I stay away from secular politics on this blog because the troubles of today are result of Christian Apostasy, falling away from the Faith.
News stories remind me that every headline about corruption could easily be replaced with similar stories from various denominations.
I saw with a clergy friend at the Moline reunion banquet - 50th anniversary. He said, "I read your blog. Lutherans are not alone with those problems." We talked about Billy Graham's grandson messing up D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge congregation. Tullian Tchividjian blamed his affair on his wife's affair, which seemed pathological by itself. But the news came out that he was hiding another adulterous connection, so he was fired from his second church in a row.
The Evangelicals are like the Lutherans in making certain superstars untouchable and certainly ungoverned by the Ten Commandments. The Pentecostals have a slogan - "Touch not the Lord's anointed!"
In WELS or Missouri, it is, "Do you know who his father is?" In the ELS, a last name only need be dropped, because everyone knows what that means.
So they practice Management by Doubletalk. Most people realize or at least sense that certain topics are radioactive, so they avoid them. More important than the ongoing scandals are the radical departures from sound doctrine in time for the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. All the Protestant sects will have to tip their hats to that, as they did with the KJV anniversary and the Gerhardt tricentennial.
This is one last chance to identify the Titanic for what it is before the ship goes down. Few will bother.
There will be talk and graphics about justification. But what do they mean by that?
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| The CLC (sic) rejects Justification by Faith Alone. They love their UOJ Universalism. Key doubletalk - by grace alone (Universal Absolution without Faith) base our faith alone (Making a Decision for UOJ) upon Scripture alone (Cherry-Picking Verses To Back CLC Dogma). |
Jack Cascione has emerged from his secure, undisclosed hiding place to wonder about "The Confessors Who Will Not Confess."
His crew has been savagely ignorant for decades in attacking Justification by Faith Alone, calling his little club LutherQuest, no doubt for the sake of irony.
The Chief Article is not inerrancy or divine inspiration, but Justification by Faith Alone. One wonders at the hypocrisy of someone with a LutherQuest template whose real agenda comes from the college graduate (only) who covered up Martin Stephan's adultery and promoted Halle Pietism his entire career.
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| Frosty Bivens, a Fuller alumnus, claims UOJ is the Chief Article of the Christian Faith. Has he even opened the Book of Concord? He got that opening from Zarling - even the same citation. |
Just to keep the snowflakes from melting at LutherQuest and Christian News, inerrancy and divine inspiration are simply the assumptions of all Christian confessions, even though the rationalism born from Pietism says otherwise.
The brave Cascione/Otten/Montgomery battle is like saying, "We firmly believe that water is wet, that the sky is blue, and Note Dame plays football." I can see them standing up - glaring into the setting sun of Lutherdom, supporting each other in the Final Battle. If they were soldiers, they would fight without discipline and run without shame in that battle. After all, they have already surrendered the Gospel itself.
What about the Chief Article? They oppose it. They reject the Biblical doctrine of St. Paul, Augustine, Luther, Melanchthon, Chystraeus, Chemnitz, and Gerhard. They despise the teachings of Jesus, which are clear enough to reach anyone.
They even deny that Robert Preus ever questioned UOJ in his final book. I admit he was ambivalent, coming as he did from Norwegian Pietism, but my best ammo against UOJ is from Preus book - Justification and Rome.
If people want to add up Montgomery's degrees, I would counter with all the degrees earned by the College of Cardinals. Yet not one Cardinal teaches Justification by Faith Alone or tolerates it being taught.
Roman Catholics - Eastern Orthodox, even the ELDONUT wing - Protestants, Pentecostals - they all teach inerrancy and divine inspiration.
ELCA repudiates inerrancy, but WELS-LCMS-ELS and the LQ crowd make no fuss over that. If repudiating all the doctrine of the Apostles Creed is nothing to them, why should I listen to the UOJists howl and moan about an obscure professor who studied at a little known school - Leeds, Weeds, or something like that.
This is called posturing to avoid the real issue - Justification by Faith Alone.
I have read many hundreds of theology books, and I have spent a long time quoting Roman Catholic scholarship. When others were watching Packer games, I was mowing lawns, painting outbuildings, and selling my book and coin assets to remain in graduate school. I often thought it was a total waste of time and money. But the more I saw UOJ at work, the more I recognized the spirit of Apostasy simply devouring the denominations.
The so-called Lutherans today are worse than the Crypto-Calvinists of long ago. Those clergy hated Luther's doctrine so much that his books were shoved to the back of bookstores and Calvinism was constantly promoted. They got the Elector to punish faithful Lutherans and reward their Calvinistic pals. Finally they were found out, investigated, and arrested.
But this has repeated itself in many stages in history. Lutheran anniversaries are bad times for Lutheran doctrine.
This what Concordia Publishing House thinks of the Reformation.
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| Drink coaster |
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| I admit to teaming up with Dr. Bruce Church to create this wonderful graphic. Absent the skinny McCain and "Got Milke?" - this was the painting he put up on his late, lamented papal plagiarism blog. Missouri has a big Roman Catholic wing, which explains why their money machine CPH despises the Reformation. |