Home - T. R. Halvorson

Make Sure You Enjoy Being in the Field on Your Way to Resurrection

One spring when I was a teenager, my Dad injured his back. He landed in the hospital in traction. That left seeding the crop to me. Could I get it done? I doubted and dreaded. When I got to the farmyard, before I knew what I was doing, I had climbed the windmill tower and […]

Review of Eckardt’s Anselm and Luther on the Atonement: Was It “Necessary”?

The trouble with many conventional treatments of Anselm and Luther is that they fail to consider their differences in purpose and method. This failure, especially among many claiming to be heirs of Luther, has driven a deeper and wider wedge between Anselm and Luther than is warranted. To be sure, they have differences, and to be...

Seeing Is Not Believing

In the three year lectionary, the Gospel text this year for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost is John 6:35-51. Let us observe how our text starts. First, Jesus declares who He is. He says, “I am the bread of life.” Next, He says that they have seen him. Then, He says that although they have […]

Jesus Visted Doc Martin’s Surgery

In the British television show, Doc Martin, the newly arrived doctor in a small village is annoyed by villagers using the waiting room of his surgery as a social club. They assemble without having medical complaints. Doc Martin rudely tells them, “If you don’t have an actual medical complaint, just get out.” John the Baptist […]

Real Men Catechize their Children

Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche was the title of a best-selling book by Bruce Feirstein published in 1982. Supposedly, a real man would eat egg and bacon pie if his wife made it, she served it to him, and she cleaned up afterwards. What a real man would not do is make it himself, call it […]

How to Find the Church — Pastor Rolf Preus

If you want to ﬁnd the church you don’t look for Christians. You look for the pure gospel of Christ. God only knows who the Christians are. But we can and must know what the gospel is. So we don’t look for the biggest group, the most prestigious group, the holiest group, or the most […]

FUBAR: Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition

In the movie, Saving Private Ryan, Private Reiben asks, “Where’s the sense of riskin’ the lives of the eight of us to save one guy?” Captain Miller says, “We all have orders, and we have to follow ’em. That supersedes everything, including your mothers.” Private Reiben asks, “Even if you think the mission’s FUBAR, sir?” […]

The Bright and Shining Sin of Good Works and the Service of God

A sermon of Martin Luther on Luke 2:21-40 is loaded with so many gems it is difficult to select one for consideration here. Two are how Simeon is a preacher of the cross and against glory, and how works and respectability can be a snare against faith. Here is a piece of the latter: “51. […]

You’ll Have To Draw Me a Picture

I almost flunked out of high school. The first time was in algebra, trying to solve polynomials. “Solving” means finding the roots of many terms. My translation? Trying to make sense of a heap of concepts. Good gravy. After my algebra disaster, it was surprising how well I did in geometry. It’s not that geometry […]

One Big Wrong Makes Us Right

As lousy moments go, it was one of the lousiest. It was during a visit to Stordahl Cemetery. Not much there. The church building is gone. Only the bell and cemetery remain. From that forlorn spot of prairie, I could see my grandfather’s homestead across the terrain and my father’s grave at my feet. We […]

Come unto Me: Sin and Salvation

Many are tormented from time to time with doubts that Jesus loves them. They see something judging them on Facebook or You Tube. A works-righteousness church they left tells them they are going to hell because they have converted to salvation by grace alone through faith alone for the sake of Christ alone. Family members […]

Stage 4 Cancer – Sorry State of Catechization in the Home

My aunt, Gladys, was a manager in the U. S. Geological Survey. As a federal government employee, she had excellent health care. The plan included frequent checkups and examinations. But it failed her. My Dad from North Dakota visited her and her husband, Bob, at their home in Maryland. He noticed it right away. Her […]

How Jesus Fooled the World

Messiah is a person foretold in Hebrew prophesies. The prophets spoke during more than 1000 years. Each added specifics to who Messiah would be. To fool the world, all Jesus had to do was fulfill a few hundred prophesies. Let’s look at a sample. Jesus was choosy about his parents, to make himself a descendant […]

Sitting in the Biggest Corner Ever

A mother ordered her naughty son to sit in a corner. After a few minutes, he told his mother, “I’m sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside!” He obeyed, but he didn’t submit. The conflict of wills between two different persons remained. In Gethsemane, the Father told his Son to […]

Conversion: Trusting God’s Word for Your Regeneration and Resurrection

Conversion: Trusting God’s Word for Your Regeneration and Resurrection By T. R. Halvorson NOTE: This article may be downloaded as a PDF Document We must trust Christ to raise us from death to life. We must trust him for this twice: regarding our resurrection, and regarding our regeneration. These two cases are alike. In both […]

W and M Forms of “Worship”

Lutheran worship, when true to Lutheran faith, takes the shape or form of a W, so to speak. The W begins above with God who comes down to us — \ — offering gifts in Word and Sacrament. When repentance receives these gifts with contrition and faith, faith believing the Gospel responds according to the […]

Book Review: Vicarious Satisfaction in Lutheran Catechisms, Confessions, and Hymns

by Rev. Dennis E. McFadden, Pastor ordained in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod Vicarious Satisfaction in Lutheran Catechisms, Confessions, and Hymns by attorney and Lutheran layman TR Halvorson fulfills the promise of its title. In a spare 160 pages Halvorson offers examples to prove the centrality of vicarious atonement in the theology of confessional […]

Finally! Some Satisfaction in the Atonement

Two Notes: This article originally published January 3, 2014 on TwinStoneWarden. The problems described here got much better with the publication of Jack Kilcrease’s The Doctrine of the Atonement from Luther to Forde. You can read my review of that book here. Ever since reading Gustaf Aulén’s Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main […]

Too sinful for Communion?

