Lutheran Doctrine versus Pietism. Never the Twain Shall Meet

A Pietist priest complained about cat graphics.
Here is another one to fuel his self-righteous anger.

I could write a longish essay or shortish book on this. For now I will summarize the differences.

Lutheran doctrine is not a brand, not a denomination. Lutheran doctrine is clearly defined in the Book of Concord as Biblical teaching directly from the Scriptures and supported by the Scriptures, with additional backing from the early Church Fathers. Luther is the key theologian because of his clear Biblical teaching and preaching about Justification by Faith Alone.

Pietism originated with Spener, who was influenced by Roman Catholic cells and Calvinism. Pietism was a deliberate blending of Lutheran doctrine and Calvinism, so it was post-Reformation and alien to the Lutheran Reformation. All American Protestant and Lutheran denominations came from Pietism, as part of Pietism's missionary emphasis. Spener is the key figure because of his organizing ability and prolific writing, with an emphasis on developing piety through the small group (cell, Bible study, conventical. prayer, care, share, koinonia group). Pietism is founded on doctrinal indifference and an emphasis on works.

The Christian Church is a gathering church, using the Means of Grace to plant and sustain faith in individuals. Worship is man receiving grace and forgiveness through the invisible Word of preaching and teaching, the visible Word of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

Pietism is a gathered church, where people must meet certain standards lest they be excluded. Sermons are about how evil the outside world is, especially those with some relationship to the group, but how holy and wonderful the group is, since they are so selective in their fellowship. Pietists have long faces, long beards, and short tempers, like their exemplars - the Pharisees. They are forever pounding the sins of others with the hammer of the Law.

Sincere Christian believers rejoice in the treasures of the Gospel, knowing that they can never exhaust the spiritual wisdom of the Scriptures or the best of the Reformation theologians.

Pietism glorifies its works and looks for material proof of its superiority. That may include large buildings, huge gatherings, balanced budgets, large endowments, spartan hair-shirt simplicity, or splendid robes, incense, copes, mitres, chasubles, berets, and crosiers. Titles are fraught with meaning, and everyone knows the implication of those titles.

The Christian Gospel teaches people that the Holy Spirit forgives sin through the Gospel Word daily, freely and fully. As Luther wrote, God forgives not just the trivial sins and the ones we think we can conquer, but also the great and terrible sins.

Pietism invents sins and elevates them to mortal sins, sins for shunning and excommunication, with the end result of trivializing actual sin. Therefore, people feel guilty for buying Girl Scout cookies or hosting a Cubs group, but they laugh away the criminal actions of their denominational leaders. Murder and child porn never happen among the Pure and the Perfect. Anyone who reports the truth has already "broken fellowship with us." Attitudes are also punished. As Northwestern Publishing House wrote me, "We will not publish Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant until you change your attitude about WELS." Previously, CLP was scheduled for printing by NPH, but my criticism of Church Growth wounded their tender feelings.

The true Christian Church is a gathering church, so the pastors and congregations emphasize the Means of Grace and trust in the efficacy of the Word. Therefore, they do not claw and rake members into their group, to control them and make them shun the rest of the evil world.

Pietists control the actions and attitudes of their clergy and members. Many of the rules are unwritten but well known. The right family can party like the Kennedy clan, steal money, and embarrass everyone with false doctrine, but they are shielded by automatic, daily absolution - due to their ties to the hierarchy. As Carl Mischke said about Paul Calvin Kelm, "He could join any denomination and he would be welcome."

Lutherans Extol the Word.

The church has the command to appoint ministers; to this we must subscribe wholeheartedly, for we know that God approves this ministry and is present in it. It is good to extol the ministry of the Word with every possible kind of praise in opposition to the fanatics who dream that the Holy Spirit does not come through the Word but because of their own preparations. (Apology XIII:9,11-13)

Pietists extol themselves.

 ELDONA made this graphic and posted it
on the Right Reverend Lord High Bishop's FB page.

One More Rose Bloom - For Advent 2

I looked over the weather predictions carefully for rose gardening. We have some nights around freezing, which is not bad. The 20 degree nights almost finished off the rose blooms, but not quite.

I cut a few for last Sunday and one for the diabetic specialist on Wednesday. The roses that bloom get very frost-bit, but the sepals covering the buds protects them fairly well.

Therefore I have one rose bush with a cane bearing four rose buds for now. I am trying to encourage blooming by Saturday, dusk. Yesterday I carted two buckets of rainwater to that bush to promote blooming. I will do the same today.

