Slouching Toward Constantinople: Turn East!

Father Rutowicz no longer links to the Confessional Lutheran Marian monastery, cited earlier on Ichabod. The link does not work.

The Augustana Ministerium, not to be confused with the Augustana Ministerium:

“The Challenge of Eastern Orthodoxy”

and

“Sanctification and Modes of Communication”

Augustana Ministerium Second Annual Theological Conference

August 30-31, 2007

“Eastern Orthodoxy and Lutheranism on Original Sin,” by Rev. John Rutowicz, Part 1 Part 2

“Eastern Orthodoxy and Lutheranism on Justification,” by Rev. David Juhl, Part 1 Part 2

“Eastern Orthodoxy and Lutheranism on Sanctification/Theosis,” by Rev. Gary Gehlbach, Part 1 Part 2

“Sanctification: What Is It? What Causes It? What Are its Consequences?” by Rev. Dr. Steven Hein

“Modes of Communication in the Ministry of the Gospel,” by Rev. Robert Schaibley

GJ - An Eastern Orthodoxy advocate is not amused.
***

GJ - This reminds me of the Panel Discussion on the Church Growth Movement, Mequon Sasusage Factory, 1987, led by such Fuller luminaries as Paul Kelm, Lawrence Otto Olson, David Valleskey, etc. etc. Paul Y. Cho received fulsome praise and adoration. Criticism of Church Growth was received with smirks.

Note below from Cyberstones:

Re: Infant Communion - weedon
I don't think many of us are actually advocating for the immediate move to infant communion - we know and love our parishes and our people, and we know what such advocacy would do to our churches. But we are advocating for the freedom to discuss this and explore the matter - a matter which many of us think the Reformation fathers did not put on the front burner, and therefore did not do justice to. One cannot but be struck in the discussion between Andreae and Jeremias II how Andreae builds his entire case on a reading of 1 Cor. that Luther disallows; or how Andreae can say that we do not NEED to commune the baptized infants because they spiritually eat of Christ by faith, never even taking note that it was exactly this "spiritually eating of Christ by faith" which according to the Formula is the very grounds for a beneficial oral eating. These are matters which the CTCR in its report simply did not deal with, and they need to be looked at. Not in the heat of someone pressing the Church to change on this over night, but in the calm and reasoned and prayerful discussion of the Scriptures by which the Holy Spirit leads the Church to an ever deeper appropriation of the faith once delivered to the saints.
Mar 30, 2007 13:32:44 Re: Infant Communion - Gary Gehlbach
Fr. Weedon, thank you for your well-reasoned comments. You said it much better than I could.

GVG
Mar 30, 2007 17:53:42 Re: Infant Communion - weedon
Fr. Gehlbach,

What I presented was nothing but a condensation of the arguments you have assembled and helpfully presented for all to read. For that the Church owes you a debt of gratitude indeed.

Mar 30, 2007 07:24:48 Re: Infant Communion - Gary Gehlbach
Bill, your analysis is spot on. In the CTCR response to Circuits 18 & 19, it asserts that advocates of infant communion are making the two sacrament equivocal to each other. Yet, that is exactly what it does in its own response. The CTCR dismisses 2000 years of Church history as being irrelevant, yet asserts the importance of the past 150 years of the LCMS. It plays word games by asserting that a person can be "worthy" yet receive the sacrament "unworthily."

For more information on infant communion and links to several LCMS documents, I would refer folks to my website. It has references and links to all sorts of papers on infant communion.

GVG
Mar 30, 2007 08:18:21 Re: Infant Communion - Rev.PTM
Gary, I know that you personally are really "into" the whole infant communion thing. If so, I urge you to take your views very public and post them on your blog site along with all supporting documentation for your position and then's let's have an open debate over it. Subject your position to that scrutiny.

You are going to have a tough row to hoe though trying to reinterpret the Confessions and Scriptures and appealing to a couple of pastor's papers isn't going to cut the old mustard.

Mar 30, 2007 10:11:34 Re: Infant Communion - Gary Gehlbach
I should take it public? Apparently, my website isn't public, although it has been one of the top search results under Google and only recently overtaken by wikipedia and paedocommunion.com. I lost my top listing when we changed ISPs last year.

