Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "WELS Stands Alone In Allowing the NNIV, Raising th...":
Far from raising the question I believe it provides a definitive answer!
Brett Meyer has left a new comment on your post "WELS Stands Alone In Allowing the NNIV, Raising th...":
But the point is moot since the WELS has a long and active history of excommunicating clergy and laity who teach and confess in harmony with Scripture, that men are justified solely by faith in Christ alone. Faithful Pastor Paul Rydecki being the most recent.
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GJ - WELS will excommunicate over anything. Years ago they excommunicated nine members for objecting to WELS using government funds when it was the expressed policy to oppose using government money.
They kicked out pastors for criticizing the NIV.
One pastor, still active, visited a family and told them, "You have criticized the upcoming WELS hymnal, so you are no longer in fellowship and no longer members."
I could list many more examples of their abusive behavior, without mentioning the criminal acts.
Those who defend WELS behavior are just as guilty, since they enable even more of the same. The abuse starts in the synod president's office and infiltrates the rest of the sect. Mark Schroeder is a product of that system and a practitioner.
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Ben Wink has left a new comment on your post "WELS Stands Alone In Allowing the NNIV, Raising th...":
http://www.amazon.com/Joseph-Smiths-New-Translation-Bible/dp/0830900322/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375533127&sr=8-1&keywords=joseph+smith%27s+new+translation+of+the+bible
So this is a mite extreme but I have to make a point about it. It is a translation of the Bible. Is it God's Word? Oh sure, there's discernment now, but what about later?
What if Biblical truths get watered down with whatever translation fits whatever agenda? Chances are, I will never learn Greek and I will never learn Hebrew. I have to rely on a translation like most laypersons. For years in WELS it was the KJV, then the NIV. We had it engrained in our minds that other translations were inadequate. The ESV, the NLT, the NASB, and whatever other alphabet soup was mentioned as not being as great as the NIV was.
Now that shifted apparently and these translations and others are all good now? I want to be wrong, but I shudder when our own convention says that all translations are all just the cat's meow now.
This just reeks of a backdoor way to get the NNIV approved above all other translations. It is a foregone conclusion that NPH will only use the NNIV. Other church bodies, even those that WELS is in fellowship with such as ELS, have turned NNIV down. Even the more "liberal" church bodies as defined through WELS terminology, such as LCMS and the Southern Baptists, have rejected this translation. What does this tell anyone?
I'm sure there are plenty of people that are scared to speak out because they value their jobs and want to keep providing food on their tables. I think there were plenty of uninformed people that stick with the "Well, they are pastors..." mentality and never questioned and went with the flow.
I have to ask the question regarding all of these changes: who benefits? I'm just enough of a cynical realist to know there are some huge stakes involved here.
The unanswered question is why doesn't the synod do their own translation? There are people qualified to evaluate a translation but there is no one qualified to help make one? Doesn't that set off any warning bells?
Going back to the original languages is crucial. During all my time at MLC, we had it impressed upon us daily that learning the Greek and Hebrew is so very important in understanding the Lord's Word. But apparently there isn't anyone in this synod that knows the languages well enough to make a synodical translation. Why make ourselves prisoners of other costly translations when the synod could make their own?
This entire debacle is disheartening. Instead of at least making a definitive stand and decision regarding a translation, it was waffled. We received this loosey goosey nonsense about rainbows and puppy dogs and that every translation is God's Word. And now that door is open and the toothpaste is out of the tube.
God help us, because we certainly cannot help ourselves.
