Tuesday I had lunch with Dr. Kolb again. As I mentioned, he is "the Godfrey of the Lutherans" as he is not only so knowledgeable, but witty. When asked in class what he thought were the weaknesses of Lutheranism, he told a story of when he asked Stanley Grenz what his affiliation was. Grenz said, "By denomination, Baptist, by movement, Pietist, by tradition, Evangelical." Grenz then asked Dr. Kolb, who said, "By denomination, Lutheran, by movement, Lutheran, by tradition, Lutheran."

Well . . . seeing that I just deleted my post for day 2 and I am not going to do that all over, it will have to suffice that Tuesday we discussed the predestination controversy between Marbach and Jerome Zanchi, the Crypto-Calvinist controversy, including the tract war between Joachim Westphal and John Calvin (as an aside, Dr. Kolb mentioned that the next issue of Lutheran Quarterly was an article by Wim Janse on Westphal's treatises against Calvin where he argues Westphal wasn't arguing against Calvin's doctrine of the Supper, but Calvin's compromise position with Bullinger in the Consensus Tigurinus.), and the work of Martin Chemnitz in leading the Lutherans to the Formulae of Concord (I'll post on Chemnitz more later as Wednesday's class will deal with his treatise against us on the Lord's Supper).

What I found interesting, as well, was Dr. Kolb's answer to my question of the Lutherhan response to the Heidelberg Catechism. Besides Tilemann Heshusius' (read Dr. Clark's essay in which he is mentioned here) vitriolic responses (as Dr. Kolb said, you can't really look to Heshusius as a source for good Lutheran theology since he has 7 pastorates and was exiled 6 times because he couldn't get along with anyone!), in 1564 the County of Mansfeld wrote the Mansfeld Confession, in which it responded to the errors of the Catechism . . . I wish it was translated!