Kyrie Eleison

2011-04-29T06:00:00.000-05:00

Quarry the granite rock with razors,
or moor the vessel with a thread of silk;
then may you hope
with such keen and delicate instruments
as human knowledge and human reason
to contend against those giants,
the passion and the pride of man.

— John Henry Newman —

When Literature Foreshadows Life

2011-04-23T15:39:00.009-05:00

I just saw part 1 of the three-part film adaptation of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I had started the book decades ago but never finished it (after having completed The Fountainhead). This film made me wonder whether (a) it will produce political ripples in popular opinion about the Obama administration and (b) Aglioloro, who held the rights, or the director, Paul Johansson, or the producer, Harmon Kaslow, intended to produce it at this particular time in history in reaction to our current political and socio-economic setting, (c) I'm going to have te read the book now so that I can engage in semi-intelligent discussions. Jason Pye's United Liberty blog review gives some interesting threads to pull.

It seems that other bloggers are picking up on this, too, each in their own way, though the critical reviews or the movie have been sparing in their praise. None, however, can hold a candle to the review of the book masterfully composed by Whittaker Chambers, "Big Sister is Watching You." And apparently, I'm a johnnie-come-lately to the discussion which has been simmering for years.

Stephen Moore wrote in an online January 9, 2009 WSJ article (more than a year before the movie went into production) "For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism."

Connections between Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand are also interesting. I'm just waiting for another conspiracy theory to sprout from all this. I wonder if Jesse Ventura will pick up on it.

Three key characters in the plot (the faces of none of them are seen in part 1) attended university at "Patrick Henry." This is a fictional name made up by Rand, but it would be interesting for Dr. Gene Veith of the very real Patrick Henry College in Virginia (first incorporated in 1998 and officially opened in 2000, years after Rand wrote her book - and the antithetical counterpart to Rand's fictional university) who is a gifted author in the realm of literature and the arts to make some hay of this with a review of his own.

Still, my political naivete must be apparent. At first blush (and willing to suffer the indignities of broadcasting my ignorance), I took the film as a commentary which could be critical of the Obama administration, drawing attention to the dangers of dismantling capitalism (a side theme in another recent movie, Source Code) -- but upon further reflection, I wonder. Is Obama John Galt?

Scenes from the Passion of Christ

2011-04-22T06:00:00.005-05:00

From the website on Scenes from the Passion of Christ "Hans Memling combined all passages from the Passion into one painting, adding the Resurrection and three appearances, creating a total of 23 scenes on one small panel. The praying figures in the lower corners are probably Tommaso Portinari, who commissioned the painting, and his wife.

"The story of Jesus' last hours begins far left in the corner with his entry into Jerusalem, then winds its way through town into the Garden of Gethsemane, bottom left, to continue in the middle, where we see Jesus brought before Pilate and the scourging, only to leave town and to end with the Crucifixion on the Mount behind the city. After Christ's death and resurrection he appears a number of times."

If you search on the top right of the second column of text, you'll find that you can start a lo-tech animation which shows all the episodes in sequence. Each vignette is also number-keyed in the explanation.

http://www.artbible.info/art/large/351.html

Elevating the Host

2011-04-21T06:00:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, a brother pastor took me to task for lifting up the offering plates after the offering higher than I lifted up the elements of Holy Communion during the consecration -- or for not elevating the host and chalice at all. His position was that by failing to elevate the elements sufficiently I was not holding them in proper reverence and esteem.

This seemed like nonsense to me because the altitude of the host is not what determines a proper attitude of the celebrant or the communicant in the Lord's Supper. Additionally, I didn't want to give the impression to unwitting observers by elevating the host that I was in any way offering it to God as a sacrifice. (There is no sacrifice to God for the forgiveness of sins other than Christ's death on the cross.)

Then, this past week in reviewing the doctrine of the Lord's Supper (since Christ first instituted it on that night when He was betrayed which we now celebrate in the liturgical year as Maundy Thursday), I came across this treatment in Luther. (AE 38:316)

Luther writes:

"Before I would admit to or take upon myself such a guilty conscience, on account of which I would have to drop the elevation because it would make me feel like a murderer, crucifier, and hangman of Christ, I would still today not only retain the elevation but, where one would not be enough, assist in introducing three, seven, or ten elevations.

"Therefore, I wanted to have it regarded as a free choice (even as it is a free matter and must be that), in which no sin could take place, whether one upheld it or dropped it. For this reason the elevation was retained among us. For whatever is free, that is, neither commanded nor prohibited, by which one can neither sin nor obtain merit, this should be in our control as something subject to our reason so that we might employ it or not employ it, uphold it or drop it, according to our pleasure and need, without sinning and endangering our conscience.

"In short, we want to be free lords and not slaves, who can proceed in this matter how, what, where, and when they wish. We do not want to be compelled to abolish the elevation because it is such a grave, great, and horrible sin, as Karlstadt’s spirit wanted it to be; we also do not wish to be forced to retain it because abolishing it would mean the loss of the soul’s salvation, as the pope’s devil wants to have it; but it should mean:

"If you do not want to elevate, then let it lie; if you do not want to let it lie, then elevate it. What does God care about that? What does my conscience care about that? It is as little concerned about that as the altar is concerned about whether you want to elevate something above it or place something on it; both procedures are a matter of indifference to it."

If You Want To Go To Confession

2011-04-09T21:19:00.003-05:00

In his exposition of 1 Peter 2:12, Martin Luther takes issue with Christians who thought that after absolution or baptism they could take it easy and relax . . .

"If you want to go to confession and be absolved, you must act like a soldier who takes the lead in battle when this is really important and the war begins. Now one must fight in earnest, just as though previously this had been sport. Now one must draw the sword and lay about with a vengeance. But there must be vigilance as long as the battle lasts.

"Thus even if you are baptized, you must realize that you are never safe from the devil and from sin. Indeed, you must remember that now you will have no peace. Thus the Christian life is nothing but a battle and a camp, as Scripture says.

"Therefore our Lord God is also Dominus Sabaoth (Ps. 24:10), that is, a Lord of hosts. Likewise, Dominus potens in proelio, “the Lord mighty in battle” (Ps. 24:8). He shows His might by letting His people wage war constantly and by letting them take the lead where the trumpets always sound. They must constantly remember to exclaim: “To the defense here! To the defense there! Thrust here! Strike there!” Thus this is an everlasting struggle, and you must do all you can to strike the devil down with the Word of God. Here one must always resist, call upon God, and despair of all human powers." (AE 30:71-72)

1895 8th Grade Test in Kansas

2011-03-23T21:10:00.004-05:00

Every once in a while, a "final test" from 1895 for 8th graders in Kansas shows up in e-mails or websites.

For those who want to see the questions AND the answers, check out this website:

http://www.barefootsworld.net/1895examcomp.html

Snopes, however, declares this test to be an urban legend -- and I don't know that anyone has actually ever documented it or scanned it to a picture file . . .

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.asp

Scout Doesn't Want to Go to School

2011-03-18T11:26:00.004-05:00

In Chapter 2, the heroine and main character of "To Kill A Mockingbird," Scout (daughter of Atticus Finch), is in first grade on the first day of school. The new teacher, Miss Caroline (who is apparently an advocate of what we might call the new education promoted by John Dewey) was attempting to find out what the first graders know. Scout narrates the story beginning with what happened when Miss Caroline wrote the alphabet on the blackboard and showed it to the students:

I suppose she chose me because she knew my name, but as I read the alphabet, a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate -- and looked at me with more than faint distaste.

Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more; it would interfere with my reading.

“Teach me?” I said in surprise. “He hasn’t taught me anything, Miss Caroline. Atticus ain’t got time to teach me anything,” I added, when Miss Caroline smiled and shook her head. “Why, he’s so tired at night he just sits in the living room and reads.”

“If he didn’t teach you, who did?” Miss Caroline asked good-naturedly. “Somebody did. You weren’t born reading The Mobile Register.”

. . . “Now you tell your father not to teach you any more. It’s best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I’ll take over from here and try to undo the damage – “

“Ma’am?”

“Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now.”

[Note: A bit later, Scout carries on a discussion about this with her brother who says . . .]

“Don’t worry, Scout,” Jem comforted me. “Our teacher says Miss Caroline’s introducing a new way of teaching. She learned about it in college. It’ll be in all the grades soon. You don’t have to learn much out of books that way – it’s like if you wanta learn about cows, you go milk one, see?”

. . . I contented myself with asking Jem if he’d lost his mind.

“I’m just trying to tell you the new way they’re teachin’ the first grade, stubborn. It’s the Dewey Decimal System.” [sic]

Having never questioned Jem’s pronouncements, I saw no reason to begin now. The Dewey Decimal System consisted, in part, of Miss Caroline waving cards at us on which were printed “the,” “cat,” “rat,” “man,” and “you.” No comment seemed to be expected of us, and the class received these impressionistic revelations in silence.

I was bored [n.b.], so I began a letter to Dill. Miss Caroline caught me writing and told me to tell my father to stop teaching me. “Besides,” she said. “We don’t write in the first grade, we print. You won’t learn to write until you’re in the third grade.”

[Note: And all of this on the first day of first grade for Scout! And then at the end of the chapter, we find this little discipline encounter . . .]

Miss Caroline stood stock still, then grabbed me by the collar and hauled me back to her desk. “Jean Louise [Scout], I’ve had about enough of you this morning,” she said. “You’re starting off on the wrong foot in every way, my dear. Hold out your hand.”

I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reason anybody in Maycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored method of sealing oral contracts.

Wondering what bargain we had made, I turned to the class for an answer, but the class looked back at me in puzzlement.

Miss Caroline picked up her ruler, gave me half a dozen quick little pats, then told me to stand in the corner. A storm of laughter broke loose when it finally occurred to the class that Miss Caroline had whipped me.

When Miss Caroline threatened it with a similar fate, the first grade exploded again, become cold sober only when the shadow of Miss Blount fell over them.

Miss Blount, a native Maycombian as yet uninitiated in the mysteries of the Decimal System, appeared at the door, hands on hips, and announced: “If I hear another sound from this room I’ll burn up everybody in it. Miss Caroline, the sixth grade cannot concentrate on the pyramids for all this racket!”

My sojourn in the corner was a short one. Saved by the bell, Miss Caroline watched the class file out for lunch. As I was the last one to leave, I saw her sink down into her chair and bury her head in her arms. Had her conduct been more friendly toward me, I would have felt sorry for her. She was a pretty little thing.

(Note: And at the end of Chapter 3, Scout doesn’t want to go back to school the next day because what she wants more than anything is to keep reading with her father. If going to school meant giving that up, she wanted nothing to do with school.)

Closed Communion in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

2011-03-18T11:24:00.002-05:00

I thought this to be an interesting exchange for a fictional account which has been one of the most popular works in American literature of all time -- which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year.

Miss Maudie settled her bridgework. "You know old Mr. Radley was a foot-washing Baptist -- "

"That's what you are, ain't it?"

"My shell's not that hard, child. I'm just a Baptist."

"Don't you all believe in foot-washing?"

"We do. At home in the bathtub."

"But we can't have communion with you all -- "

Apparently deciding that it was easier to describe primitive baptistery than closed communion, Miss Maudie said: "Foot-washers believe anything that's pleasure is a sin. Did you know some of 'em came out of the woods one Saturday and passed by this place and told me [that] me and my flowers were going to hell?" [Miss Maudie liked gardening and spent a lot of time thus engaged as the book earlier describes.]

"Your flowers too?"

"Yes, ma'am. They'd burn right with me. They thought I spent too much time in God's outdoors and not enough time inside the house reading the Bible." My confidence in pulpit Gospel lessened at the vision of Miss Maudie stewing forever in various Protestant hells. . .

Pretzels for Lent

2011-03-06T19:17:00.003-06:00

"The earliest medieval references to pretzels, including the earlier reference by Isidore of Seville, share the common theme that pretzels were associated with fasting. They were food for monks, and, for the most part, it was in the bakeries of monasteries that most pretzels were made. This connection with suffering or abstinence is vividly illustrated in the book of hours belonging to Catherine of Cleves, an illuminated manuscript in the Pierpont Morgan Library that shows the sufferings of St. Bartholomew completely framed by a border of pretzels."

(The complete exposition is found in the April 1991 issue of The World and I magazine, pp 616-623)

The 'Gesimas

2011-02-21T18:16:00.002-06:00

Pre-Lent: Sola Gratia, Sola Scriptura, Solus Christus

Septuagesima Mt. 20:1-16
Landowner and His Wages
Grace Alone!

Sexagesima Lk 8:4-15
The Sower and His Seed
The Word Alone!

Quinquagesima Lk 18:31-43
Going Up to Jerusalem
Christ Alone!

(Thanks to Rev. Robert Schaibley for first pointing this out to me.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagesima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_solas

The Anatomy of an Education Myth

2011-02-13T18:51:00.006-06:00

The Ten Percent Solution: Anatomy of an Education Myth

I came across this article the other day and think that it is worth re-posting on this blog. It has numerous applications undermining some of the assumptions people hold in churches and schools.

FOR MANY YEARS, VERSIONS OF A CLAIM that students remember "10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, 50% of what they see and hear, and 90% of what they do" have been widely circulated among educators. The source of this claim, however, is unknown and its validity is questionable. It is an educational urban legend that suggests a willingness to accept assertions about instructional strategies without empirical support.

The Claim

In a popular book on children with ADHD, the author makes the following claim:

According to statistics, students retain:

10% of what they read;

26% of what they hear;

30% of what they see;

50% of what see and hear;

70% of what they say; and

90% of what they say and do." (1)

The claim is startling. Any instructional method that could deliver on a promise of 90% retention would revolutionize education. Moreover the claim is framed with impressive exactitude. The reader would like to know more but, alas, no source is given other than "statistics." The figures are passed along like memes. A book on accelerated learning, for example, claims:

It has been said that on average, we remember:

20% of what we read

30% of what we hear

40% of what we see

50% of what we say

60% of what we do

90% of what we see, hear, say, and do" (2)

But no source is acknowledged and no evidence is given. A slightly different version of the claim is presented in a recent issue of the Stanford Business Review: "Some research on learning indicates that we may retain only about 10% of what we read, maybe 20% of what we see and hear in a lecture, and perhaps 80% of what we experience
personally. Learning may increase even more to the extent that we take what we have experienced, put it into our own words, and then explain it to others." (3) But just what is this research and who conducted it? On this point the article is silent.

An Internet search reveals dozens of versions of this claim. While they are all essentially similar, they often differ in the specific percentages they assign to the various instructional modalities. For example "20% of what they read" is far more common than "26% of what they read." Some versions add the final claim that students retain "95% of what they teach to someone else." What is the origin of this claim and why have educators accepted it uncritically?

The Source

To date, all efforts to locate the source of this claim have failed because all trails have led to dead ends. For example, a 1988 paper by Felder and Silverman repeats the claim and cites a 1987 paper by Stice as their source. (4) The Stice paper in turn speaks of "some data from the old Socony-Vacuum Oil Company. (The source indicates the data are from the 1930s or 1940s, but I have no other information)." (5)

A 1997 paper by Lee and Bowers, however, sets out on an alternative trail. These authors indirectly cite White (sic) from a 1992 paper by Hapeshi and Jones. (6) The passage in Hapeshi and Jones actually reads:

Bayard-White (1990) quotes the British Audio Visual Society, which claimed that we remember about:

10% of what we read

20% of what we hear

30% of what we see

50% of what we see and hear

80% of what we say

90% The evidence of what we say and do at the same time

The evidence for these statements is not given ..." (7)

Thus Lee and Bowers cited Hapeshi and Jones, who in turn cited Bayard-White who, they acknowledge, had no evidence for the claim. An Internet search for the "British Audio Visual Society" yielded a total of 9 hits, all of them repeating the claim and citing this organization as its source. But no record of the existence of a British Audio Visual Society has been found. It appears that once a claim has been published subsequent authors do not bother much about the actual supporting evidence.

A third source frequently cited for the claim is Edgar Dale. In fact, many on-line versions label the claim "Dale's Cone of Experience," or "Dale's Cone of Learning." In his 1946 book, Audio Visual Methods in Teaching, Dale did present a concept called the "Cone of Experience." described as "merely a visual aid to explain the interrelationship of the various types of audio-visual materials, as well as their
individual positions in the learning process." (8) In the 1969 edition of Audio Visual Methods in Teaching Dale tells us:

In addition, we have suggested the narrowing
upward shape of the Cone does not
imply an increasing difficulty of learning.
Both verbal and visual symbols are used by
little children, Demonstrations may be complex
and quite involved--much more a)
than a map (a visual symbol) of Alaska.
The basis of the classification is not difficulty
but degree of abstraction--the amount of
immediate sensory participation that is
involved. Thus, a still photograph of a tree
is not more difficult to understand than the
dramatization of Hamlet. It is simply in itself
a less concrete teaching material than the
dramatization. (9)

Dale's Cone is really a classification of audiovisual material on a scale of abstractness and bears only slight resemblance to the claim. Indeed, it could be argued that Dale's Cone presents a much more complex model that is trivialized when associated with the claim. All citations of Dale as the source of the claim are simply mistaken.

The Truth

I was only able to locate one paper that explicitly tested the claim, the research by Lee and Bowers who found:

These results do not support White's(sic) percentages
for the contribution of the different components
of multimedia (as quoted in Hapeshi & Jones,
1992). For example, audio did not have a larger
impact on learning than text, nor did graphics and
animation alone have a larger impact than audio
(unless one is comparing "what we see" as text and
graphics together. Actually, audio had much less of
an impact and audio plus graphics and text plus
graphics had an equivalent impact. (10)

Nor does the claim agree with other empirical studies of the relative
effectiveness of various teaching techniques. (11)

The Meaning

In his investigation of the myth that people use only 10% of their brains, Barry Beyerstein noted a similarity to urban legends because "attempts to verify them invariably lead to an infinite regress." He also argued that there is a connection between numerology and the 10% brain myth: "I suspect that the lucky choice of the number 10 for the denominator in our fictitious fraction has served to enhance the
attractiveness of" the one-tenth myth. Among magical thinkers, numerology--the belief in the magical power of numbers--is rarely far from the surface, and 10 is a perennial favorite in this camp. Probably because nature equipped us with 10 fingers and 10 toes, our ancestors developed a primitive reverence for them." (12)

Beyerstein goes on to give examples of how arbitrary increments of 10 are often given special significance such as the Ten Commandments, the 10 best dressed list, and the characterization of historical periods in terms of decades. The educational claim investigated in this paper is typically flamed in increments of 10, and thus fits neatly into this pattern.

A recent paper by Simkin and Roychowdhury estimated that a large percentage of authors do not actually read the papers they cite. (13) As worrisome as their findings are, the multiple iterations of the claim reveal an even more distressing pattern. Not only do people often fail to read the research they cite, they sometimes fail to see if the research was ever actually conducted!

Above all this suggests a staggering lack of curiosity and a willingness to accept findings that agree with superficial preconceptions. Perhaps the real world effects of the claim examined here are relatively benign. After all, who would quarrel with the idea that instructors need to use a variety of teaching techniques? But the
larger implication is troubling. Instructional techniques affect real children, and education have a responsibility to ground their practice in actual research, not unsupportable cliches.

Author Note: The author wishes to thank Rob Waller of the Information Design Unit for his assistance.

References

(1.) Rief S. F. 1993. How to Reach and Teach AD /ADHD Children. West
Nyack, NY: The Center for Applied Research in Education, 53.

(2.) Rose, C. and M.J. Nicholl. 1997. Accelerated Learning for the
21st Century: The Six-step Plan to Unlock Your Master-Mind. New York:
Delacorte Press, 142.

(3.) Joss, R. 2003. "The Value of Learning by Doing" [Electronic
version]. Stanford Business Magazine. Retrieved June 28, 2003, from
http://www. gsb.stanford.edu/news/ bmag/sbsm0305 /deans.shml.

(4.) Felder, R. M. and L. K. Silverman. 1988. "Learning and Teaching
Styles in Engineering Education." Engineering Education, 78, 674-681.

(5.) Stice, J. E. 1987. "Using Kolb's Learning Cycle to Improve
Student Learning." Engineering Education, 77, 291-296, 293.

(6.) Lee, A. Y. and A. N. Bowers. 1997. "The Effect of Multimedia Components on Learning." Proceedings of the Human Facets and Ergonomic Society 41st Annual Meeting 340-344.

(7.) Hapeshi, K. and D. Jones. 1992. "Interactive Multimedia for
Instruction: A Cognitive Analysis of the Role of Audition and Vision."
International Journal of Computer--Human Interactions, 4, 79-99.

(8.) Dale, E. 1946. Audio Visual Methods in Teaching (1st ed.), New
Dryden Press, 37. The full text of Dale's Pyramid, from base to apex,
reads: "Direct Purposeful Experience, Contrived Experience, Dramatic
Participation. Demonstration, Field Trips, Exhibits, Motion Pictures,
Radio Recordings, Still Pictures, Visuals Symbols, Verbal Symbols" (p.
39).

(9.) Dale, E. 1969, Audio Visual Methods in Teaching (3rd ed).
Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press, 110.

(10.) Lee and Bowers, op cit. 343.

(11.) Bligh, D. A. 2000, What's the Use of Lectures? San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass Publishers.

(12.) Beyerstein, B. L. 1999 "Whence Comes the Myth that We Only Use
10% of our Brains?" In S. D. Sala (Ed.). Mind Myths: Exploring Popular
Assumptions About the Mind and Brain (3-24). Chichester. UK: John
Wiley and Sons Ltd, 23. 12.

(13.) Simkin M. V, and V. P. Roychowdhury. 2002. "Read before you
cite!" [Electronic version] Retrieved June 28, 2003, from
http://arxiv.org/ ffp/cond-mat/papers /0212/0212043.pdf.

Miraculous . . . or Marvelous?

2011-01-16T10:20:00.004-06:00

Epiphany II
John 2:1-11

(An audio version of this can be found here and clicking on "Stream.")

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

The apostle Paul writes: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified . . .” (1Cor. 1:22-23). The Gospel appointed for today seems to have a little something for everyone. For Jews demanding signs we have Jesus changing water into wine. For Greeks seeking wisdom, we have a little moral of the story: “Save the best for last.” But what’s in it for those who are looking for Christ crucified? What’s in it for those who are not merely looking for miraculous manifestations or for a revelation of common sense?

It is really no big deal for Jesus Christ, true God and true man ,to be changing water into wine. What could be more simple for the One by whom and through whom all things were made? Why, if He wanted to, He could turn YOU into a stone jar of fine wine — or a pillar of salt.

The marvelous epiphany in this text is not that Jesus did a miracle, but rather that the Lord God Almighty should have anything to do with the cares and concerns of sinners. When His mother expressed a need, Jesus replied, “Woman, what does this have to do with Me?”

Are you looking for Jesus to do something for you — something miraculous perhaps? Do you call on the Lord God Almighty to get you out of a jam, to make you feel better when you are in pain, to grant you success in the face of failure? What does that have to do with Him? Why should He care? As the Psalmist wrote, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps 8:4) Or as the prophet Isaiah wrote (Is. 40:17), “All the nations are as nothing before Him, they are accounted by Him as less than nothing and emptiness.” By comparison, if you went to the mayor and said, “I’m broke,” what would that mean to him? If you went to the state rep or governor or president on up the line to the Lord God Almighty, what makes you think they would care?

Jesus shows that the Almighty God has something to do with us. Ultimately, it isn’t what is miraculous. It’s what is marvelous. It isn’t changing water into wine. It’s when His hour comes. When in this text Jesus says, “My hour has not come,” He is pointing to what lies ahead. That something is noted later in the Gospel of John (17:1), in Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.” And again in the Gospel of Mark, “The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.” (Mark 14:41)

God didn’t send His Son into the world to do miracles. He gave His Son for the forgiveness of sins. If the Church were about doing miracles every Sunday . . . but no. He forgives sins every Sunday. And we act as though that were boring.

Like a teenage daughter who wants an expensive prom dress and is told “No.” She throws a fit and accuses her parents of not loving her. She doesn’t consider the fact that she has a roof over her head, food to eat, clothes to wear, free taxi service, an ATM machine that looks like her mother’s purse or her father’s wallet. All of that is boring.

Christ crucified is the ultimate epiphany in which God reveals that He has something to do with us. There is no miracle on the cross; only what is marvelous. On the cross Jesus says, “I have something to do with you. Your sins I atone for with My own blood. Your lying and your self-centeredness and your disrespect I atone for with My innocent suffering and death.” If God has not spared His only begotten Son, will He not give you all good things?

Jesus shows that He has something to do with us today where He joins His body and His blood to bread and wine according to His word. At this Lord’s Table this morning, there is no miracle going on. As Lutherans, we categorically deny both transubstantiation and consubstantiation, that the bread is changed into Christ’s body or that the wine is changed into His blood. That would seem miraculous. In fact, the magical term “hocus pocus” comes from a misunderstanding of the Lord’s Supper. The Latin, which few could understand, was “Hoc est corpus meum” or “This is My body.”

We do not practice miracles here in this sanctuary. We are stewards of what is marvelous. Jesus unites Himself with us, meets us, cares about us in this blessed communion. Whether we run out of food or money, and when it seems as though we are of no concern to Him, we live by faith not by sight. “Lord, it seems like You’re not going to have anything to do with me. But I know better. You took on this flesh. You suffered and died for my sins.” Cast all your cares upon Him, for He cares for you. Worries, anger, sins. Bring them here. He has something to do with them. Another Krueger child . . . Amanda . . . Alexandra, Annabel, Abigail, Cast cares.

Confident of this marvelous fact, knowing that the Lord God Almighty has something to do with us in a gracious way, we in turn may ask others “What have I to do with you?” Whether it be to tsunami victims or our military abroad or children in the school, we are a concern to each other. We are no longer anxious for ourselves. We are anxious for each other. Jesus has something to do with you. Now you have something to do for others.

We have not gathered here this morning for Jesus to do miracles. We are not gathered here to get some interesting perspectives on life or Ben Franklinesque helpful advice for living. We are here because it is marvelous in our eyes that the Lord God Almighty should have anything to do with us. Therefore, do not look for a miracle as proof of God’s love for you. Look to what is marvelous, the innocent suffering and death of God’s Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Christmas Gifts

2010-12-23T16:15:00.002-06:00

"And when we give each other gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans--and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused--and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself."

— Sigrid Undset

The Origins of the Name Noel

2010-12-20T06:40:00.000-06:00

I had heard that people weren't certain of the origins of NOEL - and the explanation on Wikipedia seems a bit convoluted.

The thought occurred to me that it could be a simple abbreviation of the last four letters in IMMANUEL.

The WAW (a Hebrew letter) can express both "U" and "O". A little child or someone not entirely familiar with Hebrew or Biblical pronunciations might certainly shorten it this way.

Immanuel: Born is the King of Israel.

What About You, Boy?

2010-11-21T07:21:00.004-06:00

To the ilk of theologians who think that "we are all that [God] has at last," Mr. Manfred raises some questions:

What About You, Boy?
by Frederick Manfred

Is your work coming along?
Are you still making candles
Against darkness and wrong?
The whole thing is to blast.
Blast and blast again.
To fill the black
With songs, poems, temples, paintings,
Anything at all. Attack. Attack.
Open up and let go.
Even if it’s only blowing. But blast.
And I say this loving my God.
Because we are all he has at last.
So what about it, boy?
Is your work going well?
Are you still lighting lamps
Against darkness and hell??

What's the Difference?

2010-07-30T18:20:00.002-05:00

The other day, I began to wonder if Democrats thought that the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was our nation's first unfunded public mandate. Maybe the Democrats are simply trying to fund that mandate . . .

Then, while on vacation in South Dakota, I stumbled across a bookrack at a rural gas station which featured books by a local author, Ben Goode. The excerpt below comes from his book, How to Confuse the Idiots in Your Life, pp. 57-59. You might discover and enjoy other titles by this humorist at http://www.apricotpress.com/

Caveat: These caricatures are for entertainment purposes only, intended to give equal opportunity at spoofing both "sides."

DEMOCRATS

A Democrat believes she has a right to force you to live the way she wants you to because only people supported in some way by the government are capable of compassion and understanding and because of a persistent feeling of moral superiority, which she feels because she never discriminates by reason of race, (only against white males and because of religion and political ideology).

Although she's promiscuous and a heavy burden on society because she's on the dole and even though she has had many abortions, she still has very high self-esteem because she recycles her pop cans and because she once went on a march to save the guppies and has a "Celebrate Diversity" bumper sticker on her YUGO.

Democrats believe that aside from themselves, people aren't capable of managing the really important phases of their lives without government help, because everyone is some type of victim. They believe that it's okay if someone breaks the law as long as he is their candidate, that all military personnel are evil.

REPUBLICANS

A Republican believes he has a right to make you live the way he wants to because he has a feeling of moral superiority, because he never discriminates against anyone because of religion, (only because of gender or race and socioeconomic opportunities). He believes a person is above the law as long as he supports free market economics and his candidates. He also realizes that all wars are good because we all get rich, provided we're not too dead.

Although he's pretty much a hypocrite, the fact that he holds higher standards for others, especially Democrats, than he does for himself does not bother him. He still has high self-esteem because he donated $100.00 last year to his alma mater's athletic scholarship fund and because he smiled and gave a noogie to a street person last Christmas.

Republicans believe that anyone who isn't rich must be lazy. In fact, if they themselves hadn't had to wrestle with the burden of having been born rich, they would undoubtedly be even more wealthy and
successful.

Freedom from Gossip

2010-07-25T07:27:00.002-05:00

"Luther's conversation was also remarkable for its freedom from any spiteful or frivolous gossip, of which even at Wittenberg there was then no lack. Of such scandal-mongers, who sought to pry out evil things in their neighbors, Luther frequently used to say, 'They are regular pigs, who care nothing about the roses and violets in the garden, but only stick their snouts into the dirt.'"

from Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin, p. 320.

Lowering My Ears

2010-07-24T17:37:00.003-05:00

At the barbershop yesterday, the barber quipped to the next client in line. He said that after a man gets married, he can either be happy or he can be right. I wonder what he meant by that...

Look Around You

2010-07-24T06:18:00.001-05:00

During the summers, I enjoy listening to the repartee at the speed of light on the Dennis Miller Show. It was there that I learned about the BBC science spoofs entitled Look Around You. The two seasons and associated materials can be found at the Look Around You BBC home website.

I enjoyed the Periodic Table - which has to be examined closely.

The videos are readily available and most easily accessible on YouTube such as this one on maths (as the British are wont to call mathematics), the brain, sulfur and germs.

If you can appreciate British humor, you are likely to go from dead-panned facial expressions to gut-busting laughing your face off. You might never watch NOVA or the Discovery Channel in the same way again. (I wish they'd do one on Darwin in the same manner.)

Luther, Katie, the Garden and the Fish Pond

2010-07-23T06:10:00.000-05:00

"Luther frequently assisted his wife in her household. He was very fond of gardening and agriculture, and we have seen how he sent commissions to friends for stocking his garden at Wittenberg. On one occasion, when going to fish with his wife in their little pond, he noticed with joy how she took more pleasure in her few fish than many a nobleman did in his great lakes with many hundred draughts of fishes."

Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin, p 318.

After

2010-07-22T17:04:00.000-05:00

After
Robert Browning

Take the cloak from his face, and at first
Let the corpse do its worst!

How he lies in his rights of a man!
Death has done all death can.
And, absorbed in the new life he leads,
He recks not, he heeds
Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike
On his senses alike,
And are lost in the solemn and strange
Surprise of the change.
Ha, what avails death to erase
His offence, my disgrace?
I would we were boys as of old
In the field, by the fold:
His outrage, God's patience, man's scorn
Were so easily borne!

I stand here now, he lies in his place:
Cover the face!

Taking God's Name in Vain

2010-07-22T09:04:00.004-05:00

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway has produced an excellent article entitled Vainly Naming the Name for Christianity Today. This would be good material for any catechism class studying the 3rd Commandment (Lutheran numbering of the Commandments) to read.

Regarding the numbering of the commandments (there are three traditions of different ways to number the commandments in the Decalogue), you might enjoy reading James Akin's overview entitled The Division of the Ten Commandments. (Please note that this reference is not an unqualified endorsement of everything that is discussed on that page.)

Luther's Bowling Alley

2010-07-20T17:06:00.002-05:00

"Luther also had a bowling-alley made for his young friends, where they would disport themselves with running and jumping. He liked to throw the first ball himself and was heartily laughed at when he missed the mark. He would turn then to the young folk and remind them in his pleasant way that many a one who thought he would do better and knock down all the pins at once would very likely miss them all -- as they would often have to find in future their life and calling."

From Life of Luther by Julius Koestlin, pp. 320f.

Who Stands and Waits

2010-07-20T17:02:00.003-05:00

SONNET XIX.
John Milton

WHEN I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide,
'Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?'
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.'

And to turn a quote: "Don't just do something. Stand there."

Good Friday: Crucianus + Christianus

2010-04-02T14:58:00.005-05:00

Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." Luke 14:27 "And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple." Matthew 10:38 "And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me." Matthew 16:24 "Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me." Galatians 6:14 "But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."

LUTHER: “Whoever is no crucianus, if I may so express it, is also no christianus. That is to say, he who does not bear the cross is no Christian; he is not like his Master Christ.”

(St. L. II:467, cited in Pieper's Christian Dogmatics, III:70.)

Sit and Listen

2010-04-02T14:51:00.002-05:00

If you can sit day and night in a tavern or somewhere else with good companions, gossiping, talking, singing, and bawling, and not grow tired or feel that it is work, then you can also sit in church for an hour and listen in the services of God and his will.

But now we have the damnable devil, who makes the people so blind and so surfeited and sated that we do not realize what a treasure we have in the dear Word and go on living so rudely that we become like wild beasts.

Let us take it to heart then and remember, whenever we preach, read, or hear God’s Word, whether it be in the churches or at home through father, mother, master, or mistress, and gladly believe that wherever we can obtain it we are in the right, high, holy service of God, which pleases him beyond all measure. Thus you will be warmed and stirred to love hearing it all the more and God will also grant that it bear fruit, more than anybody can tell.

For the Word never goes out without bringing forth much fruit whenever it is earnestly heard, without your being the better for it. Even though you do not see it now, in time it will appear. But it would take too long to tell all the fruits now, nor, indeed, can they all be numbered.

Let this suffice as a foreword to St. Paul’s message, to stir us to listen more diligently to God’s Word, as indeed it is necessary to be reminded of this every day and in every sermon. And it also is pertinent to this text we have taken from St. Paul, for in it he reproaches these same shameful spirits who take hold of God’s Word with their own wisdom and likewise soon allow themselves to think they know it well and that they no longer need to listen to it or learn from anybody else. They turn to unprofitable talk about whatever is new or strange and the mob likes to hear.

They presume to be masters of the Scripture and everyone’s master; they want to teach the whole world and still they do not know what they are saying or asserting. For this is precisely the plague that results; when the Word of God is not proclaimed with earnestness and diligence, the listeners become listless and the preachers become lazy; there the concern must soon collapse and the churches become desolate.

Then inevitably there appear these false spirits, who offer something new, attract the rabble to themselves, and boast that they are masters of the Scriptures, and yet are always the kind of people who themselves have neither known nor ever experienced what they are teaching. This is already gaining ground among us and God’s wrath and punishment for our weariness and ingratitude is coming down upon us.

(The American Edition of Luther's Works, vol. 51, pp. 264-265.)

[1 Cor. 1:17 ". . . to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect."

Voltaire and the Earthquake

2010-02-18T22:17:00.003-06:00

On All Saints' Day, November 1, 1755 a devastating earthquake hit Lisbon. It had a profound effect on philosophical leaders like Voltaire who wrote a lengthy poem about it.

In light of the recent disaster in Haiti, there may be some benefit to reflecting on the past. These websites have some stories to tell:

Thomas Vernon

Engines of our Ingenuity

Poetic Reactions

Political Mavens

Cassandra Tropes and Truth

2010-02-13T06:05:00.003-06:00

Cassandra
by Louise Bogan

To me, one silly task is like another.
I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride.
This flesh will never give a child its mother,—
Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side,
And madness chooses out my voice again,
Again. I am the chosen no hand saves:
The shrieking heaven lifted over men,
Not the dumb earth, wherein they set their graves.

Cassandra and Truth in TV Tropes.

On Memorization

2010-02-12T14:13:00.000-06:00

Cicero, Institutio Oratoria, Book II, VIII, 3.

For it is a better exercise for the memory to learn the words of others than it is to learn one's own, and those who have practised this far harder task will find no difficulty in committing to memory their own compositions with which they are already familiar.

Further, they will form an intimate acquaintance with the best writings, will carry their models with them and unconsciously reproduce the style of the speech which has been impressed upon the memory. They will have a plentiful and choice vocabulary and a command of artistic structure and a supply of figures which will not have to be hunted for, but will offer themselves spontaneously from the treasure-house, if I may so call it, in which they are stored.

In addition, they will be in the agreeable position of being able to quote the happy sayings of the various authors, a power which they will find most useful in the courts. For phrases which have not been coined merely to suit the circumstances of the lawsuit of the moment carry greater weight and often win greater praise than if they were our own.

"The Perfect Is the Enemy of the Good"

2010-02-10T10:16:00.000-06:00

John Ruskin; The Stones of Venice (II, Chap 6)

. . . no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great man ever stops working till he has reached his point of failure; that is to say, his mind is always far in advance of his powers of execution. . . . The second reason is, that imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change.

The Memoirs of Hadrian

2010-02-09T06:00:00.000-06:00

Margaret Yourcenar, The Memoirs of Hadrian, p. 3.

My dear Marc,

Today I went to see my physician Hermogenes, who has just returned to the Villa from a rather long journey in Asia. No food could be taken before the examination, so we had made the appointment for the early morning hours. I took off my cloak and tunic and lay down on a couch.

I spare you details which would be as disagreeable to you as to me, the description of the body of a man who is growing old, and is about to die of a dropsical heart. Let us say that I coughed, inhaled, and held my breath according to Hermogenes' directions.

He was alarmed, in spite of himself, by the rapid progress of the disease, and was inclined to throw the blame on young Iollas, who has attended me during his absence.

It is difficult to remain an emperor in presence of a physician, and difficult even to keep one's essential quality as man. The professional eye saw in me only a mass of humors, a sory mixture of blood and lymph.

This morning it occurred to me for the first time that my body, my faithful companion and friend, truer and better known to me than my own soul, may be after all only a sly beast who will end by devouring his master. But enough. I like my body; it has served me well, and in every way, and I do not begrudge it the care it now needs.

I have no faith, however, as Hermogenes still claims to have, in the miraculous virtues of herbs, or the specific mixture of mineral salts which he went to the Orient to get. Subtle though he is, he has nevertheless offered me vague formulas of reassurance too trie to deceive anyone; he knows how I hate this kind of pretense, but a man does not practice medicine for more than thirty years without some falsehood. I forgive this good servitor his endeavor to hide my death from me.

Hermogenes is learned; he is even wise, and his integrity is well above that of the ordinary court physician. It will fall to my lot as a sick man to have the best of care. But no one can go beyond prescribed limits: my swollen limbs no longer sustain me through the long Roman ceremonies; I fight for breath; and I am now sixty.

Contra Vocational Education

2010-02-08T06:05:00.000-06:00

A couple of thoughts against a mere vocational education:

"You are put to a stern choice. . . .You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men are not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them." -- John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice.

"I insist that the object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men; there are two means of making the carpenter a man, each equally important: the first is to give the group and community in which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and his family what life means; the second is to give him sufficient intelligence and technical skill to make him an efficient workman . . ." W.E.B. DuBois, The Talented Tenth.

The Benefit of Publishing One's Imperfections

2010-02-06T06:00:00.001-06:00

Michel de Montaigne, On Friendship.

My defects are becoming natural and incorrigible, but as fine gentlemen serve the public as models to follow, I may serve a turn as a model to avoid . . .

The act of publishing and indicting my imperfections may teach someone how to fear them. (The talents which I most esteem in myself derive more honor from indicting me than praising me.) That is why I so often return to it and linger over it. Yet, when all has been said, you never talk about yourself without loss: condemn yourself and you are always believed -- praise yourself and you never are.

Leisure Preserving Tranquility

2010-02-05T06:26:00.000-06:00

Seneca, On the Shortness of Life.

"Some take a break in the middle of the day and keep any less demanding task for the afternoon hours. Our ancestors also forbad any new motion to be introduced in the senate after the tenth hour. The army divides the watches, and those who are returning from an expedition are exempted from night duty. We must indulge the mind and from time to time allow it the leisure which is its food and strength. We must go for walks out of doors, so that the mind can be strengthened and invigorated by a clear sky and plenty of fresh air. At times it will acquire fresh energy from a journey by carriage and a change of scene, or from socializing and drinking freely.

"Occasionally, we should even come to the point of intoxication, sinking into drink but not being totally flooded by it; for it does wash away cares, and stirs the mind to its depths, and heals sorrow just as it heals certain diseases. Liber was not named because he loosens the tongue, but because he liberates the mind from its slavery to cares, emancipates it, invigorates it and emboldens it for all its undertakings. But there is a healthy moderation in wine, as in liberty. Solon and Arcesilas are thought to have liked their wine, and Cato has been accused of drunkenness; whoever accused him will more easily make the charge honorable than Cato disgraceful. But we must not do this often, in case the mind acquires a bad habit; yet at times it must be stimulated to rejoice without restraint and austere soberness must be banished for a while.

"For whether we agree with the Greek poet that 'Sometimes it is sweet to be mad,' or with Plato that ' A man sound in mind knocks in vain at the doors of poetry,' or with Aristotle that 'No great intellect has been without a touch of madness,' only a mind that is deeply stirred can utter something noble and beyond the power of others.

"When it has scorned everyday and commonplace thoughts and risen aloft on the wings of divine inspiration, only then does it sound a note nobler than mortal voice could utter. As long as it remains in its senses it cannot reach any lofty and difficult height: it must desert the usual track and race away, champing the bit and hurrying its driver in its course to a height it would have feared to scale by itself.

"So here you have, my dear Serenus, the means of preserving your tranquility, the means of restoring it, and the means of resisting the faults that creep up on you unawares. But be sure of this, that none of them is strong enough for those who want to preserve a fragile thing, unless the wavering mind is surrounded by attentive and unceasing care."

On the Pleasure of Hating

2010-02-04T06:00:00.001-06:00

William Hazlitt, On the Pleasure of Hating.

It is easy to raise an outcry against violent invectives, to talk loud against extravagance and enthusiasm, to pick a quarrel with every thing but the most calm, candid and qualified statement of facts: but there are enormities to which no words can do adequate justice.

Are we then, in order to form a complete idea of them, to omit every circumstance of aggravation, or to suppress every feeling of impatience that arises out of the details, lest we should be accused of giving way to the influence of prejudice and passion? That would be to falsify the impression altogether, to misconstrue reason, and fly in the face of nature.

Suppose for instance, that in the discussion of the Slave-Trade, a description to the life was given of the horrors or the Middle Passage (as it was termed), that you saw the manner in which thousands of wretches, year after year, were stowed together in the hold of a slave-ship, without air, without light, without food, without hope, so that what they suffered in reality was brought home to you in imagination, till you felt in sickness of heart as one of them, could it be said that this was a prejudging of the case, that your knowing the extent of the evil disqualified you from pronouncing sentence upon it, and that your disgust and abhorrence were the effects of a heated imagination? No. Those evils that inflame the imagination and make the heart sick, ought not to leave the head cool.

This is the very test and measure of the degree of the enormity, that it involuntarily staggers and appalls the mind. If it were a common iniquity, if it were slight and partial, or necessary, it would not have this effect; but it very properly carries away the feelings, and (if you will) overpowers the judgment, because it is a mass of evil so monstrous and unwarranted as not to be endured, even in thought.

Peace Through Suffering

2010-02-03T10:21:00.000-06:00

John Ruskin, The Work of Iron in Nature, Art, and Policy.

Think over what I have said; and as you return to your quiet homes tonight, reflect that their peace was not won for you by your own hands, but by theirs who long ago jeoparded their lives for you, their children; and remember that neither this inherited peace, nor any other, can be kept, but through the same jeopardy.

No peace was ever won from Fate by subterfuge or agreement; no peace is ever in store for any of us, but that which we shall win by victory over shame or sin; -- victory over sin that oppresses, as well as over that which corrupts.*

For many a year to come, the sword of every righteous nation must be whetted to save or to subdue; nor will it be by patience of others' suffering, but by the offering of your own, that you will ever draw nearer to the time when the great change shall pass upon the iron of the earth; -- when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; neither shall they learn war any more.

*Ed. Note: (Ephesians 2:14-16, "For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity." (See also, 1 Cor. 15:54-57; Cf. 2 Sam. 12:10 with Luke 2:35)

When Technology Blinds

2010-02-01T06:11:00.000-06:00

Joseph Pieper, Learning How to See Again.

"We have lost, no doubt, the American Indian's keen sense of smell, but we also no longer need it since we have binoculars, compass, and radar. Let me repeat: in this obviously continuing process there exists a limit below which human nature itself is threatened, and the very integrity of human existence is directly endangered. Therefore, such ultimate danger can no longer be averted with technology alone.

"At stake here is this: How can man be saved from becoming a totally passive consumer of mass-produced goods and a subservient follower beholden to every slogan the managers may proclaim? The question really is: How can man preserve and safeguard the foundation of his spiritual dimension and an uncorrupted relationship to reality?

"The capacity to perceive the visible world 'with our own eyes' is indeed an essential constituent of human nature. We are talking here about man's essential inner richness -- or, should the threat prevail, man's most abject inner poverty. And why so? To see things is the first step toward that primordial and basic mental grasping of reality, which constitutes the essence of man as a spiritual being.

"I am well aware that there are realities we can come to know through 'hearing' alone. All the same, it remains a fact that only through seeing, indeed through seeing with out own eyes, is our inner autonomy established.

"Those no longer able to see reality with their own eyes are equally unable to hear correctly.

"It is specifically the man thus impoverished who inevitably falls prey to the demagogical spells of any powers that be. 'Inevitably,' because a person is utterly deprived even of the potential to keep a critical distance."

Teach Us To Pray

2010-01-31T09:55:00.000-06:00

From Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book, pp. 106-107.

Luther, in his preface to the German Psalter (1528) wrote, "If you want to see the holy Christian Church painted in glowing colors and in a form which is really alive, and if you want this to be done in a miniature, you must get hold of the Psalter, and there you will have in your possession a fine, clear, pure mirror which till show you what Christianity really is; yea, you will find yourself in it and the true gnothi seauton ["know thyself"], and God himself and all his creatures too."

If the Psalms are our primary text for prayer, our answering speech to the word of God, then Jesus, the Word made flesh, is our primary teacher. Jesus is the divine/human personal center for a life of prayer. Jesus prays for us -- "he always lives to make intercession for [us]" (Heb. 7:25). The verb is in the present tense. This is the most important thing to know about prayer, not that we should pray or how we should pray, but that Jesus is right now praying for us (see also Heb. 4:16 and John 17). . . .

Prayer is shaped by Jesus, in whose name we pray. Our knowledge, our needs, our feelings are taken seriously, but they are not foundational. God, revealed in the Scriptures that we read and meditate upon and in Jesus whom we address, gives both form and content to our prayers. In prayer we are most ourselves; it is the one act in which we can, must, be totally ourselves. But it is also the act in which we move beyond ourselves.

In that "move beyond" we come to be formed and defined not by the sum total of our experiences but by the Father, Son, and Spirit to whom and by whom we pray.

Keeping a Standing Army

2010-01-30T08:56:00.004-06:00

John Ruskin, On Art and Life, (Penguin Books, Great Ideas, p. 95-96)

"The argument brought forward for the maintenance of a standing army usually refers only to expediency in the case of unexpected war, whereas, one of the chief reasons for the maintenance on an army is the advantage of the military system as a method of education.

"The most fiery and headstrong, who are often also the most gifted and generous of your youths, have always a tendency both in the lower and upper classes to offer themselves for your soldiers: others, weak and unserviceable in the civil capacity, are tempted or entrapped into the army in a fortunate hour for them: out of this fiery or uncouth material, it is only soldier's discipline which can bring the full value and power.

"Even at present, by mere force of order and authority, the army is the salvation of myriads; and men who, under other circumstances, would have sunk into lethargy or dissipation, are redeemed into noble life by a service which at once summons and directs their energies.

"How much more than this, military education is capable of doing, you will find only when you make it education indeed. We have no excuse for leaving our private soldiers at their present level of ignorance and want of refinement, for we shall invariably find that, both among officers and men, the gentlest and best informed are the bravest; still less have we excuse for diminishing our army, either in the present state of political events, or, as I believe, in any other conjunction of them that for many a year will be possible in this world."

On the Transfiguration of our Lord

2010-01-24T23:03:00.002-06:00

Do we assume that the Transfiguration of Christ was for the benefit of Peter, James and John (cf. 1 Peter 1)?

But what if it was rather for the benefit of Moses and Elijah?

And why do all of our Transfiguration hymns emphasize vision, seeing and light when the emphasis of the text is: LISTEN to Him?

Caution: Brondos Hymnwriting

2010-01-23T12:57:00.006-06:00

Today I "wasted" some time having a go at composing some verse, but clearly committing the error of appending inferior lines and marring the works of such a great wordsmith as G.K. Chesterton. What I have done, as evidenced below, is probably akin to painting a daisy wreath on the head of the Mona Lisa. But I have done it -- after becoming enamored of Chesterton's depictions in first two stanzas, but then being disappointed in his third because he says too little of Christ and His Means.

So, taking the chance that my efforts would be met with either approval or disdain, I send you Chesterton's first two stanzas followed by my own recent creations (which are still likely to be edited further by me):

CHESTERTON:

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry.
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not Thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
For sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.

BRONDOS:

Thy two-edged sword dividing
What double-minded men,
With scoffing and deriding,
Vainly obscured, do then
Recall midst glorious psalter
That Thou to us drew near --
Upon Thine earth and altar
A Sacrifice so dear.

In truth and peace provide us
What we by grace have heard;
At font and altar hide us
In Christ and in His Word;
And thus delivered, grant us
In faith and hope and love,
To thrive where Thou dost plant us
With thoughts of heav'n above.

Proof Against It

2009-11-06T05:30:00.000-06:00

In the latter pages of Richard Adams' Watership Down (which I just completed with my 7th and 8th Grade literature class), I came across this reflective statement:

"Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it." (p. 465)

I wonder if that might also be the rationale for why some people also like horror movies.

Not Feeling So Well?

2009-11-05T05:30:00.000-06:00

If you take some sort of dark comfort at the thought that at least you don't have a condition a bad as others, of if you ascribe to the old apothegm, "Misery loves company," you might take heart at knowing how much Luther suffered with his illnesses.

Martin Brecht's biography of Luther is superb (and not just in describing morbid details). The following description comes in his third of three volumes on Luther Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church (1532-1546). This is from pages 185-186.:

It is possible that Luther might have been more actively involved at the assembly and might have had his position accepted had he been healthy. This time it was not heart problems, but kidney stones that became evident on 8 February when he passed a stone and experienced bleeding. In the following days he could participate in the discussions only sporadically.

On Sunday, 18 February, he was well enough to preach. He freely applied the gospel of Jesus' temptation by the devil (Matt. 4:1-11) to the church that had been tempted by external persecution, heretical perversion of the Bible, and now by the anti-Christian papacy and its mass. Only Christ himself could put an end to this.

Later that same day he suffered extreme pains. An enema administered by the landgrave's personal physician understandably not only did not help but caused persistent diarrhea that weakened the patient. Melanchthon was quite concerned about this inept treatment.

On 19 February Luther was unable to urinate, and this persisted for eight days. Although there were several physicians of the princes in Schmalkalden, at Luther's request Dr. George Sturtz was summoned from Erfurt with suitable medications on 20 February. Previously, too, they had obtained medicine from Erfurt. . . .

The surgeon (Steinschneider) from Waltershausen was summoned. The elector's surgeon had a golden instrument fabricated for an operation. Luther had to suffer even more at the hands of the physicians who were helpless in his case, and, when all was said and done, he would rather have died.

"They gave me as much to drink as if I had been a big ox." They offered him broth made from almonds. They also tried, from the Dreckapotheke (excrement pharmacy), remedies made from garlic and raw manure.

From 25 February onward, Luther's condition grew increasingly critical. Melanchthon could not hold back his tears while visiting him. Their previously substantial differences were now obviously irrelevant. Luther was prepared to accept his fate from God's hand. However he had an urgent wish to he in the territory of Electoral Saxony. Although hardly in condition to be moved, he wanted to leave Schmalkalden. To his consternation, Melanchthon postponed the departure for a day because, for astrological reasons, he thought the new moon was an unfavorable date for this undertaking.

Before Luther's departure on 26 February the elector visited the patient and wished him God's grace and healing for the sake of the Word. Luther advised him to pray against the devil, the real adversary. The papal legate would be happy about Luther's death—in fact, the status of Luther's health was an important political consideration on all sides—but with Luther's death the pope would also lose an important person who was praying for him and he would not escape the evil to come. Luther thanked his sovereign for all that he had done for the sake of the gospel, and exhorted him to continue to work for it.

John Frederick stated his concern that God would take away "his precious Word" along with Luther. Luther, however, mentioned the many theologians who had taken it to heart and understood it very well. The anxious elector took this as an opportunity to admonish all those present to preserve the pure Word.

Luther also feared that after his death the gospel would be threatened by controversies. Interestingly, in this context he asked whether all the theologians had unanimously signed the articles, which, as mentioned above, was not the case. Melanchthon was able to tell him only that all of them, even Blaurer, had signed the Augsburg Confession and the Wittenberg Concords.

Before leaving, the elector assured Luther that he did not need to be concerned about his wife and children: "For your wife shall be my wife, and your children shall be my children." Nevertheless, Luther was afraid that the city governor, Hans Metzsch, who was at odds with him, would take revenge upon his family. Amsdorf should look after Katy. The patient's pains were so severe that he feared he was losing his mind. He felt miserable and had to vomit. Like Stephen, he felt he was being "stoned." But he held fast: "God still remains wise and Christ, my Lord, my wisdom and God." They should stop praying for him in the churches. God had now been "prayed, importuned, and cried to" enough. God would do the right thing. If Luther surrendered to the devilish pain, Christ would take revenge upon him. In this trust he commended his soul to God.

For the trip a copper basin was specially prepared so that towels could be heated and applied to the patient while traveling. When Luther entered the wagon, he made the sign of the cross and wished those standing around: "The Lord fill you with his benediction and with hatred of the pope." In his deathly illness Luther was aware of the significance of this final unreconciled word. The legate apparently assumed that Luther was already dead and had been taken away secretly. He therefore sent his servant to find out if this were so, but Schlaginhaufen prevented him from seeing Luther: "You will not see Luther in eternity." Bugenhagen, Spalatin, Myconius, Schlaginhaufen, and Dr. Sturtz accompanied the patient. Two men walked beside the wagon in order to moderate the discomfort of the trip on the poor road. Possibly, it was this jolting that saved Luther's life. The trip was excruciating, however.

The Sum of the Christian Life

2009-11-04T16:35:00.001-06:00

Here's a piece of Luther's Work which I had not read before but was glad to have come across it. It is his Sermon on the Sum of the Christian Life (1532) found in the American Edition of his works, vol. 51, beginning at page 256. It's a nice one to read in conjunction with his treatise The Freedom of a Christian. when considering sanctification in the life of Christ's people.

Now, as for him who will neither heed this nor be moved to hold God’s Word in honor and esteem and gladly hear and learn it whenever he can, I do not know how to advise him, for I neither can nor will drag anybody in by the hair.

Anybody who despises it, let him go on despising it and remain the pot-bellied sow that he is until the day when God will slaughter him and prepare a roast for the devil in the eternal fires of hell. For such a person cannot be a good man, nor is it a human sin, but rather the devil’s obstinacy, when a man can so despise that for which God himself has appointed a place, person, time, and day, and besides admonishes and pleads with him so solemnly through his command and promise, and lays all this at our doorstep free of charge.

This is something for which you ought to run to the ends of the world, something you cannot pay for with any gold or silver. And yet it is such an easy service that it costs you no labor or work, no money or goods, only to lend your ears to hear, or your mouth to speak and read, and surely there is no easier work than this. For even though this may bring with it the peril that you will have to bear the cross and suffer for it, yet the work in itself is easier than even the easiest of labors.

If you can sit day and night in a tavern or somewhere else with good companions, gossiping, talking, singing, and bawling, and not grow tired or feel that it is work, then you can also sit in church for an hour and listen in the services of God and his will. What would you do if he commanded you to carry stones or to go on a pilgrimage or imposed some other heavy work upon you, as was imposed upon us formerly, when we willingly performed everything we were told to do and into the bargain were fleeced of money, goods, and body with silly lies and frauds?

But now we have the damnable devil, who makes the people so blind and so surfeited and sated that we do not realize what a treasure we have in the dear Word and go on living so rudely that we become like wild beasts. Let us take it to heart then and remember, whenever we preach, read, or hear God’s Word, whether it be in the churches or at home through father, mother, master, or mistress, and gladly believe that wherever we can obtain it we are in the right, high, holy service of God, which pleases him beyond all measure.

Thus you will be warmed and stirred to love hearing it all the more and God will also grant that it bear fruit, more than anybody can tell. For the Word never goes out without bringing forth much fruit whenever it is earnestly heard, without your being the better for it. Even though you do not see it now, in time it will appear. But it would take too long to tell all the fruits now, nor, indeed, can they all be numbered.

It's Number 53, Actually

2009-11-03T05:30:00.001-06:00

11/3/1956

The Misanthrope

2009-11-02T05:30:00.000-06:00

Moliere, anyone? The explanation of this painting by Pieter Bruegel is as follows:

The Dutch inscription reads: 'Because the world is perfidious, I am going into mourning'. The moral of the painting is that such a relinquishment of the world is not possible: one must face up to the world's difficulties, not abandon responsibility for them. The hooded misanthrope is being robbed by the small figure in a glass ball, a symbol of vanity. His action shows how impossible it is to give up the world. The misanthrope is also walking unawares towards the mantraps set for him by the world. He cannot renounce it as he would wish, and he is contrasted with the shepherd in the background who guards his sheep and who is more virtuous than the misanthrope because of his simple, honourable performance of his duties, his sense of responsibility towards his charges.

Swine Flu and the Plague

2009-11-01T17:12:00.004-06:00

From the amount of air-time given to issues surrounding the Swine Flu, it must be pretty serious. But by comparison, I wonder what the media coverage and popular reaction would be if we were hit with a plague such as that known in Luther's day.

The following are some excerpts from the translator's introduction and Luther's treatment of this subject found in AE 43:115ff. It was apparently written on an All Saints' Day, 1527 -- on the tenth anniversary of Luther's burning the papal bull against him.

WHETHER ONE MAY FLEE FROM A DEADLY PLAGUE: To the Reverend Doctor Johann Hess, pastor at Breslau, and to his fellow-servants of the gospel of Jesus Christ (1527).

[from the introduction]

On August 2, 1527, this dread plague struck Wittenberg. Fearing for the safety of Luther and the other professors at the university, Elector John, on August 10, ordered Luther to leave for Jena. Five days later the university moved to Jena, then to Schlieben near Wittenberg, where it remained until April of the following year.

Unmoved by the elector’s letter or by the pleas of his friends, Luther, along with Bugenhagen, stayed to minister to the sick and frightened people. By August 19 there were eighteen deaths; the wife of the mayor, Tilo Dene, died almost in Luther’s arms; his own wife was pregnant and two women were sick in his own house; his little son Hans refused to eat for three days; chaplain George Rörer’s wife, also pregnant, took sick and lost both her baby and her life; Bugenhagen and his family then moved into Luther’s house for mutual encouragement.

Writing to Amsdorf, Luther spoke about his Anfechtungen and about the hospital in his house, closing his letter by saying,

“So there are battles without and terrors within, and really grim ones; Christ is punishing us. It is a comfort that we can confront Satan’s fury with the word of God, which we have and and which saves souls even if that one should devour our bodies. Commend us to the brethren and yourself to pray for us that we may endure bravely under the hand of the Lord and overcome the power and cunning of Satan, be it through dying or living. Amen. At Wittenberg on All Saints’ Day in the tenth year after the trampling down of the papal bull, in remembrance of which we, comforted in both respects, have drunk a toast.”

By the end of November the plague had definitely receded and in December Luther’s wife was happily delivered of her child, Elizabeth.

[from the treatise]

Since the rumor of death is to be heard in these and many other parts also, we have permitted these instructions of ours to be printed because others might also want to make use of them.

To begin with, some people are of the firm opinion that one need not and should not run away from a deadly plague. Rather, since death is God’s punishment, which he sends upon us for our sins, we must submit to God and with a true and firm faith patiently await our punishment. They look upon running away as an outright wrong and as lack of belief in God. Others take the position that one may properly flee, particularly ff one holds no public office.

I cannot censure the former for their excellent decision. They uphold a good cause, namely, a strong faith in God, and deserve commendation because they desire every Christian to hold to a strong, firm faith. It takes more than a milk faith to await a death before which most of the saints themselves have been and still are in dread. Who would not acclaim these earnest people to whom death is a little thing? They willingly accept God’s chastisement, doing so without tempting God, as we shall hear later on.

Since it is generally true of Christians that few are strong and many are weak, one simply cannot place the same burden upon everyone. A person who has a strong faith can drink poison and suffer no harm, Mark 16 [:18], while one who has a weak faith would thereby drink to his death. Peter could walk upon the water because he was strong in faith. When he began to doubt and his faith weakened, he sank and almost drowned.

When a strong man travels with a weak man, he must restrain himself so as not to walk at a speed proportionate to his strength lest he set a killing pace for his weak companion. Christ does not want his weak ones to be abandoned, as St. Paul teaches in Romans 15 [:1] and I Corinthians 12 [:22 ff.]. To put it briefly and concisely, running away from death may happen in one of two ways. First, it may happen in disobedience to God’s word and command. For instance, in the case of a man who is imprisoned for the sake of God’s word and who, to escape death, denies and repudiates God’s word.

In such a situation everyone has Christ’s plain mandate and command not to flee but rather to suffer death, as he says, “Whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven” and “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul,” Matthew 10 [:28, 33]. Those who are engaged in a spiritual ministry such as preachers and pastors must likewise remain steadfast before the peril of death.

We have a plain command from Christ, “A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep but the hireling sees the wolf coming and flees” [John 10:11]. For when people are dying, they most need a spiritual ministry which strengthens and comforts their consciences by word and sacrament and in faith overcomes death. However, where enough preachers are available in one locality and they agree to encourage the other clergy to leave in order not to expose themselves needlessly to danger, I do not consider such conduct sinful because spiritual services are provided for and because they would have been ready and willing to stay ff it had been necessary.

We read that St. Athanasius fled from his church that his life might be spared because many others were there to administer his office. Similarly, the brethren in Damascus lowered Paul in a basket over the wall to make it possible for him to escape, Acts 9 [:25]. And also in Acts 19 [:30] Paul allowed himself to be kept from risking danger in the marketplace because it was not essential for him to do so.

2009-10-30T16:10:00.000-05:00

Regarding the question, "Did Luther use a drinking song as the basis for A Mighty Fortress Is Our God?" put together by the Rev. Richard Lammert, Technical Services Librarian, Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN.

This is a common misconception, but the answer is an undeniable “no.” Martin Luther wrote both the words and the tune for “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” (in German “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott”). Carl F. Schalk, a well-known contemporary hymnologist, writes in Luther on Music: Paradigms of Praise (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1988) as follows:

“Luther also set his hand to the task of writing hymn melodies. It is generally acknowledged that at least three hymn tunes are from Luther’s own pen. “Wir glauben all an einen Gott”, “Ein feste Burg,” and the Sanctus hymn from the German Mass, “Isaiah dem Propheten das geschah.” Considering his own musical experience and training, and living at a time when the Meistersinger tradition prescribed that poet and tune writer were one and the same person, it would be strange had he not attempted to give musical expression to his own texts” (p. 26).

Leonard Woolsey Bacon, in The Hymns of Martin Luther Set to Their Original Melodies. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883), refers to a near contemporary of Luther’s in reporting that the tune is by Luther:

“It seems superfluous to add to this testimony the word of Sleidan, the nearly contemporary historian, who says expressly concerning “Ein’ feste Burg” that Luther made for it a tune singularly suited to the words, and adapted to stir the heart. If ever there were hymn and tune that told their own story of a common and simultaneous origin, without need of confirmation by external evidence, it is these” (p. xix).

In contrast to these definite statements attributing the tune to Luther, one can note that there are scholars who question this. For example, William Barclay Squire in his article on Martin Luther in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., edited by Eric Blom (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1959) says:

“The following are the hymn-tunes which have been ascribed to Luther, though none with any degree of certainty: ... ‘Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott’” (v. 5, p. 447). One should note, however, that if Luther himself did not write the tune, absolutely no source is given for the tune.”

The idea that Luther adapted his tune from a drinking song is probably from a misunderstanding of the tune in “bar form.” It is easy to see here that “bar” is a technical term, because it is precisely the same word in German. For example, in Liederkunde, 2. Teil, edited by Joachim Stalmann (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), we find the statement “Luther baut einen neunzeiligen Bar” [“Luther builds a bar of nine lines”] (p. 61).

Willi Apel in Harvard Dictionary of Music, 2nd ed., rev. and enl. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969) says the following on p. 80-81 about “Bar form.” Of particular importance is the connection of the form with the Meistersingers, as seen also in the first quotation from Carl Schalk:

“The name is derived from the medieval German term Bar, a poem consisting of three or more Gesaetze (i.e., stanzas), each of which is divided into two Stollen (section a) and an Absegang (section b). ... [The Bar form] found its way into the repertory of the troubadours ... and ultimately into that of the minnesingers and Meistersinger, who called it Bar and used it for nearly all their lyrical songs. It is equally common in the German ... Lutheran chorales and the various compositions based on them (organ chorales, chorale cantatas, etc.). ... Of particular importance is the type of Bar in which the Stollen recurs complete at the end of the Abgesang, thus leading to the form a a b a. An appropriate designation for this is rounded Bar form. Several hymn melodies show this form.”

“A Mighty Fortress” has the “bar form” A A B A’. One can diagram it thus:

A A mighty Fortress is our God, A trusty Shield and Weapon;
A He helps us free from ev’ry need That hath us now o’ertaken.
B The old evil Foe
Now means deadly woe;
Deep guile and great might
Are his dread arms in fight;
A’ On earth is not his equal.

Despite the analyses of musicologists, one could still claim that Martin Luther “knew a good tune when he heard it,” and adapted it for his own purposes. To think that Luther adapted a drinking song for “A Mighty Fortress,” however, goes completely against the practice of the Reformer. This is amply stated by Richard C. Resch, “Music: Gift of God or Tool of the Devil,” Logia 3 (Eastertide/April 1994) no. 2: 36, where he makes reference to Markus Jenny, Luthers geistliche Lieder und Kirchengesaenge (Koeln: Boehlau Verlag, 1985):

“Martin Luther is one of the most misunderstood church fathers with respect to the use of music in the church. Claims that he used tavern tunes for his hymns are used in defense of a music practice that freely accepts worldly associations. Such conclusions bear no resemblance to Luther’s writings on the subjects of worship and music. In fact, Luther’s actions teach us quite a different lesson. In his search for the right tune for his text “Vom Himmel hoch, da komm’ ich her” [“From Heaven Above to Earth I Come”] , Luther learned about the power of worldly associations. According to the Luther scholar Markus Jenny, Luther’s first wedding of this text with a tune was “a classic example of the failure of a contrafacta.” He set it to a secular dance song that begins, “I step eagerly to this dance.” The dance and tune were closely associated with a Christmas wreath ceremony that was often held in taverns. Luther found the secular associations to be so strong that he eventually wrote a fresh tune that was free of worldly associations. He then indicated on the manuscript that this new melody was to be used in the Sunday service and with children. Luther’s modification of this beloved hymn is indication of his sensitivity to the harmful power of worldly associations in the worship practice of the church.”

Outrage Redivivus

2009-10-03T01:57:00.002-05:00

Bill Bennett used to think that outrage was dead. I wonder if he sees things differently now that Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Michael Savage (to name a few) are building up a full head of steam. Could such "outrage" ever get to the point of being outrageous? Oh, for the days of Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.

Wassup 2016?

2009-10-03T01:52:00.002-05:00

So, Chicago won't get the opportunity to lose oodles of money by hosting the 2016 Olympics. Oh well. If we really still want to lose money, we could always sponsor another World's Fair. That was pretty cool.

Presidential Debates and the Hippocratic Oath

2008-10-18T09:14:00.005-05:00

In a couple of presidential debates, the Hippocratic Oath was mentioned. What many people (including the presidential candidates) don't realize, however, is that the oath of Hippocrates is quite different today from the original, taking a sharp turn in the 1960's. If it is mandated at all for graduating medical students, it is markedly different today from what it was in the past.

The Oath of Hippocrates included the swearing off of terminating pregnancies: “I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.” But alas, the classic Hippocratic oath has been left behind, modernized so that most med students today don't even realize just how far modern versions of the oath have strayed from the classical model. The PBS/NOVA site offers some interesting statistics with the article The Hippocratic Oath Today: Meaningless Relic or Invaluable Moral Guide? I've included several paragraphs in the “continue reading” section from that site in case your web surfing time is short:

“The Hippocratic Oath (see ancient and modern versions) is one of the oldest binding documents in history. Written in antiquity, its principles are held sacred by doctors to this day: treat the sick to the best of one's ability, preserve patient privacy, teach the secrets of medicine to the next generation, and so on. “The Oath of Hippocrates,” holds the American Medical Association's Code of Medical Ethics (1996 edition), “has remained in Western civilization as an expression of ideal conduct for the physician.”

“Today, most graduating medical-school students swear to some form of the oath, usually a modernized version. Indeed, oath-taking in recent decades has risen to near uniformity, with just 24 percent of U.S. medical schools administering the oath in 1928 to nearly 100 percent today.

“Yet paradoxically, even as the modern oath's use has burgeoned, its content has tacked away from the classical oath's basic tenets. According to a 1993 survey of 150 U.S. and Canadian medical schools, for example, only 14 percent of modern oaths prohibit euthanasia, 11 percent hold covenant with a deity, 8 percent forswear abortion, and a mere 3 percent forbid sexual contact with patients -- all maxims held sacred in the classical version.

“The original calls for free tuition for medical students and for doctors never to 'use the knife' (that is, conduct surgical procedures) -- both obviously out of step with modern-day practice. Perhaps most telling, while the classical oath calls for 'the opposite' of pleasure and fame for those who transgress the oath, fewer than half of oaths taken today insist the taker be held accountable for keeping the pledge.”

Traditional Worship for Contemporary People

2008-09-06T17:44:00.002-05:00

I don't know why or how I came to be receiving e-mail from Bob Pierson. But I do think it's a bit humorous how the trend in "spirituality" and worship is coming back around to the "traditional."

At this point, I'm not certain what Pierson means by "traditional worship" -- and I don't have time to check it out -- but in my nearly 25 years of being a called-and-ordained pastor, the historic liturgy is the service I've always conducted in caring for Christ's people with Word and Sacrament. I'm still using the 1940's edition of The Lutheran Hymnal.

What I find funny in all this is that aficionados in The Lutheran Church -- Missouri Synod (LCMS), the church body with which I am affiliated, usually runs 15 to 20 years behind the curve, trying to keep up with the rest of popular American Christian trends. Currently, the majority of congregations in the LCMS are still trying their hand at a 1970's-1980's style "Contemporary Worship," either going full-tilt with an anti-liturgical, unvestmented, karaoke-Christian praise service, or an attempt to blend contemporary with traditional.

In about 20 years, the LCMS gurus who are hip will be trending back to some form of "traditional worship," learning from their highly-paid non-Lutheran poll-mongering consultants that that is what people want. They'll move back towards that for all the wrong reasons while I and a few others will remain doing what the church has always been doing, and doing well.

In case you're interested, here is the e-mail I received today:

Dear colleague,

There are many churches all across America that use traditional worship as their primary way of doing worship services. Jim Bankston, pastor of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Houston believes in the importance of traditional worship and St. Paul’s does only traditional worship. The large United Methodist Church I served for over 30 years in Tulsa does both traditional and contemporary worship. We are both committed to finding ways to do traditional worship better. We believe it will make a significant difference for the church to be able to improve the quality of traditional worship.

Therefore, we are holding a national conference on November 11-13, 2008 called Traditional Worship for Contemporary People. The event will be held at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Houston and features some of the great, practical experts on traditional worship. Although this conference has been designed primarily out of the United Methodist tradition, we want to respect all the customs of traditional worship. We hope that you will come to the conference and enjoy it. You can view the brochure and more information at www.leadershipnexus.net/houston.htm. Feel free to make copies of the brochure for your friends, or forward this email to them. There are many aspects of the conference that will add unusual excitement and effectiveness to any traditional worship service.

Please email me if you have any questions. You can register by mail or online at www.leadershipnexus.net/houston.htm. I hope you will begin that process as soon as possible and get the early discount!

Yours in Christ,
Bob Pierson
Executive Director
Leadership Nexus
7103 S Columbia Place
Tulsa, OK 74136
Cell: 918-809-7489
Office: 918-477-7549

Email: bpierson@leadershipnexus.net

The Difference Between Preaching Christ and Preaching About Christ

2008-08-31T07:22:00.002-05:00

The Rev. Dr. Ken Korby left a great impression on many pastors and laypeople. One impression he left on me was the distinction between preaching Christ and preaching about Christ. He illustrated it in this way:

If you were standing before a judge, having been condemned and convicted of a crime, could you tell the difference between the judge talking about a parole and the judge actually declaring that you are paroled?

The Gospel is not telling people about Jesus. It is, as the apostle Paul declared, preaching Christ -- and Him crucified (1 Cor. 1:23; 2 Cor. 4:5; Phil. 1:15-16; Col. 1:28).

Lutheran pastors don't merely preach about forgiveness, they forgive in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

Infomercial Lutheranism

2008-08-31T07:10:00.002-05:00

If you had a cheapo gizmo that you wanted to make a killing on, how would you promote it? If you had a second-rate product which you wanted to sell to the American public, how would you promote it?

Infomercials.

Use all the glitz and glam of various media, hire an enthusiastic "talent" with just the right look and a dynamic voice, combined with a adjective-rich script, plenty of testimonials, and an offer you cannot refuse.

And that doesn't look too terribly different than the Ablaze! / Fan Into Flame campaign.

No one is really asking whether the millions of dollars being poured into the Ablaze! campaign is money well spent. Since one cannot judge the effect that the Ablaze! presentations has on human hearts dead in sin, there seems to be no way of holding anyone accountable.

But is $20-million+ spent on consultants, ad campaigns, brochures, T-shirts and web development really anything more than infomercial Lutheranism? Isn't the Rev. Dr. Kieschnick and his ilk wasting millions of dollars on such things when it could have been spent on supporting ordained ministers of the Gospel to serve as missionaries abroad or in socio-economically depressed urban and rural communities here in the States or helping students at our teacher colleges and seminaries to graduate without being $40,000 in debt -- a debt very difficult to pay off with the types of salaries that LCMS pastors and teachers usually get?

The Ablaze!Program is infomercial Lutheranism. I'm not buying it . . . no matter how many "And wait! There's more!" they have to offer.

Ex Opere Operato is Alive and Well and Living in the Ablaze! Program

2008-08-31T06:53:00.002-05:00

In the Twenty-First Thesis on the Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel, C.F.W. Walther writes:

"... the Word of God is not rightly divided when men are taught that the Sacraments produce salutary effects ex opere operato, that is, by the mere outward performance of a sacramental act. The grave error which is scored by this thesis is held by the papists, who teach men that they will derive some benefit by merely submitting to the act of being baptized, despite the fact that they are still unbelievers, provided they are not actually living in mortal sins. That mere act is said to bring them God’s favor or make God gracious to them. They teach the same regarding the Mass and the Lord’s Supper, viz., that grace is obtained by the mere act of attending these rites. This impious and abominable teaching contradicts point-blank the Word of God, in particular, the Gospel, which teaches that a person is justified before God and saved by grace alone, and that he cannot perform any good work until he has been thus justified.

The Ablaze! Program doesn't make much mention of Holy Baptism and the Lord's Supper. For the most part, it seems to be interested in telling people about the Gospel -- telling them about Jesus and what an awesome, spectacular, praiseworthy and loving god our God is.

Adherents of the Ablaze! Program make it sound that encountering people with a Gospel presentation is worthy to be counted as a significant event. Just say something about Jesus or have a prayer with your waitress and we'll chalk it up on the Ablaze! counter.

The opus operatum approach, if one were to generalize or over-simplify, is the way of Roman Catholicism, while the opposite extreme, opus operantis is the way of the Reformed. The former emphasizes the efficacy of a done deed. The latter attributes efficacy to the faith one has in the heart.

Luther ultimately avoided such a dichotomy as being unhelpful. For him, the Gospel was not effective: it was salutary. The Gospel dunamis was not irresistable force and effective power, but it was enlivening and vivacious. (Life is so fragile, but at the same time no power on earth -- no chemical, no physical, no nuclear, no psychological, no spiritual power is capable of creating it.)

The Ablaze! Campaign says little about repentance, denying one's self, confession, and a salutary use of the means of grace. It's too busy doing its deeds ex opere operato and catching it digitally to promote in a newsletter, website or brochure.

When You're Done with that Cray 2 Supercomputer, Can I Have It?

2008-08-31T06:43:00.002-05:00

Obsolescence is the way of electronics. I remember hearing, a good 20 years ago, about the Cray 2 Supercomputer. Surely by now it must not be fast enough or have enough memory or enough storage space that the owners haven't upgraded, right? But I'll bet it could still play some pretty cool games. Still, I wonder if it would run Windows Vista . . . without crashing?

Take the Ablaze! Challenge

2008-08-23T10:23:00.005-05:00

In The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS), we currently have an initiative promoted by our president Rev. Dr. Gerald Kieschnick. Is the movement to be commended or condemned?

On one hand, "All that glitters is not gold," and every slick brochure and newsletter article which shows smiling faces and uses the word "mission" frequently does not necessarily promote the Gospel of Christ rightly. On the other hand, it isn't right to be mean-spirited, nit-picking and finding fault with others just because it represents a different way of doing things than what our own preferences would dictate.

The apostle John tells us: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world," (1 John 4:1). We know from Scripture and throughout history that not everyone who calls out "Lord, Lord!" is of the kingdom of God and that beliefs and actions which turn us away from the Gospel of Jesus Christ can start up within the Church.

In the spirit of 1 Thessalonians 5:21, ("Test all things; hold fast what is good") I offer some side-by-side considerations for examining the Ablaze! Movement. I haven't been able to polish these statements as carefully as I like, so readers should feel free to offer imporovements. Statements depicted with "A" represent positions which are clearly in line with the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions while statements marked with "B" represent an antithesis.

Readers may also want to cite supporting examples from Ablaze! materials according to these comparisons and contrasts in order to clarify what's going on in the movement.

(1) The Means by which it works

☐ 1A. It clearly shows how the Lord does His gracious work through the Holy Scriptures, Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion, demonstrating in accordance with the Lutheran Confessions that these are the only means by which the Spirit works.

☐ 1B. The majority of its sermons, articles, actions and expenditures show a heavy dependence and reliance upon clever stories or worldly means -- such as consultants who tell us nothing of the Gospel but focus on secular sales techniques or manipulative motivational methods to get the world’s attention.

(2) Right use of Law and Gospel

☐ 2A. It rightly divides between Law and Gospel in every aspect of the media it uses.

☐ 2B. It takes an “infomercial” approach to the proclamation of the Gospel in the way it uses various print and broadcast media getting people to buy into the program because it sounds so good.

(3) Leading to Repentance or Motivation

☐ 3A. It uses well-trained, called and ordained servants of the Word who by the Law of God lead people to repentance and in the proper application of the Gospel preach life and salvation in Christ.

☐ 3B. It makes use of motivational speakers who hold a faith contrary to that which we confess — speakers who confuse the distinction and application of Law and Gospel in promoting a course of action to save the lost and act in a Christian manner.

(4) Good stewardship and Highly-paid consultants

☐ 4A. uses good stewardship to support those who actually teach and preach the Word of God.

☐ 4B. has indebted the synod to the tune of millions of dollars by creating administrative jobs and relying on highly-paid consultants.

(5) Christians hated or liked

☐ 5A. It knows that the world hates Christians and doesn’t try to soft-peddle the Law or Gospel in order to make it appealing to the world.

☐ 5B. It attempts to be “likeable” to the world, not comprehending the Scriptures which tell us that friendship with the world is enmity toward God.

(6) The work of the Spirit or the Goals of Man

☐ 6A. It fishes for men without setting goals or quotas, knowing that the Spirit blows where He wills and that the Word needs to be taught and preached in areas where there may be no immediate results.

☐ 6B. It uses arbitrary numbers as goals or measures of accomplishment, establishing certain numeric and fiscal goals to be achieved by certain dates. If the arbitrary number is too low, the movement will be satisfied for accomplishing less than it could have. If the number is too high, a burden of conscience will be placed on people for not having accomplished it — or artificial means will be used to inflate the numbers.

(7) Proper training

☐ 7A. encourages and enlivens with the Word of God, not by making people feel guilty that they aren’t doing enough, but letting the power of the Gospel do its work.

☐ 7B. creates theological and practical problems in its zeal, as when an arbitrary number of congregations to be established is set — when there aren't enough pastors to fill them, the dubious practice of creating a “pastor specific ministry” is initiated, placing men into the functions of the pastoral office who have been less thoroughly trained than regular pastors, not taking into account the problems which arise from such a practice.

(8) Repentence or Attraction

☐ 8A. preaches repentance appropriately as did the apostles in the book of Acts.

☐ 8B. It says virtually nothing about repentance, denying one’s self or taking up the cross but rather depicts a god who is so loving and nice that people will want to be come Christians because God is so good.

(9) The Nature and Content of Sermons

☐ 9A. clearly and rightly distinguishes between Law and Gospel with sermons that clearly focus on the Word of God, showing how the Scriptures and the doctrines contained therein bestow forgiveness, life and salvation.

☐ 9B. sermons consist primarily of clever stories and anecdotal details of examples which “warm people’s hearts,” relying on human rhetoric to move people into action.

(10) Credit and creativity

☐ 10A. does not take credit for the success of the Gospel, which is solely the glory of God.

☐ 10B. takes the credit for the effectiveness of missions and evangelism in its “creative” ventures instead of giving proper credit to the Holy Spirit working solely through the Means of Grace as our Confessions maintain.

(11) Where offerings go

☐ 11A. the freely-given offerings of Christ’s people go to actual mission work.

☐ 11B. money is spent on advertising campaigns while pastors, teachers, and deaconesses are withdrawn from the mission fields.

(12) Theology of cross or glory?

☐ 12A. it promotes the theology of the cross which is beset with troubles and hardships from the moment faith is given, but meets them with the patience and joy of forgiveness in Christ.

☐ 12B. abandons established Word and Sacrament missions and ministries in socio-economically depressed areas simply because they don't seem to be effective or growing in numbers.

(13) Pure doctrine advanced or downplayed

☐ 13A. The Ablaze! movement should be commended if it finds speakers for conferences who speak the truth of the Holy Scriptures in accord with our Lutheran confession of faith as stated in our synodical constitution. While analyses from those outside our confession of faith may be of interest to us, there solutions and commendations are not, for they do not direct us to the means of grace.

☐ 13B. embraces postmodernism’s rejection of pure doctrine and utilizes constructivist approaches to missions, evangelism, faith and life. Individuals should be empowered to go their own way as it pleases them and doctrinal “absolutes” are downplayed.

(14) Accurate or misleading

☐ 14A. accurately portrays the history of The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod with regard to the emphases on doctrine, missions, and evangelism.

☐ 14B. renders false judgments and makes misleading insinuations and unbalanced assumptions about the lack of mission zeal in The LCMS.

(15) Formal training or 90-day wonders

☐ 15A. emphasizes the formal training in the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures as in 1 Timothy 3:6 and 5:22.

☐ 15B. provides quickie, "90-day-wonder" trainees to serve as limited-capacity "pastors" thinking that quantity and haste are appropriate even when all the regularly-trained pastoral candidates from the seminaries cannot be placed.

(16) False divisions

☐ 16A. emphasizes Article V of the Confessions, acknowledging why the office of the keys exists and affirming what the Scriptures say about the Office of the Holy Ministry and that “not many should become teachers”

☐ 16B. raises false dichotomies between laypeople and called-and-ordained servants of the Word, maintaining that untrained, undisciplined hosts can lead small-group Bible studies and services in their homes.

(17) Pre-evangelism

☐ 17A. sees the Law as the only “pre-evangelism” appropriate before the Gospel

☐ 17B. embraces the idea of “pre-evangelism” in terms of kindly, civic acts rather than the proclamation of the Law. It proclaims a “loving” God in such a way that does not distinguish between the worldly idea of “love” and the Scriptural understanding of love, suggesting to unbelievers that their life on this earth will be “better” in the face of divorce, alcoholism, and the like.

(18) Self-promotion

☐ 18A. like John the Baptist, seeks to decrease while Christ increases

☐ 18B. it promotes itself in all the synodical publications, missions programs, and causes hundreds of thousands in media expenses to promote its logo and trademark

(19) Use of offerings

☐ 19A. uses offerings to help those who are poor in spirit, and to assist needy congregations in the inner city which may not appear to be “successful”

☐ 19B. it uses offerings and gifts to pay for the equipping of “Christian” coffee houses among the affluent while it withdraws funding from poor minority mission congregations in the inner city.

(20) Theology of cross . . . or glory

☐ 20A. promotes a theology of the cross which does not rely on outward measures of success to determine true worth; it denies itself even as it feels the devil, the world, and the flesh pressing hard, causing pain and suffering.

☐ 20B. it promotes a theology of glory wherein the Christian life is depicted in a triumphalistic manner, acting as if the Christian life can be exuberant and successful if only one tries hard enough — and showing little need for confession of sins, daily repentance, and denial of self.

(21) Full counsel or partial picture

☐ 21A. proclaims the full counsel of God in both Law and Gospel that people may rightly know what it is to fear, love and trust in God above all things instead of making up their own ideas about God which is idolatry.

☐ 21B. it attempts to promote a picture of God which is only loving, kind and caring without a word that our Lord is a zealous God who condemns sin.

(22) Relying on those whose doctrine we condemn

☐ 22A. it relies on seasoned pastors and teachers who put forth Law and Gospel who have been thoroughly equipped, not with the latest trends and market research but are rather well-grounded in the Biblical languages, comparative systematics, historical theology, and the practical aspects of a well-rounded Liberal Arts curriculum.

☐ 22B. it invites, pays, and advertises keynote speakers who deny infant baptism, who do not believe that pastors have the authority to forgive sins in the words of absolution, who do see the Lord’s Supper as a friendship activity rather than as the forgiveness of sins and preservation of faith, who confound Law and Gospel, who teach that people can decide to become Christians according to their own free will, and who maintain double predestination. (Have we ever had so many Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Pentecostals, and “non-denominational” motivational speakers telling us how to live the Christian life as we now have with the Ablaze! initiative?)

(23) Postmodern methods

☐ 23A. it relies on the same Word and Spirit as is found in the work of the prophets, apostles and evangelists.

☐ 23B. it succumbs and resorts to postmodern methods while claiming to lead people away from postmodernism. It should be condemned if it fails to teach people to deny themselves, take up their crosses and follow Christ (Mark 8:34). It should be condemned if it suggests that if potential members want to have “purple carpeting with pink polka-dots” installed in the church sanctuary then Christian congregations are obligated to install it in order to win souls for Jesus.

(24) Forms of Worship

☐ 24A. It uses forms of worship which has, like the historic Lutheran liturgy, a high percentage of word-for-word texts from the Scriptures instead of relying on the creativity and whims of a worship committee.

☐ 24B. It uses forms of worship which use poetic license and human ingenuity in an attempt to make worship meaningful and relevant.

(25) Reverential or sensational worship

☐ 25A. Conducts worship services with reverence so that the focus is on the holy, living Word of God.

☐ 25B. Glamorizes corporate worship by making it sensational according to the flesh with such things as liturgical dance, dramatic effects, technological whizz-bangs.

(26) Sacramental or symbolic

☐ 26A. It is sacramental rather than symbolic, emphasizing at every point in worship and life how the Means of Grace, not means of power, concretely impact the hearts and minds of people.

☐ 26B. It is symbolic rather than sacramental, emphasizing abstract verbal and visual allegory to impact the hearts and minds of people.

(27) Use of the Law

☐ 27A. Teaches that the Law condemns and kills; it always accuses.

☐ 27B. Teaches that the Law tells us how to live a Christian life.

(28) Appealing to allegory

☐ 28A. relates our Lord’s words that He speaks in parables because “seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.’” (Mat 13:13-15)

☐ 28B. It thinks that parables are allegories intended to appeal to man’s intellect in making the Bible more meaningful as if they were mere object lessons.

(29) Law as the goal of the Gospel

☐ 29A. Preaches Law and Gospel, not Gospel then Law, confessing that the Gospel gives life not so that men may return to the Law, but so that they may live by the Spirit in freedom (Gal. 5:8).

☐ 29B. It preaches Gospel then Law, teaching that the Law is the goal of the Gospel.

(30) Acknowledging the end times

☐ 30A. Appropriately lays forth what the end times will be like and acknowledges what Matthew 24:6-22 and 2 Timothy 3:1-11 say, comforting and supporting faithful pastors and congregations with dwindling membership in neighborhoods that are in decline or communities which place great importance on worldly matters.

☐ 30B. It sets forth a picture of the Christian Church that it should always be growing in number and that churches which are in decline, even in socio-economically depressed neighborhoods, are somehow unsuccessful, unfaithful and unwanted.

(31) Church militant or triumphant

☐ 31A. Confesses the Church Militant which in this life is besieged and embattled.

☐ 31B. Attempts to establish – or at least give the appearance of being – a Church triumphant which assumes it is capable of overcoming the effects of sin with victorious living.

(32) The Christian Life

☐ 32A. Makes clear to new converts that the devil, the world and their own flesh will be at war against them now that they have become Christians and that they ought not expect to have a life free from doubts and hardships – that they should trust the Word of the Lord more than their own feelings and experiences.

☐ 32B. Implies to potential converts that their life will be so much better once they have become Christian.

The Good Samaritan

2008-08-19T10:53:00.002-05:00

This past Sunday, in the historical lectionary (not the same as the three-year lectionary used by many American congregations of various confessions), the account of the Good Samaritan served as the Gospel reading and text for the sermon.

One memorable thing from the preaching of Rev. Matthew C. Harrison while I served with him at Zion Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, IN was the summary of this text that he proclaimed from the pulpit.

The robbers said:
"What's yours is ours and we take it."

The priest/scribe said:
"What's ours is ours and we keep it."

The Samaritan said:
"What's mine is yours and I give it."

Thus, Christ and His righteousness for those who have been beaten up by sin -- and not a moral example for people to obey.

Clergy Supporting Evolution

2008-08-19T10:49:00.003-05:00

Here is the website of the Clergy Letter Project wherein may be found the Open Letter of clergy members embracing and supporting the teaching of evolution in schools -- along with an alphabetized list of reverend subscribers.

There is also a resource for scientists "on-call" to assist pastors who want to promote and defend evolution as "a core component of human knowledge, fully harmonious with religious faith."

Personally, I can't wait until Ben Stein's "Expelled" comes out on DVD this October. Until then, I guess I just have to wait and hope that the clergy who embrace evolution will evolve into some higher life form.

It's a whoppohw!

2008-07-29T23:25:00.003-05:00

A palindrome is a sentence which reads the same backwards and forwards like "Madam, I'm Adam."

Here's a 17,259-word palindrome. (NO, I'm not going to reproduce it on my blog. You're going to have to click on the hyperlink.)

Was it worth sacrificing a comparable amount of couch potato time to produce?

Responding to Pietism . . . and Ablaze!

2008-07-29T19:01:00.004-05:00

Recently, I was perusing Heinrich Schmid's book, The History of Pietism translated by James L. Langebertels. The following passage (p. 273) struck me as having some parallels with current responses to Dr. Kieschnick's Ablaze! program -- and to certain discussions occurring on other blogs like The Steadfast Lutheran. My comments follow . . .

Pietism is not primarily concerned . . . with doctrinal questions.

The first matter with which Pietism began was not a special false teaching that had to be opposed but with an accusation against abuses prevalent in the church and recommendations to eliminate these abuses. The goal was to attain to a more living piety. Therefore, the first, and not the least error of those opposing Pietism was to overlook the abuses in the church and to accuse the Pietists of doctrinal errors. Something new and different confronted them in Pietism, which surprised them.

The new things, they thought, had to be based on special doctrines. They then became suspicious of every statement of their opponents and branded every statement if it did not conform to the usual dogmatic way of speaking a doctrinal error.

Already in 1695 the Wittenberg faculty counted up 264 doctrinal errors of which Spener was supposed to be guilty. The opponents of Piestism followed the bad habit, which we have already seen in the syncretistic controversies, of making everything that sounded or looked peculiar into a doctrinal question. Loescher was the first to realize that there can be tendencies in theology and in ecclesiastical life from which peculiarities can arise and that one must come to the root of these tendencies. Not one of the earlier opponents of Pietism thought of that.

Accordingly, we cannot let the opponents of Pietism lead us in this book merely to count up all the individual doctrinal errors with which they have reproached the Pietists and then to investigate whether the Pietists had really been guilty of them. . . .

COMMENT: I don't think that the Ablaze! movement is primarily a doctrinal movement -- but nost of the sharp critical responses (such as my own) have been theological, based on orthodox Lutheran understanding of faith and life.

Piestism, if I'm not guilty of summarizing too curtly, was concerned primarily with morals, the outward life of a Christian (not to be entirely dissociated from the inner life of faith and sanctification). It may have been correct in the sense of observing some shortcomings in the lives of Christians -- but ultimately wrong in how it attempted to address those shortcomings.

The Ablaze! movement wants to be zealous about missions. Basically, there isn't anything wrong with that - and that emphasis may well have been lacking in numerous areas. But Ablaze! zeal is utterly wrong-headed in the methods it has chosen to address what was lacking. Ablaze! did not attempt to make a theological correction to the lack of missionary zeal but rather sought (and seeks) to make practical efforts to restore an energy for evangelism.

Those of us who want to respond to Ablaze! have never thought about trying to out-do them with missionary zeal, but we ought to keep in mind what we learn from historical theology regarding a truly appropriate response.

A Catechetical Hymn

2008-07-29T18:39:00.002-05:00

I really benefit from hymns which summarize the Word of God and the Christian faith. One such hymn is found in the Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary hymnal of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS). It covers 5 of the 6 chief parts of the catechism (Luther's Small Catechism originally had only 5 parts, not 6. The Office of the Keys was added later.) Another hymn captures the 6 chief parts in a succinct manner: "Lord, Help Us Ever To Retain."

1.

Fear and love thy God and Lord
And revere His name and Word,
Holy Keep the Sabbath day,
Honor to thy parents pay,
Kill not, shun adultery,
Steal not, lies and slander flee,
Keep from covetousness free.
Help me, Lord, I trust in Thee!

2.

In the Father I believe,
Who to all did being give,
And in Jesus Christ, His Son,
Who for all redemption won;
And my faith I also place
In the Holy Ghost, whose grace
Sanctifies our souls and ways.
Grant me faith through all my days!

3.

Father, throuned in heav'n above,
Hallowed be Thy name in love;
Let Thy kingdom come we pray,
And Thy will be done alway;
Give us food, forgiveness send,
In temptations aid extend,
Save us, Lord, when comes our end!
Amen! Lord, Thy Church defend!

4.

God the Father, God the Son,
God the Spirit, Three in One,
I, baptized into Thy name,
As Thy child Thy blessing claim;
Grant that by Thy promised grace
I my trust in Thee may place,
All my sins with peace replace
Till in heav'n I see Thy face.

5.

Jesus, let my soul be fed
With Thyself, the living Bread,
For Thy flesh is meat indeed,
And Thy cleansing blood I need;
Let it cleanse from sin and shame,
Keep me from all harm and blame,
That Thy death I may proclaim,
And forever bless Thy name.

Admonishing Angry Pastors

2008-07-25T05:42:00.000-05:00

Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, pp. 295f.

John Gulden, the pastor of St. Peter's Church in Weida, Thuringia, caused mischief in his community by quarreling with fellow clergymen, railing against those who disagreed with him and inciting some people to acts of violence and iconoclasm.

Philip Melanchthon described him as one of those "who think that the only way to preach the gospel is to rage with great contentiousness and bitterness against those who differ from us." Complaints about Gulden's preaching and conduct reached Luther and called forth the following article.

Grace and peace in the Lord.

My dear John:

It has been reported to me that you are a little too severe in your handling of the Word, and I have been asked to admonish you. If you are responsive to the suggestion, I beg you to give first place in your preaching to those things which are of greatest weight, namely, that you urge faith and love upon your hearers. For if these have not struck roots, what is the use of our troubling ourselves about silly ceremonies? Nothing is accomplished by this except that we titllate the unstable minds of the foolish masses who are frivolous and have a mania for novelties. Not only is nothing going to be gained by this, but it will result in loss to the glory of God and his Word.

So conduct yourself with your colleagues therefore, that you may direct and do all things in unity of spirit and form. Do not abuse those of whom you do not know what sort of people they may yet be, but appeal to them gently and humbly, without insisting and boasting that what you propose is right. It will in time become abundantly clear that "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die" [1 Cor. 15:36]. Receive this admonition of mine in good part.

Farewell
Yours,
Martin Luther
Tuesday after Trinity Sunday, 1526

Ancient Road Rage

2008-07-24T05:38:00.000-05:00

Doing any traveling this summer on vacation? The word "travel" has a common etymology with the word "travail." Travel in Roman days seemed torturous at times (as related in the textbook Latin for Americans I, Glimpses of Roman Life: Roman Roads, p. 39). This excerpt from Archaeology Odyssey 02:01 produced by the Biblical Archaeology Society offers an illustration by which you could compare your own summer jaunts.

In the spring of 37 B.C., the Roman poet Horace set off down the Appian Way, the grand, ancient highway beginning in Rome and stretching some 350 miles to the southeastern coast of Italy.

For 17 days Horace and his companions negotiated the perils of travel in the ancient world: rainy days, sleepless nights, questionable food, poor accommodations. Horace suffered from an upset stomach and inflamed eyes, not to mention the trickery of a local girl, who had promised the poet a midnight rendezvous. Horace recounts these misfortunes in one of his Satires, the fifth poem of Book I.

I left lofty Rome on a trip, stopping first at Aricia, At a quiet little inn. My companion was Heliodorus, by far the best Greek rhetorician alive. From Aricia we pushed on to Forum Appi, a place jammed with boatmen And sharp innkeepers. This forty miles took us two days. Took us slowpokes two days: real travelers make it in one. The Appian Way is less rough if you take it in stages. At Forum Appi I found the water so foul I made war on my stomach and waited fuming while friends Finished their dinner.

Now night was preparing to spread Her darkness on earth, to station her stars in the heavens. And boatmen and slaves began cursing each other to pieces. . . .

Never take a night boat, reader. You spend the first hour paying fares and hitching up the mule. Then fearless mosquitoes and resonant swamp frogs keep sleep safely at bay. A sailor and passenger, soused with cheap wine, compete in songs to their absent girl friends. The mule driver finally drops off to sleep: the lazy driver lets the mule browse, fastens the rope to a rock, stretches out, and snores.

Dawn was already at hand before we observed That the boat hadn’t budged an inch. Then a hot-tempered tourist leaped ashore, cut a switch from a willow, lit into the mule And the driver, drumming on their domes and their bones.

Luther and Terence

2008-07-23T05:09:00.000-05:00

Terence was a playwright of the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC. Luther frequently quoted from Terence's works and especially commended his comedies to children being taught in the schools. Terence also had a great influence on William Shakespeare. Here are some words of wisdom from Terence -- not necessarily quoted in Luther.

"Their silence is sufficient praise."

"There is a demand in these days for men who can make wrong appear right."

"There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly."

"Too much liberty corrupts us all."

"What is done let us leave alone."

"Charity begins at home."

"Moderation in all things."

"I have everything, yet have nothing; and although I possess nothing, still of nothing am I in want." [cf. 2 Cor. 6:10]

Mission Creep(s) 2 - Mendicant Merchandise

2008-07-22T17:30:00.004-05:00

A few weeks back, I blogged off some steam about LCMS missionaries having to fund their own ways into the mission field.

Then came this (and I'm going to withhold some names and details so that the missionary involved doesn't suffer any reprisals . . . okay?):

Church workers going abroad have to go hat in hand to congregations, asking for financial support because they get very little -- if any -- from the Board for Missions.

What IS provided to them are these handsome (and we suspect comfortable) long-sleeved Ablaze! shirts (an actual shirt photographed in the pastor's office is shown here) to give to the pastors of the congregation where their mendicant pleas are made.

Why to the pastors? As far as I'm concerned: wrong color, wrong collar.

If money given to the Synod isn't going to the missionaries, just where, EXACTLY, is all that money going? Of the MILLIONS of dollars in offerings and gifts given faithfully by Christ's people, how much is really getting spent for missions and education -- the things upon which our Synod was founded? And why is it being spent on freebie Ablaze! paraphernalia?

Can anyone shed any light about the Fanning Into Flame kickback scheme where a congregation gives money to the program and then the program gives money back to the congregation?

Anyone care to wax eloquent on the fact that our synodical colleges and seminaries get no financial support from the Synod at all?

Will ANYONE be held accountable?

Broadcasting Seed Or Casting Pearls?

2008-07-22T05:11:00.001-05:00

Does true evangelism mean that Christians may proclaim the Gospel indiscriminately? Here are some thoughts on the matter from Luther, Chemnitz and Walther.

LUTHER [AE 45:71]

In the second place, if you want to handle the Gospel in a Christian way, you must take into account the people to whom you are speaking. These are of two kinds. On the one hand, there are those who are hardened and will not listen, and who, in addition, deceive and poison others with their lying mouths. Such are the pope, Eck, Emser, and some of our bishops, priests, and monks.

You should not deal with them at all, but hold to the injunction of Christ in Matthew 7[:6], “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and the dogs turn to attack you.” Let them remain dogs and swine; they are a lost cause anyway. And Solomon says, “Where there is no hearing, pour not out words.39 But when you see that these same liars pour their lies and poison into other people, then you should boldly take the offensive and fight against them, just as Paul in Acts 13[:10–11] attacked Elymas with hard and sharp words, and as Christ called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers” [Matt. 23:33].

You should do this, not for their sake, for they will not listen, but for the sake of those whom they are poisoning. Just so does St. Paul command Titus to rebuke sharply such empty talkers and deceivers of souls [Titus 1:10–13]

CHEMNITZ [Loci Theologici, CPH/J.A.O. Preus translation, p. 546]

The hearts of men by nature are either pharisaic or Epicurean. For the Pharisees the doctrine of the Gospel is something unpleasant, because they believe that by their own purity they are righteous before God and therefore there is no need for that righteousness of which the Gospel speaks. From such people we must on the basis of Scripture take away all trust in their own righteousness before God, and they must be confined by the Law under sin [Gal. 3:22]. But the Epicureans, when they hear about the righteousness of the Gospel, are not seriously concerned, and do not seek or embrace or cling to it, because they are convinced of the idea that what we are like and how we live are of no importance before God, whether we are reconciled with God or not. If we immediately set before them the promise of the Gospel, it accomplishes no more than casting pearls before swine. Therefore we must denounce such people as sinners on the basis of the Word of God, for he who has not been reconciled with God through Christ is under the frightful wrath and curse of God, he is in the kingdom of Satan and in the power of darkness, and nothing is more certainly expected for him than the judgment of eternal damnation.

This is the preparation for grace, as Luther says in discussing Galatians 3, for which the Gospel uses the ministry of the Law, so that both repentance and remission of sins will be preached in the name of Christ. We must preserve this order in teaching the doctrine of justification, so that all, whether Pharisees or Epicureans, might be moved by the Holy Spirit not to despise, neglect, hate, or attack the righteousness of the Gospel, but might hunger and thirst for righteousness, that is, that they might love, seek, embrace, and hold fast the grace and mercy of God which the Gospel offers and shows to us in Christ. The Son of God Himself used this method both in His formal teaching (as in Mark 1:15, “Repent and believe the Gospel”; cf. Matt. 4:17) as well as in His pastoral practice, so to speak, as when He treats Mary Magdalene one way and the Pharisee another [Luke 7:36 ff.]. It is worthy of note that the same question is asked in Matt. 19:16; Luke 10:25; Acts 2:37; and 16:30: “What must I do to be saved?” But because in Acts the question is asked by those who are contrite, while in the gospels by Pharisees, therefore the answer is not the same, and yet the purpose is the same in both cases.

WALTHER [Law and Gospel, Dau translation, p. 113]

Matt. 7:6 our Lord says to His disciples: Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and rend you. A remarkable utterance! What is meant by “that which is holy”? Nothing else than the Word of Christ.

What is meant by “pearls”? The consolation of the Gospel, with the grace, righteousness, and salvation which it proclaims. Of these things we are not to speak to dogs, that is, to enemies of the Gospel; nor to swine, that is, to such as want to remain in their sins and are seeking their heaven and their bliss in the filth of their sins.

Isaiah says, chap. 26:10: Let favor be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness. In the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly and will not behold the majesty of the Lord. It is quite useless to offer mercy to the godless. They imagine either that they do not need it or that they already have all of it. The trifling sins, they say, of which they are guilty have long been forgiven, and grass has grown over them. To a person of this stripe I am not to preach the Gospel; in other words, I am not to offer him mercy -- for that is what preaching the Gospel means -- because he will not be benefited by it.

A wicked person, who wants to remain in his sins, whether they be gross or refined sins -- for the devil can bind men not only with the ropes of filthy, gross sins, but also with such delicate threads as pride, envy, lovelessness -- such a wicked person, Isaiah says, does “not behold the majesty of the Lord.” He does not see what a great treasure is offered him. He does not understand the doctrine of salvation by grace; either he spurns it, or he shamefully misapplies it. He thinks: “If mere faith is all that is necessary for my salvation, my sins, too, are forgiven. I can remain such as I am, and I shall still go to heaven. I, too, believe in my Lord Jesus Christ.” The preacher who is to blame when secure sinners misapply the Gospel loads himself with a great guilt and responsibility before God.

The Organization of Laymen Against the Pastors

2008-07-21T05:25:00.000-05:00

Dr. Francis Pieper, in his Christian Dogmatics (vol. 1, p. 127). speaks about a self-centered theology which had inundated America in the 19th century. At the time, Pieper did not see the need for Lutheran laymen to rise against the clergy. But has the time now come for them to do so? Are there pastors who give lip service to believing that the Bible is the inspired Word of God but in practice allow themselves and the people under their care to follow a spirituality which is founded on personal feelings and uninformed opinions? He writes:

Here, in the land of the Reformed sects, [the theology of self-consciousness] has found a most congenial environment. Zwingli and Calvin, teaching the immediate operation of the Spirit, represented in principle the I theology [Ichtheologie].

Owing to the powerful influence of Luther this theology did not attain its full growth in those days. But it is not surprising that when Luther’s influence had waned at the beginning of the 19th century, Schleiermacher and his Reformed-pantheistic theology should find admirers and adherents in this country, even though it was criticized in some details. The situation at present is this, that all our large universities, with the partial exception of Princeton, stand for the theology of the self-consciousness, if they deal with theology at all.

Some time ago we reported on an “organization of laymen,” set up for the purpose of defending the Christian fundamentals. These laymen charge that the universities and most theological seminaries have been training a generation of preachers who deny these fundamentals. They specify that these preachers have substituted for the divine authority of Scripture the consciousness of the individual and for the vicarious satisfaction of Christ moral endeavors conforming to the example of Christ, the ideal man.

Whether this “organization” of laymen will check the destructive flood, only the future will show. In our church body -— the Synodical Conference -— there has been up to now, thanks be to God, no need of organizing the laymen against the pastors. Among the thousands of our pastors there is to our knowledge not a single one who questions the inspiration of Scripture and, as a result, would be forced to espouse the Ego theology. But we must never overlook the danger threatening us from our American surroundings.

Denominations . . . Or Confessions?

2008-07-19T05:55:00.000-05:00

The word "denominations" suggests that the items under considerations are all simply variations on the same thing. The term "confessions" is intentionally used to relate the idea that those who align themselves under the name "Christian" are not necessarily all part of the same sliding scale, the same spectrum, ranging from conservative to liberal. What follows come from the Foreward to the translation of Werner Elert's Elert's Morphologie des Luthertums, The Structure of Lutheranism (Concordia Publishing House: St. Louis, MO).

One of the earliest English names for a “Lutheran” was “Confessionalist.” [cf. OED II, 1933, p. 802]

Because the Lutheran Church defined itself in a series of confessions but never adopted an official liturgy or a uniform polity, Lutheran theologians have often supposed that the key to understanding any section of Christendom is its confession or symbol. Thus has arisen the branch of theology called Symbolik, or more recently Konfessionskunde.

In fact, the German word for “denominations” is Konfessionen; but at least since the eighteenth century American English has been calling the Konfessionen “denominations.” For even though academic theologians may wish that the denominations were confessions and expressed their genius in the form of a statement of faith, the mute realities of history make it clear that “in Great Britain and America … the chief differences between the religious denominations are not doctrinal but institutional. If therefore any one wishes to make a comparative study of the consensus and dissensus of British and American Christianity, he must pay more attention to religious institutions than to doctrines of Faith and Morals.”

Therefore American denominationalism as a religious and historical phenomenon5 has been the despair of scholars in the field of “comparative symbolics,” who prefer the neater and more precise interpretations that come from a comparison of confessions and creeds.

Getting Plastered

2008-07-18T05:24:00.001-05:00

While browsing for an image of Jonathan Swift yesterday, I came across a collection of death masks. Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee were included in that collection, but Martin Luther was not -- so he gets some air time on this blog.

And while we're at it . . . in order to satisfy their curiosity about crucifixion, some members of the Royal Academy of Arts decided to crucify a condemned criminal and then make a plaster cast of it which still hangs in display. If you aren't interested in seeing it, then don't look here.

Richard Dawkins, Meet Jonathan Swift

2008-07-17T06:08:00.000-05:00

Hasn't Richard Dawkins been making an appeal for the abolishment of religion, citing it as a nuisance if not an outright evil? If there is no Christian apologist who may hope to sway him, perhaps a response from Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver's Travels) might carry some weight.

In his documented tongue-in-cheek satirical manner, Swift composed his Argument Against the Abolishment of Christianity. Here are two brief passages:

First, one great advantage proposed by the abolishing of Christianity is, that it would very much enlarge and establish liberty of conscience, that great bulwark of our nation, and of the Protestant religion, which is still too much limited by priestcraft, notwithstanding all the good intentions of the legislature, as we have lately found by a severe instance. For it is confidently reported, that two young gentlemen of real hopes, bright wit, and profound judgment, who, upon a thorough examination of causes and effects, and by the mere force of natural abilities, without the least tincture of learning, having made a discovery that there was no God, and generously communicating their thoughts for the good of the public, were some time ago, by an unparalleled severity, and upon I know not what obsolete law, broke for blasphemy. And as it has been wisely observed, if persecution once begins, no man alive knows how far it may reach, or where it will end.

In answer to all which, with deference to wiser judgments, I think this rather shows the necessity of a nominal religion among us. Great wits love to be free with the highest objects; and if they cannot be allowed a god to revile or renounce, they will speak evil of dignities, abuse the government, and reflect upon the ministry, which I am sure few will deny to be of much more pernicious consequence, according to the saying of Tiberius, DEORUM OFFENSA DIIS CUROE. As to the particular fact related, I think it is not fair to argue from one instance, perhaps another cannot be produced: yet (to the comfort of all those who may be apprehensive of persecution) blasphemy we know is freely spoke a million of times in every coffee-house and tavern, or wherever else good company meet. It must be allowed, indeed, that to break an English free-born officer only for blasphemy was, to speak the gentlest of such an action, a very high strain of absolute power. Little can be said in excuse for the general; perhaps he was afraid it might give offence to the allies, among whom, for aught we know, it may be the custom of the country to believe a God. But if he argued, as some have done, upon a mistaken principle, that an officer who is guilty of speaking blasphemy may, some time or other, proceed so far as to raise a mutiny, the consequence is by no means to be admitted: for surely the commander of an English army is like to be but ill obeyed whose soldiers fear and reverence him as little as they do a Deity.

. . .

And to urge another argument of a parallel nature: if Christianity were once abolished, how could the Freethinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning be able to find another subject so calculated in all points whereon to display their abilities? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any other subject? We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among as, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have left? Who would ever have suspected Asgil for a wit, or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with materials? What other subject through all art or nature could have produced Tindal for a profound author, or furnished him with readers? It is the wise choice of the subject that alone adorns and distinguishes the writer. For had a hundred such pens as these been employed on the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence and oblivion.

Explaining Classical Christian Education to a Secular World

2008-07-16T05:36:00.000-05:00

The Ambrose Group has produced a very nice "apologia" (glossy, color, 7.5x10 in.) for classical Christian education. This brochure would make a nice introduction to include with a school's information packet. A .PDF version is available online -- or you can call them with requests for copies in bulk. There are also some other nice features at their website.

Handwriting Contest -- Memphis Calligraphy Guild

2008-07-15T05:25:00.001-05:00

PLEASE NOTE: This is NOT a calligraphy contest, but a handwriting contest. It isn't meant to show off fancy, ornate skills, but rather to demonstrate handwriting which is basic and beautiful in its own write (pun intended).

Here are the rules:

The Memphis Calligraphy Guild invites you to participate in the 2OO8 HANDWRITING CONTEST

l. One (l) entry per person.

2. Age categories (as determined by your age on January l, 2008)

6 and under
7 to 10
11 to l9
20 and over

3. Write designated quote (see below) on lined or unlined 8 1/2 x 11-in paper. Use ballpoint or fountain pen. NO felt tip markers or calligraphy pens. Only BLACK INK will be accepted. Use the same pen throughout the quote. Children aged 6-and-under may use a pencil.

4. Ages l0 and under have the option to write using either MANUSCRIPT
PRINTING (joins fewer than half its letters) or CURSIVE (joins half or
more of its letters). Ages 11 and over MUST LISE CURSIVE. The 6-and-under category may PRINT.

5. The written quote must fit on the FRONT side of ONE (1) sheet of paper.

6. On the BACK of the entry, write your name, age category, address, area code and phone number, and e-mail address (if any). All personal information will be kept confidential and used only to notify winners. If missing or illegible, you won't win.

7. Entries will be judged on:

LEGIBILITY: how easy it is to read.
FLUENCY: smoothness, grace and flow of writing.
COMPETENCY: Layout: margins on 4 sides of writing, spacing between the letters, words and lines. Consistency of letter forms: size, slant, accuracy of the quote, neatness, spelling, and whether or not the rules were followed.

8. No cash prizes will be awarded. All entries become the property of the
Memphis Calligraphy Guild and will not be returned. NO FAX OR ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED. Top 100 entries will be displayed at The Delta Festival in August 2008. Mailed entries must be received by August 1, 2008. Mail entries to:

Carole Foster
3513 Angelin Cove,
Bartlett, TN 38135

For more information, e-mail Carole Foster [imageryfarm@gmail.com].

DESIGNATED QUOTES:

Quote #1 Alphabet Sentences (Ages 6-and-under Only)

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Jack's man found exactly a quarter in the woven zipper bug.

Quote #2 (Ages 7 to l0)

Letters, these seemingly commonplace little signs, taken for granted by so many, belong to the most momentous products of creative power. These forms, which we take in with our eyes a million times each day, embody the highest skill within their small compass. They are abstract refinements of the creative imagination, full of clarity, movement and subtlety. They combine two characteristics, which must be inseparable: the precision of mathematical laws and the expressiveness of the animated stroke. Gustav Bartel

Quote #3 (Ages 11 and older)

Handwriting: That action of emotion, of thought, and of decision that has recorded the history of mankind, revealed the genius of invention, and disclosed the inmost depths of the soulful heart. It gives ideas tangible form through written letters, pictographs, symbols, and signs. Handwriting forms a bond across millennia and generations that not only ties us to the thoughts and deeds of our forebears but also serves as an irrevocable link to our humanity. Neither machines nor technology can replace the contributions or continuing importance of this inexpensive portable
skill. Necessary in every age, Handwriting remains just as vital to the enduring saga of civilization as our next breath. Michael R. Sull

Undogmatic Christianity: Erasmus vis-a-vis Luther

2008-07-14T07:03:00.002-05:00

At the moment, I cannot recall the source from which I jotted down this citation. Perhaps it will come to me later. And if, for the sake of comparison, you'd like to see an example of a contemporary sympathy with Erasumus' love for peace over religious dogma, check out this little essay. In it Christianity is identified with peace, not with doctrine.

The history of human thought knows of cases where two great men, occupied with the same problems, are simply unable to understand each other. They are unable, to grasp – to use Erasmus’ word – one another’s ideas. They talk to each other, but as it were on different wave lengths. No mutual understanding seems to be possible.

A case in point in our time is the correspondence between Harnack and his former student Barth after the appearance of the latter’s Commentary in Romans. There is a certain truth in Barth’s saying that they are not the worst theologians who have simply not got the ability to re-think the thoughts of others.

But this does not explain the depth of the contrast between Erasmus and Luther. For Luther knew what Erasmus meant to say. He saw deeper than anybody else what was at stake. He saw behind Erasmus’ concept of an undogmatic Christianity the coming neo-paganism of the modern world. This is the reason why in his great reply in De servo arbitrio [On the Bondage of the Will], before entering the discussion of the individual Bible passages, he attacks his adversary’s basic understanding of Christianity.

Erasmus had confessed his dislike of not only Luther’s firm “assertions” but of any religious dogma whatever: “You would” says Luther, “take up the Skeptic’s position if the inviolable authority of Holy Scripture and the Church’s decisions permitted you to do so, so little do you like assertions. What a Proteus the man is to talk about ‘inviolable authority’ and ‘the Church’s decisions’ as if you had a vast respect for the Scriptures and the Church, when in the same breath you tell us you wish you had the liberty to be a skeptic” (WA 18,603, quoted from Packer-Johnston, p. 68).

Over against Erasmus’ undogmatic Christianity Luther emphasizes in the moat powerful way that Christianity is essentially a dogmatic religion and that he who destroys the Christian dogma or tried to play it down, as Erasmus does in his “philosophy of Christ”, destroys the Christian faith: Tolle assertiones, et Christianismum tulisti, “Take away the assertions, and you take away Christianity.”

Why, the Holy Spirit is given to Christians from heaven in order that He may glorify Christ and in them confess Him even unto death – and is this not assertion, to die for what you confess and assert?” (WA 18, 603; Packer 67). “The Holy Spirit is no skeptic.”

The Power of Church Leaders

2008-07-13T05:54:00.001-05:00

“We believe, teach, and confess that at a time of confession, as when enemies of the Word of God desire to suppress the pure doctrine of the holy Gospel, the entire community of God, yes, every individual Christian, and especially the ministers of the Word as the leaders of the community of God, are obligated to confess openly, not only by words but also through their deeds and actions, the true doctrine and all that pertains to it, according to the Word of God. In such a case we should not yield to adversaries even in matters of indifference, nor should we tolerate the imposition of such ceremonies on us by adversaries in order to undermine the genuine worship of God and to introduce and confirm their idolatry by force or chicanery.” (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article X,10)

“St. Peter prohibits the bishops to rule as if they had the power to force the churches to do whatever they desired [1 Peter 5:2]. Now the question is not how to take power away from the bishops. Instead, we desire and ask that they would not force themselves into sin. But if they will not do so and despise this request, let them consider how they will have to answer to God, since by their obstinancy they cause division and schism, which they should rightly help to prevent.” (Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII, 76-78)

“If the bishops wanted to be true bishops and to attend to the church and the gospel, then a person might -- for the sake of love and unity but not out of necessity -- give them leave to ordain and confirm us and our preachers, provided all the pretense and fraud of unchristian ceremony and pomp were set aside. However, they are not now and do not want to be true bishops. Rather they are political lords and princes who do not want to preach, teach, baptize, commune, or perform any proper work or office of the church. In addition, they persecute and condemn those who do take up a call to such an office. Despite this, the church must not remain without servants on their account.” (Smalcald Articles, Part III, Article 10,1-2)

“...All this evidence makes clear that the church retains the right to choose and ordain ministers. Consequently, when bishops either become heretical or are unwilling to ordain, the churches are compelled by divine right to ordain pastors and ministers for themselves. Moreover, the cause of this schism and dissension is to be found in the ungodliness and tyranny of bishops, for Paul warns that bishops who teach and defend false doctrine and impious forms of worship are to be considered accursed.” (Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, The Power and Jurisdiction of Bishops, 72)

“It is certain that the common legal authority to excommunicate those guilty of manifest crimes belongs to all pastors. In tyrannical fashion, the bishops have transferred this solely to themselves and used it for profit. It is evident that the so-called bureaucrats have acted with intolerable license and, out of greed or other lusts, have harassed and excommunicated people without any proper judicial process. What kind of tyranny is this that these bureaucrats have the power to excommunicate people arbitrarily without a proper trial?” (Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, The Power and Jurisdiction of Bishops, 74)

“If the opponents would only listen to the complaints of churches and pious hearts! The opponents valiantly defend their own position and wealth. Meanwhile, they neglect the state of the churches, and they do not care if there is correct preaching and proper administration of the sacraments in the churches. They admit all kinds of people to the priesthood quite indiscriminately. Then they impose intolerable burdens on them, as if they take pleasure in the destruction of their fellow human beings.” (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII, 3)

Everything Must Yield

2008-07-12T05:00:00.004-05:00

“...Many people do not understand, saying we should not fight so hard about an article and thus trample on Christian love; rather, although we err on one small point, we agree on everything else, we should give in and overlook the difference in order to preserve brotherly and Christian unity and fellowship.

“No, my dear man, do not recommend to me peace and unity when thereby God's Word is lost, for then eternal life and everything else would be lost. This matter there can be no yielding nor giving way, no, not for love of you or any other person, but everything must yield to the Word, whether it be friend or foe. The Word was given unto us for eternal life and not to further outward peace and unity. The Word and doctrine will create Christian unity or fellowship. Where they reign all else will follow. Where they are not no concord will ever abide. Therefore do not talk to me about love and friendship, if that means breaking with the Word, or the faith, for the Gospel does not say love brings eternal life, God's grace, and all heavenly treasures, but the Word...”

Sermons of Martin Luther from the year 1531, W.A. 34,11,387. Day By Day We Magnify Thee, p. 384.

The Ultimate in Self Advertising

2008-07-11T05:06:00.001-05:00

Here is a selection from Fit Bodies, Fat Minds by Os Guinness (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1994), 89–90.

At its heart, style is a term of identification, as substance is. But style and substance are in direct contrast. Substance is a matter of who or what someone or something is; style is the manner through which that distinctiveness is presented and perceived.

The term “style” has traditionally identified the leading characteristic or ruling taste of a period or school—in the sense that we refer to “Romanesque” and “Gothic” architecture or to “classical,” “impressionist,” and “cubist” art. Each new style is in some ways a break from the past and embodies a different way of seeing or doing things. But what matters in this usage is that style is viewed as the outer expression of the inner character of the period. The style, therefore, is as enduring as the period itself.

Today, however, style has become an end in itself. No longer expressive of substance or inner character, style is all that matters now. No longer enduring, it is transient, changeable, and fashion- oriented. As a glance at any magazine rack will show, style is the number one mantra of late twentieth-century America. Used more often on magazine covers than even the word “sex,” style is a leading source of anxiety, hope, and fascination for millions.

To be up-to-date and in touch with one’s style is essential; to be out-of-date or out-of-touch is unforgivable. At a time when permanence of personality is as forlorn as permanence of place, change is the order of the day. Identity is now a matter of perception and presentation. And style is the art of skillfully presenting illusions as we walk down the corridor of images that make up modern society.

From the perspective of its purveyors, style is the official currency of marketing products. From the perspective of consumers, style is the leading idiom of the image of one’s choice—the desired sense of projected meaning and belonging. Style, image, and consumption are foundational to modern identity and discourse. In a world of increasing anonymity where scrutiny by unknown others is our daily norm, style is a sort of armor for city life. Wear something and walk down the street and you don’t just say, “I like this,” but “I’m like this.”

As Stuart Ewen shows [All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture, New York: Basic Books, 1988], style is the sorcery that turns the banal necessities of our everyday world into an enchanted utopia of mouth-watering freedom. This is the illusory world where no conflicts grate and no needs are unmet. If modern society is a Vanity Fair of consumable styles, style itself is the ultimate in human self-advertising.

Does Alternative Worship Represent an Alternative Lifestyle?

2008-07-10T05:04:00.001-05:00

The following is a portion of Frank Senn’s exposé in the May 1995 issue of Worship, pages 194–224.

In an effort to appeal to the unchurched, congregations within mainline denominations have begun offering “alternative worship services,” sometimes also called “contemporary services” to distinguish them from “traditional liturgies.” Such “alternative services” may feature lite rock combos, on-stage dramatizations by church players, testimonials from celebrities, and upbeat messages which draw on the insights of popular psychological theories.

Advice given in church-growth seminars on “worship that attracts and holds the unchurched” includes such admonitions as “make it user-friendly,” “keep it simple,” let it be “from the heart,” cultivate informality, maintain a hospitable atmosphere, give a positive message, keep the music up-beat, and exercise quality control. Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and even some Episcopal congregations have provided options for such “alternative worship” as well as “traditional worship” on the Sunday morning menu (sometimes two services being held simultaneously in different spaces).

It is not surprising that a market-oriented approach to the Church’s life and mission (aiming specifically at “baby boomers” and now also at “baby busters”) would emulate the shopping mall with its varied choices. It is also not surprising that this atmosphere has encouraged a great deal of liturgical entrepreneurship, with megachurches sponsoring “how to do it [like us]” seminars and publishers providing “celebration kits” and “Worship Alive!” resources.

In spite of its seemingly anti-liturgical stance, there is a whole liturgical movement going on in the church-growth movement which is oriented toward “reaching the unchurched” on their own terms. Promoters of church growth are absolutely convinced that dynamic, corporate worship is the key to successful evangelism.

The serious membership hemorrhaging that has occurred in the mainline churches over the last twenty-five years has prompted denominational staffs to encourage the implementation of the principles of church growth in their congregations. A worship style, quite “ecumenical” in its own terms, has evolved from these principles. Yet while this kind of worship is called “alternative” or “contemporary,” it has not emerged ex nihilo.

The task of this article is to explore its historical roots, analyze its cultural context and appeal, and probe the challenge that it raises for orthodox Christian worship and confessional theology. Since the use of contemporary popular music characterizes most “alternative worship services,” the celebrants and devotees of such worship may not have discerned that it stands in a tradition at least two centuries old. The ethos, if not the form, of this “alternative worship” is found in the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Especially in Lutheran and Reformed Churches, there was a pietistic reaction to the perceived “sterility” of orthodox church life which sought to “convert the outward orthodox confession into an inner, living theology of the heart.” The orthodox reaction to pietism was probably overly caustic; on the other hand, examples of actual orthodox church life, such as in Leipzig during the music directorship of Johann Sebastian Bach (1723–1750), show such church life to be far from sterile.

Pietism had no liturgical program of its own. Its aim was to inject some “heart” into the church orders authorized for use and to deepen the personal religious life. However, hymnwriting for worship and devotion was an ongoing activity in Lutheran Churches, and hymns around the beginning of the eighteenth century reflected the more subjectivistic faith of pietism, as well as pietism’s stress on sanctification. Indeed, the pietistic movement gave a new impetus to hymnwriting and congregational song that even secured a place in the worship of the German Reformed Church around the beginning of the eighteenth century through influence of the Lower Rhenish poets Joachim Neander (e.g., “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”) and Gerhard Tersteegen (e.g., “God Himself Is Present”). New hymnbooks reflected the emphases of pietism, arranging their anthologies according to the “order of salvation” rather than the church year.

New tunes were composed for the new lyrics, which had a more sentimental quality than the old chorale tunes. Even the syncopated rhythms of the old chorales were “smoothed out” to even note values. The lyrics and the lyrical musical qualities popular in “alternative worship” reflect the warm Jesus-mysticism of pietist hymns, though hardly with the same theological depth. But nothing under pietism could match the assault on the liturgy that occurred under the influence of rationalism.

The Enlightenment held that the chief function of worship was “edification.” This was an emphasis on which both pietism and rationalism agreed (and against which J. S. Bach stood with his old fashioned notion that worship is rendered soli Deo gloria). Everything that “edified” was kept; everything else had to be revised or abolished. To “edify” meant to induce feelings of reverence. Simplicity was the order of the day. Church music accordingly underwent a thorough revolution in which the simpler homophonic harmonies, but quasi-operatic oratorios of G. F. Handel served as more of a model than the complex contrapuntal structures and chorale-based cantatas and organ works of J. S. Bach.

Preaching, too, had to have a practical purpose. Whatever did not teach a practical moral lesson could be dismissed, for the way the pastor could make himself useful was, for example, “by helping the farmer to follow a better plan of life, by replacing superstitious quack medicines with truly effective remedies, and by giving prompt aid to those suffering from external lesions and wounds.” The pastor, as an educated person, had a responsibility to help simple people deal better with the needs of everyday life.

Immanuel Kant denied that prayer, church-going, and the sacraments were “means of grace,” and suggested that clergymen dominated the hearts of others by attaching to themselves exclusive possession of the so-called means of grace. But he found the sacraments useful in social terms in that baptism is “the ceremonial initiation, taking place but once, into the church . . . community” and Holy Communion is “The oft-repeated ceremony . . . of a renewal, continuation, and propagation of this churchly community under laws of equality.” If the sacraments had any efficacy, it was understood in terms of natural rather than supernatural purposes.

In the religion of the Enlightenment, we are already dealing with the desiderata of the church-growth movement: concerns for simplicity, authenticity (worship which is “more from the heart”), singable music, and practical preaching, although informality is not something one would associate with the German Aufklärung. But it is something one would associate with revivalism. In spite of some differences in theological emphases, the kind of worship fostered by revivalism was in line with the principles of worship championed in the Enlightenment under both pietism and rationalism: it was oriented toward human ends; it was a tool used to accomplish sanctification (pietism), edification (rationalism), or conversion (revivalism) rather than an offering “to the glory of God alone."

It should be noted that bringing the forms and styles of revivalism into the mainline churches is not new. Even Lutherans in America have flirted with revival practices. Most Lutheran immigrants to North America were imbued with a pietistic spirituality and had their own Jesus-songs which matched those of revivalism (e.g., “Beautiful Savior”). Having brought to North America also their own spiritual folk songs (especially the Scandinavian Lutherans), they resonate with the folk character of the songs popularly sung in “alternative worship services.” For several decades John Ylvisaker has been providing American Lutherans with their own spiritual folk songs.

“American Lutherans” (as they were called in the mid-nineteenth century) were also influenced by evangelical revivalism. Their leader, Samuel Simon Schmucker (1799–1873), believed that the practices of revivalism could be incorporated into Lutheran services. They were, including the singing of revival songs, a breakdown of liturgical order and (especially in Pennsylvania) a strong commitment to the abolition and temperance movements (which Finney also supported).

Those partisans of confessional revival in the mid-nineteenth century who were opposed to Schmucker, such as Charles Porterfield Krauth (1823–1883), came to see that forms of worship were not incidental to confessional theology. They instinctively realized that revivalistic worship supported a theology that was opposed to Lutheran confessional theology. They embraced the romantic liturgical restoration movement as that eventuated in the compilation of the “Common Service” and in the recovery of church hymns. But while the “church songs” were sung in the liturgy, the revival songs continued to be sung downstairs in the Sunday School. The result is that Lutheranism in America has been a church with confessions and an ordered liturgy, but these have not served to form spirituality, so that liturgical worship and popular devotion have often been at odds with each other in American Lutheran church life.

Church Polity is a Confessional Issue

2008-07-09T05:02:00.001-05:00

The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod appears to be on the brink of a radical realignment of its structure and constitution. Business models and the centralization of power seem to be in the offing, but what of doctrinal considerations? Hermann Sasse provides a perspective worth considering in this excerpt from Here We Stand, p. 142-144.

The Holy Scriptures know nothing of a Christ who gave “general rules” for the organization of the church. Calvin, like the theologians of other churches, read this picture of Christ into [emphasis original] the New Testament. And just as we do not know this Christ who legislates, who instituted a senatorial, or presbyterian, form of church government for His church in order that His “sole sovereignty” in the church might not be infringed upon, so we do not know the church which can be recognized as a church of Christ by its obedience to His law.

We, too, know that the church must obey His commandments —- His real commandments, not those which are mistakenly attributed to Him. But this obedience is no part of the nature of the church. For it if were, the church would not owe its existence solely to Him, the Lord who is truly present and active in His Word and Sacrament, but to us as well in consequence of what we are and do.

We have no objection either to church discipline (provided it serves no other purpose -— no purpose, for example, like glorifying God -— besides that of saving sinners) or to a proper church polity. If the Reformed teaching concerning ecclesiastical government were only intended to remind Christendom that the church should he an ordered church properly to fulfil its task of preaching the Word and administering the Sacraments, this doctrine would be a valuable and arguable contribution to the problem of church government. But it happens not to be intended for that.

It claims to indicate —- and this claim has not been given up by the Reformed even today, despite all the liberalizing and softening of Calvin’s rigid principles -- what fundamental commands for the organization of the church the New Testament contains. And as long as it claims to do this, the doctrine is beyond discussion.

“A discussion concerning the correctness or applicability of this form of church polity is out of the question for us who are Reformed” — these words came, in 1929, from the French Reformed Consistory in Berlin — just as a discussion concerning the dogma of the Trinity or the doctrine of the Sacraments is impossible for every other evangelical Christian. For us the question of church polity is a confessional question.”

Here, as in the curious “articles of faith” in the Calvinistic Confessions which treat of the equality of pastors and the election of presbyters, the conclusion is expressly drawn, as it must necessarily be drawn whenever the boundary between Law and Gospel is obliterated, that faith has been turned into obedience, and the Gospel into a new law.

This has an important effect on the work of the church in the world. According to the common testimony of all church bodies, it is one of its tasks to preach the Law — which includes what our Confessions call the “political use” of the Law. According to the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, since Jesus Christ is not, in His essential nature, a Lawgiver, the Gospel cannot “bring new laws concerning the civil state,” but it “permits us outwardly to use legitimate political ordinances of every nation in which we live.”

According to the Reformed view, on the contrary, the Gospel must be the source of all the laws in society and state. That Jesus Christ, the Lord to whom “all authority hath been given . . . in heaven and on earth,” should be manifest before the Last Day when He reveals His glory which is now hidden, the church should see to it that the world obeys His laws, which are contained in the Gospel, even now.

In various ways Reformed theologians and churches — Zwingli more than the prudent Calvin, the Puritans in England and America more than the German Reformed — have proclaimed a Theocracy (or “Christocracy,” to use the expression of the Reformed theologian, August Lang) and thus set before the church tasks with which the church, as Lutheranism sees it, has nothing to do whatsoever.

It's NOT the Church's Mission

2008-07-08T05:52:00.001-05:00

Henry P. Hamann’s book On Being A Christian is a commendable text for confessional Lutherans. The following passage directs us to what is and what is not the mission of the Church (pp. 113-114).

The marks of the church determine the mission of the Lutheran Church in the world. It is in the world to bear clear, genuine, unambiguous witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to the sacraments he instituted: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It is there to make this witness both to those who are Lutherans and to those who are not, both to Christians and to non-Christians, for it is entrusted with the very Word of God, the Word of salvation. . . .

Discerning readers will probably think at this point of the argument that I have been guilty of a grave omission in my account of the mission of the church. They will be aware that most churches in the world — and especially the large representative bodies like the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation, as well as the pope of Rome — have assumed for themselves a leading role in the endeavor to bring about a better world. The various churches make solemn declarations on a whole host of important concerns: on war and peace, on poverty and health, on justice and human rights, on freedom and the role of women in society. The churches have much to say on the proper action of governments in all quarters of the globe, calling upon them to change such-and-such a policy and enact such-and-such reforms. Knowing all this, it may well be a matter for wonder that the present description of the mission of the church has failed to speak of such activity as part of that mission.

The answer is that the confessional Lutheran just does not consider these matters to be part of the mission of the church. A distinctive teaching of Lutheranism comes up here: the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms — although this traditional view has also been discarded by a great part of the modern Lutheran church.

Evil Pietism

2008-07-07T05:54:00.001-05:00

Northwestern Publishing House has made available a very important and timely translation. It is The Complete Timotheus Verinus by Valentin Ernst Loescher. This work, originally written in two parts (1718 and 1721), “is the most comprehensive analysis of the pietistic movement in the German Lutheran Church.” With the resurgence of pietism in our own day, it is a work which needs to find its way into the hands of many. The following excerpt comes from pages 49-50.

Pietism in general is an evil; but there are also some specific evils.

First, there is the pious-appearing indifferentism; by that I mean that the revealed doctrines, faith, the supports for serving the preservation of religion (church constitutions, the symbolical books, polemics, an accurate style of teaching, and church ordinances), even religion itself, have been made indifferent and unimportant, even suspicious and objectionable. Some of these pietistic doctrines and practices were inherently connected with indifferentism, others flowed from it.

Second, there is the incipient fanaticism, or Crypto-enthusiasm; the means of grace and the ministry have been depreciated, and even revoked, through pietistic doctrines and practices; in their place, coarse enthusiastic and fanatical things were commended, defended, and excused.

Third, there is the so-called theoretical operatism, or work righteousness; the works of men have been too highly regarded and have been mingled into the basis of salvation, namely into righteousness by faith.

Fourth, there is millenialism; many have sought and hoped for the end of Christ’s kingdom of grace and cross, and the beginning of an absolute kingdom of glory in this life.

Fifth, there is terminism, which cuts short in this life God’s gracious will to save all.

Sixth, there is precisionism; the sharpness of the law has been enlarged and increased and the inquisition was reintroduced.

Seventh, there is mysticism; through pietistic doctrines and practices, false and harmful conceits, if only the appeared to be spiritual and holy, were introduced as divine secrets.

Eighth, there is perfectionism; pietistic doctrines and practices have led men to overstep the mark, and to introduce a home-made fulfilling of the law and an imagined paradisiacal condition in this life.

Ninth, there is reformatism; the present condition of the church has been regarded as completely corrupt, so that a fundamental reformation, or the establishment of a completely different church, is needed. All of these special evils will be treated in more depth below so that they are less often misunderstood. The schisms and doctrinal separations, which were caused intentionally and without sufficient reason, will not be forgotten.

But in all these things, there was something else, very special, which characterizes pietism even more accurately. A conceited striving for piety in doctrines and practices was mixed into all, or at least into most of the theological points of religion; they regarded these points as nothing without their kind of piety. They altogether, or for the most part, approved or excused the movements and harmful exploits which have arisen up to this time. They denied that an evil called pietism was present in the church.

Billy Sunday: Father of Sunday Schools?

2008-07-06T05:46:00.003-05:00

If you're ever traveling through Northwestern Indiana near Warsaw and Lake Winona, you might stop in at the Billy Sunday Museum and learn more about the father of Sunday Schools.

And if you want some of that "Old Time Religion," check this out as well as his other sermons (navigate up a level).

Methodist Songs in Lutheran Sunday Schools

2008-07-06T05:44:00.001-05:00

The following translation by the Rev. Matthew Harrison has shown up in numerous places, but it bears repetition. It is a letter written by C.F.W. Walther in response to a question he had received about the kind of music appropriate for Lutheran children. He writes:

Honored Sir, This morning I received your worthy letter, written on the 19th of the month. In your letter you ask for my opinion on whether it is advisable to introduce the singing of Methodist songs in a Lutheran Sunday School. May what follows serve as a helpful reply to your questions: No, this is not advisable; rather very incorrect and pernicious.

1. Our church is so rich in hymns that you could justifiably state that if one were to introduce Methodist hymns in a Lutheran school this would be like carrying coals to Newcastle. The singing of such hymns would make the rich Lutheran Church into a beggar which is forced to beg from a miserable sect. Thirty or forty years ago a Lutheran preacher might well have been forgiven this. For at that time the Lutheran Church in our country was in as poor as beggar when it comes to song books for Lutheran children. A preacher scarcely knew where he might obtain such little hymn books. Now, however, since our church itself has everything it needs, it is unpardonable when a preacher of our church causes little ones to suffer the shame of eating a foreign bread.

2. A preacher of our church also has the holy duty to give souls entrusted to his care pure spiritual food, indeed, the very best which he can possibly obtain. In Methodist songs there is much which is false, and which contains spiritual poison for the soul. Therefore, it is soul-murder to set before children such poisonous food. If the preacher claims, that he allows only “correct” hymns to be sung, this does not excuse him. For, first of all, the true Lutheran spirit is found in none of them; second, our hymns are more powerful, more substantive, and more prosaic; third,
those hymns which deal with the Holy Sacraments are completely in error; fourth, when these little sectarian hymn books come into the hands of our children, they openly read and sing false hymns.

3. A preacher who introduces Methodist hymns, let along Methodist hymnals, raises the suspicion that he is no true Lutheran at heart, and that he believes one religion is as good as the other, and that he thus a unionistic-man, a mingler of religion and churches.

4. Through the introduction of Methodist hymn singing he also makes those children entrusted to his care of unionistic sentiment, and he himself leads them to leave the Lutheran Church and join the Methodists.

5. By the purchase of Methodist hymn books he subsidizes the false church and strengthens the Methodist fanatics in their horrible errors. For the Methodists will think, and quite correctly so, that if the Lutheran preachers did not regard our religion as good as, or indeed, even better than their own, they would not introduce Methodist hymn books in their Sunday schools, but rather would use Lutheran hymn books.

6. By introducing Methodist hymn books, the entire Lutheran congregation is given great offense, and the members of the same are lead to think that Methodists, the Albright people, and all such people have a
better faith than we do.

This may be a sufficient answer regarding this dismal matter. May God keep you in the true and genuine Lutheran faith, and help you not to be misled from the same, either to the right or to the left. Your unfamiliar, yet known friend, in the Lord Jesus Christ,

C. F. W. Walther
St. Louis, Missouri
January 23, 1883

Abbreviating Membership Classes

2008-07-05T05:48:00.000-05:00

Michael Reu, Catechetics: Or Theory and Practice of Religious Instruction, (Chicago: Wartburg Publishing House, 1931) p 44-45.

The catechumenate of the Early Church received its first blow when the heathen in large masses crowded to the baptismal font.

Still, a considerable measure of Christian knowledge was imparted and a reasonably thorough moral training was accomplished as long as the church insisted upon a careful examination of the baptismal candidates, upon a catechumenate of sufficient length, and, especially, upon thorough instruction during the competent period. Now, however, just these three essential conditions were increasingly disregarded. The preparatory catechetical discourse was discarded, probably as early as the fifth century. The time of a catechumenate was dangerously shortened.

Thus in 506 the Synod of Agde declared that Jewish converts must remain in the catechumenate for eight months; hence, ordinarily the time of preparation was still briefer (this action was taken because experience had showed that many former Jews withdrew from the church soon after they had joined). This, however, was not all. At the council at Bracara in 6100 time for low instruction of competentes was actually cut down to 20 days; and in most cases religious instruction was so completely overshadowed by ever increasing scrutinies that only a few formulae were memorized. That was all that remained of instruction which had one time had been conscientiously cultivated and cherished as an indispensable obligation of the Church. But all the alien elements adapted from paganism, the ceremonies and Magic formulae, were retained in the church. No wonder that this period produced large numbers of sacramentaries and liturgical treatises and books about the scrutinies, but very few catechetical writings.

The catechumenate decayed; it was buried under the scrutinies. This would perhaps have been less dangerous if conditions had been such that but few unbaptized adults remained within the precincts of the church; but the opposite is true: as the Roman Empire crumbled before the onslaught of the barbaric peoples, ever new pagan nations settled within the boundaries of the church which needed thorough instruction and training. The sad state of affairs was aggravated by the fact that even those baptized in infancy received no regular or sufficient training. A spiritually sterile church, poisoned by hierarchic thoughts with its emphasis on mystic-theurgic acts, was unable to renew these nations inwardly though she subdued them outwardly — with the help of the state.

An Appeal for Vestments and Liturgy

2008-07-04T05:30:00.002-05:00

I didn't see a date given when this paper was originally presented, but it is an interesting historic overview and a plea for vestments and the liturgy by By J. A. O. STUB, D. D., pastor at Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, MN.

Here is an excerpt:

The story of the unfortunate changes in the vestments of the clergy, the use of the sign of the cross, candles, the color symbolism of the church, etc., wrought by rationalism particularly in Germany and to a lesser degree in Scandinavia, is too lengthy a chapter for this article. The reason rationalism did not succeed so well in removing the external tokens of Lutheranism in the Scandinavian countries, was this: their kings were Lutheran, at least in name.

Suffice to restate our premise: What Reformed kings had not finished, was completed by rationalism; and the historic church, which Luther wanted to name, “The Evangelical Christian Church,” became in its vestments and liturgy largely a copy of the Calvinistic sects.

Luther retained the Communion vestments which were considered an entirely neutral matter. In the order of the mass of 1523 Luther says that: “The vestments may unhindered be used when pomp and luxury be avoided, but they should not be dedicated or blest.” This position was, however, the very opposite of that of the fanatics who wanted to abolish all the ancient and historic vestments, liturgies, etc., etc. This placed Luther in the peculiar position, t.’ hat he was forced to emphasize liberty in these Matters by emphasizing the liberty to continue the use of the ancient Communion vestments. In the fall of 1524 he thus wrote:

Here we are masters and will not submit to any law, command, doctrine, or verdict. (Suppose Luther had been living in 1737!) Therefore has the service of the Communion been celebrated in both ways at Wittenberg. In the monastery we have celebrated the mass without chasubles, or elevation—with the greatest Simplicity as recommended by Karlstad. In the parish church we have chasubles)’albs, Altar, and elevate so long as it pleases us.”

In 1526 he retained the vestments, candles, and Altar. In 1528 he contended against fanatics again, and insisted on liberty to continue vestments, etc. In 1539 Luther said:

“When only the Word may be preached in its purity and the Sacraments rightly celebrated, then go in God’s name in procession and wear a silver or gold cross; wear a cope and surplice of silk or linen; and should your master, the duke, be not satisfied with one cope or surplice—put on three, as Aaron, the chief priest, did put on three, which were beautiful and glorious—wherefore the vestments in the days of the pope were ‘Ornamenta’—for such things (when otherwise no abuse takes place) neither add to nor take away from the Gospel.”

In the motion picture depicting the story of the English nurse, Edith Cavel, is a scene that made a deep impression upon the audience. The nurse is in the death cell awaiting her execution. The title on the screen announces the visit of “the Lutheran priest.” He comes in that conventional black robe, which several makers of robes catalog as “the Lutheran gown.” I have never liked it. It makes no appeal to the eye.

I could almost sympathize with the nurse, who asks for an “English priest.” A Church of England “priest” is then ushered into the cell. Over his arm he carries the neat surplice of the old Christian Church, and the colorful stole, the mark of the ordained clergyman. Shortly after, he appears vested, seated opposite the doomed nurse, facing her across the table. Then she makes that beautiful confession: “I have come to see that patriotism is not enough.”

here is instinctively a catch in your throat and a mist before your eyes. And, as a Lutheran, I felt that in this contrast of vestments our faith was made to appear somber and joyless. No wonder an esthetic and refined soul longed for the simpler and more cheerful vestments of her church, than that black robe with its many shirrings and clumsy sleeves.

Mission Creep(s)

2008-07-03T14:45:00.005-05:00

Did you know that, ON THEIR OWN, overseas missionaries in the LCMS have to collect 85% of the cost to operate their missions? The Synod graciously picks up the other 15%.

Oh, there's one exception. NEW missionaries have to collect 100% of their operating expenses.

Here's a radical idea:

Fund the missionaries with 100% of their operating expenses and get Gerald Kieschnick and the other district presidents to fund 85% - 100% of their salaries, going from congregation to congregation, making PowerPoint presentations and asking for money.

In the Northern Illinois District we have FOUR mission "executives." They are supposed to be facilitating the planting churches and promoting missions in the district. Would it surprize you to learn that missions aren't growing too well -- but that salaries and budgets have grown just fine?

Also in the Northern Illinois District, the district's board for missions has been given constitutional authority to review and approve grants to missions congregations. In the past year or so, however, they have not been consulted in ANY of these grants. ZERO. Who has been doing the reviewing and bestowing? The district's Ablaze! Grant Teams -- groups which have absolutely NO constitutional authority to be doing such things.

Is there someone from whom I need permission to get angry? In situations like this within Christ's church, is there some place I need to go to get approval to use strong language, make a whip of cords, overturn tables and drive out money-changers? (I'm primed to have someone pose the question to me: "What would Jesus do?")

Would I feel any better if I read Robert Bork's book The Death of Outrage?

I guess I can try to placate myself by writing up some overtures for next year's district convention . . .

Chalk Talk

2008-07-03T06:34:00.000-05:00

One of my sons happened across this video at Blockbuster. It runs in the same genre as The Office but it takes place in a high school. These mockumentaries have a similar effect as fingernails on a blackboard (if anyone can remember the days before dry-erase whiteboards). I covered my eyes, but watched through parted fingers, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

The Plastic Fork Thing

2008-07-02T22:25:00.003-05:00

Okay, "tv", since you commented on that last post wanting to know about the plastic fork reference, I decided just to publish the quote from Thomas Day's Why Catholics Can't Sing here: (I couldn't find my book but Neuhaus happened to quote from that section in his First Things) . . .

What does it all mean?

One telephone call I received was from a man who was both upset and amused. It seems that he happened to attend Sunday services in a Lutheran church and saw something that almost totally monopolized his attention. The minister, choir members, and a big group of young children, all in the front of the church, had strings around their necks and hanging from each piece of string was a plastic fork. Prayers were prayed, hymns were sung, and plastic forks dangled. The congregation was without a clue.

Finally, the minister talked to the children and explained the symbolism of the forks. 'Remember those times when you were eating dinner and your mother told you to save your forks?'

Continued cluelessness from the congregation.

The minister, sensing that further clarification was needed, continued: 'You know, save your forks for dessert . . . for heaven.'

What does it all mean? First of all it means that Roman Catholics are not the only ones capable of liturgical nuttiness. Secondly it means prepare for the worst. We must surely be living in a dangerous era when any religion begins to treat human beings as if they were little kitsch toys -- without yearnings, without imperfections, without imagination, without the gift of a soul, without art.

We would expect dictators, radical political theorists, and others who have a low opinion of people to indulge in amusing games with symbols, as a sign of their contempt for the idiots called human beings, but in religion this sort of thing is bad news. It means the end of that idea of a special, creating human 'soul,' and the beginning of an age when people in churches will be manipulated as if they were stupid machines-easily turned on or off (with a gimmick) by smart machines. It means head for the hills.

A Musical Moratorium

2008-07-02T05:40:00.000-05:00

Point #1: The new LCMS Lutheran Service Book (LSB) has four Marty Haugen hymns.

Point #2: There is actually a Society for a Moratorium on the Music of Marty Haugen and David Haas.

Point #3: I didn't initiate nor subscribe to the website in Point #2. But I could have.

Nothing New Under the Sun

2008-07-02T05:32:00.001-05:00

Don't think for a moment that "modern" innovations in "Church Growth" parishes are all that modern. Things like these have been creeping into congregations for a long time. The following P.E. Kretzmann quotations serve to illustrate Ecclesiastes 1:9, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.”

"Gospel Anthems"
We must take note also of a most deplorable tendency of our times, namely, that of preferring the shallow modern ‘Gospel anthem’ to the classical hymns of our Church. The reference is both to the text and to the tunes in use in many churches. On all sides the criticism is heard that the old Lutheran hymns are “too heavy, too doctrinal, that our age does not understand them.” Strange that the Lutherans of four centuries and of countless languages could understand and appreciate them, even as late as a generation ago! Is the present generation less intelligent or merely more frivolous?

(From P. E . Kretzmann; Magazin fur evang.-luth. Homiletik und Pastoraltheologie; June 1929, pp 216-217.)

Secular Dates in the Church
A very strong tendency toward sectarianism and even secularization is found in the increasing number of special days that are celebrated, at least with a special ‘program’ in the Sunday-school, if not with a similar perversion of the regular service in the church itself. We have with us to-day Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Children’s Day, Rally Day, Father-and-son Day, Decision Day, Washington’s Birthday, Lincoln’s Birthday, Roosevelt’s Birthday, Armistice Day, and a host of others, and apparently the end is not yet. “All these,” Rev. F. R. Webber says (Lutheran Church Art, November, 1928), “are anthropocentric. We have a church-year that is highly Christocentric. Any so-called Lutheran who sets aside the old church-year and out of desire to ape the sects indulges in the sloppy sentimentalism of the sectarian, Christless world-year is a traitor to the Word of God. What warrant have we to observe festivals, ferias, and fasts in honor of people?” The stricture, though severe, is well taken and well worthy of serious deliberation.

(From P. E Kretzmann, Magazin fur evang.-luth. Homiletik und Pastoraitheologie, June 1929, pp 218)

Prayers Over the Collection Plates
A very peculiar innovation showing the trend toward sectarianism in our circles is a strange liturgical act, the possibilities of which were evidently overlooked by the old Lutheran compilers of church orders and orders of service for Sundays and holidays. The reference is to the act which the children, in their usual frank, if not brutal, manner, with more truth than poetry, call ‘the blessing of the nickels’ or even ‘the blessing of the pennies’. It is a short prayer of thanksgiving spoken over the collection plates after the deacons or ushers have solemnly marched up the center aisle, with the baskets or plates carefully stacked on the left arm.

Charity fails to find an excuse condoning such an act in a Lutheran church. We have ever taught that good works and the merit of men should be kept out of sight as much as possible, particularly when we assemble in the house of God as poor sinners desiring the assurance of the forgiveness of our sins, without any merit or worthiness in ourselves. Formerly the collection was purposely taken (or ‘the offerings lifted’) as unobtrusively as possible, during the singing of the hymn following the sermon, not during a sentimental ‘offertory’ played with soft stops.

And now much ado is made, not exactly about nothing, but surely about the least of our gifts for the kingdom. That a special prayer of thanksgiving is offered, or even a special service of thanksgiving arranged, for an unusual gift of God’s mercy in overcoming our close-fistedness is entirely in order, but to include the Sunday collection in a regular order of worship, with a special liturgical act, is – simply not Lutheran.”

(P. E . Kretzmann, Magazin fur evang.-luth. Homiletik und Pastoraltheologie, June 1929, p 219.)

A Matter of Taste?

2008-07-01T05:29:00.001-05:00

Carl Schalk, First Person Singular: Worship Through Alice’s Looking Glass and Other Reflections on Worship, Liturgy, and Children (St. Louis: Morningstar Music Publishers, 1998), 11-12.

Every day standards and guidelines shape our lives. Without regulations governing food, drink, health, safety, and even the state of the air we breathe, our lives, health, and general well-being would be seriously at risk. Standards for healthy living are a fact of life and are welcomed everywhere.

Everywhere, it seems, except in discussions about the church’s worship and music. There, some say, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, no matter how uninformed or harmful such opinions may be. The self-evident connection between the music of worship and spiritual health — affirmed by the Church in every age — is conveniently overlooked.

“It’s all a matter of taste.” And with that, any attempt to establish even basic liturgical or musical standards in parishes goes out the window. One predictable result is the inane concoction of musical and liturgical trivialities served up to many congregations Sunday after Sunday as “relevant and meaningful.”

But after all, isn’t “beauty in the eye of the beholder?” Erik Routley once commented that “there is no . . . miserable or demoralizing hymn tune, no mawkish anthem or organ voluntary . . . [and, we might add, no insipid setting of the liturgy] but somebody has thought it beautiful.” The usual argument in favor of bad music is that fine tunes are without a doubt “musically correct,” but people want something simple. In fact, as Routley suggests, the phrase “musically correct” has little meaning; the only “correct” music is that which is beautiful and noble in character. As for simplicity, what could be simpler than St. Anne or Old Hundredth?

Seeking musical refuge in “what I like” or “what appeals to me” is to withdraw into an individualism which seeks personal gratification before the building up of the community of faith. It avoids the simple fact that, in Ralph Vaughan Williams’ words, the issue is, first of all, a theological and moral issue rather than a musical one.

It may be one thing, in Vaughan Williams’ words, “to dwell in the miasma of the languishing and sentimental hymn tunes [and church music] which often disfigure our services.” It is quite another when such an attitude is encouraged by those charged with leadership in worship. To say, for example, that the choice of hymns in worship is simply “. . . a matter of taste” is ultimately to avoid taking responsibility for the spiritual, musical, and moral development of ourselves and our children.

In matters medical we reject the advice and counsel of our doctor at our own peril.

Regarding worship and its music — for our children’s sake if for no other reason — perhaps we should pay less attention to those advocating faddish whims and passing fashions and more to those who can help young and old alike grow into the church’s worship, the church’s song, and the church’s life.

Luther and the Two Kingdoms

2008-06-30T05:19:00.002-05:00

Luther's doctrine of the two kingdoms has often been misunderstood and misrepresented, being treated as if it were the same concept as the separation of church and state. Steven Ozment, in his work A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People, offers some much-needed perspective on the subject, as noted on pages 87-88.

For Luther the German problem of the sixteenth century was the devil’s success in tempting both rulers and clergy, subjects and laity, to sell their souls and shirk their moral and spiritual duties. The politicians did so by permitting injustice and obstructing the Gospel; the ecclesiasts by false assurances of salvation and improper secular ambition; and the general run of humankind by allowing itself to be so easily fooled and cowed by both.

In addition to a foreign, predatory papacy, two other enemies were seen to threaten civic society in the early decades of the Reformation: Catholic rulers who suppressed Protestant religious reforms, and renegade Protestant gospelers and revolutionaries who urged the common man to take up arms for alleged Christian rights.

In pursuit of his goals Luther, too, fatefully blurred the lines of authority and power he himself had drawn. He did so, first, by inviting the Christian nobility of the German nation, as Christian laity, to take up his cause against an intractable Church. In1523 he commended the example of a lay congregation in the German town of Leisnig for replacing its Catholic priest with a Lutheran pastor or its own choice, praising its action as an appropriate rejection of false “human law, principle, tradition, custom, and habit.” If this was a new ecclesiology, it was also a timely rationalization.

Again, in 1528, after Saxon visitations discovered spotty religious knowledge and scant moral improvement among the laity in the country parishes, Luther exhorted the German princes, again as Christians, to become “emergency bishops.” In that capacity they were to provide the fledgling Protestant churches with the administration, authority, and force required for their proper maintenance and discipline. Despite qualifying clauses, which stressed the princes’ lay status and the exceptional nature of their new powers, that concession set an ominous German precedent.

When, in, in 1523, princes began persecuting Protestants, Luther attempted in vain to put the genie back into the bottle, lecturing them on “what they might not do.” By 1518 German rulers never again — if ever they had — confined their rule solely to body and property. Luther’s weaving together of temporal and spiritual power enabled the new church to survive its infancy and pursue its mission in relative safety. It became a more cooperative state church, empowered and eager to mix large doses of religion into civic life through the new schools, welfare system, and domestic arrangements it helped create.

Anatomy of a Takeover

2008-06-29T05:37:00.000-05:00

The following article is abridged from an original paper delivered over 10 years ago on November 23-25, 1997, at the Mission Hills Resort, Rancho Mirage, California by Karen Holger, at that time president of the Parents’ National Network.

While the back-to-basics movement has been directed mostly at returning our public schools to researched-based teaching methodologies, there are now, unfortunately, signs that the Outcome Based Education (OBE) movement, also known as “progressive education,” is spreading within private school networks. Parents National Network (PNN), along with other education reform groups nationwide, are receiving an increasing number of calls and letters from concerned parents who have children enrolled in private schools.

One would suspect that, of the private schools, it would be secular institutions that would be most susceptible to such dumbing-down fads as whole language, “cooperative learning,” “constuctivist” math, school-to-work, “inventive spelling,” death education, and other OBE techniques. Unfortunately, however, many of the complaints are now emanating from private Christian schools attached to Bible-based conservative Christian denominations. And parents from these schools now find themselves asking: “Where do we go when the last bastion of defense is succumbing to secular, progressive ideologies that have nothing to do with core academics? Why do we now find ourselves fighting the same fight in our Christian schools?”

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) school system is a case in point. LCMS, a conservative denomination (as opposed to the more liberal mainstream Lutheran church) has a history of establishing good, solid schools which use tried and true teaching methods based on strong empirical research. However, as this report will show, it now appears LCMS has unknowingly, in recent years, turned its teacher training programs over to progressives whose graduates are busily turning LCMS schools into pale imitations of public schools — at least when it comes to education methodology and philosophy. This trend is especially disheartening to this writer because for years she and her family were LCMS members and her own daughter attended a LCMS school.

With test scores on the decline at some LCMS schools, the effects of “progressive reform” are just beginning to show. With the evidence beginning to build, it is highly likely that within five years the entire LCMS school system will be in the same disarray as public education. Will the same calls for internal investigations to determine the reason for declining performance follow? Will LCMS parents soon threaten educational malpractice as have some public school children’s parents? It is hoped this report will serve as an early warning for LCMS leaders before it is too late.

For a variety of reasons, this transformation of LCMS schools may have occurred easier than one would think. Due to the uniformity found in hierarchical denominations, like LCMS, it takes only a dedicated core within the University leadership to set the direction its education departments will eventually follow when it comes to teaching philosophy.

LCMS has its own self-contained teacher preparation system; indeed it has teacher training programs at all ten Concordia Universities in the United States. At the Baccalaureate level, all ten offer degrees in Elementary Education and nine of the ten offer degrees in Secondary Education. At the graduate level, degrees are offered in teacher education at Concordia University at Irvine (CA), Mequon (WI), River Forest (IL), St. Paul (MN), and Seward (NE).

A quick review of education courses offered by the Concordia University system(CUS) clearly indicates a move away from traditional education approaches. Course descriptions incorporate all the latest buzz words used by the liberal public school establishment. For example, the term “Multi-cultural” is repeatedly used in course descriptions. (In public education, this term includes defining homosexuality as a minority group deserving of special rights.)

Furthermore, based on the seminar content promoted at Palm Desert’s Conference, it is clear that teacher preparation programs within CUS have embraced progressive education and thus, thousands of teachers trained in progressive education philosophy are now teaching in LCMS primary and secondary schools across the United States.

Confirming this view, Lutheran Educators Conference organizers distributed a packet of CUS material entitled “Resources: Models of Teaching,” which “contain brief descriptions of several teaching models treated in the Teacher Education Program at Concordia University. The descriptions are intended to serve as a reference resource for student teachers, and for master teachers . . .”

The material discusses many different teaching models, but nearly all of them espouse the progressive school of thought. Even though the Federal Government conducted a massive $1 billion dollar study, “Project Follow Through,” which compared student performance data for all major teaching models, the CUS document includes absolutely no discussion of performance data.

In fact, the CUS document makes no reference to the government study, and mentions only in a token way the most effective model – “Direct Instruction” (DI). DI emphasizes phonics, constant feedback to assess a child, homework, discipline, the teacher as teacher, i.e., the “expert”, (not as a “facilitator” as progressives promote) and other traditional techniques. CUS fails to describe how to properly teach direct instruction and never mentions its successful track record.

The Concordia University teacher preparation material focuses almost exclusively on process, not learning or performance, a classic sign of progressive education thought. Most of the models included in the document promote “Cooperative Learning,” “Group Learning,” “Group Investigations,” and “Group Projects.” The material says students should be taught in groups, assigned projects in groups and tested in groups, even though research shows group learning to be a total failure (see more about this later in this report).

Most of the models in CUS promote the idea that children need to be in charge of their own learning, or as the document states, “directing their own work.” This is just another failed method—sometimes called the “open classroom,” or, as some of the conference speakers called it, the “child-centered classroom.” Indeed, the CUS material suggests that teachers pose these questions to their students:

"What would you like school to do for you?”
“What, specifically, do you want to learn?”
“Do you think it is important to learn any skills? If so, which ones?"

Moreover, the CUS report states that in the course of group learning, “each team member is responsible for knowing that his or her teammates understand the assignment.” So now, not only are students mapping out their own lesson plans, but they are supposed to be responsible for their classmates as well! Who needs teachers? This also raises the questions: How do children know what they need to learn? Do LCMS schools now teach only what students think they want to learn? Is this really what LCMS parents want for their children? Is this what LCMS leadership wants for their students?

Another teaching model discussed states, “The focus of the strategies is not to pour facts into the student’s head, not to bring about some specific behavior outcome-rather, it is to draw out the student’s own creativity."

A teaching model titled, “Exploration of Feelings,” is likewise devoid of learning, but the central strategy here is, as stated, to have “Students explore others’ feelings or actions.” This strategy urges the use of dramatic stories to evoke sadness, anger, joy, etc. and then assign students to question each other on the feelings being experienced. This exercise may be great when used by a trained, licensed psychologist; but used in classrooms by teachers not trained in psychology could have devastating results! In California, practicing psychology without a license, or credential, in psychology is illegal!

Another reason for the leftward drift of LCMS schools is the recent effort by some to obtain accreditation status from liberal, highly secular accreditation agencies such as the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). A number of reports have surfaced that WASC has threatened to withhold accreditation from Christian schools unless they agree to make certain changes in their curriculum, methodology, and even management practices that are more in line with “progressive” education practices.

WASC makes no secret of their desire to alter a school’s mission. Page 228 of WASC’s accreditation guidelines book, published two years ago, states:

“Change--We cannot expect to change our long-held traditions to reorganized our army and to create cities without internal opposition. Among you chieftains and Huns will be those whose spirits cling to our past ways. We will show patience with you unenlightened ones. — Attila the Hun”

Ironically, there is no need for LCMS elementary, middle, or high schools to obtain WASC accreditation. There are no colleges or universities who reject students based on the accreditation status of elementary or secondary schools. College admission officers look at grade transcripts and SAT scores, not the accreditation status of the school.

Yet, the myth persists. The fact that so many LCMS schools are now seeking WASC accreditation status gives the impression that progressives within the LCMS education hierarchy are using the accreditation hammer to force its “backward” schools to “modernize”. Not surprisingly, WASC material was evident throughout the Conference.

Conference Overview The Lutheran Educators Conference was a gathering of LCMS educators from all over the western half of the United States and was officially sponsored by the LCMS church. Most attendees were K-12 teachers or administrators. Most were members of the denomination and deeply committed Christians. The purpose of the conference was to teach LCMS educators the “latest” teaching strategies and techniques.

With the exception of a few isolated workshops on promoting Christian values within the classroom, the material covered differed little from the education conferences hosted by various public school professional associations. Sadly, the workshops attended were dominated by the progressive view of education. In some seminars it was subtle; in others it was so blatant a few of the older and wiser educators left the seminar with looks of disgust on their faces.

In three days of conference, it did not appear that many, if any, workshops focused on empirical research-based techniques. Every failed education fad was covered, and covered well. It is amazing that time could be spent on how to show films such as “Buckwheat Dies” from Saturday Night Live, yet not even touch on the latest reading research from the National Institute of Child Development verifying that systematic phonics is the only effective way to teach reading.

Psychological Counseling Workshops: Another tenet of progressive education philosophy is the idea that teachers should engage in psychological analysis and treatment within the confines of the classroom. The CUS actually has entire courses dedicated to this endeavor, but Lutheran teachers, or any teacher for that matter, do not receive the necessary training to engage in this practice.

Evidence of this practice can be seen with the emphasis on self-esteem and “death education,” (an attempt to counsel children about life and death issues) in our public schools. Such activities have led to numerous lawsuits, primarily brought by parents who feel that schools have no right to engage in practices of a non-academic nature — especially psychological counseling that might undermine religious beliefs or parental rights.

Indeed, death or “grief” education, as LCMS educators call it, is believed to be a contributing factor in at least a half-dozen student suicides as a result of exposing already depressed children to incessant lectures about death, dying and suicide. The psycho-babble currently being practiced in schools throughout the nation has caused extreme concern among many psychologists. Indeed, the California Association of School Psychologists were so alarmed by this practice, they actively joined with other psychologists, parents and teachers, in support of legislation carried by California Assemblyman George House. Assemblyman House’s bill prohibits California teachers from engaging in psychological practices without a license. His bill overwhelmingly passed the State Legislature and was signed into law last year by California Governor Pete Wilson. (Maybe LCMS should recommend that all their teachers read and become aware of California law, especially Ed. Code 49422.)

The Lutheran Educators Conference had three workshops dealing with psychological issues; “Meeting The Grieving Child At The Classroom Door,” taught by Carol Ebeling, “Counseling Tips For Teachers Who Weren’t Trained As Counselors,” also by Ebeling, and “Helping Students Manage Family Stress and Trauma At School,” by Christine Honeyman.

While both women are licensed counselors, they apparently did not have qualms about imparting their techniques to educators without counseling experience or licenses. In fact, during one of Ms. Ebeling’s sessions, one teacher asked, “Since we aren’t psychologists, how far can we go with these techniques?” Ms. Ebeling responded, “Not far.” What does that mean?

From the session on death education, Ms. Ebeling gave attendees information about how to exact feelings by having students answer such questions as:

“When will I die?”
“Who will take care of me”
“How did I cause the death of ____________?”

Ebeling also advocated asking students to, “Give detailed expressions that affirm painful feelings,” and to , “Go beyond ‘God has a plan.’” She further stated,

“In order to help your students to grieve, and to get rid of the bad feelings, it depends on you! Begin by encouraging the child to smack a Styrofoam cup, or poke holes in it, tear it, or throw it. Some teachers bring in a pillow and let the child scream into it, punch it, or have a pillow fight.”

Ms. Ebeling offered several “menu options” to be used as “manipulatives” to “assist in helping kids get their feelings out” and advocated the daily use of “Journaling” for children to deal with their “feelings.” She suggested that grieving students should write sentences that express their feelings.

One shocking view expressed by Ms. Ebeling was that she felt it was critical for children who have suffered a death in their family to “view the dead.” When asked, “What if the body is mutilated?,” Ebeling replied, “No mutilation can exceed a child’s worst nightmare.” Is Ebeling aware that she advocates the flagrant violation of three California laws, (1) assessing self esteem, (2) practicing psychology without a license, and, (3) pupil/parent protection rights?

The bottom line is that the use of psychology in the classroom blatantly undermines the prerogatives of parents, and one would presume, violates the Biblical beliefs of the LCMS. Indeed, Ebeling’s workshop specifically encouraged educators to handle grieving children by getting “a school family together where the children can share,” and if the child didn't actually witness the tragedy, “have the child draw what he didn’t get to see,” for “the family.” Ms. Ebeling apparently believes the progressive rationale that the “school family” takes precedence over “the real Biblical family”. This sounds a lot like the “It Takes a Village” concept and has no place in a Christian school.

This obsession with feelings is not only a dangerous approach and undermines parental rights, but the LCMS should be very wary of lawsuits if a death of a child is traced to such depressing curricula.

The National Institute of Mental Health actually says, “Most school-based, information-only, prevention programs focused solely on suicide have not been evaluated to see if they work; new research suggests that such programs may actually increase distress in the young people who are most vulnerable.” Other psychologists have said that by discussing these issues in the classroom a child’s “safe zone” is violated; when that happens it can create crisis. These psychologists say that troubled or grieving children should be counseled by a professional; non-troubled children have no reason to be subjected to discussions on death, dying or suicide.

In a second workshop taught by Ebeling, she instructed the teachers to have a “softball toss” with the children. In this exercise students and teacher stand in a circle while the teacher tosses the ball to each child with the instruction to finish a specific sentence, i.e., “When I let my feelings out I_________________.” Ebeling stated, “Children don’t always know how to express feelings in words so we need to teach them,” and recommended a text used by Concordia University called “Getting Along,” which apparently gives more ideas about how to entice children to talk about their feelings.

Apparently, most parents have no idea such activity is occurring. When one educator spoke in the workshop about using techniques from “Getting Along” in his classroom, he was asked afterwards if parents had granted him consent. He said, “No,” but added it was mentioned in the school newsletter. When asked if the newsletter was specific as to what types of activities were taking place, he again said, “No.”

Ebeling passed out a handout that showed a drawing of a child with suggested conversation topics written on his body. These included: “One of the bad things about my school,” and “What makes me cry.” On another handout, Ebeling listed behavior characteristics of “Children Who Hate” and “Children Who Hurt.” Some characteristics appeared to be highly subjective and could lead to teachers placing psychological labels on students. For example, children with “behavior problems” and those who are “older than peers” are listed on the “Children Who Hate” list! That may be half of the kids in a classroom!

The confusion about what to look for in children who “might” be troubled was apparent when one educator asked, “So many of these characteristics can be present in children, how are we to know what constitutes a real problem and what doesn’t?” Ebeling responded by saying that teachers need to be careful not to misjudge students! But wasn’t that the point of her workshop? On one hand she was asking teachers to practice psychology; on the other hand she was telling them not to go too far or engage in uneducated guessing!

Christine Honeyman’s workshop, “Help Students Manage Family Stress and Trauma at School,” was more of the same, and was focused on psychological techniques for use on children “who have anger.” In order to deal with student anger, Honeyman suggested exercises such as, “have kids write three things they didn’t like over the weekend and one thing they did.” This was suggested for Monday mornings because, as Honeyman told the attendees, when the kids come back to school after being home all weekend, “they have to get that anger out of their systems.”

Once again, as in the previous workshops, the assumption was that home is a traumatic place and psychological counseling is needed to counter the bad influence of the parents. The danger here, of course, is that such an exercise plants the notion in children’s minds that home is indeed a bad place, even if they are from a perfect home. It is doubtful parents are told of this exercise. Is this really why Christian parents send their children to Christian schools?

Honeyman continually remarked that she wished she had more time to really go “into these things.” She made it clear she wasn’t able to explain in depth how to deal with sensitive issues. Again, isn’t that the whole point? Why was this conference so focused on psychological practices with teachers who are not trained in psychology? The potential for harm is incalculable! Why is LCMS condoning this practice?

Portfolios/Peer Review Workshop: This workshop, entitled “Writing Portfolios: A School-Wide Endeavor,” was taught by Stephanie Van Blarcom and Lisa Ellwein. Portfolios are the latest fad in the area of grading students. Instead of report cards, the teachers have students prepare portfolios, i.e., create a collection of a student’s work. What alarms many parents, however, is the non-academic nature of the portfolio. The content of the portfolio is usually chosen by the student. Some of the material will be “self-graded.” Other material will be “peer graded.” And naturally, the student’s worst work will not be included. But, the portfolio looks good to the student, to his teacher, and to his parents, even though he may be totally behind in learning basic skills.

Teachers like portfolios because they do not have to engage in the difficult work of giving grades to students based upon actual performance and mastery of various topics. Ms. Van Blarcom even admitted as much: “Portfolios have changed my life . . . because I don’t do that [grading] anymore.” Ms. Van Blarcom emphasized this point again with a hand-out that listed the benefits of portfolios:

“Grading everyday ruins my social life.”
“I’m tired of taking responsibility for my student’s work; I'm throwing the ball in
their court!”
“Portfolio is a buzz word, and I don't want to feel like I'm teaching the way my teachers taught me.” [as if that is automatically bad]

This amazing woman even stated that she tells parents at the beginning of the year that their child’s work will not be sent home: “If they want to see their child’s work, the portfolios are available in the classroom!” California students are only last in the country in Reading and third from last in Mathematics, so who needs homework anyhow?

