Sometimes I stop at various Lutheran websites to see if there is any content worth reading. The explanation for the excess of opinion and poverty of thought was published recently in an article about modern writers and Herman Melville.
Tragically, I have lost the link for now. The writer argued that the great authors of the past were well read in literature. Lost is the notion that someone should be immersed in the classics in order to offer something of value to their readers.
Tolkien and Lewis, who were colleagues, studied European literature, published scholarly articles, and wrote recent classics.
In comparison, Melville was not an academic, but he absorbed a vast amount of literature and reflected it in his writing. A free-thinker, Melville made the Bible the backbone of his Moby Dick narrative.
The original Thomas Wolfe (Harvard MA) tried to read every book existing and find unknown treasures. The modern Tom Wolfe earned a PhD at Yale.
Shakespeare (aka the Earl of Oxford) was the best educated individual in Europe and his patron, the Queen, was a close second, able to eviscerate an ambassador in classical Latin ex tempore. Oxford had the largest vocabulary of all English writers and invented many new words we still use (proto-Icha-slang). John Milton was second only to Oxford.
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| Although no one reads Ichabod, according to Fox Valley WELS, the center of Wisconsin intellectual life, this quotation has received over 51,000 views. |
Lest anyone be offended - although that is often my melancholy duty - I am not saying there is a direct relationship between academic honors and Lutheran theological acumen. Laity and pastors who understand the Luther quote correctly are schooled by the Holy Spirit and respectful of the Confessions.
But there is no substitute for study, whether it is the layman with his Bible and Book of Concord, or the pastor with his large library and the Internet as a vast supplement.
Modern writers, the lost article said, show no interest in producing anything except their own opinions. They have no grasp of the masterpieces of earlier ages and no interesting in learning from them. Lutherans seem content to indulge in promiscuous scribbling, unhindered by research.
Lutheran websites are so bad that I hardly know where to start:
1. The People's Republic of WELS is finishing an expensive building on its shrinking Martin Luther College campus so they can provide and teach daycare for children from the moment the tikes are separated from their placentas. Remember when we all complained about Red China doing that? Now it is a Lutheran ministry, a career, a vocation.
2. Paul McCain published another triple face-palm, where he showed Pope Gregory in his tiara, and actually credited an enormous copy-and-paste from the Catholic Encyclopedia. That makes McCain a Confessional Lutheran and a scholarly writer. And people wonder why he never finished a graduate degree, not even at a parochial seminary.
3. WELS-ELS-ELCA-LCMS, and the twitching fragments thereof, continue to teach rationalistic Pietistic UOJ while persecuting justification by faith. And they all consider their brand of sectarian Pietism to be orthodox (drumroll), confessional, Biblical (trumpets), Lutheranism. Just as they teach justification without faith, they offer Lutheranism without Luther. Do they quote Luther except in error? Have they read an entire Luther sermon with comprehension?
4. WELS and Missouri are following Rome in converting worship leadership into an all-woman event, which will definitely displace enough men to make the ELCA gambit work in WELS-LCMS.