Several pastors' papers may not "cut the mustard" in your opinion. But the opponents' arguments are weak and don't cut the muster with Scripture and the Confessions.

The topic of infant communion is an open question. Luther and the Reformers never condemned the Eastern Churches on this topic. (Oh, right that is an argument from silence; but it is still a valid point.) Oh, yes, I'm "into" discussing infant communion. Unlike others who simply wish to pontificate their opinions and bully others into submission.

Paul, believe it or not, I want to discuss the issue (my website lists articles both pro and con) and have been discussing it for years. And besides, the real issue behind the infant communion discussion is whether or not infants have faith or if they must have adult faith to be worthy. All the arguments against infant communion (even the CTCR's) indicate that there are two types of faith -- adult faith and infant faith. I find this most offensive and contrary to the Scripture and the Confessions.

You ask in another place whether I commune infants. No, it is not in the western tradition I inherited. But as with all traditions, it must continually tested by Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions.

GJ - Click here for Pastor Gehlbach's Infant Communion Mega-site.

***

GJ - The recently resussitated Augustana Ministerium seems to be the farm team for ELDONA. Both are intent on imitating the Eastern Orthodox as much as possible. One Ft. Wayne student dismissed concerns about crypto-Romanism as "just a matter of polity." Likewise, Church Growth is not doctrine but "just a few useful ideas," in the words of Church Growth Enthusiast David Valleskey.

In fact, both trends are Enthusiasm, one hiding in a cloud of incense, the other behind the latest marketing surveys.

Episcopal Tolerance

LIBERALS FRAME DEBATE FORCING ORTHODOX TO DEFEND THEMSELVES

Commentary

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
11/22/2007

Whenever liberals excoriate the orthodox for holding to "rigid positions" on sexuality, they do it by making conservatives look fundamentalist, uninclusive, lacking diversity, while ignoring the real issues like poverty, HIV/AIDS and a woman's right to free abortion.

Liberals and pansexualists also want to make it very clear, and underscore, that if the Anglican Communion splits it is the fault of narrow-minded conservatives who can't see beyond the end of their moral and theological noses. If they would just rediscover the big tent of Anglicanism with its Via Media approach to just about everything, all will be well and all manner of things will be well.

The man who comes in for the most bashing and vitriol is Peter Akinola, Archbishop of Nigeria. Now if Akinola were an African-American, white liberals would never dare say the things about him that they say and get away with because he is ensconced in Africa and does not have access to America's legal system. Bishops Spong, Griswold, Shaw, Bennison et all have all said things about Akinola and his fellow African bishops that would be deemed racist and subject to lawsuits were they spoken on US soil to a US African-American bishop. But they can say the things they do and know they can get away with because Akinola is a "fundamentalist" who lives in Africa, far from the litigious North American scene.

Pennsylvania Bishop Charles E. Bennison's memorable line likening the growth of the church in Africa to that of the Nazi Party will probably make the history books. On another occasion he called African Anglicans "extreme Anglicans." The majority is black and they are tied to the Church of England more than we are, he said. An enormous lie if ever there was one. Liberals and pansexualists are constantly pleading their case with one eye firmly fixed on the Archbishop of Canterbury, begging him to accept New Hampshire Gene Robinson to Lambeth next year regardless of what Dr. Williams might think about sodomy. American liberals would build an altar and sacrifice Akinola on it if it would guarantee an invitation for the homoerotic bishop of New Hampshire - and these people don't even believe in the atonement and the blood of Jesus to cleanse them from all their sins. But Akinola is certainly worth sacrificing for the greater cause of Anglican unity!

Something calling itself the Inclusive Church held their first conference in Derbyshire, England recently and Dr. Jenny Te Paa Principal of the College of St. John the Evangelist in Auckland, New Zealand, and a member of the 2003 Lambeth Commission, and someone assisting in the St Augustine's Seminar responsible for planning the detailed content for the forthcoming Lambeth Conference 2008 (talk about the loading dice for what the content of the Lambeth Conference will be) had this to say.

