Eric W. Gritsch (originally Erich Walter Gritsch, April 19, 1931, Neuhaus am Klausenbach, Austria - December 29, 2012, Baltimore, United States) [1] was an American Lutheran ecumenical theologian and Luther scholar.
Eric W. Gritsch (originally Erich Walter Gritsch, April 19, 1931, Neuhaus am Klausenbach, Austria - December 29, 2012, Baltimore, United States) [1] was an American Lutheran ecumenical theologian and Luther scholar.
Gritsch was raised in a Lutheran pastor's family in Bernstein im Burgenland in Austria. His family was deeply affected by the Anschluss and the Second World War. His father died on a death march as a Russian prisoner of war, but Gritsch himself, who had been drafted into a Werwolf group, escaped capture by posing as a gypsy boy. [2] He returned to Bernstein and graduated with Matura in 1950. The same year, he matriculated at the University of Vienna to study Protestant theology. In 1954 he received a Fulbright scholarship and came to Yale University for the academic year 1954/55. After going back to Austria to complete his ministerial training, he immigrated to the United States in 1957, initially for doctoral studies with Roland H. Bainton. His thesis was on Thomas Müntzer, the radical reformer.
Gritsch's first teaching position was at Wellesley College from 1959 to 1961. In 1961, he was called to Gettysburg Seminary, where he taught Church History and Reformation Studies until his retirement in 1994. In 1970, he became the first director of the seminary's Institute for Luther Studies and responsible for the series of scholarly conferences at Gettysburg known as Martin Luther Colloquy. [3]
Since his early days in Gettysburg, he was active in the Christian-Jewish dialog. The Lutheran World Federation made him a board member of its Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, and for the ELCA he was a member of the American Lutheran-Catholic Dialog Commission (1971–1992). He also served on the board of the Lajos-Ordass-Foundation. Together with Robert Jenson, he produced Lutheranism. The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings, a widely used resource book.
Gritsch was part of a team that translated and edited the American edition of Luther's works. Assisted by his wife Ruth (1931–2009), [4] he translated and edited vols. 39 and 41. He also cooperated on the translation and edition of the Book of Concord (Kolb/Wengert edition). [5]
In retirement, Gritsch lived in Baltimore with his wife Bonnie. He remained active as lecturer and teacher. From 1995 to 2005, he taught at the Ecumenical Institute of St. Mary’s University in Baltimore. At the Melanchthon Institute in Houston, Texas he held an endowed chair named in his honor in 2000.
He was a member of Zion Lutheran Church and director of its Zion Forum for German Culture. His latest major works were a history of Lutheranism and his autobiography The Boy from the Burgenland. From Hitler Youth to Seminary Professor, which also contains a number of his articles.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is a mainline Protestant Lutheran church headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA was officially formed on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three Lutheran church bodies. As of 2022, it has approximately 2.9 million baptized members in 8,640 congregations.
Crypto-Calvinism is a pejorative term describing a segment of those members of the Lutheran Church in Germany who were accused of secretly subscribing to Calvinist doctrine of the Eucharist in the decades immediately after the death of Martin Luther in 1546. It denotes what was seen as a hidden Calvinist belief, i.e., the doctrines of John Calvin, by members of the Lutheran Church. The term crypto-Calvinist in Lutheranism was preceded by terms Zwinglian and Sacramentarian. Also, Jansenism has been accused of crypto-Calvinism by Roman Catholics.
Robert William Jenson was a leading American Lutheran and ecumenical theologian. Prior to his retirement in 2007, he spent seven years as the director of the Center for Theological Inquiry at Princeton Theological Seminary. He was the co-founder of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology and is known for his two-volume Systematic Theology published between 1997 and 1999.
The Book of Concord (1580) or Concordia is the historic doctrinal standard of the Lutheran Church, consisting of ten credal documents recognized as authoritative in Lutheranism since the 16th century. They are also known as the symbolical books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The Lutheran Church in America (LCA) was an American and Canadian Lutheran church body that existed from 1962 to 1987. It was headquartered in New York City and its publishing house was Fortress Press.
This is a sub-page for the Justification (theology) page.
