I was in a special chem-physics class in high school. My lab partner earned a PhD in math. Another friend in class earned a PhD in rocket science. A third student won a full scholarship at Yale College. The class taught me that chemistry was more than filling the house with smoke from a Gilbert Chemistry set and having my parents yell down the basement steps, "What are doing down there? It smells like Hell!" That was the burning sulfur.
Much later, a tour of the Dow analytical chemistry labs in Midland, Michigan taught me that the key to identifying chemicals was getting them excited and reading how the ingredients responded. I wrote about this before, but some of you have not memorized all 7,000 posts yet.
Doctrinal polemics are quite similar. If I ask someone what he really teaches (exciting the ingredients) his response will tell me what the actual components are. Lutherans do this without shame or shyness. The Pietists loathe doctrinal discussions unless they can agree to all disbelieve together - true unity.
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| Chemnitz was a master polemicist and the senior Concordist. Few Lutheran pastors know or appreciate his work. |
About 20 years ago, a WELS pastor told me that he could barely organize a theology conference. No one wanted to admit that their little group was all over the place. Two more decades of neglect have only made things worse.
When Mark Schroeder was elected Synod President, replacing the fleeing ex-SP, I suggested a thorough study of the Book of Concord by all congregations. Needless to say, no one wanted to do that. The pastors are trained against the Confessions, returning the ministerium to the time when the first SP called the confessions "paper fences." Bading and Hoenecke changed that - Bading at Historic St. John's, Hoenecke at the seminary.
The fake blog is emitting panic signals, which I take to be reflective of the general state of the Changer leadership. Although they have hidden away in plain site, now they are easily identified. Their hideous doctrine is revealed and UOJ is understood as anti-Gospel rather than immutable Gospel truth. Worst of all - for the Changers - WELS members have done the research and helped put together a coherent portrait of UOJ.
Recent discussions revealed how Jay Webber was willing to quote an out-of-the-closet Pietist against Chemnitz.
The Calvinist-Pietist bloodline is UOJ, the Holy Spirit divorced from the Word and Sacrament, efficacy coming from chance or the clever methods of man.
The Biblical Lutheran bloodline is justification by faith alone, the Holy Spirit working through the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace.
Any person can ask the right questions and get the pastors, seminary professors, and synod drones to emit signals. Those signals clearly show where they belong in the universe of confessions.
I am not asking anyone to agree with me. I am not the ruling norm (the Scriptures), and not the ruled norm (Confessions). Debate means that people are awake and ware about the Confessions. That will determine where someone is. Those who loathe the Confessions and find them boring are the Pietists. They may believe now but they are on the way to Unitarianism or Pentecostalism, the two routes of Enthusiasm.
I am simply following John 16:8, where the Holy Spirit rebukes and convicts - You do not utterly trust in Jesus. How strange to have "conservative" Lutheran pastors enraged by John 16:8, by Luther, by the orthodox Lutheran writers.
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LutherRocks has left a new comment on your post "Thoughts on Analytical Chemistry - From a Non-Chem...":
Solid. These are the kind of posts that keep an orthodox Lutheran grounded; the kind that I have always appreciated...even when I was on the other side of that fence so to speak. All the Fake-O-Bodians have to offer when presented with such is ad hominem...
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GJ - Joe, few of us were born with the Triglotta in one hand and the Weimar edition of Luther in the other. Doctrinal turmoil makes us hunger and thirst for the truth, and the Word fills us accordingly.
