Secondary Doctrine Thesis - From a Lutheran Layman

 Building and correcting - Objective Justification builds and corrects the Chief Article, according to their snake-oil salesmen. What better way to supplant it and reach the point of assailing faith at every opportunity? Stay tuned for the real LCMS-WELS.

A Lutheran layman wrote to suggest Objective Justification is a secondary doctrine. I was intrigued because of his comparison with Roman Catholic dogma.

Why does Purgatory exist without any support from the Scriptures? It answers the logic of people who think that Christ has forgiven them, but still they sin, sometimes in terrible ways. Purgatory, borrowed from the pagans, answers that question in the rational mind. Christ has paid for sins with His Atonement, and that forgiveness is given with Holy Baptism. But what about afterwards?

Mother Angelica preached on her TV program that landing in Purgatory meant "I made it!" - escaping Hell. Thus the "logic" of Purgatory continues.

How often I have heard that "I have to know I am already forgiven before I can believe in it"? That is one secondary excuse for OJ.

Rolf Preus recently wrote on LutherQueasy, "Justification by Faith requires OJ," another form of the same argument.

A. Hoenecke wrote in his Dogmatics that "Objective Justification protects the Gospel." Many Hoenecke fans find that shocking, but he did graduate from Halle, the same school that trained Bishop Martin Stephan, the Pietist leader who taught his Pietist student CFW Walther the Easter Absolution of the world.

Matthias Loy - If There Is No Lutheran Congregation. From Alec Satin, Lutheran Librarian

On the subject of what to do if there is no faithful church where you live.

The Lutheran believer by an inward necessity, which is also taught and enforced by the Word of God, is led to unite with the pure visible Church of the Augsburg Confession and perform his duties as well as exercise his privileges and seek his edification in the fellowship of that Church. He cannot without danger to his spiritual life and ultimate salvation deny any portion of his faith by joining another Church which teaches and confesses otherwise than God’s Word teaches, and must be ready to make sacrifices in behalf of the Church of the Augsburg Confession with its pure Word and Sacraments. It is surely not loyalty to that Confession which inspires the thought that, if there be no congregation of that Confession in the place of our residence, the best thing to be done is to join some other Church that professes to be Christian. Such conduct can reflect no credit upon a professed believer of the evangelical truth for which our fathers contended in the days of the Reformation. Indifference to the truth is thus manifested rather than faith.

If there is no Church of the Augsburg Confession where a Lutheran believer lives, there ought to be; and his calling has evidently become that of a missionary who providentially has the high duty of confessing the truth and, if possible, of gathering other believers around the Augsburg Confession and forming an Evangelical Lutheran congregation.

Meantime instead of denying his faith by holding fellowship with those who confess a different doctrine, he will be content with his own family worship, employing the services of the nearest pastor for the administration of the sacraments and an occasional sermon, until a little congregation can be collected in his own locality.

From Loy, Matthias. The Augsburg confession: An Introduction To Its Study And An Exposition Of Its Contents Columbus, Ohio: Lutheran Book Concern, 1908.

Sword of Margarine Award - Will Supplant the Faux-Sabre of Boldness

 The Sword of Margarine

The Sabre of Boldness award committee has informed me that they are tired of giving their phony prize when nobody in Lutherdom deserves it. In fact, they are so timid that they took several years to gather the gumption to tell me.

Therefore, I have honored their request and their sincere well-earned modesty. I have covertly assembled a group of savvy judges - highly trained in Biblical doctrine and abnormal psychology - to give the new prize - The Sword of Margarine.

Nominees

1. Christian News - Suggested for their adroit selling to both sides of the issue:

• Church Growth and Lutheran doctrine, 
• Walter Maier and Rolf Preus, 
• Roman Catholic hatred of Luther and Luther trinkets, 
• Walther idols and Bibles.

