Below is a listing of DOXOLOGY’s conversation videos from our Collegium Conversation with Dr. James Nestingen – Carefree, AZ.
1. Dr. James Nestingen
Dr. James Nestingen, emeritus professor of church history at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, presents justification as the doctrinal grammar governing pastoral speech at a Doxology collegium in January 2016. He proposes four rules drawn from the doctrine: Christ is always the subject of the verb, the hearer is always the direct object, the gospel is always unconditional, and the gospel always presses into the present tense. The session closes with a pointed exchange on confession and absolution as constitutive acts of Christian worship, not mere preparation for it. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
2. Dr. James Nestingen
Session 2 of a collegium conversation with Lutheran theologian James Nestingen covers why Luther insisted the gospel is promise (promissio) rather than command, and how that promise is always incarnate in a narrative and a specific human voice. Nestingen distinguishes faith from therapy, arguing that therapy aims at recovering the self while faith is self-loss in Christ Jesus, and that confusing the two produces gospel as therapeutic self-improvement. The session closes with an extended treatment of forensic justification, contending that Melanchthon’s abstraction of the forensic declaration was a departure from Luther, for whom the declarative word does what it says and creates a new life contending with the old. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
3. Dr. James Nestingen
Dr. James Nestingen addresses the pastoral mechanics of private absolution, with extended attention to how addictive and repetitive sin disrupts the movement from repentance to faith. He distinguishes guilt from shame and the absolution’s role in each, applies the penultimate/ultimate distinction to the relationship between pastoral care and therapy, and examines Luther’s relational account of conscience (syneidesis) against Enlightenment moralism. The session closes with Nestingen on why private confession largely disappeared in North American Lutheranism and how pastors can restore it through teaching, preaching, and lay formation. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
4. Dr. James Nestingen
Dr. James Nestingen turns from the theology of absolution to the practice of hearing private confession, opening with an old Irish priest who taught him to pray the moment a confession ends and hand what he has heard over to Christ so that he can forget it. He treats the seal of the confessional and the rare limits of confidentiality, the pastor’s task of easing the terror of a penitent saying aloud what he never meant to say, and his own practice of requiring confession before he would marry students. The session closes with an extended exchange on caring for the despairing and suicidal penitent who hears the absolution and only wants to die again, and ends in the doxology. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →