John Sparky Brenner worked on
this research for his doctoral dissertation at a Catholic university. He substitutes
“individual appropriation of forgiveness” for Justification by Faith, because
he has already misused Justification for the “Justification of the World,” his
favorite term for Objective Justification.
If anyone wonders where so
many errors begin in the LCMS, WELS, and ELS, they only need to look at Walther’s
Pietistic version of Calvinism. The polyps have all turned into cancer, so
swaths of the Synodical Conference are Pentecostal, Universalist, or
sinuflecting toward Rome.
Limited Atonement
Nothing strikes the ears so
blatantly as the cacophony of Calvin’s limited atonement. But, if mankind’s salvation
and damnation are determined at the beginning of time, the atonement cannot be
universal in their thinking. Once again, separating the Holy Spirit from the
Word generates gross errors, because the claims replace the revealed, inerrant
Word as the foundation. Oddly, this strange term is used by the Calvinizing
Lutherans against the Chief Article. LCMS radio broadcaster and fund-raised
Todd Wilken chuckled and said, “Justification by Faith is Calvinism.” The advocates
of Objective Justification also imagine that the Chief Article assumes the
limited atonement, a sad commentary on LCMS knowledge of Calvin, Luther, and
the Scriptures.
Irresistible Grace
If man is so utterly depraved,
then grace must be irresistible. This claim, nowhere to be found in the Word,
diminishes and defames the Means of Grace. Since baptism and communion mean little
as symbols and mere ordinances, they count little among most Protestants. Can
anyone find a hymn about baptism or communion written by non-Lutherans? They
must be as rare as hen’s teeth, but Lutheran hymns about the Sacraments are
beautiful, comforting expressions of faith.
Perseverance of the Saints
Vance has accumulated many
quotations to show that Calvin and Calvinists are scattered in their
definitions. This problem is another reason why Christians should avoid ambiguous
terminology not found or supported in the Scriptures.
Denial of the Word’s Efficacy Undermines Support for Creation
Some issues are not hotly
debated today, but God’s Creation in six 24-hour days is rapidly separating the
good from the bad. The 16th century did not deny Creation, but
Zwingli and Calvin denied the Spirit-Word connection in the Bible, setting the
table for Christians to understand and believe the science of their era rather
than the mysteries of God revealed by the Scriptures.
Ironically, the scientific
Protestants of today are thralls of 19th century theories, derived
by Charles Darwin and from Charles Darwin. Therefore, they plunge forward with
little grasp of the created world around them, the perfect synchronizing of
plants, animals, seasons, the sun and moon, even fungus and bacteria in the
soil.
The sovereignty of the Holy
Spirit is defined by Calvin as fickleness, chance, beyond man’s control. This
error is corrosive, so the denial of the Sacraments begins to work upon the
miracles, the divinity of Christ, Creation, the Trinity, and finally the
existence of God.
When we follow the plain
teaching of the Scriptures, we know that the Word always brings Christ to us,
grace through the Instruments of Grace, never doubting God’s Promises –
For rebirth, washing, a new
creation;
For the forgiveness of sin;
For everlasting life.
The power of the Word is so
great that we can trust its effectiveness at all times, always accomplishing
God’s will, never returning void, but prospering His will. That may mean
hardening and blinding those who persistently and obstinately oppose the Word,
as so many clergy, denominational leaders, and professors do today. They are
like the thieves who want to steal copper and cannot grasp the energy in those
thick, high-power lines. They turn what is good for society into death for
them.
When my baker father found
mealworms in his flour, he did not say, “Leave them alone. We do not want to
split or diminish the flour supply.” Instead, he said, “Get these out of here.
They will take over the bakery if we let them alone.”
Likewise, the Word divides the
good from the bad. We can also depend on the Gospel Word to foster the growth
of the fruits of the Spirit. At that point we can see how damaging the cancer
of Calvinism has been in the name of growth.
Calvin and Barth-Kirschbaum Feed the Church Growth Cancer
Dr. Walter A. Maier (PhD, Harvard)
correctly stated that Justification by Faith and the inerrancy of the Bible are
the capstone and cornerstone of the Christian Faith.[1] How can someone argue for
studying the dogma and methods of a seminary boasting of anti-inerrancy and marketing
statistics, in the name of missions?