Instead of grading and evaluating student work as most parents assume teachers are paid to do, this workshop encourages Lutheran educators to utilize “Peer review.” Peer review is another progressive teaching technique which, again, has no research to back up its effectiveness. It is a technique whereby students critique each other’s work. The problem with peer review is that the students will only be able to grade their peers at their own proficiency level. Even if you match smarter kids with slower kids, the effect is to slow down the faster learners so they spend their time trying to critique others instead of moving ahead themselves. Moreover, students will go easy on one another since they know the student they are critiquing may soon be critiquing them. Again, this technique epitomizes the progressive tenet of leveling the abilities of all students.

One fourth grade teacher raised his hand and said he had tried “peer review.” “It just didn’t work,” he said. He went on to tell the attendees that his students didn’t understand what they were supposed to do; didn’t understand how to grade someone else’s work, etc. This didn’t daunt the presenters—their advice was to just keep doing it. “Model for them” until they get it. When questioned about the lack of immediate corrective feedback from an “expert teacher” , the presenters both hemmed and hawed and then said they used other forms of grading too. They didn’t quite explain what the “other forms” were or how they helped the student!

Ms. Ellwein, claimed the “benefits” of portfolio grading for students included, “They determine and set own goals” and “Self-evaluation – Students identify their own strengths and weaknesses.” Isn’t that what teachers are paid to do?! Ms. Ellwein, who served on the WASC accreditation committee at her school, said that portfolio grading was one of the top items looked at by WASC. She explained that it was extremely important for attendees of the workshop to go back to their schools and lobby the principal to support the portfolio technique so that it became a “school-wide,” not just classroom, change. By soliciting support from the principal, she said, the teacher in the next classroom who might not want to change his old ways, could be “forced” into adopting portfolio assessments.

As for grading the portfolios, this is not done as one may think. Ellwein advised the attendees to “Assess growth from beginning of year to end of year.” The inference here was not to compare the students with others on their ability to grasp content but rather on their general growth. In other words, a child might receive an “A” — not because he is doing “A” work on a traditional grading scale — but because he improved considerably over his previous work. Nonetheless, this means the child could receive an “A” even though his performance might be at what would traditionally be considered “D” level work. Of course, the parents will be happy — until the SAT scores come out.

Both workshop presenters admitted that no scientific evidence exists that portfolio assessment works but “we see both process and product.” Here are quotes from the workshop handout:

“The teacher can encourage critical thinking by having students decide which of their works to include in the portfolio...”
Under “Student Roles” : Student “ participates in self and peer assessment ...collaborates with peers about strengths and weaknesses.”
Under “assessing portfolios” : “ No criticism – only provide suggestions for change...”

Conclusion: The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod has always been identified has a conservative church, so what occurred at the conference came as a shock. How does such a church reconcile its conservative theological beliefs with the most radical, progressive education theories being promoted at its own education conference?

LCMS now stands at a crossroads. It can choose to clean house or accept the creeping liberalism that is rotting away its education and Christian mission. Like most highly organized denominations, the LCMS world is a somewhat closed world, and therefore immune to outside criticism, a situation which has allowed the progressives to completely revamp teacher preparation programs without much notice or criticism. Without delving into the theological history of the LCMS, any criticism outside the education reform movement will likely have little effect. LCMS has a history of protecting its own and as such it will take the intervention of national LCMS leaders to intervene to change things at this point.

As with most denominational leaders, LCMS leaders probably do not understand that the “progressive” philosophy of human nature embodied by the OBE approach to education is based upon secular humanist notions that run contrary to the Christian worldview. For example, promoting group learning over individual learning and accountability has theological repercussions – the elimination of competition is totally against Biblical principles. Surely, using psychological games to replace family values is not consistent with LCMS views on the family – especially when those psychological practices violate state laws!

Indeed, the acknowledged father of progressive education was Jean Jacques Rousseau, the humanist philosopher who believed the purpose of education was not to educate, but rather to find happiness and allow children to be creative. He also believed that classrooms were to be used to condition students to accept a socialized world view. This philosophy rationalized Rousseau’s own lifestyle, characterized by numerous illegitimate children, stealing, lying, and the inability to hold a job.

Rousseau’s philosophical heirs, Horace Mann and John Dewey, were responsible for the growth of progressive education in America. They attacked memorization, drills, phonics, and mathematical formulas by claiming such practices restrict a child’s creativity! Historically, private Christian schools have resisted the tenets of progressive education and instead, did as the Bible instructs; educate children, both spiritually and academically, so that they may honor God and become productive citizens. This is a detailed and complex argument that would have to be made to key LCMS leaders before one could expect any action to be taken. Unfortunately, it may be too late.

Hymnals of Unionism and Rationalism

2008-06-28T05:34:00.000-05:00

A Handbook of Church Music, edited by Carl Halter and Carl Schalk (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1989).

The Lutheran liturgy of 1748 followed the general outlines of historic Lutheran worship as filtered through the healthy pietism of its compilers. The revision of 1786, with its decreasing emphasis on the church year, its greater informality, and its emphasis on extempore prayer, was typical of the direction the future would bring. The “liturgical” part of the service was shortened in order that the sermon might receive more time. All these changes were indicative of a pietism increasingly divorced from a confessional Lutheran practice.

But two other forces in the early 1800s were to have even greater impact on the worship life of American Lutheranism: unionism and rationalism. The impact of these developing movements was to lead to a marked toning down and relaxation of sound Lutheran worship practices.

Unionism developed in part because of a spirit of religious indifference nourished by the inroads of rationalism, in part because it was often the line of least resistance, but also because it often appeared to be the most prudent course in the cause of a common evangelism. In Pennsylvania the trend was toward union with Reformed churches; in New York toward union with Episcopalians.

The attraction between Lutheran and Reformed churches in the early 1800s was accentuated by a number of circumstances. In Prussia, homeland of many German Americans, union was the official policy between Lutherans and the Reformed. In Germany, Frederick Wilhelm III was preparing to proclaim the Prussian Union. In America, many Lutheran, Reformed, and other Protestant churches were making joint plans to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Reformation.

In addition, Lutheran and Reformed churches in America often shared the same church building, a fact attested to by many “Union” churches still dotting the rural countryside in Pennsylvania. Given such circumstances, the request for a common worship materials could not be far behind. Hardly a decade after its formation as the second Lutheran synod in America, the New York Ministerium took note of the “intimate relation between English Episcopal and Lutheran churches, the identity of doctrine, and the near approach of their discipline,” and efforts were begun — though never completed — looking toward the eventual union of the two churches. The tide of opinion favoring at the least a variety of united endeavors, and, as some hoped, union, was too great to be ignored.

Likewise, rationalism affected America as a result of close contact between America and France in the Revolutionary period. It had found its way into German universities, even into Halle, and the American church was not to escape its influence. As early as 1792, for example, the Pennsylvania Ministerium had deleted all reference to the Lutheran Confessions from its constitution. In 1803 the constitution of the North Carolina Synod, the third Lutheran synod to be organized in North America, made no reference either to the Lutheran Confessions or to Lutheranism. In 1807 the New York Ministerium elected as its president Rev. Frederick H. Quitman, an avowed disciple of John Semler, the “father of Rationalism” at Halle.

The ideals of unionism and rationalism found embodiment in congregational books of worship among the Lutherans. For unionism it was the Gemeinschaftliche Gesangbuch (“Common Hymnbook”) of 1817, issued “for the use of Lutheran and Reformed congregations in North America”; for rationalism it was A Collection of Hymns, and a liturgy, for the use of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, published in 1814. Both books were widely used in German and English Lutheran congregations that found them compatible with their ideas. . . .

Rationalism sought to bring the forms of Lutheran worship in line with human reason; unionism sought to dilute those forms and practices in order to facilitate organic union. Both forces were, for a time, successful. But both ultimately gave way before a new movement that was to herald a return to confessional concerns.

Blessed Be the NAME of the Lord

2008-06-27T05:48:00.000-05:00

Last month, Christianity Today published an editorial entitled: Blessed Be the Name of the Lord: Why 'Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier' is somewhere between heresy and idolatry.

Referring to February 29th reports on a Vatican statement, "Vatican Says Baptisms Using Wrong Words Are Not Valid, Must Be Redone," the article is reprinted here:

Anyone baptized "in the name of the Creator, and of the Redeemer, and of the Sanctifier" or "in the name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer" didn't really get baptized, explained Cardinal Urbano Navarrete after the Vatican's brief statement. If you got married after such an invalid baptism, Navarrete said, your marriage isn't valid either (at least in the Roman Catholic sacramental sense).

Media reports only turned up one Catholic congregation that had been using the proscribed formula: in Brisbane, Australia. And it stopped using it in 2004.

Avoidance of "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" is, unfortunately, common in some North American streams of Protestantism. Gender-neutral language for the Trinity is often an emblem of progressive churches that see liberation from patriarchy as a hallmark of the gospel. After the Vatican's statement, one Methodist pastor howled about the Vatican's "liturgical fundamentalism that values human language over divine grace."

He failed to recognize that this particular instance of "human language" is a matter of divine grace. We use this rather than other Trinitarian formulas for a simple reason: Jesus—"very God of very God," as the Nicene Creed puts it—gave it to us and commanded its use (Matt. 28:18–20).

This formula is perfectly consistent with the self-revelation of God throughout the Bible. In the Gospels, Jesus refers to the Father and to himself as the Son. Yes, he also employs other metaphors for the Godhead, but never so consistently and starkly.

Furthermore, it is a mistake to focus only on the phrase "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" without noting the two words that introduce it in the Great Commission: " … the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Whenever God reveals his name, he reveals his character. We see in God's name his communal nature and desire for a personal relationship to his people. "I Am who I Am," he told Moses. "The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob … This is my name forever."

Almost all the recent alternatives to the Trinitarian formula undercut the personal significance of God's name by replacing it with words of function. As many have noted, "Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier" encourages modalism, the heretical teaching that God's threeness is more about his modes of operation, or our perception of him, rather than something intrinsic to the divine essence. Biblical Christianity teaches that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in creation, redemption, and sanctification. A document "commended for study" by the Presbyterian Church (USA) explicitly rejected a modalist understanding of "Creator, Savior, Sanctifier," but still encouraged its use, along with "Mother, Child, and Womb," "Sun, Light, and Burning Ray," and other troubling triads.

As theologian Robert Jenson has noted, "Such attempts presuppose that we first know about a triune God and then look about for a form of words to address that God, when in fact it is the other way around. … [T]he phrase Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is historically specific and can be what liturgy and devotion—and, at its base, all theology—must have, a proper name of God."

God is serious about his name—which is why he took the trouble to reveal it to us in Christ. To create an alternative according to our cultural sensibilities is at best parody and at worst idolatry, even if it is constructed from the good metaphors God has given us. Most idols, after all, are created from God's good gifts.

The Baptism of Penguins

2008-06-27T05:40:00.000-05:00

I don’t know much about the author Anatole France, his milieu or world view, but his writing strikes me about the same way as that of Kurt Vonnegut, both of whom have a rather unorthodox perspective on human nature. Reading such works can grant a pastor certain insights into the works of the flesh which need to be addressed by the Word of God. Anatole France’s book, Penguin Island, ultimately says more about human nature than about penguins — and I suspect Anatole’s contempt for the church. If you want to read something rather out of the ordinary this summer, try this.

After having drifted for an hour, the holy man approached a narrow strand, shut in by steep mountains. He went along the coast for a whole day and a night, passing around the reef which formed an insuperable barrier. He discovered in this way that it was a round island in the middle of which rose a mountain crowned with clouds. He joyfully breathed the fresh breath of the moist air. Rain fell, and this was so pleasant that the holy man said to the Lord, “Lord, this is the island of tears, the island of contrition.”

The strand was deserted. Worn out with fatigue and hunger, he sat down on a rock in the hollow of which there lay some yellow eggs, marked with black spots, and about as large as those of a swan. But he did not touch them saying: “Birds are the living praises of God. I should not like a single one of these praises to be lacking through me.” And he munched the lichens which he tore from the crannies of the rocks.

The holy man had gone almost entirely round the island without meeting any inhabitants, when he came to a vast ampitheatre formed of black and red rocks whose summits became tinged with blue as they rose toward the clouds, and they were filled with sonorous cascades.

The reflection from the polar ice had hurt the old man’s eyes, but a feeble gleam of light still shone through his swollen eyelids. He distinguished animated forms which filled the rocks, in stages, like a crowd of men on the tiers of an ampitheatre. And at the same time, his ears, deafened by the continual noises of the sea, heard a feeble sound of voices. Thinking that what he saw were men living under the natural law and that the Lord had sent him to teach them the Divine law, he preached the gospel to them.

Mounted on a lofty stone in the midst of the wild circus: “Inhabitants of this island,” said he, “although you be of small stature, you look less like a band of fishermen and mariners than like the senate of a judicious republic. By your gravity, your silence, your tranquil deportment, you form on this wild rock an assembly comparable to the Conscript Fathers at Rome deliberating in the temple of Victory, or rather, to the philosophers of Athens disputing on the benches of the Areopagus. Doubtless you possess neither their science nor their genius, but perhaps in the sight of God you are their superiors. I believe that you are simple and good. As I went round your island I saw no image of murder, no sign of carnage, no enemies’ heads or scalps hung from a lofty pole or nailed to the doors of your villages. You appear to me to have no arts and not to work in metals. But your hearts are pure and your hands are innocent, and the truth will easily enter into your souls.”

Now, what he had taken for men of small stature but of grave bearing were penguins whom the spring had gathered together and who were ranged in couples on the natural steps of the rock, erect in the majesty of their large white bellies. From moment to moment they moved their winglets like arms and uttered peaceful cries. They did not fear men for they did not know them and had never received any harm from them; and there was in the monk a certain gentleness that reassured the most timid animals and that pleased these penguins extremely. With a friendly curiosity they turned towards him their round little eyes lengthened in front by a white oval spot that gave something odd and human to their appearance.

Touched by their attention, the holy man taught them the Gospel. “Inhabitants of the island, the early day that has just risen over your rocks is the image of the heavenly day that rises in your souls. For I bring you the inner light; I bring you the light and heat of the soul. Just as the sun melts the ice of your mountains so Jesus Christ will melt the ice of your hearts.”

Thus the old man spoke. As everywhere throughout the nature voice calls to voice, as all which breathes in the light of day loves alternate strains, these penguins answered the old man by the sounds of their throats. And their voices were soft for it was the season of their loves.

The holy man, persuaded that they belonged to some idolatrous people and that in their own language they gave adherence to the Christian faith, invited them to receive baptism. “I think,” said he to them, “that you bathe often, for all the hollows of the rocks are full of pure water, and as I came to your assembly I saw several of you plunging into these natural baths. Now purity of body is the image of spiritual purity.” And he taught them the origin, nature, and the effects of baptism. “Baptism,” said he to them, “is Adoption, New Birth, Regeneration, Illumination.” And he explained each of these points to them in succession.

Then, having previously blessed the water that fell from the cascades and recited the exorcisms, he baptized those whom he had just taught, pouring on each of their heads a drop of pure water and pronouncing the sacred words. And thus for three days and three nights he baptized the birds.

A Day's Journey Into Ninevah

2008-06-26T05:06:00.001-05:00

Eugene Peterson, Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 128-130. To Peterson’s analysis, we would commend the incarnational locatedness of Christ in the water and the Word of Holy Baptism, Christ’s own body and blood with the bread and wine in his testament of Holy Communion — and the Church not as invisible, but visibly gathered at that place and time where the Word is preached and the Sacraments bestowed.

Pastoral work is local: Ninevah. The difficulty in carrying it out is that we have a universal gospel but distressingly limited by time and space. We are under command to go into all the world to proclaim the gospel to every creature. We work under the large rubrics of heaven and hell. And now we find ourselves in a town of three thousand people on the far edge of Kansas, in which the library is underbudgeted, the radio station plays only country music, the high school football team provides all the celebrities the town can manage, and a covered-dish supper is the high-point in congregational life.

It is hard for a person who has been schooled in the urgencies of apocalyptic and with an imagination furnished with saints and angels to live in this town very long and take part in its conversations without getting a little impatient, growing pretty bored, and wondering if it wasn’t an impulsive mistake to abandon that ship going to Tarshish.

We start dreaming of greener pastures. We preach BIG IDEA sermons. Our voices take on a certain stridency as our anger and disappointment at being stuck in this place begin to leak into our discourse.

Now is the time to rediscover the meaning of the local, and in terms of church, the parish. All churches are local. All pastoral work takes place geographically. “If you would do good,” wrote William Blake, “you must do it in Minute Particulars.” When Jonah began his proper work, he went a day’s journey into Ninevah. He didn’t stand at the edge and preach at them; he entered into the midst of their living – heard what they were saying, smelled the cooking, picked up the colloquialisms, lived “on the economy,” not aloof from it, not superior to it.

The gospel is emphatically geographical. Place names — Sinai, Hebron, Machpelah, Shiloh, Nazareth, Jezreel, Samaria, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Bethsaida — these are embedded in the gospel. All theology is rooted in geography.

Pilgrims to biblical lands find that the towns in which David camped and Jesus lived are no better or more beautiful or more exciting than their hometowns.

The reason we get restless with where we are and want, as we say, “more of a challenge” or “a larger field of opportunity” has nothing to do with prophetic zeal or priestly devotion; it is the product of spiritual sin. The sin is generated by the virus of gnosticism.

Gnosticism is the ancient but persistently contemporary perversion of the gospel that is contemptuous of place and matter. It holds for that salvation consists in having the right ideas, and the fancier the better. It is impatient with restrictions of place and time and embarrassed by the garbage and disorder of everyday living. It constructs a gospel that majors in fine feelings embellished by the sayings of Jesus. Gnosticism is also impatient with slow-witted people and plodding companions and so always ends up being highly selective, appealing to an elite group of people who are “spiritually deep,” attuned to each other and quoting a cabal of experts.

The Church Fathers and Counting Numbers

2008-06-25T05:12:00.000-05:00

Wilhelm Loehe shows how contemporary the Church Fathers seemed in his time and ours. As evidence, consider this passage found in James Schaaf’s translation of Loehe’s Drei Bücher von der Kirche (Three Books About the Church; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 128-130.

Gregory of Nanzianzen speaks eloquently about the number of those in the church: “Where are they who reproach us with our poverty and boast themselves of their own riches; who define the church by numbers and scorn the little flock; and who measure the Godhead and weigh the people in the balance, who honour the sand and despise the luminaries of heaven; who treasure pebbles and overlook pearls . . . ? These men have the houses, but we the Dweller in the house; they the Temples, we the God; and besides, it is ours to be the living temples of the living God, lively sacrifices, reasonable burnt-offerings, perfect sacrifices. . . . They have the people, we the Angels; they rash boldness, we faith; they threatenings, we prayer . . . ; they gold and silver, we the pure word.”

Chrysostom says the same thing in his sermon: “Which is better, to have much hay or to have a few gems? The true majority does not rest upon numbers but upon values. Elijah was alone, but the whole world could not outweigh him.”

Augustine says, “If you want to be just, do not count but weigh. Bring a trustworthy scale so that you may be called a righteous man. Of you it is written, ‘The righteous shall see and fear’ [Ps. 52:6]. Therefore, do not count the host of men who wander on the broad ways, who in the morning gather themselves together and celebrate with a loud tumult in the city, setting the city in confusion with their bad behavior. Pay no attention to them. They are many, but who counts them? There are fewer who travel the narrow way. Bring the scale, I tell you, and weigh them. See how much chaff there is to the few grains of wheat.”

Arnobius writes, “For neither is truth unable to stand without supporters, nor will the fact that the Christian religion has found many to agree with it and has gained weight from human approval prove it true. It is satisfied to rest its case upon its own strength and upon the basis of its own truth. It is not despoiled of its force though it have no defender, no, not even if every tongue oppose it and struggle against it and, united in hatred, conspire to destroy faith in it.”

Tertullian feels it is easier to go astray in a great crowd than to love and hold fast to the truth with a few. Jerome says clearly to a Pelagian, “Your numerous supporters will never prove you to be a catholic, but will show that you are a heretic.”

After all, it is so simple, and the matter is so clear. How futile is the noise of the multitude and the noise about the multitude blinding only the blind! Our opponents themselves, if they wished to be honest, would agree with us that the church is to be recognized by its Word, not by its numbers; under other circumstances, they themselves would use these ancient proofs. The truth is truth, even when it is completely alone in the world. It was what it now is even before the foundation of the world, and it will still be the same when we have passed into dust. What of the multitude? Only that which is apostolic is catholic, and those who hold to what is apostolic belong to the catholic church and can claim for their communion that noble name against all impure denominations.

Supermarket of Desire

2008-06-24T05:09:00.003-05:00

Douglas D. Webster, Selling Jesus: What’s Wrong with Marketing the Church, 78-81.

If we step back and look at American culture, it’s easy to conclude that it is materialistic, self-centered and individualistic. These characteristics raise an important question: What kind of felt needs will be stimulated in the age of entertainment?

The average American household is saturated by television and sports. What does the church need to become in order to compete effectively with frantic schedules, work pressure and leisure amusements?

Parenting is always a challenge, but especially when it comes to meeting one’s children’s felt needs. I am faced with the uncomfortable and unenviable task of discerning between genuine needs and selfish needs. I would love to give my three children everything they ask for, but few people — not even my kids themselves — would judge me a good father if I did that. If eating, sleeping, working and cleaning were left to my young children’s discretion, without any parental direction, our home would be a total disaster. If peer pressure, television ads and self-interest were allowed to dictate the need-meeting in our household, in no time we would be spoiled, self-centered and broke.

What my children really need from me is the ability to discern between momentary pleasure and long-term happiness. They need help in disciplining their lives, deferring gratification and deciding what is right. Much of what they want may get in the way of what they need. They need the example of parents who turn to Christ to meet their deep-seated spiritual needs and human aspirations. Ginny and I have the task of weaning them from superficial, self-centered felt needs and preparing them to deal with their own significant needs and the needs of others through Christ and through responsible, mature behavior.

Being a parent involves daily work in this area. We are not just meeting needs; we are working at defining needs. There is a lot of discerning and discarding to be done.

What holds true for children is also true for adults. The needs we feel most keenly may be trivial or artificial, induced by a culture that is seriously devoted to treating us like consumers every minute of the day. Even when our felt needs are concerned with important matters, such as where to live and work, they may still marginalize more fundamental needs, such as the need to know God. . . .

We have grown accustomed in our market-driven culture, to yoking relational well-being with material well-being. Like the proverbial monkey whose hand is trapped in the cookie jar because it is unwilling to release its grip on its precious find, Americans are trapped by their materialistic dependencies. Barna predicts, “We will remain a society struggling with self-doubt and low self-esteem. As technological advances and the deterioration of social skills continue, Americans will feel increasingly isolated . . . . Our dominant obstacle to emotional attachments will be our fear of being hurt and our unwillingness to sacrifice material comforts or leisure experiences in exchange for new relationships. Psychological counseling services will boom in the 90's, as people struggle with issues of self-worth, loneliness and control.

It’s not surprising that in a consumer-oriented culture the deep-seated spiritual longing for transcendence is scaled down to a materialistic quest for success. For many Americans, the fear of God is nothing compared to the fear of personal failure. Job security means more than eternal security. People who shrug their shoulders at the thought of divine judgment cringe at the thought of cancer or AIDS.

In the nineties, the human search for meaning and significance is translated into a restless quest for excitement and escape. The greatest danger facing the modern psyche is not nihilism but boredom. Qualities honored in the past — stability, continuity and tradition — are exchanged for sensationalism, stimulation and excitement. Today’s hunger and thirst for righteousness are nothing compared to the insatiable appetite for entertaining distractions.

Face the Muzak

2008-06-23T05:00:00.000-05:00

Leonard J. Seidel’s book, Face the Music: Contemporary Church Music on Trial, (Springfield, Virginia: Grace Unlimited Publications, 1988) offers some interesting points for discussion. The following points are found on pages 18-19 and 22-23 of this work.

The controversy regarding proper music is not new. In the early Greek civilization, Plato and Aristotle were dealing with the same problems. Plato understood the power that music had in affecting the lives and nation of the Greek people. He wrote in his Republic: “The introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state: since styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions” [Plato, Republic, 424c].

Aristotle also spoke of music’s power: “Music directly represents the passions or states of the soul — gentleness, anger, courage, temperance . . . if one listens to the wrong kind of music he will become the wrong kind of person; but conversely, if he listens to the right kind of music he will tend to become the right kind of person” [Aristotle, Politics, 8, 1430]. . . .

The Muzak Corporation has cashed in on the mind-controlling aspects of music. You can’t miss it in your doctor’s office, the mall, or in an elevator. They know that music is not neutral, for they have declared that “unlike drugs, music affects us psychologically and physiologically without invading the bloodstream. The subtle influence of music has been harnessed in programs providing controlled stimulus progression for people at work and play” [Dr. J. Keenan, Research Notes, Muzak Corp., 1976]. No wonder Muzak can claim that your department store sales will be considerably higher if you are using the right music!

Intelligent composers and arrangers of music believe that your emotions and though patterns can be triggered and manipulated by music alone. The effectiveness of those who write music is directly related to an understanding of music theory. Serious, eternal music is written by those who have done their homework in the area of music theory. If music is neutral, then there is no reason for a music student to study long hours analyzing the works of the masters to see what and how they were communicating through their craft and skills.