The trees have changed color and are dropping leaves fast. The shredded wood mulch on the front yard is so covered in golden maple leaves that the mulch has disappeared under the blanket.

 Hot Cocoa sold out last spring.
I had two bushes for $5 each.

Voids Keep Warmth In
The maple leaves interlock so well that they are my favorite mulch, unlike Syamore, whose leaves are semi-permanent Frisbees that float over various yards.

I packed a box of books with plastic-covered air. The pockets of plastic are like the pockets of air between leaves. Maple leaves hold in the moisture and slowly feed the soil creatures, encouraged by shade, warmth, and moisture. The soil creatures slow down for the winter, but they do not stop, and they begin again - much earlier than many people think - in the early spring.

A large contingent of soil creatures will be even larger if they have a leaf comforter above them for the winter. Snow is another layer of warmth, as anyone knows who has built a snow fort or igloo. In fact, an igloo is much warmer than a WELS church, as one study from Fuller Seminary revealed. (It was suppressed, for obvious reasons.)

Newly fallen snow is mostly air, the crystals locking in air, making it light and translucent when viewed from below.

Snow offers the added advantage of moisture coming down to feed all life below while keeping away the drying and freezing winds.

Some fear an embarrassing blanket of leaves on the ground in the spring. What will the neighbors say? But from early to late spring, from crocus to tulip season, the leaves will be devoured and turned to fertilizer by the earthworms, springtails, mites, slugs, and other creatures.

Those hated moles mix the soil for free, serving like gigantic Rome plows compared to the relatively small earthworms. Moles will eat earthworms glalore but also store them in their earthen safety deposit boxes, where they will leave behind earthworm cocoons to hatch out more babies and pure fertilizer material.

Moles do not eliminate earthworms but leverage their work and make the soil even more attractive to the smaller earth creatures. Note well - moles eat insect larvae too.

About those leaves again.
Leaves in the spring will be grabbed by the birds for their nests. One Robin was afraid of me - somewhat - but he would not let go of his mouthful of leaves last spring. He was determined to hold onto his prize.

To watch bird nesting activity, drape string and twine over bushes. The birds will grab them faster the synod officials grab foundation grants. A bird will dive to the ground if one string is dropped.

Dryer lint is also treasured for nests. A wire basket for suet will hold plenty of lint. Leave that near the strings and watch the lint disapper too.

Others are raking their leaves out of the yard, into bags, onto the streets. I am raking them away from my neighbors and onto each garden area.

 You laugh at my leaves?
Here is my refutation.

Correction - ELDONUTs Ordered The Faith of Jesus Removed. They Were Already Offended by The Faith of Jesus

 Making Disciples  is available on Kindle and Amazon
or from me at the author's price.

Rejection of the traditional text of the New Testament has been fruitful for the apostates. They have diluted the impact of having one, clear, precise English translation - the King James Version.

Once the radicals got their hands on the Greek New Testament, they convinced the academics that routine toying with the text could provide endless variations in the readings and slowly destroy the concept of the Word of God.

The KJV family - which includes many modernized versions - is alone in using the traditional Greek text. The rest -

• NIV
• ESV
• RSV
• New RSV

use the Nestle-Aland, which continues to change from the votes of the few who decide on the fate of each word.

Observe the invented rules about which Greek manuscript is best -

The New Testament in the Original Greek, the Text Revised by B.F. Westcott and F.J.A. Hort(Cambridge : MacMillan & Co., 1882):

• There is a stronger presumption that the earlier date of a manuscript implies "greater purity of text" (p. 59)

• A reading that is apparently an "improvement" of the text is less likely to be authentic (p. 27)

• A more difficult reading is to be preferred as scribes tended to "smooth away difficulties" (p. 28) - from KJVToday

I was fascinated by Greek manuscripts when I was a young lad, but these rules struck me as ridiculous presumptions from the start. 

1. How do we know that a manuscript is earlier than another? The real issue in transmission is care for accuracy. 
2. Could something seen as an improvement actually be the better choice in the first place, the confused or confusing word a matter of inattention, bad eyesight, bad hearing?
3. Who defines difficult? If an apostate calls it difficult for believers, then the apostate editor of the Greek New Testament is going to choose something harmonious with his many doubts. This rule is the most rewarding for turning the New Testament text into a set of Tinker Toys.

