My sixteen year old son is helping out at the Churchwide Assembly. He has been a great help with getting things handed out and set up for Solid Rock and Word Alone. If you are interested in his impressions of the week, click on the title.
Warning! He is more conservative than his mother!
---Katie
8 comments:
My ELCA mother was Roman Catholic until she married my father 53 years ago. She is increasingly disressed with the "regression" of the Lutherans.... not only with the liturgy, etc, but with the doctrine itself. Drew's observations are absolutely on target and very astute.
This is one more reason to reconsider membership in the ELCA.
This may be nitpicking, but Luther's objection to the Roman Catholic Church spoke to the corruption that had led to the tyranny in the selling the Grace of God, departing from the doctrines formed over hundreds of years through study of Scripture and developement of DOGMA and TRADITIONS based on that prayful study and interpretation. He loved the Church and in no way wanted to scrap it all. Luther always hoped and prayed for reform and reconciliation. Many factors, especially Nationalism, dashed these hopes. The hate that developed for all things Roman Catholic and is still alive and well in many protestant churches would have broken Luther's heart. This may seem counter intuitive, especially in those synods that place Luther's writings just slightly below scripture ( our version of "tradition"), but we are a generation misguided due to our utter lack of knowledge of church history. Church history did not begin at that Wittenbeg door, and much of Lutheran doctrine and practice is a carry over, a bit revised, is totally Catholic Dogma/Tradition devoloped over hundreds of years. Have you read any of Augustine, Ambrose, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Polycarp, Crhystystom ? A good place to start may be John Henry Newman's "Apologia Pro Vita Sua". an account of how the church doctrines devloped. Solo Scriptua may have served us well while culture reflected Scriptural standards and morals, but you can see with your own eyes what is happenig when culture changes. With no Authority to guard the tenents of the True Faith, we are left to the tyranny of revisionists, who claim the Bible as their authority. Every individual becomes a law unto himself, as long as he shouts"solo scripture, solo scriptura !"
I see a wisdom in Church Authority, as practiced in RC and Orthodox churches. Does it make them immune from corruption? No. But there is something in the witness that no matter what heresies have tried to establish themselves , they eventually failed in the face of Truth. And has Christ promised, the Gates of Hell have not Prevailed against the Church, and she has remained One.
I am a cradle Lutheran, and love my church. But am realizing that what I love about it can be changed in the twinkling of an eye, with no justification other than someone saying "this is what we think it should be now." by Friday, my church may be gone. I am bone weary of the alphabet soup of Lutheran groups that are multiplying like rabbits for years in reaction to one thing or another. The group that voted in Bishop Hanson, Word Alone being a major block, felt he would best support a less homogenous Synod that had room for the vaying espressions brought together in the merger, and another group supported of CCM, seeing it as a step toward Luther's dream of reconciliation. Everyone had good intentions that were all for naught. Fortunately these groups have tired of finger pointing and are semi united in trying to take back the church.
I am just now searching history and recognizing what is happening is as old as dirt. Church History should be taught side by side with Luther. Becaused we have failed to do so, I think we a reaping what we have sown.
I am committed to staying, to stand as a witness to the truth, and unity, and hopefully be the voice crying in this wilderness, for the sake of my children, wo are your age, and God help them, are to steeped in this culture of liberalism (reinforced, unknown to us, at of all places Lutheran youth gatherings) , victims of our failure to teach History, and the fact that there is nothing new under th sun. When they are safe, all I can pray is "lord, to whom shall we go?'
Have you read any of Augustine, Ambrose, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Polycarp, Crhystystom ?
As a matter of fact yes,I have; I will be teaching a church history course for homeschoolers this fall. I recommend the series 2000 Years of Christ's Power by N. R. Needham if you are interested. My son has read most of the series.
Frankly, it does not seem to me that the revisionists are using the Bible to justify what they want the church to do. To the contrary, it is a cadre of liberal bishops and pastors who prance around saying, "God is doing a new thing!" that seems to be the danger. Perhaps if these bishops and leaders would take their traditional role of safeguarding the faith more seriously, we would not have the problems we have.
Luther spent a great deal of time studying the Bible and translating it so that the common people can read it. It is our responsibility to know if what is being presented as truth is correct according to the Bible as interpreted through the Lutheran Confessions. I for one am tired of the label "biblicist" being used as an epithet against those who want to preserve the authority of scripture in our church body.
Luther not only was concerned with the abuses of the selling of indulgences, but that the church had developed a number of doctrines over the years that were not consistent with scripture. The confessions (Augsburg in particular) were an attempt to clarify the pure doctrine that had been developed and later ignored over the centuries.
Those clarifying writings can be found in The Book of Concord.
