Pope Paul the Unlearned has started his own thread about Ichabod on LutherQueasy. He has three posts on that topic alone in one day. He must have been weaned too early, because nothing shows obsession more clearly than reading this blog simply to find more more posts to blog about.
Someone said, "Fame is a shuttlecock kept aloft by opposition," so I appreciate all the extra web attention.
How many Lutheran blogs have various would-be authors dedicated to this holy task?
I did reproduce an error in earlier posts. I gave McCain credit for three years as a nominal parish pastor while he worked with Herman Otten to get Al Barry elected Synod President. McCain's bio shows only two years in that position, carefully avoiding congregational work ever since.
A little bit of research shows almost the same wording used by Paul Without a Call, no matter who is the object of his wisdom. Someone who spent two extra years in seminary without earning a degree is rather special.
Some of you are thinking, "Oh, you mean his time-out and defenestration on the ALPB Online discussion forum?" Oh no, here is an example from a Roman Catholic, who ran into McCain's macro-wit. I do not mean giant wit, but saying the same thing every time, no matter what the topic is, regardless of the facts.
You can find McCain quoted here - Lutheran pastor (sic) and slander expert:
I have already made several replies to White's efforts. Rev. McCain wrote, for example, the following on a Lutheran blog, c. 22 March 2007:
Warning!His foil here is a Roman Catholic layman named Armstrong who self-published a book titled, "The One Minute Apologist."
Dave Armstrong is one of those sad persons who apparently spend (sic) nearly every waking moment on their (sic) Internet site. He is a Roman Catholic apologist who culls (sic) through the Internet looking for any chance he can to pounce on people who dare breathe a word of protest against what "Holy Mother" Rome has to say on anything. As is the case with most apologists like him, he tends to get his facts pretty screwed up.
If you engage him, it is akin to sticking your hand on flypaper, he and his groupies like to swarm.
He is the Roman version of a guy like James White, who has a similar style.
Dave Armstrong is not interested in "helpful discussion" but only attacking non-Romanists. I informed him that he is unwelcome to post on any of my blog sites. He only wants a platform to spread his false teachings. [he is welcome on my blog, any time]
Just a word of caution.
The Catholic blogger replied:
Nice try, but, um, no cigar. It is published by Sophia Institute Press, a very reputable and well known Catholic publishing house that specializes in classics (and I received an advance of $3000: that would be quite a feat indeed for a self-published book. Who would write the check, I wonder?). One would think that a "reviewer" could get his basic facts about the book reviewed straight, but no such luck.
This is in line with his [McCain's] stated antipathy to apologetics:
Perhaps we would do well to distinguish between apologetics and polemics. Lutherans have done polemics since the "we condemn" of the Lutheran Confessions. Apologetics? Not so much.
When I read Dave Armstrong's blog, or James White's blog, I frankly find myself getting bored, in a hurry. Both men are self-proclaimed and self-annointed [sic] "apologists" and yet they seem to spend a lot of their time attacking other apologists and arguing with how other apologists argue, and then debating who said what, about what, when, and where, etc. It is really finally absurd.
I think Lutherans much prefer simply to proclaim, and confess, and teach and let the truth speak for itself.
That is not to say that we do not do polemics. This is a perfectly fine and even necessary thing to do, but apologetics? Well, like I said, not so much.
It seems that Rev. McCain's impulse to finally mention me on his blog has something to do with a marked dislike of my person. On the same discussion thread (the next day) he "proclaimed":
By the way, this particular post and thread has set Dave "I'm a Roman Catholic apologist" Armstrong off on what can only be described as a temper tantrum becoming a three year old. It is however a very good illustration with the problem of most of this on-line "apologetics" work going on. Dave tried to bait me into an argument, one of his favorite tactics, and then failing to do that he didn't take kindly to some observations I made about his blog site and his apologetics methodologies and then the mud really started to fly.
Armstrong is a convert from what he calls "Evangelicalism" though admitted to be a member of an ELCA congregatio[n] at some point or another. Now, as is so often the case, he must breathlessly, with near desperation, "defend" Romanism against any perceived slight. The funny thing is that he can't see that the very things he finds as faults with others and how they express themselves, are all precisely the same way he conducts his "apologetics ministry" only at about a multiplying factor of ten.
It finally gives me a good case of the giggles.
***
GJ - Many more examples can be found elsewhere.
