Thirty-Five years ago on this day (December 13, 1973), The Rev. Dr. Arthur Carl Piepkorn was called to his eternal rest.

To try and get a picture of who Piepkorn was is no easy task. He held a doctorate from the University of Chicago in Assyriology. He was a mission pastor in rural Minnesota. He helped Walter A Maier found the Lutheran Hour Radio Program. He served as the Chief Chaplain of the occupational forces in Germany following World War II. He was the lead instructor at the Chaplain training school at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania for the US Army. He was a translator for the Tappart Edition of the Book of Concord and an editor of the American Edition of Luther’s works. He was a seminary professor at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. He was one of the most highly respected members of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialog in the United States.

But it is not simply the diversity of his interests and talents that make understanding Piepkorn so difficult for those who were not privileged to study under him. Because of his varied talents and gifts he left no major books bearing his name – his magnum opus Profiles in Belief was not finished until after his death. In its place he left behind countless articles on a variety of topics all of which served his enduring concern, the catholicity of the church, particularly as an inheritor of the Augsburg Confession.  What he lacked in leaving behind a corporate body of literature he more than made up for in the influence that he had on a generation or more of Lutheran theologians.

Through the work of former students, Piepkorn’s legacy continues. The ALPB began the task by publishing The Church the first of four volumens of Piepkorn’s collected writings. Piepkorn’s last doctoral student Phil Secker, who in retirement from pastoral ministry now runs The Arthur Carl Piepkorn Center for Evangelical Catholicity, has published the second volume, and is currently working on the remaining volumes.

In 2001, in an effort to draw together the diversity of Piepkorn’s writings, both published and archival, I wrote an essay entitled “The Legacy of Arthur Carl Piepkorn” which attempted to provide a theological summary of who Piepkorn was. In honor of this, the 35^th anniversary of his death, I offer it here on Lutheranforum.org in the hopes that someone else from my generation may come to be inspired by this under appreciated giant of 20^th century Lutheranism.

The Legacy of Arthur Carl Piepkorn (in PDF - 3.1 mb)