Process Theology, Enlightenment Reason, and the Authority of Scripture: An LCMS Evaluation The rise of modern progressive theology within the Church cannot be understood apart from its philosophical roots. Among the most influential of those roots is Enlightenment thought, which elevated human reason into the position of final judge over truth. Within that trajectory, process theology stands out as one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching expressions of this shift. From the standpoint of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), this development is not merely a different theological style or emphasis.…
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From Scripture to Construction
A Confessional Lutheran Reflection on Authority, Hermeneutics, and Institutional Drift Introduction: A Lutheran Beginning Without a Map Authored by: James F. Polk I entered California Lutheran University in 1997 for a simple reason: I was Lutheran. I had grown up in a Lutheran congregation connected to the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) and was baptized at sixteen at Grace Lutheran Church. At the time, I assumed—without suspicion—that a university bearing the Lutheran name stood broadly within the same theological family. I did not understand then that “Lutheran” in America encompassed profoundly…
Read MoreMachine Learning Didn’t Prove JEDP—It Exposed Its Assumptions
Machine learning has increasingly been applied to biblical studies, including debates surrounding the Documentary Hypothesis, the theory that the Pentateuch is composed of multiple independent source documents—traditionally labeled J, E, D, and P—stitched together by later editors. Proponents of the classic Documentary Hypothesis argue that these sources can be distinguished by differences in divine names, vocabulary, theology, and literary style, assuming internally consistent authorial fingerprints and relatively clean boundaries between documents. In recent decades, however, machine learning techniques—particularly stylometry—have been used to test whether such distinctions emerge naturally from the…
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