The Intrepids are showing some leadership by bringing up adiaphora.
More basic to getting justification right is returning to the Lutheran Confessions. I am not sure justification by faith can be discussed intelligently - as long as conference papers by nitwits and faculty books by politicians are the norma normans (ruling norm) of doctrine. Missouri has the same problem, of course. So does the Little Sect. Missouri decided that 1932 was the high point in Lutheran theology and made that particular Brief Statement (among others) their ultimate statement. For some reason, the ELS also agrees with that peculiar and anti-Confessional attitude.
WELS continues to use the adiaphora term to excuse doing whatever they wanted, especially when it came to imitating the worship of Enthusiasts. The Doctrinal Pussycats are quick to latch onto this, showing how unqualified they are to lead.
For example, DP Buchholz continues to "work on" the Church and Change parish, CrossWalk, after three years of muttering threats. The only result has been Gunn and two members elevated to the board of Willowcreek's Liberal College in Milwaukee. And CrossWalk is not even a WELS congregation (unless they slipped it in, without emailing me first).
Buchholz claims there is no Universalism in WELS, but he gave convention paper where he taught Universalism. And that was supposed to be a critique of Kokomo Universalism.
Therefore, the qualifications for a WELS DP not only include "knowing not" but also "knowing not that he knows not." The phrasing is kelmed from Plato, who foresaw people looking at shadows of figures inside the cave as reality and resisting looking outside into the sun. The cave analogy should be called the WELS analogy.
The Key Point of Adiaphora
Those who use adiaphora to justify their spikey hair, jeans, and bad pop music are only proving they have never read the Confessions with discernment.
Since this adiaphora evasion was used during the Interim period, when the Romanists were dominant, the Formula of Concord clearly shows that these so-called matters of indifference may NOT be used during a doctrinal crisis when those rituals are associated with false teachers.
When Olde Syn Conference pastors imitate Willow Creek, Mars Hill, Granger, and NorthPoint, they are violating the Formula of Concord. They clearly identify with those Enthusiasts in worship style and in doctrine. To prove my point, Glende and Ski and Parlow and many others have given the sermons of the Enthusiasts, often verbatim. Doctrinal retreaters like Englebrecht support it.
This one passage shows that the Olde Syn Conference leaders have been and remain in violation of the Formula of Concord, no matter what they claim about their quia subscription to the Book of Concord.
Article X, Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration
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.