David Hubbard had another idea
about inerrancy at Fuller. The topic was a distraction that hampered their work
for missions. He wrote with pious wrath some years ago:
"We
resent unnecessary distractions; we resist unbiblical diversions. Can anyone
believe that all other activities should be suspended until all evangelicals
agree on precise doctrinal statements? We certainly cannot." David Allan Hubbard, "What We Believe
and Teach," Pasadena, California: Fuller Theological Seminary.
Because Fuller was changed by faculty
devotion to the dogmatics of Barth and Kirschbaum, the entire program was
changed and expanded. That degeneration was destined to happen, because it
began with the creative Enthusiasm of Zwingli and Calvin, followed later by the
turning point at Halle University – with Schleiermacher as professor and
dogmatics author.
Unfaithful Theologians and Their Dogmatics
Innocent laity and clergy
think theologians are writing as faithfully as they can about God, using the Scriptures,
but modern efforts are no different from writing novels and short stories based
upon some research and experience. No boundaries exist, and the peers of theologians
admire someone who is different, challenging, shocking, and rebellious toward
the Bible and Christianity.
·
The late Paul Tillich was a celebrity
theologian, featured on the cover of Time magazine, but his own colleagues at
the Left-wing Union Seminary were shocked at his radicalism, which was a form
of pantheism: all the people, planets, plants, and animals are god. He explained
that nonsense in three volumes of his Systematic
Theology.
·
Karl Barth and Charlotte Kirschbaum worked
closely together to fashion an entire industry of publishing and writing about
Barth. Only lately have writers opened up about what was known in the 1970s
about their Marxism and blatant adultery. Their 14 volume Church Dogmatics often sells at an extreme discount.
·
Rudolph Bultmann kept the world of Biblical
scholarship stirred up by finding almost nothing truly known about Jesus,
claiming the Bible needed to be de-mythologized.
·
Braaten-Jenson wrote the pre-ELCA Christian Dogmatics, two volumes, where
every article of faith in the Apostles Creed is mocked and rejected. The set still
sells today, and Carl Braaten complains about the apostasy of ELCA, which he did
so much to establish.
·
The Missouri Synod spent many years creating a
two-volume Confessing the Gospel: A Lutheran
Approach to Systematic Theology. Unfortunately, these great scholars
repeated the error of Walther and Pieper, devoting their energies to substituting
Objective Justification for the Chief Article of Christianity, Justification by
Faith. The St. Louis Seminary professors also back-pedal on Creation, so
readers know that Seminex has been reborn at its original OJ location.
The Prussian Union Church Reborn
The government forced the
Lutherans to stop emphasizing the doctrine of Reformation, in favor of peace
through unity with the Calvinists. Schleiermacher participated in making this
happen.
By attracting so many
Lutherans and Protestants to Fuller Seminary and making that school their
unifying institution, with massive help from Thrivent Insurance, all the
Lutheran synods have been amalgamated into modern Calvinism, with an emphasis
on rationalism, marketing, and outward success.
When I became the Lutheran I
always was[2], every Lutheran
congregation in town had liturgical services, hymns, the Creed, and Biblical
sermons. The Disciples of Christ congregation I left was all gimmicks,
paleo-Church Growth, now empty and unwanted. Since that time in the 1960s, I
have found the Lutheran Church in all its forms retreating into the Disciples
of Christ model, where the always-tanned minister arrived in a fire truck one
Sunday, rode down the aisle on a Hog another Sunday.
All about the Numbers
One dense WELS pastor said
they had to stick to Fuller Seminary because “We cannot give up all their world
mission statistics!”
Church Growth was initiated at
Fuller by a sociologist from the Disciples of Christ and World Council of
Churches – Donald McGavran. His doctorate favored statistical analysis, which
works well in discovering that Pop Tarts sell like crazy before a big storm.
Numbers have served as a delightful opiate to let the addicts find comfort in
staring a charts and working on new plans.
