Renowned Talmudic scholar, biologist, and rabbi Dr. Carl Feit of New York will be the main presenter at a forum hosted by the Concordia Seminary Institute on Lay Vocation in St. Louis.
“Called to Be Human: Jewish and Lutheran Perspectives on Creation and Vocation” will be held at 7:30 p.m. March 15 in the seminary’s Clara and Spencer Werner Auditorium.
Admission is free and no tickets will be issued. A reception will follow the lecture.
Orthodox Jews and Lutherans agree that God created humans in His image to serve each other, notes Dr. Uwe Siemon-Netto, director of the institute. Luther called man “God’s cooperator.”
Feit, the Dr. Joseph and Rachel Ades Professor of Pre-Health Sciences and associate professor of biology at New York’s Yeshiva University, will explore the common Jewish and Lutheran concepts of man’s role as “created co-Creator,” or God’s associate in the ongoing process of creation.
“Christians are rediscovering the significance of the Lutheran doctrine that God gives assignments to all of us to serve our neighbors lovingly in our secular endeavors,” said Siemon-Netto. “If we do this to the best of our abilities, we render the highest possible service to God. Therefore, it is enormously important to hear from an orthodox Jewish scholar how deeply rooted this doctrine is in Scripture — his and ours.”
The forum respondent will be Dr. David L. Adams, associate professor of exegetical theology at Concordia Seminary. Siemon-Netto will serve as moderator.
The mission of the Institute on Lay Vocation is to promote the doctrine of vocation — that Christians are called to perform their duties in their everyday lives in service to God. The institute promotes this doctrine in symposia, seminars, lectures, magazine and online articles, and radio broadcasts on and off the Concordia Seminary campus, in the United States and overseas. Director Siemon-Netto is a veteran journalist with a Ph.D. in theology and sociology of religion from Boston University.
For more information, contact the institute at (314) 505-7009 or layvocation@csl.edu. Or, visit the seminary’s Web site at www.csl.edu.
Posted Feb. 9, 2007
