Friday, November 1, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 1st of November 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Here on the Almanac we pay attention to the days and times and how we mark the time passed. And perhaps we think a little more than most about how we count time- it is no understatement to say that the one who controls the calendar can control the culture. After all, why year is it?

It is 2024 AD (no, not “after death,” as I hear too often, but it’s “Anno Domini,” Latin for “the year of our Lord). But for our Jewish friends, it is the year 5784. And for the French Revolutionaries- the children of 1789 and the Bastille and all that are currently in the year 231- it’s fair to say this calendar hasn’t really caught on.

And there has been more than one puzzled young historian who wondered why people didn’t start getting curious around, say, 7 “B.C”- “before who?” And if that doesn’t scramble your brains, get this one:

One minute you are hanging out in 1 BC, and you wake up one morning, and it’s 1 AD? What happened to the year 0?!

And sure, it’s All Saints Day today (All Hallow’s Day- after the ‘eve’)- and there is no shortage of momentous events that took place on this day in both Christian and secular history- the election of the Warrior Pope- Julius II, and the unveiling of the Sistine chapel! We’ve got the Lisbon earthquake and the end of the Ottoman Sultanate in 1922… but all of our counting and remembrances are based on the calendar we choose to follow, and for those of us counting, we have the problem of the year 0. Today we remember the man who made this his mission: from the New York Times, we read that it was on this, the 1st of November, that:

“Franz Bibfeldt was born (one day premature) in 1897 at Sage-Hast bei Groszenkneten, Oldenburg, Niedersachsen, Germany, though some say reports of his birth have been greatly exaggerated.”

His 1927 Doctoral thesis from the University of Worms was titled “The Problem of the Year Zero” and claims that the Roman Empire was really destined to fall when they started counting backward… it is absolutely astonishing that no one picked up on this. Bibfeldt himself was haunted by his reckoning of years- he routinely arrived at conferences either one year too early or too late. In 1988, the American Academy of Religion devoted a session to examining the life and thought of Bibfeldt- whose works include a response to Soren Kierkegaard’s “Either/Or” titled “Both/And”. In “The Unrelieved Paradox, Studies in the Theology of Franz Bibfeldt we read that the key to his theology is that the theological should and can reconcile everything to everything. 'If God can do it, why can't we?' he asked.”

He was said to have been born and baptized on the same day because his parents wanted him to have not just one or two saints- but “All Saints”.  According to one Bibfeldt scholar, his parents picked “All Saints” to also guide him in the modern theologian's task to “please everybody, be relevant to everything, and offend no one.”

Bibfeldt was not born on this day, in fact, as you might guess- he is a fictional theologian born out of frustration with the Concordia Seminary Library in St. Louis- it was in 1947 that Robert Clausen, a seminarian with a paper to finish found the library closed on the Sunday before a paper was due. So, Clausen “invented” a theologian to add weight to his paper's arguments. The paper received an A, and Clausen and his friend Martin Marty spent the next few years building the legend of Franz Bibfeldt.

A 1951 review of Bibfeldt’s “The Relieved Paradox” in the Concordia Seminarian was written by Martin Marty- later one of the big names in American Lutheranism last century- noted that Bibfeldt’s theology is deep, but difficult and this “limit[s] his usefulness to all but rather mature theological thinkers”.

Rushing to stay “up to date” with modern European theology, the “works” of Bibfledt began to spread, and he would be quoted approvingly by professional theologians not in on the joke.

Concordia Seminary, long known for its sense of humor- whimsy and play, did not appreciate the joke when it was revealed. Marty was supposed to go on his vicarage to London but was instead placed in a parish in Chicago- he would then apply to the University of Chicago, where he would teach for over 30 years, becoming a key figure in modern Lutheran theology- something that happened on account of the great, if not invented theologian Franz Bibfeldt who was said to be born on this day in 1897.

A shoutout to Toby, who sent me an email recently asking about the esteemed Bibfdt and suggested he get his own episode.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and Romans 3:

21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 1st of November 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who knows firsthand the fun-loving pranksters in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man thinking about ranking American churches based on how they take a joke- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.