Needless to say, when numbers
are first, then fidelity to the Christian Faith is dead last. The proof comes
from the leaders who refuse to admit they bought and paid for this debacle
1.
By their religious apostasy,
2.
By their devotion to Fuller and likeminded
synagogues of Satan,
3.
By their destruction of anyone who dared to
tell the truth about their corrupt practices, felonies, and subsequent lawsuits.
As the misled have shouted at various times, “Either we are
growing or we are dying!”
The Word of God Needs Help – Entertainment
At the Chicago Inerrancy
Conference, a Calvinist rudely charged Dr. Robert Preus with not explaining and
making relevant his summary of Christian doctrine. Preus condensed a number of
descriptions of God, a pleasure to read and hear. The late-comer to the Reformation
knew what should been done. “I would not let one of my students get away with
this.”
The Fuller kamikaze pilots
have attacked every denomination, every parish, a few facts leavened with great
big lies.
1.
Pipe organs are no good, old-fashioned.
2.
Sermons are no good, too boring.
3.
The liturgy, any formal Christ-centered
worship, has to go.
4.
Traditional Christian hymns must be replaced
with Vacation Bible School songs and praise bands who praise themselves and
sell their music.
5.
The minister should dress for the south forty
or a day of tag football.
6.
The church sign must be generic, like Grace
Point, or Family Center.
I heard a rich business man
declare all this as the program for the congregation, as the WELS pastor nodded
his head in submission. Who was the source of all this? – one of the great church
destroyers, known for his infidelities.
We Must Have Plans, Goals, and
Strategies
Peter Drucker, Management by Objectives, cleverly attached
himself to Fuller Seminary and sold everyone on his secular style of planning.
Jim Huebner’s face went white when I told him I knew all about Drucker. In
fact, the LCA taught the same things because their leaders studied at Fuller,
just like Huebner, Kelm, Olson, Bivens, Valleskey, Oelhafen, Adrian, and many
more.
Thanks to this Fuller-Drucker
team, everyone is taught that they must have goals, that their church will
never grow unless they have gigantic visions, with specific and achievable and
measurable goals to make the visions become reality. Strangely, every
denomination had visions suggesting inhalant abuse – hundreds of new missions,
thousands of new members. A pastor (now an atheist) dreamed of having a
world-famous valet parking ministry with 8,000 communing members. That parish
is now almost empty.
The only goal should be
fidelity to the Scriptures, from which spiritual fruits and gifts will emerge
for God to carry out His plans.
Shallow Teaching, Instant Members
Long ago, people figured out
that children do not grow healthy and strong on a diet of candy and desserts. However,
the Fuller brain-washed lust for measurable results, so they need instant
members.
One rock-ribbed Walther Enthusiast,
considered a Bronze Age Missourian, said this, “We needed more members, so we
hired Waldo Werning to come in and teach Church Growth. We were desperate!”
Those pastors who teach prospects
for one-hour and make them members are creating a fragile and volatile
congregation. A little conflict will make them melt down like a meringue pie
left on a sunny ledge.
Genuine teaching will
strengthen the couples, families, and congregation, knowing that people move
and take the Gospel they know with them.
Busy But Not Busy Visiting
The ideal Church Growth pastor
is a rancher with enormous herds, even multiple sites, so individuals seldom
see them, even after the service. Most congregations are not like that, but the
wannabees are too busy, so they tell us, to visit their own members. Nothing is
more important than to take the Gospel to the hospitalized, the sick and shut-in,
the elderly who have done so much. Why does it take a metaphorical cattle-prod
to get a Church Growth pastor to visit?
The
short conclusion will be a positive, therapeutic program based on the efficacy of
the Word in the Means of Grace.
[1]
This quotation is on the back cover of Herman Otten’s book about Maier – The Word Still Listens.
[2]
Father Richard John Neuhaus (LCMS, AELC, LCA, ELCA, Rome) gave a talk at
Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne, entitled “How I Became the Catholic I Always Was.”
Many Ft. Wayne students and graduates nodded their heads in agreement as he
spoke.
