Challenges - But with Great Changes

 My friends were talking about changes in various blogs and discussions. We have changed from being the Baby Boomers of the 1950s, with great losses and reduction of those people from that era. 

One sign comes from the numbers of Assistant Living - often used as the title of the facility. Long ago we had hospitals, but now the hospital nursing side is bed-ridden in large numbers, aided by assistant living - apart from surgery and the in-and-out treatments.

The next two years should be especially volatile, with the Supreme Court stopping much of the nation's spread of single judges creating their own national spread of peculiar laws. Most of us have seen the single, activist judges becoming their own laws. The US Constitution should rescue us from those frivolous attempts. 

The establishment denominations know how hard they are trying to repeat the past. "Do the math." 

When was the last time someone read the massive volumes of Karl Barth? (I thought so.)

Roman Catholicism on the Decline

 

Catholicism on the Decline in the US

There is a crisis of belief in the Catholic Church. Will the priests and bishops of America remedy that?

GJ - Judging by the religious in Notre Dame classes 50 years ago, those who belonged to religious orders were as Unitarian as the mainline Protestants. For example, when the class rejected the infallibility of the Pope, a local priest railed at everyone and said, "How can you call yourselves Catholic?"

     I pointed out the paganism of Paul Tillich and the professor said, "Lutherans do not understand Lutheranism." I responded "Lutherans do not understand Luther?" Dead silence followed. 

     The Courage To Be, by Tillich, was a best seller. Other Protestants - like Bultmann and Barth - were equally apostate. 

Dogmatics - Lo, How the Professors and Bishops Have Fallen!

 

"The first and coarsest is that of St. Thomas (if indeed he be a saint). This was taken from the system of pagan science and art which was written by that great light of nature, Aristotle. Now they say that his philosophy is like a bright, shining plate, and the Word of Christ is like the sun. And as the sun shines upon the plate, causing it to gleam and glitter all the brighter, so the divine light shines upon the light of nature and illumines it. With this beautiful simile they have introduced pagan doctrines into the Christian church, which have been taught and cultivated by the great universities and in which teachers and preachers have been instructed. The devil has taught them to speak in this way. Thus the Word of God is trodden under foot, for when it is given full play, it subverts all these satanic doctrines." Epiphany 1 sermon, #16.

Dogma is often used as a term to refute someone's argument, but somehow  Dogmatics is a wonderful, large, impressive set of books, required reading - they claim. A few years later, they are retired reading, beautiful backdrops of 300 unread volumes hovering above and behind a pastor's head.

Luther's statement above - and in the previous post - is enough to warn people away from dogmatics. However, even today the ranking theologians are stuck and will not let themselves be unstuck (the last being another fad).

Here is a sample -

Thomas Aquinas - required reading for future popes and dogmaticians.

Calvin - boring, lifeless, often ridiculous, but somehow addicting to semi-Lutherans.

CFW Walther, BA, genuinely Calvin with a veneer of Luther.

Paul Tillich - The Courage To Be, mostly forgotten.

Karl Barth and his live-in mistress/assistant - Church Dogmatics; on sale for $1 a volume.

Franz Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, a clever sleight of hand, merging Justification by Faith with Objective Faithless Justification, promoting yet denying the efficacy of the Word of God.

Braaten-Jenson, Christian Dogmatics, an introduction to ELCA, a superb collection of ponderous drivel. 

These volumes are guaranteed to slowly turn someone into an atheist, step by step, though many deny it. Note that the Pieperites are perfectly happy to work with ELCA's Braaten-Jenson and Fuller Seminary's McGavran/Peter Wagner style theologians.

The only book they all loathe is the King James Version of the Bible. Now we begin to smell the pot-roast, as Luther once wrote.

They Do Not Teach Faith in Jesus Christ the Savior - Because They Have No Faith

From Luther - The First Holy Trinity Sunday

God will make no one such a king who is not God, for he will not give the reins out of his hands; he alone will be the Lord over heaven and earth, death, hell, the devil and all creatures. If he, then, makes Christ Lord of all that is created, Christ must truly be God.

8. We can. therefore, have no surer foundation for our belief in the divinity of Christ than that we enwrap and enclose our hearts in the declarations of the Scriptures. The Scriptures gradually and beautifully lead us to Christ; first revealing him to us as a man, then as the lord of all creatures. and finally as God. Thus we are successfully led to the true knowledge of God. But the philosophers and the wise men of this world would begin at the top and so they have become fools. We must begin at the bottom and gradually advance in knowledge, so that the words of Proverbs 25:27 may not apply to us: “It is not good to eat much honey; so for men to search out their own glory is grievous.”

