The About Mode - And Paul L. Holmer, Yale

Paul L. Holmer's lectures were branded into our minds, because he had so much to say in few words.

Gugenheim Fellow

One of Holmer's enduring statements about intellectual life was the 50-year cycle of the About Mode. Someone has a new, creative idea and everyone copies it for 50 years before they wear it out. The minor figures live and prosper in the About Mode. They have no ideas of their own.

 McGavranistan provided the fields of opium.

I am a bit sad that I learned that bit of genius, because I have seen it repeated in my lifetime. I wondered how ELCA, WELS, Missouri, and the ELS could drool over the same terms and methods derived from Fuller Seminary and its copycats. 

WELS and Missouri were supposed to be stalwarts of Biblical inerrancy, but they said exactly the same things at their conferences as I experienced first-hand at the LCA/ALC evangelism conferences and training. The Peter Drucker tapes I heard in the LCA were verbatim what WELS/LCMS taught.

The non-secret was that WELS/LCMS leaders were not only trained at Fuller and Trinity Divinity, but also jointly worked with ELCA, excited together about all they were gaining and tapping from AAL/Lutheran Brotherhood/Thrivent funds. 

The founder of Church Growth, Donald McGavran, was a pro-abortion liberal Disciples of Christ missionary. His salesmen C. Peter Wagner and Win Arn were unflagging cheerleaders for the dull, verbose McGavran.

 We never had transvestite church picnics in the LCA, but that is how WELS picks conference speakers.

All those who followed, adored, and praised McGavran, Wagner, and Arn were perpetually in the About Mode. 

The late Waldo Werning, D.D. (honorary) went nuts when I challenged his denial that he ever went to Fuller Seminary. I read that fact from my Day-Timer. Likewise, the WELS Stooges - Bivens, Valleskey, Kelm, Olson, etc etc - denied it too.

Hunter got degrees from LSTC - ELCA and P!U! Fuller. That made him an expert for the LCMS and WELS.

The About Mode is the curse of Calvinism, the font of every modern heresy. The Calvinists do not accept that the Holy Spirit is always at work in the Word and never apart from the Word. They consider the Word of God a dead letter unless they make it reasonable, germane, and attractive. In other words, Rationalism is style of interpretation and the efficacy of the Word is their enema enemy.

No clever can unite the superficial marketing talk of the Calvinist Church Growth salesmen with the Means of Grace taught in the Scriptures. 

As long as the red lens of Rationalism is over their eyes, they will see and hear Church Growth Principles! in every Word of the Bible, especially when so much is ripped from the Majority or Traditional text of the Greek New Testament.

 And WELS never participated in Church Growth, said Wayne Mueller, CG expert, in the WELS magazine. 

The Church Growth and NIV stooges usually deny being nursed on the Fuller sow's teats, but they hate anyone criticizing Holy Mother Sow. One Larry Otto Olson, WELS, is such a genius that he earned a precious D.Min. in Church Growth - I read his Fuller essay - and was never there! (See the Christian News article penned by another sycophant.)

The only way the True Church can grow is by adhering to the true Scriptures. There is no "about" to change, corrupt, or remove the Word from the Scriptures. The lazy, corpulent, alcoholic ministers need to go back to the Word of God and teach directly from the reliable Scriptures, the Majority Text itself or the King James translation. 

Those leaders and the various mini-popes can see the crash coming. The question is whether they will bail out and repent or be removed from the True Vine (John 15:1ff). 

Spiritual Fathers in the Christian Church

Bainton took time to pose with our son twice,
and he helped me with my dissertation, offering to xerox pages for me.

Luther taught OJ, according to Jay Webber.
I guess he never read this book either.

My first interest was church history, so I was very happy to see Roland Bainton on campus at Yale so often. If he was talking, we were there.  He was a socialist and a rationalist, but that did not keep him from being kindly, considerate, and easy to approach. When we asked to visit him at Sterling Library, where he had his own office, he posed with our son the second time and showed off his bands for keeping his trousers out of his bike spokes. 

Years before, Bainton posed with baby Marty, after our son broke up the lecture audience at the mention of Martin Luther's son - Martin. LI moved his arm and said "Eep" very distinctly. Bainton loved it as much as the others, who knew the baby was another Martin.

Paul L. Holmer posed with Little Ichabod in his office.

I took continuing education one year at Yale, just so I could hear Paul Holmer again. Mrs. Ichabod threw him a party when he had a one-semester sabbatical. It gave the students and faculty a chance to show him how much we appreciated him. The Left hated him, so some liberals took his class just to argue with him.

Last night I was searching for graphics and found a number of Holmer. I often go to the page for that graphic. I found a summary of his life work and realized even more what a genius he was, how he held that back to let his students thrive. He and Nils Dahl were always in church at Bethesda Lutheran; they even did Swedish services together,  Dall preaching in Swedish - with Holmer on the organ.

Nils Dahl was considered the best Biblical expositor of his time.

 Dahl taught Biblical studies unlike the rest. He stymied the class by asking what we knew for certain about Jesus - in his Christology class. He answered, "The text! Do not teach what we do not know, but what we do know." He studied under the famous New Testament scholars of Europe, such as Mowinkel and Bultmann, but he shunned the theories for the text. He wanted us to study the famous scholars but use the text for research.

Meanwhile, the so-called conservative Lutheran professors want everyone to follow the official dogma, no matter how much that contradicts the Bible.

I met Stan Hauerwas at Augustana College, where he was not renewed,
took his advice for attending Notre Dame, and had him for a dissertation advisor.

Stan Hauerwas and Roland Bainton were my examples in publishing early and often. Stan grew up a bricklayer - helping his father - doing a lot of hard physical work, similar to what I did in my father's bakery. However, I had much better benefits and far less to lift.

Stan was the opposite of my official advisor, who was all talk and all forked-tongue. Stan acted tough but he made things happen, without asking or expecting thanks.

He is now the best known theologian in America. His publishing allowed him to be selected for a well known European lecture series and endless opportunities, such as working with the Kennedy family.

Sterling is the main library,where I found a 270 year-old book labeled,  when Yale wasjust the  Collegiate Institute at Saybrook.

This is the nave of Sterling Library - yes the nave.
Baintain said Sterling was a church where education was worshiped,
pointing to the figure of Knowledge above the desk.