New translation of Löhe’s Aphorisms published

ONTARIO – Rev. Dr. John Stephenson has served Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary (St. Catharines) as a productive scholar, writer, and teaching theologian for 33 years, having joined the faculty as a young man in 1989.

Just prior to his retirement in December 2022, Dr. Stephenson’s English translations of two volumes of Wilhelm Löhe’s foundational writings on the church and the office of the ministry were published through CLTS.

The seminary writes, “Dr. Stephenson has been nurturing his translation of this second volume over the past decade until it is now ready for publication.”

The recent CLTS publication includes the translation of Löhe’s first and second volumes brought together under one cover: Aphorisms on Church and Office: Old and New.

The cover features an icon of Wilhelm Löhe by Harrison Avery Prozenko. The book  is available through the print-on-demand service, Lulu.

The publication, and Dr. Stephenson himself, has received high praise from LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri—Synod) pastor and Issues Etc. radio program host, Rev. Will Weedon, in a blog he wrote for Gottesdiesnt. Below is an excerpt from the ‘Gottesblog’ titled “Aphorisms on Church and Office, Old and New” (shared with permission):

“The debt which confessional Lutherans owe to Dr. John R. Stephenson just continues to climb. There is, first of all, his absolutely stunning work Eschatology in the Confessional Dogmatics series, the finest treatment of the topic that I have ever encountered. And as if that were not enough, he brought us great joy with  The Lord’s Supper in the same series. This is, of course, to say nothing of his various articles and essays (the latest of which I recall is a delightful piece ‘ To Anaphorize or Not to Anaphorize, That is the Question ’ in the festschrift in honour of Dr. Jonathan Naumann titled With Angels and Archangels). But now Dr. Stephenson has blessed us, particularly we Missourians, even more with a modest update to his earlier translation of Loehe’s Aphorisms of 1849 but now including also Church and Office: New Aphorisms, from 1851 with its three appendices. The title of the whole, published by Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary, St. Catharines (2022) is thus fittingly: Aphorisms on Church and Office Old and New, and it is a must read.

If you’ve ever listened in on half a conversation on a phone call, you know that you can sometimes get a glimmering of the subject, but without the second half of the conversation you really are wont to misunderstand even what you clearly heard. That strikes me as the position of we Missourians regarding Wilhelm Loehe. We know the man mostly from what Walther found objectionable in him. But this is to not to know him at all! Dr. Stephenson does us the favor of allowing us to hear and discover Loehe in his own context. He simply lets Loehe speak for himself (though with helpful footnotes along the way!).”

Weedon concludes by thanking Dr. Stephenson for his translation work, in addition to thanking CLTS President Thomas Winger and the seminary in St. Catharines for publishing the writings.

The full blog post can be read online at: gottesdienst.org

Other seminary publications may be found and browsed on CLTS’ website: concordia-seminary.ca/publications

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