She condemned what she called the 'reach of enmity' among Anglicans. In a strong speech, Te Paa reminded her hearers "how pervasive the reach of enmity has become amongst us." She told her audience "not to notice the bad behavior of the few, but the good behavior of the many."

So who exactly are those who have enmity and who practice "bad behavior"? Mrs. Jefferts Schori and her legal pit bull David Booth Beers as they sue dioceses and parishes? I don't think so. Jon Bruno Bishop of Los Angeles who is repeatedly suing three orthodox parishes for their properties? I doubt it. What about uninclusive liberal dioceses that refuse to allow graduates from the evangelical Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry exercise their gospel ministry in their dioceses? Not a prayer. Or the 2,000 pansexualists in The Episcopal Church who are pounding the bricks for sodomy seven days a week in every parish and diocesan convention, bullying priests and bishops (look what Louie Crew had to say about SW Florida Bishop Dabney Smith recently). http://tinyurl.com/2b4n4p

Sodomists are TOTALLY RELENTLESS in their pursuit, read behavior, of inclusion. The Episcopal-recognized organization Integrity has its leader Susan Russell running to her computer at every opportunity to push LGBT issues to the forefront on every occasion she can. She is utterly and totally relentless to the point of viciousness in making sure that anyone, bishop or priest who stands in the way of the full inclusion of non-celibate sexual behavior in TEC is included in every statement. The only sexual behavior not to get a pass in The Episcopal Church is, of course, adultery.

Dr. Te Paa lamented the church's obsession with drawing lines that exclude, which is distracting us from the enormous suffering so many people face. We must not "fret and fight" while people are literally dying. Perhaps Mrs Te Paa should talk with Archbishop Bernard Malango of Central Africa whose province is being torn apart over sexuality issues. This province is dying not because of poverty or HIV/AIDS but the relentless pursuit of sodomite acceptance by a bishop and a wannabe English cleric who wants to be a bishop resulting in the destruction of an entire province.

The only people drawing the lines in the Anglican culture wars are liberals and pansexualists. THEY not the orthodox have drawn the lines (of exclusion) demanding full acceptance of a behavior that the church in 2,000 years has never endorsed by the vast majority of Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Evangelicals of all stripes.

At the same conference the Revd Canon Giles Goddard, chair of Inclusive Church, said, "We are not a pressure group of the like-minded." He added, "We are ordinary Anglicans who love our church, and we are deeply concerned by the way in which the effort to exclude is overtaking the calling to live the Gospel."

That's a downright lie at least in the American Episcopal Church. No group has done more pressuring than Integrity, and the few hundred LGBT folk use every diocesan convention, and for the last 25 years, every General Convention, to pressure the Episcopal Church into accepting their abominable behavior. It is a fiction to say otherwise.

Their tactics are nothing short of Stalinist. First preach, change a few lay people and priests' minds, raise unholy hell, convince a few bishops, then coerce the rest. When the rest don't follow, pass a resolution demanding they do, then bully them, scream at them (you can take lessons from Jack Spong, Gene Robinson or Walter Righter) and then set out to destroy those who don't share the now "majority" opinion. Is it any wonder whole dioceses are fleeing the Episcopal Church. How much more should they take from "tolerant" liberals, read revisionists?

A case in point is women's ordination. What was initially a matter of conscience is now fully accepted and DEMANDED in The Episcopal Church. And if you don't conform you will be hounded out of the church. Just ask Ft. Worth Bishop Jack Iker and what he has had to put up with for the sake of his conscience on this issue. It has been nothing but misery in the way he has been beaten up by a single laywoman in his diocese who gets full liberal media attention and support from the national church whenever she opens her mouth.

One only has to scan liberal Episcopal bloggers to read the nastiness and anger at anyone who opposes the pansexual agenda of the Episcopal Church. It is a sight to behold. Their anger and vitriol would fill volumes. The informal HOB/D Listserv which features mostly liberals commenting on church issues occasionally has an orthodox commentator. He is torn to shreds the moment he appears and dares to challenge the current zeitgeist.

