by the Addams Family revival movement in architecture.
Several attitudes have led WELS into the Slough of Despond. One is the Wah-wah-tosa bewitchment. The original intentions were not so bad, but now the current products of The Sausage Factory use the Good Old Days as an excuse to avoid all doctrinal study, because "we only need Lenski, the Triglotta, and boxer shorts." The Triglotta is never opened and Lenski is panned for being wrong on justification by faith. The jury is still out on the boxer shorts.
Wisconsin pastors always use the Adiaphora as an excuse to do whatever they want, although "whatever they want" is consistently in line with Baptist and Pentecostal practices.
They miss the whole point of the article. When a minor point of practice (an adiaphoron - matter of indifference) is being used to promote false doctrine, then confessional Lutherans are bound to avoid--or bound to practice--that very thing.
This issue developed during Melanchthon's compromising attitude toward the Interims, when he tried to please the Romanists by giving in on what was called adiaphora.
Now the WELS pastors have dumped the liturgy, the Creeds, and sound Lutheran hymns in favor of appearing and sounding just like the Deformed pastors they envy. Every little point is an adiaphoron, they claim, so nothing is left. Somehow they even justify plagiarizing the sermons of false teachers, wolves in sheep's clothing, more likely - faded bluejeans and a Mickey Mouse t-shirt.
The Key Passage, Book of Concord, Formula of Concord, Adiaphora:
10] We believe, teach, and confess also that at the time of confession [when a confession of the heavenly truth is required], when the enemies of God's Word desire to suppress the pure doctrine of the holy Gospel, the entire congregation of God, yea, every Christian, but especially the ministers of the Word, as the leaders of the congregation of God [as those whom God has appointed to rule His Church], are bound by God's Word to confess freely and openly the [godly] doctrine, and what belongs to the whole of [pure] religion, not only in words, but also in works and with deeds; and that then, in this case, even in such [things truly and of themselves] adiaphora, they must not yield to the adversaries, or permit these [adiaphora] to be forced upon them by their enemies, whether by violence or cunning, to the detriment of the true worship of God and the introduction and sanction of idolatry. 11] For it is written, Gal. 5:1: Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not again entangled in the yoke of bondage. Also Gal. 2:4f : And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage; to whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour, that the truth of the Gospel might continue with you. 12] [Now it is manifest that in that place Paul speaks concerning circumcision, which at that time had become an adiaphoron (1 Cor. 7:18f.), and which at other occasions was observed by Paul (however, with Christian and spiritual freedom, Acts 16:3). But when the false apostles urged circumcision for establishing their false doctrine, (that the works of the Law were necessary for righteousness and salvation,) and misused it for confirming their error in the minds of men, Paul says that he would not yield even for an hour, in order that the truth of the Gospel might continue unimpaired.]
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GJ - This is a time when no Lutheran church should ever appear to be Romanist or Reformed/Pentecostal, not even in the most minor details. To excuse praise bands and aping Andy Stanley as cutting edge evangelism is just plain tom-foolery.
The true legalists are those law-salesmen who really believe that they can reproduce a Lutheran version of Willow Creek by following the Willow Creek laws and joining the Willow Creek Association (as Parlow, Kelm, and Trapp have done). They only reproduce a third-rate version of a liberal, anti-confessional, soon to be Unitarian congregation. They are not shining the Gospel light but spreading falsehood behind a glistening screen of lies. Their Father Below is proud of their work.
