Seminary names Ziegler to Preus Chair

The Rev. Dr. Roland F. Ziegler, associate professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Ind., has been named holder of the Rev. Dr. Robert D. Preus Chair in Systematic Theology/Confessional Lutheran Studies.

Ziegler

The chair “is endowed to honor the faithful service of Dr. Preus to this seminary and the church at-large,” according to a seminary news release. It was dedicated during a May 22 Vespers service in the school’s Kramer Chapel that was attended by members of the Preus family; seminary faculty, staff and students; and friends of the seminary.

Preus was elected president of the seminary in 1974, when it was located in Springfield, Ill., and served in the post for nearly 20 years.

Ziegler said he is “honored and humbled” by the appointment. “I take it as a call to me and to all of us to honor Dr. Preus by following his example in our vocations: to be faithful to the Scriptures as the inspired and inerrant Word of God, to join joyously in the confession of our fathers as we find it in the Book of Concord, to honor the fathers of the 17th century by reading and engaging them, to engage and confess the faith in the theological confusion of our time, to be a debtor of the Gospel to those among whom we live and to those abroad and, thus, to heed the admonition of the apostle and honor the motto of Concordia Theological Seminary: ‘Preach the Word.’ ”

Ziegler joined the seminary’s faculty in 2000 and received his doctorate in theology from the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in 2011. He is a native of Germany where he studied at the Universities of Tübingen and Erlangen, and at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Oberursel.

During his studies, he joined the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church. A scholarship enabled him to study as an exchange student at Concordia Theological Seminary from 1990 to 1991 as a student of Preus. After finishing his studies, he served as a teaching assistant at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Oberursel, a vicar in Berlin and a pastor in Konstanz.

Posted May 23, 2014