An interesting quote from Needham: "As an heir of the Reformation and a church historian, I often find myself telling people that the great spiritual and theological movement set rolling by Luther and Zwingli was in fact the best elements of western medieval Christianity trying to correct the worst elements."
pale_blue_angel, I was going to respond to you more fully than this, but in light of my mother's response to you I need not do so. In any case she is much better than myself at speaking gently. I will however point out my online name, AugustinianMonk, to you because I beleive that you could have refained from asking one of your questions if you had contemplated it a bit longer than you did. I chose my name not only because Luther himself was an Augustinian monk, but also because I myself support much of what Augustine of Hippo wrote in City of God and Conffesions. To whether or not I have read any of the other early church father's writings, I have read all the quotes writen in N. R. Needham's 2000 Years of Christ's Power Part One: The early church fathers. All the patriarchs you mentioned are quoted in his book.
In Christ, Drew
I'll post my responses to the Xanga post here, if you don't mind. ;-)
Hmm...interesting. About the crucifix, Beggars All had a post about that a few weeks ago. The crucifix is not strictly an RCC practice, and the use of the crucifix should be more widespread. The oldest Lutheran churches in Europe have crucifixes in them. Mary...Luther held Mary in hight regard. As for icons...I like icons. :-P
Much of Lutheran tradition, even the liturgy, is based on Catholic tradition. Call me a Romanizing Lutheran, but it is possible to keep Church Tradition that goes back further than the Reformation without adopting erroneous doctrine.
My apologies. I am glad you have read so much church history. Please try to go beyond Protestant writers though. John Henry Newman's work on doctrinal developement is online (don't know the url off hand), I don't know where your blanket condemnation of anything that seems Roman Catholic is coming from. I think that is what troubled me so much about your post - such a virulent hate of all things Roman Catholic. If the Church was so far from God's path, how could it ever produced such a man as Luther. He was steeped in it. and it was his love and concern for the Body of Christ, the church catholic, that drove him to risk everything to bring her back to the true path. If it was so apostate why did he even bother to reason and debate and suffer when all he had to do was walk away.
Your hate language scares me. Do you think all Roman Catholics are going to hell? Or that the pope is the antichrist. Had a man like John Paul II been Luther's pope, things may have turned out much differently.
The condemnation of the crucifix may seem to you to deny the proclaimation and joy of the resurrection. I think there is room for both expressions. You are young. I can only speak personally, but I used to prefer the empty cross, as years went by there have been many dark times in my life when the crucifix was more of a comfort to me than the empty cross. I need a God who I know suffers with me, understands deep pain and grief. I work with cancer patients. Most die. To only proclaim Easter, and not all that went before would be and affront to them. A suffering God, with the promise of hope on the other side speaks to some people more than all light and joy, and telling them everything will be fine in the end (which it will be, but as James said, you can't fill an hungry, starving brother with the words "be filled". I think there is room for both crosses.
And as Marie said, Luther held Mary in high honor.
He didn't forbid the Hail Mary prayers, except for those whose faith was weak and could be detrimental to them.
Again the remembrance of Baptism, a very strong teaching of Luther as it is in the Roman Catholic church, just because it happened to you in an ECUSA church and you place them one step away from Rome, you have no use for it.
Icons are much more complicated, and I won't even try to explain them, except that it is not idolitry any more than listening to beautiful sacred music that directs your mind and senses to the spiritual, to God and heaven would be idolitry.
Bur agin, your one swipe condemnation of anything Catholic disturbes me. So much of what is Lutheran came straight from that tradition. Why not toss the liturgy-the Kyrie, the practice of the people blessing the pastor in response to his blessing of us, confession and absolution, or Traditions like infant babtism (not spelled out in scripture, but a developed doctrine), or the beautiful words in the LBW burial of the dead service taken right from the latin requium mass.
Those words saved my life, faith, and sanity when my sister died and I returned again and again to them for comfort. There is nothing like it in the new RW.
I didn't mean to be harsh, but it's not the Roman Catholics that have degendered God, allow abortion as an "unfortunate reality", commune non baptized, ordain women, ordain gays (it's already being done, this convention is just to make it official).
I was just wondering who is really not compromising God's word and who is really witnessing to the Kingdom of God, not just reflecting the culture in this world.
I am terribly sorry for writing in such a way that it is not completely clear what I mean. The word "fiery," I did not mean to be interpreted as though I believe Catholicism is evil. My article was intended to be aganst the ELCA not practicing Luthernism and not against Catholisim. Mind I do disagree with the Catholic Church on many counts, but I am positive that I can agree with them on more counts. What I was trying to say in my post was this, "let Lutherans be Lutherans and Catholics be Catholics. To dilute either with the other would be to take away their identity which I believe neither of us want.
-Drew
I understand your position a bit better. Thank you.
I would fight for all I was worth, and will probably have to, now that RW passed, to worship God in Spirit and Truth. And if changes were forced on me or my congregation without even notifying or inviting those affected to the table to discuss the whys and wherefors, my first reaction would be similar to yours. (I'm beginning to talk CWA, please, let this week end soon).
Keep up the good work, studying and searching and questioning. And may God bless your journey.
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