I am glad that Carl Braaten - born 1929 - has lived so long that he can see the wreckage of the Lutheran Church that he worked so hard to accomplish. Every era has a dominant theme backed by a philosophy, whether acknowledged or not. Braaten's philosophy is one where anything divine is rejected and in need of a filler for the void. He earned a PhD at Harvard and studied under the lecherous gaze of Paul Tillich, whose own wife ratted him out in her book about Tillich.

Tillich's wife wrote about his sleazy behavior after he died.

Imagine if you will, a two-volume work on Christian Dogmatics, not just any work, but the Braaten-Jenson cooperative. You're traveling through another dimension -- a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead: your next stop: the Braaten-Jenson! [The Twilight Zone]

The Braaten-Jenson content is too precious to explain to ordinary people:

• The Trinity is denied.
• The Virgin Birth of Christ is rejected.
• Miracles did not happen.
• The Atonement has no meaning.
• The Resurrection is imaginary.

They needed a group of men to replace the articles of faith with their own dull, worn out, 19th century theology - BOMFOG. The German rationalists had already reduced the Christian Faith to the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God. New England wits extended that summary - "And the neighborhood of Boston." Earlier, Unitarianism had been confined to New England, but it gradually became the philosophy of America.

The label Banned in Boston used to make me think Beantown was a bigoted city, because books were always banned there and nowhere else. Finally I realized that Boston was so loose that anything could be published there.

Likewise, the traditional Christian Faith was taken for granted across America, but the Great Depression gave many church leaders a chance to blame the Christian Church, not the Federal Reserve Bank, for the economic debacle. 

Based on endless reading about the era from the 19th century to Great Depression, I consider the 1930s the transition to German rationalism. That was slow at first but gradually took over the academic leaders and subsequently their students. Someone could say, "I read Tillich!" instead of "Jesus was only a man." A cool Karl Barth fan would say, "Have you read II, 2?" - the mark of the Barthian Church Dogmatics mostly written by his live-in mistress.

One of my professors was the President of the Karl Barth Society and told us about Barth's alleged use of his mistress, now openly acknowledged but hushed up. My dissertation advisor studied under Barth to earn his doctorate. Another advisor emphasized Barth in his work. 

Karl Barth paid his lovely young assistant, Charlotte Kirschbaum, almost nothing to assist their work with editing and research. Karl moved her into his house, against the objections of his wife.

The head of my program was enamored by Tillich's work - the Karl Barth Society professor said in class - "Lutherans do not understand Tillich." I responded with "Lutherans do not understand a Lutheran?" I merely pointed out what Tillich's own colleague said - the Union Seminary colleagues were appalled by his paganism.

The unspoken atheism of that era allowed the highly educated church professors - much like Luther's generation - to blabber about their own philosophies without being disturbed by the revelation of the Scriptures. 

Fuller Seminary - 

The Last Frontier of Atheism for Dullards

Fuller Seminary latched onto the pro-abortion Disciples of Christ professor Donald McGavran, a sociologist with a PhD from Columbia University. He attracted others who joined his incredibly stupid crusade, and that became the New Religion, good for everyone and harmless as well. The only effect Fuller has had is negative. To make their methods neutral, they divorced any suggestion of the Christian Faith from marketing. 

Some escape the dreariness of Church Growth for the Church of Rome, where the Scriptures are dodged once again in favor of method. They glory in their incense, their prissy demands of costumes, their choreography of entertainment without Christ Himself.

Who Was Least Impressed by Dogmatics? Follow Him Instead!

I cannot say enough bad things about the Braaten-Jenson Christian Dogmatics. Jenson has gone to his reward but Braaten is like aged milk. The LCA first bragged that this double-decker dogmatics was used at all their seminaries, then later claimed the BJCD was not authoritative or required. Be generous, readers - the ALC/LCA enhanced their deceptive powers by taking in former WELS professors Jungkuntz and Gehrke. Many of ELCA's bishops (DPs) were graduates of Seminex.

 I try not to laugh when reading Barth. I really do.

 Karl seems to have confused God with the theologian - Charlotte.

 "Nothink hoppened," said Karl.

Mistresses do not always age well. This is Charlotte and the great theologian Karl.

 Christina and I met Hunsinger and his first wife at Yale Divinity. His first wife worked at the medical library. Christina and I worked at Yale Medical, she at the Child Study Center, I at the xerox machine.

 Do they sell fortune cookies in Europe?

