Real communion? One God? Polygamy? Tipping pastors?

Read more here.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Engelbrecht claims: Major Lutheran scholars are wrong about a third use of the law.

Including Forde….

10:00 – 2:00 p.m.

Holy Nativity Lutheran Church, 3900 Winnetka Ave No., New Hope, MN

Cost: $10.00 for lunch and handouts

Sign up by contacting one of the three people below:

Stew Carlson stewcarlson@yahoo.com (651/207-3939)

Brad Jenson bcjenson@charter.net (218/625-2430)

Meg Madson mhmadson@comcast.net (763/475-0577)

Sponsored by The CrossAlone District of LCMC

The Bible says: “Repent and believe in the gospel.”[1] Does that mean that Forde was wrong? Does that mean that salvation is mostly God’s doing and partly ours?

Forde writes:

“‘We have to do something, don’t we?’ – that is the pious sounding cry. Rather than face the question of death and life, we hope to get by with a little something! As Luther remarked, this kind of semi-Pelagianism is worse than full-blown Pelagianism.”[2]

Luther knew that one could use a text like Mark 1:15 against Christ, that is, in favor of saying salvation is 99% what Christ does and 1% what we do – repent and believe.

As Luther points out again and again, infants have faith, which is no surprise because in baptism God snatches us[3] in spite of ourselves.

[2] Gerhard Forde, Theology is for Proclamation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990) 142; emphasis added. See also Forde: “It is interesting – and significant – that Luther could see much more validity in out-right Pelagianism than he could in semi-Pelagianism of the so-called Christian humanists. At least, he said, the Pelagians believed that man could and should apply himself with his whole being to the pursuit of salvation, where the semi-Pelagians seem to think it could be gained for a pittance – exercising that little bit of ability supposedly left in man,” in Where God Meets Man, p. 51 by Forde; italics in the text; bolding added.

Luther: “These friends of ours, however, though they believe and teach the same, make dupes of us with deceptive words and a false pretense, as if they dissented from the Pelagians, though this is the last thing they do; so that if you go by their hypocrisy, they seem to be the bitterest foes of the Pelagians, while if you look at the facts and their real opinion, they themselves are Pelagians double-dyed” (LW 35:328).

[3] See Luther: “[E]ven if infants did not believe – which, however, is not the case, as we have proved – still their Baptism would be valid and no one should rebaptize them…” Large Catechism, Baptism, #55, BC 443.

In baptism the infant receives the Holy Spirit (SC, Baptism #10, BC 349), who, of course, cannot be quantified as if the infant only receives a portion of the Holy Spirit or a kick-start. Nor, again of course, does baptism depend on a “decision” made by the infant. Some also misunderstand the metaphor “gift” (e.g., Romans 3:24) to imply that what God does in baptism is a “gift” that has to be “accepted” even though the context (Romans 3:19-23) does not allow such a misunderstanding.

“[W]hat a great and excellent thing Baptism is, which snatches us from the jaws of the devil…” LC, Baptism, #83; BC 446, emphasis added.

“I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him” Small Catechism, Creed, Third Article, #6; BC 345.

See also John 6:44: “No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” And John 6:65, 15:16, Eph 1:4.

P:   Let us pray:

P:   Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good

C:   For his steadfast love endures forever

P:   Give thanks to the God of gods

C:   For his steadfast love endures forever

P:   Give thanks to the Lord of lords

C:   For his steadfast love endures forever

P:   To him who made all and everything

C:   For his steadfast love endures forever

P:   To him who sent his Son to save us

C:   For his steadfast love endures forever

P:   To him who gives us life in Him forever

C:   For his steadfast love endures forever

P:   Who by his Spirit keeps us every day

C:   For his steadfast love endures forever

P:   Who gives food and shelter

C:   For his steadfast love endures forever

P:   Who gives us all good things

C:   For his steadfast love endures forever

P:   Give thanks to the Lord of all

C:   For his steadfast love endures forever

All:   In Jesus’ name, Amen.

(Adapted from Psalm 136)

Vatican office of “justice and peace” issues document calling for one world government. Vatican secretary of state disowns document. Vatican newspaper rips it to shreds. Read more here.

As Bernard Lohse wrote: our “Reformation understanding [is] that there is basically no difference between the offices of bishop and pastor.”

Read more here.

Back in 1997, 37 ELCA bishops wrote that under CCM, the ELCA is not bound to the Episcopal episcopate, and Martin Marty said the opposite. Remember it here.

Why does the breach of the Sixteenth Century remain? Has the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) made a difference? See here.

As Reformation 2011 approaches, it is sobering to recall Dominus Jesus (2000), in which Rome does not recognize Protestant churches as “sister churches”; rather, they are “ecclesial communities.”

In 2001 German Lutherans issued “An Evangelical Understanding of Church Fellowship,” which Cardinal Walter Kasper found “abrasive.”

Professor Dr. Dorothea Wendebourg responded:

The Roman Catholic Church is no longer used to – and we ourselves are hardly still used to – Protestants expressing themselves confessionally in a clear and forthright manner and critiquing the teachings and practices of other churches, especially the Roman Catholics. That has now occurred in “An Evangelical Understanding of Church Fellowship.” In it we state what the goal of all ecumenical dialogues is to be and reject the Roman Catholic model and goal.  We criticize the Roman Catholic Church on various points – the papacy, the nature of the office of ministry, the ordination of women, canon law. We criticize them just as they have criticized us. However, in contrast to them we do not withhold from them the recognition of them as church.”

Read more here.

“The line between this world and the next is drawn by God’s grace. This establishes the world as a place under the law in which man can live, work, and hope…. Hope in the world to come creates the faith and patience to live in this world; it gives this world back to us by relieving us of the burden of our restless quests. Freedom from the world makes us free for it….

“This is what it means to say that whereas the kingdom to come is a kingdom of grace the kingdom of this world is a kingdom of law…. Law belongs to earth, not to heaven. It is natural, not supernatural….

“That is why Luther did not speak of law as something static and unchangeable. Laws will and must change in their form as the times demand. Luther, for instance, refused to grant eternal status even to the laws of Moses. They are strictly ‘natural,’ he said, not unlike the common law of any nation. Men on this earth simply don’t have access to eternal laws. But men do have the gift of reason and the accumulated wisdom of the ages as well as the Bible. Here is the task for man’s reason and created gifts. Once cured of religious and mythological ambitions, they can be put to work as they ought: taking care of men. For in the final analysis, all man’s vocations are to be enlisted in the battle against the devil.”[1]

See the complete collection of “Forde got out of Biblicism” quotes here.