Theologians from Across the Globe Gather in Augsburg forLutheran Consultation

Participants to Reconfigure Lutheran Theology for the Future

"It is an overwhelming experience to see so many people here from all over the world,and all of them are Lutherans," declared Dr Bernd Oberdorfer,professor of Protestant theology at the University of Augsburg,in his opening address before an international gathering of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) on 25 March in Augsburg, Germany."This displays in a wonderful way that the Lutheran church is a worldwide community," he remarked.

The LWF Department for Theology and Studies (DTS) is responsible for the gathering, a global consultation entitled "Theology in the Life of Lutheran Churches: Transformative Perspectives and Practices Today," in collaboration with the Institute of Protestant Theology of the University of Augsburg. The 25-31 March meeting with over 100 participants is the culmination of a series of seminars and publications in the framework of the DTS study program "Theology in the Life of the Church," which has been ongoing since 2004.

For Lutherans, coming to Augsburg in some sense means "coming home," Oberdorfer observed. In his welcoming address, the theologian retraced the political and theological history of the city of Augsburg, with particular emphasis on the period of the Reformation.

Luther's Seal

He felt the consultation afforded a wonderful opportunity to search for "common answers to what it means to be Lutheran in the world of the 21st century." According to DTS director Rev. Dr Karen Bloomquist, the Augsburg meeting is "probably the largest, and certainly the most diverse,gathering of theologians that the Lutheran World Federation has ever held."

The challenge confronting contemporary theologians,Bloomquist went on to say, is to truly practice theology within the Lutheran communion. The consultation hopes to bring participants to "engage in genuinely mutual ways and too communicate with each other across contextual differences, andthus to work together in reconfiguring Lutheran theology for the future," she summarized.

In his opening presentation, Dr Hans-Peter Grosshans, Professor for Systematic Theology at the University of Münster, affirmed,"I want to argue that perhaps there is not the one Lutheran perspective all over the world, but that there is one theological endeavor which binds and holds Lutherans together all over the world." Grosshans, DTS Study Secretary for Theology and the Church at the Geneva secretariat from September 2007 through September 2008, further stated that there was a common way of dealing theologically with the problems at hand and of encountering the respective culture.