Do you feel that, because of your sins, you cannot go to the Lord’s Supper? Perhaps you do because of how many your sins are. Or perhaps because of one that is besetting, a sin that many times you have resolved and even taken measure against repeating, but here you are again, right in the […]

New Book: Vicarious Satisfaction in Lutheran Catechisms, Confessions, and Hymns

Synoptic Text Information Services, Inc. announces the release of the new book, Vicarious Satisfaction in Lutheran Catechisms, Confessions, and Hymns by T. R. Halvorson. Lutheran Orthodoxy teaches that a vital part of the work of God in Christ is atonement by vicarious satisfaction. Vicarious satisfaction is attested in Scripture, the Lutheran confessions in the Book […]

Liturgy and Communion

Bibliography

Bibliography: Atonement

Books

Atonement in Confessional Lutheran Theology: Franz Pieper

Atonement in Lutheran Orthodoxy: Johannes Quenstedt

Atonement in Lutheran Orthodoxy: Baier-Walther

Atonement in Lutheran Orthodoxy: Abraham Calov

Vicarious Satisfaction in Lutheran Catechisms, Confessions, and Hymns

Catechism and Confessions

Vicarious Satisfaction in Explanations of Luther’s Small Catechism

Vicarious Satisfaction in the Lutheran Confessions

Hymns

Vicarious Satisfaction in Lutheran Hymns

Book Reviews

Jack D. Kilcrease, The Doctrine of the Atonement from Luther to Forde

Theodore Dierks, Reconciliation and Justification

Junius B. Remensnyder, Atonement and Modern Thought

Burnell F. Eckardt, Anselm and Luther on the Atonement: Was It “Necessary”?

Benjamin Wheaton, Suffering, Not Power: Atonement in the Middle Ages

Errors and Truth

Atonement in Our Circles and Church

The Cracked Foundation of Forde’s Radical Lutheranism

Nice Guys Ruin the Consolation of Christ’s Blood

The Saddest Chapter in the History of Mankind

NEC-NOS

Finally! Some Satisfaction in the Atonement

How Do Sump Pumps and Sacrifice Work?

Escaping a Prairie Fire on Burnt Out Ground

Jesus Received Up — John 9:51-56

Bibliography

Bibliography: Liturgy and Communion

Worship in General

Relevant Worship: The Story of Your Life

Worship: What for? Who acts? Which way does it flow?

W and M Forms of “Worship”

How Can Worship Begin — Baptism: No Stepping on the Lord’s Train

Parts of the Service

The Evangelical Kyrie

Why the Preface, Agnus Dei, and Pax Domini? Real Presence

Nunc Dimittis: Seeing God’s Savior and Salvation

What was I thinking when reciting the Creed?

Real Presence

Would you deny Real Presence to escape the jaws of beasts?

Vicarious Satisfaction in Liturgy

Vicarious Satisfaction in Liturgy: Worship in General

Vicarious Satisfaction in Liturgy: Invocation

Vicarious Satisfaction in Liturgy: Agnus Dei (Lamb of God)

NEC-NOS

The Sacrament and the Second Petition in Leviticus

Hushing Christ’s Words of Institution: Then and Now

Publisher’s Preface: Luther’s Liturgical Criteria, Bryan D. Spinks

The Focus of Life is “None of the Above”

Luther’s Liturgical Criteria and His Reform of the Canon of the Mass

Luther reformed the Canon of the Mass, the way the Sacrament of the Altar is administered. He has been branded a liturgical hack.

Was he a hack or a surgeon? What part did Jesus’ own words have in Luther’s reform. Is the Lord’s Supper a sacrifice we are to offer to God, or is it a testament and gift that Christ gives to the Church?

World renowned scholar Bryan D. Spinks reports the findings of his research. Spinks identifies errors of scholastic procedure in the body of literature. He examines root sources. By his industry and workmanlike procedure, Spinks succeeds at what he set out to do: Let Luther answer for himself.

As John T. Pless says in the Foreword: “It took an Anglican to rescue Luther from the Lutheran liturgical gurus. That was my first response to reading this tightly-packed and potent monograph years ago. Its value has not diminished with the passage of time. … Spinks demonstrates that Luther’s liturgical revisions were not sloppily done but carried out with integrity based on his confession of justification by faith alone. Luther understood God to be the donor in the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. Thanksgiving which flows from the gift dare not blur this fact. The Sacrament is the Gospel.”

Spinks’ achievement gives this work an exceptional place in the literature. A new audience needs it. This is why it should be republished. First published in 1982, it has gone out of print. Used copies are rare and expensive. Dr. Spinks once more gives a precious gift to the Church by readily and graciously granting his permission for this new edition.

With new musical engravings of the Verba and The German Sanctus by Jon D. Vieker and commendation by William C. Weedon, this new edition bursts the epiphany of Spinks’ brilliance into the sight of a new audience and generation.