 What was the middle part again?

 Charlotte is next to Karl. Frau Barth is stage right. Karl's brother is glowering in the back on the left - he did not approve at all.

Charlotte's lifetime work came to a halt when she became terminally ill. 

Or - consider Charlotte Kirschbaum's Church Dogmatics. She fulfilled everyone's dreams long before they were exposed. Little Miss Cutie not only fused her Marxism with Karl Barth's, but they also lived together - privately at first, each summer - then boldly in the dear professor's home packed with his children and wife. Karl and Charlotte toured America, explicitly sharing the same room and bed at each host's home. But decades later, everyone was "shocked, shocked" to hear about the scandal. The ELDONUTs would say, "Nothing happened!" 

Charlotte let Karl write the outline to their Church Dogmatics. She did the research and writing for the "small print" - as Barthians like to say, a little breathlessly and in wonderment and awe.

 The LCMS triumvirate - Calvin, Rambach, and Bishop Stephan STD.

The LCMS finally put together their collection of pronouncements in another double-decker dogmatics book. I am not going to say no one bought it or read it. I bought it, but found it unreadable. Braaten-Jenson made their disaster an interesting read, as if bank robbers were revealed as the top executives at JP Morgan Chase. The Missouri guys never tire of praising themselves while looking over their shoulders to see if the ELCA sisterhood approves.
 

Bad News - Karl Fabrezius, SJ - Has Captured the Spirit of This Age

 "You could have gone to Notre Dame, and larned something. Why are so many "confessional, conservative" Lutherans studying with the Jesuits? Most Catholics loathe the Jesuits."

The Karl Fabrezius, PhD, Society of Jesus, doctrinal breakthrough is linked here. 

His inspired (by whom?) statement is here.

During the Gottesdienst conference last week I was once again reminded that without good systematic doctrine exegesis will certainly go astray. Sometimes we take things for granted and the obvious gets passed over. As one of my fellow editors said, exegesis is more fun. However, if there is not a sober doctrinal framework, one might become drunk as he imbibes of the Scriptures and stumble around in all kind (sic) of dangerous territories. After all, every attractive heresy and false teaching is proclaimed to be Scriptural.

In spite of the careless words, which were probably applauded more loudly than the latest Schwan Foundation grant, Fabrezius has explained ELCA-LCMS-WELS-CLC- ELS-ELDONA perfectly.

He omitted one basic principle behind his summary - the organization is the final word on all doctrine - whether it is from one Lutheran sect or another. They are no different from the Church of Rome. 

That is the deadly toxic from which Codex Fabreziensis emerges, to wit -

"Without good systematic doctrine, exegesis will certainly go astray."

To narrow it down a bit, that is why ELS-WELS-LCMS appeal to their seminaries (!) and what the pastors were taught (?!). DNA matters too.

That is how Lutheran pastors have converted to Barthian hogwash ever since Karl began promoting his regurgitated Marxist propaganda in the form of Charlotte Kirschbaum's dogmatics.

Justification without Faith (Objective Justification) can easily be refuted from the Scriptures, but no - OJ is true because the synod and "my favorite teacher" says otherwise. The dreadful NIV mockery of Romans 3 can be thwarted by their own new improved NIV. As my college students said, "Justification by Faith is still there in the NIV." 

The Jesuit Fabrezius and his co-conspirators realize that they control the Scriptures by making their seminaries the last word on what the Bible teaches. Can anyone imagine the Brobdingnagian Gospel of Mark (CPH) commentary being the ruling norm? I can, because the grammarian Voelz considers Codex Vaticanus the original version of Mark, a laughable Jesuit assumption so convenient for causing confusion, doubt, and apostasy.

When lying, smirking DP Buchholz kicked Rydecki out of WELS, he wrote, "I am saddened that you no longer believe what you were taught in seminary." Buchholz left out the physical, emotional, and sexual abuse common to GA hazing rites. Who can forget those events?

Does anyone wonder why the King James Version is mocked, rejected, and ignored by the present generation of Lutheran pastors and professors? Unlike the NIV, ESV, RSV, NRSV, and even the New KJV, the Authorized Version does not change its wording every few years - and, note this - does not refer the reader to fraudulent text readings in the footnotes. 

Do the Little Three (NIV, ESV, RSV) use footnotes as alternates to the KJV? Ponder that.

Fortunately, there is only one copy of Bark's Church Dogmatics.

