Dr. David P. Scaer

Dr. David Scaer is The David P. Scaer Professor Emeritus of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne (CTSFW). At the seminary since 1966, he served as editor of Concordia Theological Quarterly (1969–1994; 1999–2024) and was academic dean (1984–1989) and chairman of Systematic Theology (1989–1993, 1996–2019). He served as the organizer of the annual Concordia Theological Seminary Symposium on the Lutheran Confessions from 1978 to 2024.

He taught for ten years as a part-time instructor in religion at the University of Illinois (Champaign) from 1966 to 1976, and he served as pastor at congregations in Gillespie, Illinois, and Rockville, Connecticut.

For nine years, he served on The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s (LCMS) Commission on Theology and Church Relations as chairman of the Committee on Theology and was the principal author of several reports later adopted by the LCMS. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Institute for Biblical Research, the Alliance of Confessional Evangelicals, and the Christianity Today Institute, for which periodical he also serves as a research scholar. Twice, he was awarded the prestigious John W. Behnken Post-Doctoral Fellowship Award by AAL for his study in Europe (1969, 1986).

A third-generation LCMS clergyman, Scaer was brought up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father, the late Reverend Paul H. Scaer, served his lifetime ministry at Trinity Lutheran Church of Flatbush. He and his wife, Dorothy, have been married since 1960 and have five children.