Is it any wonder that in recent months three Episcopal bishops have fled to Rome, another has joined CANA (The Nigerian Anglican province) with bishops being consecrated in a half dozen African provinces with the Province of the Southern Cone now offering a safe place for fleeing orthodox dioceses. Two Canadian bishops have even leaped off the floundering Anglican Church of Canada for the spiritual safety of the Southern Cone.

The Inclusive Church crowd meeting in Derbyshire concluded with this statement: "180 people have gathered here at a time in which many people are concerned that the generous tolerance which has characterized Anglicanism is under serious threat from those who wish to divide the church."

GENEROUS TOLERANCE! Mrs. Tee Pa comes from the province of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia that is more than 70% liberal. There is only one orthodox Anglican diocesan holdout in the whole country - Nelson - and I am told that there is now contention in this diocese over the issues. The Province doesn't have to "tolerate" orthodox folk; like the Borg, most opposition has been stifled or absorbed.

If Anglican unity is being threatened it is being threatened by its innovators not by those who stand for the 'faith once delivered for all to the saints'. It is people like Robinson, Bennison, Bruno, Crew, Shaw, Schori, the majority of Episcopal bishops and laymen like Louie Crew who want to change the church's received teaching to make it conform to their desires.

Don't blame orthodox Episcopalians, or evangelicals like Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen, or Recife Bishop Robinson Cavilcanti (who has still not received an invitation to Lambeth next year) while his liberal counterparts in Brazil have, or the CAPA bishops in Africa, or Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan. These men are KEEPING the faith not destroying it. Tolerance for sexual sin is not on their agenda, and they fear the eternal destiny of the immortal souls of those who don't repent. They will not join them.

To paraphrase: "Woe unto you, sodomites and self-righteous liberals, hypocrites! For you destroy the orthodox, and for a pretence preach inclusion and diversity: therefore you shall receive the greater damnation...Woe unto you, for you compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves."

Woe indeed.

Informal UOJ Research

Church Growth Guru,
Reviewing His UOJ Stormtroopers

A layman interviewed some conservative Lutheran clergy and asked them about Universal Objective Justification, the notion that God absolved the world of sin the moment Christ died (or the moment He rose from the dead). UOJ standard bearers have trouble establishing the Moment of Absolution.

Several clergy replied, "UOJ is another word for the Atonement." The layman said, "Read the Brief Statement." They looked at the words or heard them repeated and said, "That's not right."

My point is that most people, hearing the plain words of Scripture, believe what is revealed - that Christ died for the sins of the world, that this forgiveness comes to them through the Word of the Gospel received in faith.

Only certain clergy cling to UOJ. They are closely associated with the Church Growth Movement in conservative circles, with a more honest Universalism in the ELCA.

Recently some clergy were organizing some kind of independent group, with some laity in attendance. They tried to foist their UOJ on the crowd, only to be clobbered by the clear, plain words of the Bible and the Book of Concord.
I think UOJ--which came recently from Pietism, via Walther--was the turning point for Lutherans in North America. Other fads contributed (evolution, imaginative text criticism, promiscuous translations appearing on a weekly basis) but UOJ has short circuited and undermined the Gospel itself.

Nota bene:

1. UOJ leaders are unionists who have no trouble studying at Fuller Seminary and Willow Creek, as long as their associates help them in denying the obvious.
   
2. UOJ favorite theologians are Waldo Werning, Kent Hunter, Leonard Sweet, Martin Marty, and David Valleskey.
   
3. UOJ leaders show contempt for the Book of Concord.
   
4. UOJ leaders have worked unashamedly with ELCA leaders on joint worship and evangelism programs.
   
5. UOJ leaders defend their position with hysterical attacks against those who prefer justification by faith.
   
6. UOJ leaders deceive the simple by calling the article on justification "the chief article..." just before attacking the central doctrine of the Book of Concord.
   
7. Conservative Lutherans have fallen into rapid decline with the steady rise of UOJ and its favorite malady, the Church Growth Movement, aka the Purpose-Driven Church, aka Becoming Missional.