Working on Text Criticism Sources

Barth's Marxist theology, a thousand miles wide, an inch deep. Who else could be the theologian for Fuller Seminary, WELS, LCMS, ELS, ELCA? He could double-talk any topic, because he worked with his mistress, night and day, at his home, at the summer cabin, and on his tours. They replaced Christianity with Anything Goes, and conservatives still defend his/their honor.

Centenniel of Apostasy - Karl Barth's Triumph, Charlotte's Revenge

Charlotte Kirschbaum and Karl Barth worked together and traveled together.

This photo of Charlotte and Karl was taken many years later.

We can safely claim that Calvinist Karl Barth and his mistress Charlotte Kirschbaum were able to undermine Western Christianity with a two-fold attack. He appealed to the professors with his double-talking Dogmatics, and became the official theologian of Fuller Seminary, thanks to faculty studies at Basel, Switzerland. His commentary on Romans in 1919 created a sensation, and he soon became a professor rather than a parish pastor. Thus the Centennial of Apostasy.

Before taking Barth (Kirschbaum) seriously, read this book.

When various people express their awe of Barth, they either do not know or want to know about his Marxist thought or his live-in mistress, Charlotte Kirschbaum. That has been thoroughly discussed by George Hunsinger, head of the Barth Institute (Temple) at Princeton. I met Hunsinger at Yale, worked at the Yale Medical Library with his first wife, and met him again at Notre Dame. 

"As his unique student, critic, researcher, adviser, collaborator, companion, assistant, spokesperson, and confidante, Charlotte von Kirschbaum was indispensable to him. He could not have been what he was, or have done what he did, without her." Hunsinger, review of the S. Seliger book, Charlotte von Kirschbaum and Karl Barth: A Study in Biography and the History of Theology.

Barth was not trained to be an academic, and he was swamped. The mysterious Charlotte Kirschbaum showed up to be his assistant and his mistress. He tried to divorce his wife Nelly, but she said "Nein! mein Schnutschi-Putschi." He lived with Charlotte during the summer and moved her into his home a bit later.

We know next to nothing about Charlotte, who was willing to work for almost nothing her entire life. She was clearly the researcher and likely the one who wrote the small print in the Dogmatics. She went with him on his trips and shared the same room when he stayed at faculty homes on his trip to America. She represented him at a major Marxist confab.

In Academics

Schleiermacher, educated at Halle University, had a major struggle with the Christian Faith, so his father's urging him to study made him a highly educated sceptic. The result was a theologian who established "faith without belief," the theologians characterized by my friend as "people with a sentimental attachment to Christianity."

Schleiermacher was ideal for those who were really rationalists but chose to remain within the Church by using their God-talk, their faith-words, to express their ideas.

Barth and Kirschbaum built upon this by created a system where the radicals could exploit their double-talk from within the institution, a far more effective position than outside of it.

Barth was the dominant theologian at Notre Dame in the 1980s. Frank Fiorenza, now at Harvard, was the president of the Barth Society at one point. He shared Barth's co-writing tactics with us. As he said, "Most of us in the Barth Society thought Charlotte wrote the fine print and he wrote the large print." For those uninitiated in Barthology, the large print was the outline of each section, written in complete sentences in a larger font. Many people extolled the fine print and the special essays in the volumes. Some of the large print sections or markers were laughable.

My main advisor for the dissertation was John Howard Yoder, who studied under Barth at Basel. This made Yoder a rock star among Mennonites. Hauerwas encouraged Notre Dame to share Yoder with Goshen College, which was not far away. Hauerwas was another advisor.

Various names are mentioned among the famous modern theologians, but Barth's was always on the list, just as much for Catholics as for Protestants. Having a major work, with 12 fat volumes, was a great way to dominate in publishing and influence. 

In Church Growth

Two key figures at Fuller Seminary studied with Barth in Basel. One was the founder's son. The Battle for the Bible and its sequel deal with this. The anti-inerrancy people won, and the credit for this back-sliding was given to Barth's influence.

Fuller is not only the most influential school for Evangelicals, but also the finishing school for LCMS-WELS leaders. Those WELS-LCMS leaders who have studied there would make a glorious Wall of Shame for anyone curious about their decline. David Valleskey and Frosty Bivens are so devious that they brag about their Fuller studies to some and deny it (calling me a liar) to others.

One step removed, C. Peter Wagner earned his doctorate at Princeton, a very liberal Calvinist school, home of the Barth Society (Temple).

For WELS, LCMS, and ELCA, union with Calvinism is a nostalgic trip back to their roots. They make up 99% of registered but confused Lutherans in America. The three denominations began with a heavy dose of unionism with the Calvinists, struggled to pull away, but ran back, just like the abused children who defend their moms in court and deny the broken bones and bruises.