The Apology of the Augsburg Confession was written by Philipp Melanchthon during and after the 1530 Diet of Augsburg as a response to the Pontifical Confutation of the Augsburg Confession, Charles V's commissioned official Roman Catholic response to the Lutheran Augsburg Confession of 25 June 1530. It was intended to be a defense of the Augsburg Confession and a refutation of the Confutation. It was signed as a confession of faith by leading Lutheran magnates and clergy at the meeting of the Smalkaldic League in February, 1537, and subsequently included in the German [1580] and Latin [1584] Book of Concord. As the longest document in the Book of Concord it offers the most detailed Lutheran response to the Roman Catholicism of that day as well as an extensive Lutheran exposition of the doctrine of Justification.
The Smalcald Articles or Schmalkald Articles are a summary of Lutheran doctrine, written by Martin Luther in 1537 for a meeting of the Schmalkaldic League in preparation for an intended ecumenical Council of the Church.
The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537), The Tractate for short, is the seventh Lutheran credal document of the Book of Concord. Philip Melanchthon, its author, completed it on 17 February 1537 during the assembly of princes and theologians in Smalcald.
Samuel Simon Schmucker was a German-American Lutheran pastor and theologian. He was integral to the founding of the Lutheran church body known as the General Synod, as well as the oldest continuously operating Lutheran seminary and college in North America.
Lutheranism as a religious movement originated in the early 16th century Holy Roman Empire as an attempt to reform the Catholic Church. The movement originated with the call for a public debate regarding several issues within the Catholic Church by Martin Luther, then a professor of Bible at the young University of Wittenberg. Lutheranism soon became a wider religious and political movement within the Holy Roman Empire owing to support from key electors and the widespread adoption of the printing press. This movement soon spread throughout northern Europe and became the driving force behind the wider Protestant Reformation. Today, Lutheranism has spread from Europe to all six populated continents.
Charles Porterfield Krauth was a pastor, theologian and educator in the Lutheran branch of Christianity. He is a leading figure in the revival of the Lutheran Confessions connected to Neo-Lutheranism in the United States.
Roy Alvin Harrisville II was an American Lutheran theologian who wrote extensively on the interpretation of the New Testament.
Robert Kolb is professor emeritus of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, and a world-renowned authority on Martin Luther and the history of the Reformation.
The Pennsylvania Ministerium was the first Lutheran church body in North America. With the encouragement of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1787), the Ministerium was founded at a Church Conference of Lutheran clergy on August 26, 1748. The group was known as the "German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of North America" until 1792, when it adopted the name "German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States".
Carl Edward Braaten was an American Lutheran theologian and minister.
Gabriel Joseph Fackre (1926–2018) was an American theologian and Abbot Professor of Christian Theology Emeritus at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Massachusetts. He was on the school's faculty for 25 years before retiring in 1996. Previous to that he was Professor of Theology and Culture at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, teaching there from 1961 through 1970. Fackre has also served as visiting professor or held lectureships at 40 universities, colleges, and seminaries. His papers are housed in Special Collections at Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries, Princeton, New Jersey.
Lutheran Mariology or Lutheran Marian theology is derived from Martin Luther's views of Mary, the mother of God and these positions have influenced those taught by the Lutheran Churches. Lutheran Mariology developed out of the deep Christian Marian devotion on which Luther was reared, and it was subsequently clarified as part of his mature Christocentric theology and piety. Lutherans hold Mary in high esteem, universally teaching the dogmas of the Theotokos and the Virgin Birth. Luther dogmatically asserted what he considered firmly established biblical doctrines such as the divine motherhood of Mary while adhering to pious opinions of the Immaculate Conception and the perpetual virginity of Mary, along with the caveat that all doctrine and piety should exalt and not diminish the person and work of Jesus Christ. By the end of Luther's theological development, his emphasis was always placed on Mary as merely a receiver of God's love and favour. His opposition to regarding Mary as a mediatrix of intercession or redemption was part of his greater and more extensive opposition to the belief that the merits of the saints could be added to those of Jesus Christ to save humanity. Lutheran denominations may differ in their teaching with respect to various Marian doctrines and have contributed to producing ecumenical meetings and documents on Mary.
Tuomo Mannermaa was professor emeritus of ecumenical theology at University of Helsinki. He is known especially for his theological criticism of the Leuenberg Concord and his research on the relationship between justification and theosis in the theology of Martin Luther. His initiating and furthering this research caused him to be regarded as the father of "The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther" or "the Finnish School of Tuomo Mannermaa".
Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that identifies primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church ended the Middle Ages and, in 1517, launched the Reformation.
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