I'm With the Plagiarist: CFW Walther Shirts

Preus-Otten-McCain-Barry

Justification in Rome is not a travelogue. Where is the UOJ?

Norwegian Pietists were hot for UOJ, but Robert Preus finally repudiated it in his last book.

Norman Teigen provided this link about the LCMS wars. The review is from Day Star, not exactly the confessional redoubt of Missouri. Still, it contains plenty of information and some dubious facts. America really favors liberalism, according to the article. That would have surprised Reagan.

I have met or known most of the main characters: Herman Otten, his sister Marie Meyer, David Scaer, Waldo Werning, Carl Hofmeyer, Fred Rutz Sr, Ralph Bohlmann, Al Barry, and that Jesuit Paul McCain.

Otten and his group played politics and won a few battles, losing the war.

The most effective weapon is the Word, which is hardly used. The WELS district meetings will probably be proxy fights, with people hoping everyone gets the hint about what they are saying on the floor or in conversations. It is a mortal sin to be direct in WELS, scaring the apostates half to death. More obviously, it makes them resentful, and they get even.

Meanwhile, it is no sin to copy directly the so-called sermons of Babtists who deny the efficacy of the Word, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, baptismal regeneration, and infant faith. Their attitude toward Holy Communion is the same - denying the Sacrament, denying forgiveness.

This week I am teaching an MA class about plagiarism and copyright laws. When a minister publishes a sermon on the Net or anywhere else, it is copyrighted by default. When another minister copies that sermon, changing a few words, and publishes/preaches it as his own, he is a liar, a thief, and a plagiarist. WELS does absolutely nothing about that.

But dare to question Holy Mother WELS...

Money Changer - It's My Potty and I'll Cry If I Want To

More bad news for the Church and Money Changers
mark has left a new comment on your post "Too Little and Too Late?":

Notice how few readers Jackson has these days?

Maybe it's because he's to (sic) angry to do any good. Or maybe because he's wrong?

Well at least no one's reading the site anymore.

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GJ - Exactly how does this illiterate son of WELS know how many readers I have? My only source is Google Analytics. I trust he does not have the secret password for those statistics.

In the last year I have had 56,000+ unique readers.

Over 350,000 pages have been read.

Comments decreased when people realized they would be tracked for their unique identities. Some had trouble getting OpenID to work. Still, comments come in and I get more personal email than ever before.

Too Little and Too Late?

This WELS pastor loves Leonard Sweet.*

Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "Proxy War":

The question is whether the apostates can be converted or expelled by the politeness of the Intrepid Lutherans.

This is one half of the issue. Can they convert those who are manipulating the Synod and laity, to achieve their New Age Emergent success, with polite discourse on issues that are a result of the core problems and not the core problems themselves? Note that the apostates who have ushered in the New Age doctrines and practices have been exposed to and confronted with the refutations of their actions with Scripture and the Confessions by concerned laity, and have at one time taken an oath to uphold the teachings of Scripture and the BOC before. They have already rejected these for the wisdom and success of men.

The other half of the issue is the laity. Can the IL overcome the effect of doing nothing for years by discussing the fringe effects of the core problems? Can it be accomplished without offending anyone? Without giving specific examples? IL is waging a gentle 30 year campaign in a war that has been waging for years and will be over in 5-10 - it may already be over. Combine that with the fact that the majority of the (W)ELS clergy and laity take their sole lead on what to believe and confess from the authority of the Synod and not Scripture and the Confessions. The fact that IL represents only a few hearty souls means that the laity will feel far safer following the same old path than to take a chance on Scripture and the Confessions. Fear replaces faith and the (W)ELS have destroyed faith with their central doctrine of UOJ. Unless IL starts at the central article of Christian faith they will simply be rearranging the chairs and ironing the linen on the Titanic.

This is not to say that Scriptural and Confessional efforts are without benefit as God works through the Means of Grace alone and the Word purely taught and Sacraments rightly distributed always work to either harden sinful hearts or create contrition and saving faith in those God has called by His grace. The application of the medicine needs to exceed the extent of the infection.

*Leonard Sweet is also adored by Paul Calvin Kelm and the president of Our Lady of Sorrows, St. Louis.

Proxy War

The Lutheran synods have become a house of cards.

Herman Otten recently decried Lutheran groups splitting, but he comes from the era of synods modeled after General Motors - a fact well known about the LCA corporate structure. The LCA, now ELCA, has gone the way of GM.

Someone asked about Intrepid Lutherans and the discussions on the liturgy.

In WELS especially, every battle is a proxy war. The real topic is not the subject mentioned. It stands for something else.

Those emphasizing liturgy are criticizing Church and Change. They imply this without saying it.

For Church and Change, promoting the liturgy is a legalistic stance, their way of dismissing the confessional Lutherans as false teachers. They imply this without saying it.

The Church and Money Changers are nasty, unscrupulous, dishonest, and greedy. Their love of false doctrine is exceeded only by their lust for loot.

The question is whether the apostates can be converted or expelled by the politeness of the Intrepid Lutherans.

I see three positive signs, in spite of my general gloom (based on the evidence) about Lutherans in general:

1. WELS laity and pastors are working together in the open and expressing themselves on a group blog.
   
2. The Anything Goes district is giving the Book of Concord as a confirmation gift. That is like finding out that the Billy Graham Crusade is reprinting What Luther Says.
   
3. WELS is promoting the Confessions from the top down, a complete reversal from the apostate leadership of the last 33 years, when Ron Roth's Church Growth was allowed to sow its toxic seed.

WELS is tiny, so changing direction is more a case of digging one oar in a little harder.

WELS and Missouri have abandoned the Confessions so long that people are hungering for something doctrinal rather than listening to practical advice from the Babtists and New Agers.

That will put pressure on the Little Sect to have doctrinal leadership. Orvick and Pope John were both products of the WELS CG faction.

Ruling Norm and Ruled Norm

Knapp is saying, "I'm with the plagiarist."


John has left a new comment on your post "Un-Emerging Theology Book Given to Confirmands in ...":

WELS Church Lady says: "...our friends at CPH allowed for the word objective justification. No place in the body of the book is this term mentioned. Needless to say it is not found in the Concordia Triglotta."

Isn't Scripture the norm?

Aren't there many things that the Book of Concord does not address, specifically?

Does the Book of Concord specifically address abortion?

I am not commenting here on any subject other than what the norm is.

John

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GJ - Scripture is the ruling norm, while the Confessions are the ruled norm.

Lutherans are the only ones with a coherent, harmonious confession of faith, but the BoC is neglected by all the synods today.

Father Neuhaus called himself a confessional Lutheran, right up to the point where he became a Roman Catholic priest. He was an ELCA pastor when he called himself confessional. I wrote to him, "You are really just less liberal, not confessional." He conceded that point.

John is flirting with the logical fallacy called the "argument from silence." There is no OJ content in the BoC. What people claim for that is always another passage about the Atonement of Christ.

The argument from silence has been used for Preus' Justification and Rome, where UOJ is clearly repudiated. I would love to see the original manuscript, before Dan and Rolf Preus got their UOJ hands on it. Nevertheless, the doctrine of justification by faith alone comes through clearly.

There is only one justification, justification by faith, as Preus wrote.

UOJ Stormtroopers are avoiding two key issues:

1. George Knapp invented double-justification, which is a testament to the Calvinistic basis of Pietism.
   
2. Robert Preus repudiated his earlier stance in favor of UOJ.

There may be UOJ fans who tell the truth, but I have not found one yet.