tractator

(2) A treatiser writes treatises; a tractator writes tracts.

The tractator's faux apocalyptic typically trades on thinly argued but nevertheless tenaciously orated narratives of decline.

The tractator's penchant for the apocalyptic and the Manichaean leads to a third characteristic of tracts.

The tractator temptation did not gain a hold on Carl all at once.

In the Lutheran landscape from the mid-1980s forward, Carl appeared fully dressed in tractator attire, treading well-worn trails blazed by droves of self-styled apocalyptic tractators.

Carl fits his 1991 resignation from LSTC snugly within his standard tractator narrative of decline, and he does so by endorsing his long-time friend and colleague Robert Jenson's apologia: What made Carl Braaten overturn his life is a judgment: seminaries of the ELCA are now institutions emphatically inhospitable to theological work and instruction, and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.

While Carl-treatiser is perfectly capable of tackling these issues (Memoirs, 112), the temptation to tractator mode and mood seems at times to overwhelm him.