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| Jay Webber imagines that Luther taught against Justification by Faith - OJ. Hahaha. |
I was discussing philosophy with one reader. I am ambivalent, because philosophical trends have an enormous impact. However, the study of philosophy largely a waste of time.
Whether we are talking about Protestant, Lutheran, or Roman Catholic theologians, they all start from the same weak foundation. The turning point may be Halle's Schleiermacher for the Protestants, Kant for everyone. The results are the same - they are all rationalists who simply use the words of faith as concepts, intellectual toys for their tomes.
Most people may not realize this, but the vast majority of clergy have been trained against the Scriptures by those who no longer recognize the Bible as the singular, inerrant revelation of God. There is hardly any escape from this. Lutherans find that the so-called right wing consists of another set of rationalists who think their left wing has gone too far. The clowns at LutherQuest make Christian News buffoonery look like scholarship. Note - they all hate Luther's doctrine as much as ELCA does, just not as flamboyantly.
In the 1950s, the Protestants waited impatiently for the RSV Old Testament to come out. When the Isaiah 7 prophesy of the Virgin Birth was twisted into an ordinary birth announcement - a young woman will conceive - the USA erupted. The RSV, conceived by the Communist National Council of Churches, backed down and restored the Virgin Birth, putting their phrasing into a footnote.
But recently, the New NIV made the old one look classic by translating Romans 3 as "all are justified," when that is entirely absent from the text, from St. Paul, and from the Bible. Nobody murmured. The Lutherans celebrated the Reformation by printing catechisms with the New NIV - and for ironic humor - with the ESV (Calvinist, Feminist RSV) as an alternative.
The NEW NIV is feminist too, so the question is whether one desires this bad NIV paraphrase or that bad ESV one, both with the promise of altering the text and paraphrases in the future. Perhaps - like the old NIV - the New NIV will be so outmoded that it will also disappear as the NIV Century 21 develops. Oh Oh. More new printings of everything, just as before.
Obvious Results
Since the Protestants and Lutherans no longer trust in the Word at all or care about the actual content of the Bible, they rush to adopt something that works for them.
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| Given the way Luther writes about the Gospel and the synods try to monetize it. why should any leader care about Biblical teaching or want to quote Luther? |