Once the concept of the "modern text" is accepted, with changes based on some arbitrary rules, all good things follow for the apostates. Radicalism is set in concrete and believers can be shamed into submission. "This is the best and most accurate text of the New Testament. The world Bible societies and the Pope agree. Who are you to disagree?"

In contrast, the traditional text is based on centuries of Christian tradition from the Greek-speaking, Christian, Byzantine Empire - the Eastern Roman Empire that lasted until 1453. The escape of scholars from Constantinople spawned the Renaissance in Europe - a flowering of literature, art, sculpture, the Greek language, and culture. Byzantine history is almost completely ignored, even by history scholars, and is usually overlooked entirely in the narrative of Western culture.

"We have thousands of those Byzantine manuscripts," so they have little value. One man found two manuscripts on his own - Sinaticus and Vaticanus - and pronounced them the best and purest. "Those manuscripts have no clear origin, so we liberal scholars like them the best." So rave the radicals, and the  so-called conservatives who parrot this nonsense.

Edited Greek New Testaments enabled Dynamic Equivalence, which is Anything Goes paraphrasing of the text.

Those two forces are the path to forcing "making disciples" into the Great Commission. The English alone is barbarous, because the real object of the verb is "all nations" - not disciples. So - teach all nations is converted to make disciples of all nations, completely unjustified by the text. That shows how the attitude toward changing the original text is upgraded into altering the meaning of Greek. 

These points made the ELDONUTs irritated and defensive, because one layman called them on their favoritism toward the modern translations, like the ESV, and their adopting the New KJV Babtist slant, which includes "making disciples." The New KJV could be called the Babtist KJV - that is their market and word selection shows it here and there.

The Faith of Jesus is available on Amazon and Kindle,or from me at the author's price.

ELDONUT priests received free copies of Making Disciples and the Lord, High Bishop became incensed at these gifts. But worse was the open, flagrant, and unashamed distribution of The Faith of Jesus at their last mini-conference.

One underling interrupted the meal of a layman to address a terrible crime. The Faith of Jesus and some other books were on the free books table, as if it were The Abomination of Desolation. "Make these disappear!" He was ordered. Thus generosity was turned into a grave sin.

ELDONUT priest Stefanski is zero for two in the fact department,
but that happens when listening in obedience to the Lord, High Bishop. Tis funny how Eric takes time from his mass excommunication of all LCMS pastoral friends to expectorate some unsupported charges against me. Was I an LCMS pastor?
Did I ever advocate UOJ, as Stefanski did? It is a miraclethat ELDONA has not yet imploded.

Breaking the SynCon tradition of being indirect, the layman went to the Lord, High Bishop, Jim Heiser, and asked directly what the problem was. The Right Reverend was too busy to be disturbed, so great is the burden of holding a mini-conference for a micro-sect. But the layman pressed on. Heiser was enraged that the notorious author, yours truly, wrote a post he did not like eight years ago. Tearing at his longish beard, he cried out, "Does this look like an Eastern Orthodox beard?"

Heiser, in his purple bishop shirt,
is cleverly disguised as a UOJ advocate here,
with Rolf Preus and Steven Brockdorf, UOJ examplars,
proving a chameleon can turn every color - except white.

All the priests - except one - are from Concordia, Ft. Wayne, which has nursed a passion for Eastern Orthodoxy for years. A number of Ft. Wayners have joined Eastern Orthodoxy, as did one editor of the LCMS Lutheran Service Book - Fenton, who repudiated Lutheran doctrine afterwards.

Later, disciple Rydecki, when asked by me on IM, claimed, "The book was not vetted yet." That was in spite of Rydecki and Heiser having copies of the book eight months previously.

 "Do we look Eastern orthodox?"
Yes, you do.

Clearly, the ELDONUTs were fried, but they could not confine themselves to one topic. Fed by deliberate lies from another ELDONUT priest, ultimately from Heiser Hisself, Doug Handrich engaged in an age-old logical fallacy - poisoning the well, which in his case should be called "spitting into the wind."

ELDONUTs hide their information, just as Heiser hides behind his minions. But they have revealed a number of classic errors that come from Pietism.

Like Bishop Martin Stephan, STD, the tiny sect of ELDONA considers itself to be the only Church on earth. They told one layman, "It is unScriptural for Jackson to be apart from ELDONA." That declaration would also be true for 99.9999% of all Lutheran clergy. 

That declaration also defies the Augsburg Confesion, which they claim to uphold, just as the Pietistic sects LCMS, WELS, ELS, and CLC (sic) do. 