Fuller argues that they can turn up the heat slowly for the frog in the kettle, and it will not jump out - it will stay in until thoroughly cooked. Then why have so many Lutherans jumped out?

Valleskey borrowed "spoiling the Egyptians" from Barna, who borrowed it from Augustine. Notice how fast an analogy goes downhill? I had various Mordor graduates warming, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!" I responded, "Don't wash the baby in sewage."

The Fortune Cookie Theologian

From an Anonymous Source - Walter Martin and the Seminexit

 Liberalism: Its Cause and Cure, The Poisoning of American Christianity and the Cure - Amazon.This is available from the author at the discounted price.

Walter Martin was on television, often through John Ankerberg. The video above involves a lot of yelling, so at least two of us find it hard to follow him for long.

However, Martin's basic claims about modern theology are true. The liberal theologians do not believe much of anything. Their philosophy has permeated Protestantism and Catholicism through the hugging hoaxers Karl Barth and Charlotte Kirschbaum, via Fuller Seminary.

 ELCA meeting

 WELS Martin Luther College graduate. See below.

A snapshot of the Lutheran synods today will reveal that the modern apostates own all of the Martin claims, too.

• Fuller Seminary is being sued for not allowing gay students, but WELS explains they have gone rainbow at their college because of federal student loan guidelines (and the dollars involved).
• Concordia, St. Louis is miffed that anyone would question their attacks on Creation. "That is slander!" the professors say, speaking as one.
• Concordia Publishing House has taken the Seminexit too. Universalism dressed as Objective Justification is their published dogma, and the traditional, genuine ending of Mark's Gospel is not kosher.
• No Lutheran synod - not even the archdiocese of ELDONA - accepts the traditional text of the Bible, favoring the latest cut and paste efforts by the NIV and ESV instead.

 Holy Mother WELS can never be criticized, but these Fulleroids spent their careers doing exactly that, to get rid of any vestiges of Lutheran doctrine and practice. They won, and now their shrinking seminary is producing Fuller clones and Willow Creek shills.

Time To Post the Efficacy Motherlode Again - Proof Against Intuitu Cavo

 Graphic by Norma A. Boeckler

I posted the Efficacy Motherlode again, because the Lutherans are hopelessly stuck in view of Calvinism (intuitu Calvo), thanks to his influence on both sides -

1. The liberals (ELCA and offshoots) get their Calvinism from the academic theologians they hire and from the Fuller Seminary experts they promote.
2. The "conservatives" (LCMS, ELS, WELS, CLC sic) get their Calvinism from the academic theologians they hire and from the Fuller Seminary experts they promote.

As readers can seethe, the cause is almost hopeless. But it is only hopeless if we rely on institutions rather than the Word of God.

The synods and seminaries have been able to sell their garbage at fantastically high prices because they have abandoned various positions that are Biblical, taught clearly during the Reformation, and inimical to their rationalistic and Pietistic programs:

1. The efficacy of the Word
2. The Means of Grace
3. Justification by Faith.

I test each issue of Christian News (web pdf) with a control-f search on these topics - Justification by Faith, efficacy, Means of Grace. They do not come up often. The Chief Article is not Justification by Faith but magically transformed into Objective Justification. That is what they mean (OJ) when they invoke the term Justification. That is so clever. 

Karl Barth and his Commie mistress Charlotte Kirchbaum updated Calvin by playing with Biblical terms just as their exemplar did. This gave the post-Kantian theologians permission to do the same, so modern theology means playing with Biblical categories in order to weave together a new vision of Faith without Belief. 

Barth-Kirschbaum were simply working with the midwife of this approach, Friedrich Schleiermacher - Halle University, of course.

 We haf got you surrounded, Barth on the right, Barth on the left.

Because Barth-Kirschbaum influenced the early leaders of Fuller Seminary, they became the official theologians of Fuller. Because Barth was lionized among the mainline churches of Europe and America, with a big fat set of Dogmatics to cite, he became the paper pope of academics, Protestant and Roman Catholic.

I can name at least four Notre Dame professors who loved Barth - Fiorenza, Yoder, Hauerwas, and Hommes. Affiliations? - Roman Catholic, Mennonite, Methodist, liberal Calvinist.

CFW Walther dripped Calvinism and did his best to supplant the Lutheran doctrine of his colleagues with his brew of Calvinistic-Pietistic dogma, heavily reliant on Bishop Stephan, STD.