the Hebrew Psalter. Hensley explains how the five books of Psalms are marked by real editorial seams (not artificial divisions) and traces the influential but flawed thesis of Gerald Wilson, who argued that the Psalter records a shift away from the Davidic covenant toward Moses and a "democratized" covenant applied to the whole people, following Israel's exile and the loss of kingship. Hensley lays out his own thesis in response: rather than the Davidic covenant being democratized, the Mosaic covenant is "royalized." Moses appears throughout the Psalter as the one who diagnoses Israel's sin and intercedes, but never as the one who solves it. That role belongs to the idealized king, the Christ, whose intercession reconciles not only Israel but the nations to God. Drawing on Psalm 89's lament, the Davidic and Solomonic material at the end of Book Two, and the pattern of Moses references through Books Three and Four, Hensley shows how the Psalter's editors kept pointing forward to a greater son of David rather than settling for a Mosaic consolation prize. He connects this to his dissertation, published by T&T Clark as Covenant Relationships and the Editing of the Hebrew Psalter. ----more---- Host: Fr. Paul Schultz Guest: Dr. Adam Hensley ----more---- Become a Patron! You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/ You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/ You can support Gottesdienst here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/make-a-donation/ As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support.

  2. 12 Aug

    TGC 617 – LSB After 20 Years

    Dr. Paul Grime looks back on the making of Lutheran Service Book, twenty years after the project began. As the executive director overseeing the hymnal's development, Grime walks through what it took to produce a single book for a synod still split between The Lutheran Hymnal and Lutheran Worship — the committee structure, the doctrinal review process, the mid-project change in commission membership under new synod leadership, and the painstaking work of testing layout and design so the final product would be usable by any congregation without a second thought. Beyond the process, Grime reflects on what it means to do this kind of work well: learning to disagree without losing collegiality, taking time rather than rushing decisions, and remembering that a hymnal is a public confession of what the church believes and sings. He closes with an eye toward the newly reestablished Commission on Worship and the challenges facing whoever takes up the next hymnal project, given the sheer volume of hymnody and scholarship now available compared to thirty years ago. ----more---- Host: Fr. Jason Braaten Guest: Rev. Dr. Paul Grime ----more---- Become a Patron! You can subscribe to the Journal here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/subscribe/ You can read the Gottesblog here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/gottesblog/ You can support Gottesdienst here: https://www.gottesdienst.org/make-a-donation/ As always, we, at The Gottesdienst Crowd, would be honored if you would Subscribe, Rate, and Review. Thanks for listening and thanks for your support.

  3. 29 Jul

    TGC 614 – Augustine on the Christian Pilgrimage

    Rev. Chris Durham, chaplain at Wittenberg Chapel serving LCMS students at the University of North Dakota, joins the show to discuss Augustine on the theme of pilgrimage — the Christian life as movement from a beginning through this present age toward final rest in God. The conversation starts in Scripture before turning to Augustine: Hebrews 4 and 11 on the promised Sabbath rest and the patriarchs who died as strangers and exiles seeking a better country, and 1 Peter's language of Christians as "elect exiles" on the way. These texts set a pattern — a real beginning, a center in Christ, and an end in the eternal city — against which Durham contrasts Neoplatonism, Augustine's own intellectual background before his conversion. For Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, the soul's return to "the One" is not a real destination but a perpetual, unending cycle with no true rest — a view Durham compares to modern nihilism and multiverse thinking, where there's motion but no goal. Durham then traces Augustine's own writings across time: the early Soliloquies, where the newly baptized Augustine already breaks from Neoplatonism and Manichaeism by affirming creation from nothing as good; and the Confessions, written years later from his position as bishop, where Augustine reads his own past through Scripture and famously confesses, "our heart is restless until it rests in you." Durham walks through Augustine's account of his conversion in the garden in Milan — the child's voice repeating "pick up and read," the reading of Romans 13, and the peace that followed — as the turning point where restlessness gives way to rest in Christ. The two also touch on Augustine's argument in City of God Book 12 against the eternity of the world, and draw out a running application: every worldly promise of peace or comfort — ancient or modern — ultimately fails to deliver what only Christ can give, a clean conscience through the forgiveness of sins and the sure hope of the rest to come. Topics covered: Biblical foundations of pilgrimage: Hebrews 4 and 11, 1 Peter 1 Neoplatonism and the "One" — creation as emanation without beginning or end Augustine's Soliloquies: early post-baptismal rejection of Neoplatonism and Manichaeism Augustine's Confessions: restlessness, the pear-theft episode, and the conversion in the garden City of God Book 12 on the world's createdness vs. its supposed eternity The false peace offered by worldly philosophies, ancient and modern Rest in Christ as the true end of the Christian pilgrimage

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We foster confessional integrity, liturgical preservation, and preaching that doesn’t stink.

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