Pietists are obsessed with membership in the right sect, sometimes in the right district of the right sect, and even in graduating from the right seminary of the right sect. Ft. Wayne and St. Louis grads look down on each other. WELS and ELS pastors despise each other while "cherishing their fellowship." The CLC (sic) carps about everyone else while copying the worst doctrinal errors.

 "Anathema sit! Burn those books!
We alone are the Means of Grace on earth."

The book-burning attitude of ELDONA makes one wonder about the nature of their fears. If I give Augustine's City of God to a friend, am I expecting him to become Roman Catholic? If I give away a complete set of Pieper's Dogmatics, as I did to one seminarian, am I endorsing Pieper's UOJ and his Kalnis hobby? I give away books all the time, in the hopes of kindling interest in Reformation Lutheran doctrine.

Duggar Pal Reminds Us of How WELS Covers Up the Same Way. From 2014

Doug and Beall Phillips are on the outside, Lourdes Torres on the inside track to be #2 wife.
Update - Phillips settled out of court, gag order.

http://www.wnd.com/2014/04/pastor-accused-of-using-nanny-as-sex-object-2/

No copy and paste on this one; it is too close to LCMS Founder Martin Stephan, STD, and his young, single girlfriends.

I do not want to offend Matt the Fat and have him order me to erase the post.

Nor do I want to remind Fox Valley WELS about someone getting fired for abusive behavior and getting a call from the cover-up clowns Doug, Mark, and Kudu Don. ["Do this for me, Don, and I will help your media ministry." - "By your command, Great SP of All Sects. Right away. But shouldn't we wait until the toner is dry on the CRM notice?"]

Nope. I am keeping the lid on this one. If you read the article and make some connections, do not blame me.

Torres.
Would WELS blame the victim, shun her, and take her husband to court for telling the truth?
You betcha they would. They did recently and have done it many times before.

Four-way lawsuit against St. Peter member for telling the truth.

From WELS, just after cutting a deal for Ski:

"The COP will review the process for considering requests of those who desire to re-enter the public ministry. The review will be made to ensure that a uniform process is used in all districts and to provide greater input from the entire COP before decisions are made by district officials."

Reminds Me of Ski and Glende Having a Bar Ministry Disguised as a Coffee House Ministry. Not Much Coffee Was Consumed

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Scott Barefoot

23 hrs · 

Unrepentant Sin = Unrepentant Sin (doesn't matter what it is)
Repentant Sin = Repentant Sin (doesn't matter what it is)
Jesus went to the cross and died for ALL of our sins!
Perplexed? Check-out 1 Corinthians 6:11

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Kara Neal Thank you. I call this 🍒 picking sins.

Like · 2 · 23 hrs

Carol Theisen Scott, I grew up Catholic, and lived as a person with no hope for 39 years, because the " church " gave me only the Law, as above. And then, I was given a Bible, and found the second part of I Corinthians, " And such were some of you: BUT you are washed, BUT you are sanctified, BUT you are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.... Flee fornication... Know you not that your body is a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own? For you are bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's." Satan knows God's Word, too, BUT he will not quote the Gospel, God's loving mercy and grace, given freely to us weak and undeserving people. Love you, Scott. Don't buy the lies of the world, created by the "father of lies."

Like · 6 · 21 hrs

Aaron Odya Obviously this post comes from something you've observed. I like this picture:

Like · 8 · 19 hrs

Jacki Baas Schleicher Thanks Scott we all have to walk the line. Gossip I know I have done. My life is one for the gossips. I know God loves me but will he if I continue to sin every minute, every day. There's the answer. Try not to sin. I do try but I am human. So we go round and round.

Like · 2 · 19 hrs

Scott Barefoot The Apostle Paul felt the same way: Romans 7:19

Like · 19 hrs

Jim Buss Scott, that is a key part of the Gospel message. Another aspect is that the "cure" for homosexuality isn't hetrosexuality, it is holiness. The "cure" for gossip is not holding your tongue, it is holiness. If holiness is our desire then all sins are the same.

Like · 1 · 18 hrs

Anita Byer Pawelski Truth!!!!

Like · 1 · 16 hrs

Jacki Baas Schleicher All sins are equal.

Like · 1 · 14 hrs

Ben Dethloff Amen. Another passage that comes to mind: Romans 3:23

"For ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

Remind anyone who tries to judge your sin of that passage.

Like · 3 hrs

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