Theodore Laetsch was a professor many years ago in the LCMS. He died in 1962. Another Professor named Herbert Mayer wrote of him, “His courses in pastoral theology seemed to assume that the typical congregation which his students would serve was well-disciplined and solidly loyal to Lutheran
traditions. The essays which he collected and edited in The Abidi1bg Word represented the quintessence of the legacy of Francis Pieper. He was, in a sense, a last representative of a great tradition of theologians of The Lutheran Church -Missouri Synod.” (CTM, March 1963)
I have been enjoying reading his studies on many things and Concordia Publishing House has published many of his writings and to them we owe a great debt.
Here is Laetsch at his best as he writes about “The Prophets and Political and Social Problems” –
The prophets were not satisfied with a merely negative denunciation and condemnation
of existing social evils. Their proclamation was at the same time a constructive
one, declaring very clear and well-defined principles, which were to guide their
people in their social relations, and offering a very definite plan, which would
enable Israel to carry them out. The principles underlying the proper social
relations are briefly but quite comprehensively summarized by Micah in the
well-known words “He hath showed thee, 0 man, what is good; and what doth the Lord
require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?”
Micah 6: 8. A few decades earlier Hosea had told his hearers: “Sow to yourselves in
righteousness; reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek
the Lord, till He come and rain righteousness upon you,” Hos.10: 12. Justice, mercy,
humility, that is the trinity of virtues which the Lord demanded of Israel, and
justice, mercy, humility are the irremissible requirements on which the prophets
insisted in their efforts to maintain or reestablish the ideal social order demanded
by the Lord.