2. Steadfast Lutherans - Brought up because -

• They got huffy about DP-sponsored sex abuse but erased the evidence about the abuse.
• They featured one spaghetti-spine who criticized Paul the Plagiarist McCain and then offered to pay for a statue in his honor. The committee favors idolaters for this honor.
• They started as a Matt the Fatt toadies; they no longer had a candidate this year.

3. Intrepid Lutherans - Almost Winners -

• Mirthless Mark Schroeder had his classmate Steve Spencer start a group to support him against "the other side." 
• The group did an excellent job of fussing about issues but were utterly silent at synodical meetings when it mattered. Well played!
• The Intrepid founder, Steve Spencer, bailed out first - due to trepidation - followed by the rest of them.
• The committee decided it would be difficult to find someone still identified as Intrepid or Lutheran, so they had to pass on this group.

The Winner!

The contenders were highly qualified - no doubt. Margarine perfectly represents them - a substance created by chemistry to be a cheap, unhealthy substitute for butter. And yet margarine was marketed as healthy while butter was panned as unhealthy.

LutherQuest - aka SpenerQuest - aka LutherQueasies - 

aka LutherQuislings

After considering their vast effort to mock Luther and his doctrine, barely ever mentioning him, except to exploit his name - LQ had to be top contender.

Significant Achievements:

1. They slavishly reproduced Paul McCain's plagiarism of The Catholic Encyclopedia, and never rebuked him. 
2. They let someone engage in anonymous slander until they realized it could be costly to the websty owner.
3. Like the other supposedly "fierce and faithful" groups, they barely mentioned the appalling Mark Jeske Change or Die! pro-abortion gay ordination conference.
4. They present CFW Walther, BA, as a great theologian with all the answers and refuse to address the Scriptures teaching Justification by Faith. 
5. Best of all, they engage in endless trivia, like ALPB.org's forum, so that no one wakes up from the apostasy around them.

 This did not happen by accident. The Objective Justification salesmen took over from about 1932, "improving" by substitution.

Thankful to Many People

 Life can be simpler, but good donuts are much harder to find now.

I keep trying to write this post, but delays come along. I am thankful to God, first of all, for the opposition that placed me where I am today. The best and intangible joys of life came about because the inbred Hategood family in Lutherdom wanted to cause me pain for asking the wrong questions or worse - providing some of the answers. Imagine a dysfunctional alcoholic in WELS and his cousin in the CLC (sic) working together, sharing the same nickname for their Father Below.

The sacrament of shunning in Pietism has relieved me of the burden of fake friends who run when no one pursues. Instead, I have genuine friends who value the heritage of the Reformation. These friends are a jolly bunch, not the pinch-faced Puritans who sound so much like Calvin.

I could have been engulfed by twin horrors - endless editing and PR tasks, magnified by the horrors of crucial meetings, compounded by a constellation of unwritten rules.

 Veteran's Honor Rose - for all our veterans - Ranger Bob, Pete, Gary, Norm.

I enjoy writing, gardening, and getting advice from Sassy the Wonder-Dog. Mrs. Ichabod enjoys hearing the latest before I post an article. She eventually got used to the vitriol as a mark of success - "When you finally die, everyone will be so happy." (Anonymous)

A lot of the work done is a team effort, so we each do our share based on interests, ability, and time available. Frustrations and suggestions turn into books. One person said, "The House Postils should be available." That came after eight volumes of Lenker's Luther Sermons were just finished. Soon Alec Satin, the Lutheran Librarian, had them published with art from Norma A. Boeckler.

I worked with several publishers in the past, and a book project went from finished product to printed book in years, not weeks or months.

I told Pastor Shrader that one of his stories created an ongoing joke. It had to to with honorary degrees being "automatical." We always use that term and evidence suggests its use is growing.

I took computer science, web design, and Photoshop to improve what I could do in publishing. That became the path to teaching in higher education for the last 20 years. Teaching online made it easier to publishing online. A traditional tenured job would have meant being shackled to the university system.

 At age four I discovered that child labor laws were not applied within the family, so I began my career of promoting, making, selling, and eating donuts.