I fear that antinomianism will be defined as true Lutheranism.

Pietist has a post on his blog that caught my attention. Click on the title to check out his other posts.

Someone who read The Lutheran blurb on Wartburg seminary professor of contextuality Craig Nessan's paper presented to the ELCA bishops wrote:"In reading this quote, I see no source identified. Does anyone know where this is being quoted from to see the wider context? Martin Luther took a different view, Nessan said, quoting him: "It is not enough simply to look and see whether this is God's word, whether God has said it; rather we must look and see to whom it has been spoken, whether it fits us. That makes all the difference between night and day.

"I couldn't identify where in Luther's writings this quote comes from, but I think Luther probably said something like that and it is a correct approach to biblical interpretation, but capable of being horribly misused by people who are looking for a way to nullify the clear teaching of scripture. Yes, God commanded the people of Israel to practice circumcision, but he didn't command Christians to do the same. Yes, God commanded the people of Israel to observe the seventh day as the sabbath, but did not command Christians to observe the seventh day. Yes, God told various leaders in the Old Testament to totally destroy their enemies (Amalakites, Canaanites, etc.) but he did not command us to do this. Yes, God told the people of Israel to abstain from certain foods, then told Peter to call nothing unclean.

Yes, God commanded Israel that if a man died without children, his brother was to marry the widow, but didn't give that command to us. Yes, God told Hosea to go out and marry a harlot. Yes, Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all that he had. The fact that some commands in scripture were given to particular people in a particular time and place and are not binding on all people at all times does not mean that the moral teaching of scripture is purely relative and we can replace it with more contemporary ideas of right and wrong that are more congenial to people who don't like any moral restraints.

Yes, that makes biblical interpretation more difficult because the Bible is in some ways a complicated book. Christians have always known that, so most of us are not Seventh Day Adventists or Messianic Jews. But the church never had so much trouble as it has today in distinguishing what was obligatory for ancient Israel as opposed to what God expects of us who believe in Jesus. There is a difference between taking scripture seriously as God's Word and simple minded literalism that ignores important distinctions, for example between the Old and New Testaments.

The problem with what the ELCA is likely to do in its statement on how Lutherans read scripture is that it will relativize parts of scripture that have universal relevance, and that it will use the "gospel" (misunderstood as cheap grace) to undercut biblical morality or any appropriate use of God's law. It will also likely use the historical critical method to raise questions about the trustworthiness of scripture and its historical reliability. The notion of cultural relativity will likely be pushed much too far, and we will end up with a notion of scriptural "authority" that pretty much allows revisionists to do whatever they wish with scripture and accuse the rest of us of holding to an unLutheran biblicism or some such nonsense, in much the same way that Walt Bouman criticized Robert Gagnon as being "too Reformed" and not having a Lutheran understanding of scripture. Bouman implied that if Gagnon had a Lutheran understanding of scripture, he would not see homosexual behavior as morally wrong. And I have heard other revisionists say that those of us who hold to traditional moral understandings are unLutheran, particularly if we believe that creation itself established heterosexual marriage as normative.

What we are likely to get from the ELCA study is half truths that can be twisted to serve the revisionist agenda, just as some would misuse the quote from Luther cited by Craig Nessan. I fear that antinomianism will be defined as true Lutheranism.

Jim Culver

---Katie

I have let society down....

....by being a stay at home mom.

This is an interesting article by Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Click on the title to read the entire article.

What I find so fascinating is the anti-choice position of the feminist who is claiming that women should not abandon the workplace to raise children. Here are a couple of interesting quotes:

According to Hirshman's diagnosis, this problem is largely traceable to the fact that too many women are staying at home with their children. In particular, she attacked the notion that women should feel free to choose motherhood as a life calling. In attacking "choice feminism," Hirshman asserts that women who give themselves to mothering undermine the status of all women and threaten the emergence of an egalitarian civilization.

Clearly, what she argues that liberal feminism was unable to propose, she now intends to take up as her central argument. She clearly believes that housekeeping and child-rearing are not interesting and should not be socially validated.

Make no mistake--Hirshman does not want women to have any real choice in the matter. "Choice feminism" is an abysmal failure, in her view, because it validates what should never be validated--motherhood.

There is more. Hirshman argues that allowing motherhood as a choice is "bad for women individually." Hirshman is ready to tell young women that they have no inherent right to choose a status lower, in Hirshman's view, from what they should seek and demand in the public sphere.

-----

Wow.

---Katie