The Swedish-American Lutheran church was based largely in the Midwest, but unlike most of the rest of Midwest Lutherans, tended to align itself with East Coast Germans. In addition, it generally had a closer relationship with their mother church over in Europe than many other Lutherans. And so while it looks at first glance like one of the many conservative Midwest Lutheran ethnic enclaves, it was also an unofficial bridge between various neighbors and also with the homeland state church and so European Lutheranism.
The book offered here was the a dogmatics textbook that Conrad Emil Lindberg wrote for use at Augustana Rock Island. As the preface states, it came out is Swedish in 1898 and in English (with expansions) in 1922. I admit that when I started with this personal book, I was more than a bit frustrated that when he summarizes many figures, he does not reference where the figure said it, and so it. Other than scripture, the writers he references are largely those of Lutheran Orthodoxy – and he admits in the Preface that he is a bit limited in access to them. For a long time I was thinking that instead of reading this work, it would be better to read Schmid’s Doctrinal Theology instead.
But as I went through the work, I did see how this work does serve a purpose as a more approachable introduction to how Lutheran Orthodoxy can still speak to today. And I started to recognize the truth that Rev. Jordan Cooper wrote in his blog: it does "pack a lot of theology into each chapter." And it does what the Swedish-American Lutherans have often done - namely work to bridge between various Lutheran communities.
The source for this Personal Book is https://archive.org/details/christiandogmati00lind . I have incorporated the corrections noted at the end of the book into the main text. The scan at Internet Archive was generally pretty good, but there were some fuzzy spots. If a word seemed to be misspelled or there seemed to be a grammatical mistake, I have left it as is, unless the scan itself was unclear, in which case I have tried to read it as correctly as possible. If I could understand the reference, I have tried to link it with works in my library. I have not been entirely consistent about when I have created links to a particular verse if there is already a link to the passage on that page, and I have also not always been consistent in where I have inserted the links to the Book of Concord – sometimes it is in the main text, and sometimes it is attached to footnote where Lindberg references a 19th century edition with page and paragraph number. While I have quickly tried to reproduce the table of contents and the index, I have not provided links from them to the pages in the book itself.
If you find errors in this edition, I do ask that you share corrections and any helpful additions you make to this text.
SDG,
Ken McGuire
