LITMIR.BIZ

Professor Heussi? I Thought You are a Book is an entertaining account of six decades of graduate education with the subtitle A Memoir of Memorable Theological Educators, 1950-2010. In personal encounters as well as in books, academic icons appear on the horizon of memory: Viktor Frankl in Vienna, Karl Barth in Basel, Carl Jung in Zurich, Reinhold Niebuhr in New York, Paul Tillich at Harvard, and the doctor father Roland Bainton at Yale. They are mixed with has-beens, upstarts, and other special professorial characters. In this memoir of Lutheran scholar, Eric Gritsch, these accounts are also fed with collegial encounters during his thirty-three years of teaching and research in church history at the Gettysburg Lutheran Seminary, with international excursions for Luther research and ecumenical dialogue with Roman Catholics. Ambition, stamina, and humor are ingredients that spike this cocktail of theological education of a native of Austria in the 1950s and 60s. Connoisseurs of anecdotal learning will find some satisfaction in this personal history of graduate studies in Europe and in the United States.

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This book offers a swift trek through two millennia of Christendom, with all the information provided by boring textbooks. The author presents the Christian story within the framework of a warning of Jesus in his famous Sermon on the Mount: «You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt becomes dumb, with what shall one salt?» (Matt 5:13). The story is told with wit, spiked by satire and a gallows humor. There are three chapters (symbolizing the Trinity), each encompassing seven centuries (symbolizing the seven days of creation), with four parts in each chapter (symbolizing the four Gospels). Chapter headings and subtitles are eye-catchers, such as «Edifice Complex» for the Middle Ages with its zeal for architectural and sacramental edification. Idiosyncratic features are highlighted, like the «pillar saints,» monks who spent their lives on pillars in the desert; «castrated believers,» who experienced the procedure as a refinement of penance; and competing popes, who succumbed to secular pleasures. Word plays, the wisdom of proverbs, and «dumb» Christian ways prevent readers from getting bored. A witty preface and a serious epilogue provide food for new insights.

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This book is a collection of seven Good Friday homilies by the late Rev. Dr. Eric W. Gritsch. Due to the fact that this respected historian, writer, teacher, and preacher rarely wrote his sermons, this book of printed meditations will be a treasured addition to any library. Here Gritsch captures the essence of Christian theology, highlighting the concepts with his understanding of human history and human foibles. The insights and wit for which this beloved teacher is known abound in this small volume. In this collection, the seven last words of Christ from the cross are made relevant for those in the twenty-first century who live the daily experiences of their lives trying at all times to be faithful Christians. Page by page the good news of Good Friday is made real!

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