Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Dogmatics Based on Prior Assumptions - Not Biblical, Not Lutheran, Not Christian.
But Lo, How Easily They Agree with ELCA about UOJ.
Thrivent, Babe, Show Me the Money!


This is from the chapter 5 of Election and Conversion. A Frank Discussion of Dr. Franz Pieper’s Book on “Conversion and Election,” with Suggestions for Lutheran Concord and Union on Another Basis
True, our Missouri brethren will reply: “We have said again and again that this is the mystery of election; we do not try to solve it; we leave it with the eternal counsels of the Almighty to be revealed in the next life.” But why should we, in our theologizing, make the Bible a book of contradictions and inconsistencies by a method of setting proof-text over against proof-text? Why not study it more deeply, and see whether we cannot coordinate its teachings and find their inner harmony? Surely if God is the altogether excellent One, He must be harmonious in His own being, and when He gives His children a revelation, it surely cannot be so full of contradictions as to turn them into infidels. We believe in “the divine unity of the Scriptures.” By collating Scripture with Scripture, we can, more and more, find the beautiful and higher harmony of its teachings. We like Dr. Jacobs’ view-point here (page 9, ut supra); he defines the proper hermeneutical principle as being an observance of “the organic relation of the various parts of Holy Scripture to one another.”* True, we confess to some doubt about what is known as the doctrine of “the analogy of faith,” for it seems to set up a human standard of interpretation outside of the Bible, while we believe in taking the Bible teaching just as it stands. But then every text ought to be interpreted in its true contextual setting and according to the meaning of the writer, with due attention to the correct exegesis. 
* GJ - I like Hoenecke for his many strengths, but it is troubling that he wrote - "We must put the election verses together..." (paraphrased) No, Professor Hoenecke, that filters the results. The Scriptures are one unified Truth. A synodical star is not always correct because he was a synodical star. The final authority is the Word, not "how we define that in our circles," a famous, dog-eared excuse offered up by smirking WELSians.
Mere phrases and brief sentences should not be treated in an insulated way, nor wrenched from their context, nor interpreted merely according to the sound of the words, when the real sense may be something quite different. You cannot truly and fairly interpret any writing in that way – that is, by simply quoting a detached sentence here and there; for sometimes a preceding or succeeding statement of the author may qualify the quoted statement. Take, for instance, 1 Cor. 2:9. Suppose a dogmatician should try to formulate from that passage the doctrine that the glories of heaven are far beyond human conception and imagination, because Paul says: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,” etc. 

The true interpreter of Scripture would simply tell him to read the next verse, when he would see that Paul was not referring to heaven at all, but to the revelations Christians now have through the Spirit of God. We shall have occasion more than once, in succeeding chapters, to show how our Concordia brethren miss the mark in drawing their peculiar doctrines from the Scriptures by a too infinitesimal treatment of the Bible.
 They agree in their opposition to Luther,
but they will sell you overpriced Luther trinkets.
 Funny how the garbage and lint collects on the drain.

 The Wolf of Wall Street Made Himself Famous by Bragging about His Thievery.
Thrivent perked up its lupine ears and licked its slavering jaws.