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.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys - Whatch Going To Do When They Come For You? Modern Theologians in the Woodwork

 Charlotte Kirschbaum is the Commie babe who lived with Karl Barth in a cabin in the summers and moved in with Barth's family later. She probably wrote most of the Dogmatics and
the research for his lectures. When she died, "his" writing
stopped.

Lutherans should concentrate on the Lutheran Reformation rather than the Stephanite (LCMS) Sex Cult, but the faithful should also study the modern theologians - with discernment.

 This is a basic academic treatment of Barth,
allowing that his relationship with his hawt assistant
caused considerable scandal and embarrassment.

Barth is the official theologian of Fuller Seminary, which is the dominant school for liberal and conservative Protestants - and some Catholics. Many conservative Evangelicals think Karl - or rather Charlotte - is the bomb. He was not only a flagrant adulterer and plagiarist, but also a dedicated Communist, sending his mistress to a key Party meeting.

The only thing the Synodical Conference has learned from Barth-Kirschbaum is how to get away with plagiarism. Like nursery school, only the bad habits catch on, and the disease organisms flourish.

 This Fortress book by a friend of Tillich is quite good -
honest about his academic weaknesses and paganism.
Tillich's wife wrote the tell-all about his affairs with the wives of his students and his fascination with sado-masochism.

Tillich soared in the estimation of Protestants and Catholics from the 1960s one, but I wonder if he has much influence today. He is a good example of leaving the faith behind completely while making a living from it. He also plagiarized the work of others, as exemplified by the best-selling The Courage To Be, based on the research of his graduate student.

Barth wrote so ambiguously that he was able to fool the undiscerning. One of my classmates teaches at a famous conservative Evangelical school. He became extremely upset with me when I categorized Barth as a liberal. With Tillich there is no doubt.

In both cases - Barth and Tillich - theology is divorced from the Word of God, except when the Scriptures are handy as a podium. As I repeated to a liberal at Concordia Ft. Wayne, Barth's theology is summarized by "holding the newspaper in one hand, a Kalashnikov in the other, while standing on the Bible." That quip was not original to me, but it enraged the liberal professor, as intended. Jay Webber was peeved, but I was the only one in the room to answer the question about Barth - and I was just visiting.

Bultmann out-lived many original scholars and became the leading New Testament scholar after World War II. The 1950s were quite prosperous for the mainline denominations, and they appreciated a famous man who backed up their mythical treatment of the Bible.

Meet the Founder of Modern Theology - Halle's Schleiermacher

 Friedrich Schleiermacher studied at Halle University as an unbeliever and also taught there in the same capacity.
Halle was a center of Pietism and soon became a center of anti-Biblical Rationalism.

“According to Schleiermacher, the decree of redemption already means that human beings are agreeable to God in his Son; an individual act of justification in time is not first needed in each individual person. It is only necessary that each individual person become aware that in God’s decree of redemption in Christ he is already justified and made agreeable to God.”
Hoenecke, Dogmatics, III, p. 339. Hat-tip to Joseph Schmidt. 

"Objectively speaking, without any reference to an individual sinner's attitude toward Christ's sacrifice, purely on the basis of God's verdict, every sinner, whether he knows about it or not, whether he believes it or not, has received the status of a saint. What will be his reaction when he is informed about this turn of events? Will he accept, or will he decline?"
J. P. Meyer, Ministers of Christ, A Commentary on the Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1963, p. 103f. 2 Corinthians 5:18-21.

Decree of redemption - does that sound like the LCMS Brief Statement of 1932?

In Christ - does that sound like Jay Webber's eternal mantra? 

Schleiermacher is generally considered the pivotal figure for modern theology, divorcing faith from belief. Halle University turned Biblical studies on its head and became a hotbed for anti-Biblical teaching - especially UOJ.

It is fashionable for modern theologians to distance themselves from Scheiermacher, but they really start from his perspective. If they have been induced to read a lot of earlier theologians, Schleiermacher is definitely on the list. Barth is especially close to the same rhetorical tricks, but Barth is easier to spell and pronounce, so the modern theologians refer to Barth.

 Liberal Roman Catholic theologians enjoy the
philosophical smokescreen thrown up by Paul Tillich,
who is very much like their Karl Rahner.
Two of my classmates, both Catholic leaders and now retired,
were offended by my faith in the Virgin Birth and Resurrection
of Christ. They said, "There is no use talking with you, Jackson."
They were also offended that a visiting Catholic theologian
believed the New Testament was historical,
though he called the Old Testament mythical.

Two Recent Books That Remind Me of Our Perilous Times

Stan Hauerwas recently published Hannah's Child.
His work with John Howard Yoder has become a minor publishing industry.
Both men were my professors and on my dissertation committee.

Hauerwas is still alive, but I bought his theological autobiography anyway. I was working at the Augustana College library when I met him, around 1968. My sister-in-law babysat his son Adam when Hauerwas moved to Notre Dame. For that reason I met him to discuss the PhD program at Notre Dame. I was accepted there with a full scholarship, the same week our daughter Bethany was diagnosed with a terminal neurological disorder. Hauerwas was head of the PhD program, so I saw him repeatedly as a professor, etc.

I also bought Carl Braaten's On Account of Christ, another memoir. I may provide more details about both books later. The two men named just about everyone I knew in theology, including a few graduate students. Theology can be a small world, even in a large denomination. Braaten published a famous letter about Pelikan and others leaving ELCA. Long ago, I met Pelikan's brother and father in Cleveland, and I saw Jaroslav regularly at church when we were at Yale. One of his doctoral students was LI's godmother.

A rooster crowing or a little girl's name can bring back many memories, all at once. The last 50 years seem to rush together at once, from the day I was confirmed at an Augustana Synod congregation to the present.

Among theologians, Hauerwas is clearly the one with the highest IQ and the broadest range of knowledge. When I mentioned his name to a committee of doctors at the Cleveland Clinic, they all gasped at once. I knew the Great One of medical ethics.

Braaten became known as the big shot who opposed the malignant trends in ELCA.

Both men exemplify the current trends in theology and church life. There is no connection between reality and their work. Here are some brief examples.

Hauerwas loves Karl Barth, but Karl was a Marxist fraud. Barth slept with Charlotte Kirschbaum, moved her into his home, and let her write most of the Dogmatics. A little reading in Barth shows that he was an apostate who used religious categories to suit his need to overthrow the Christian faith. Robert Preus summed up Barth in a few words - read the intro and that is enough. Look up a few photos of Barth and family. His wife Nellie was a hausfrau. Charlotte was HAWT!

The Barth-Marxist-mistress connection has been known for decades, but one does not stay in the parlor with refined theologians after identifying Barth as a disgusting example of humanity. No, he is the official theologian of Fuller Seminary, whose graduates pursue hot babes to this day.

Braaten is even less connected with reality than Hauerwas. His chosen hero is Paul Tillich, who was famous for sleeping with the wives of his graduate assistants. Tillich pretended to fight with Barth, an old academic charade carried out by professors and grad students to fill journals and fuel dissertations. Hannah Tillich wrote about her wandering husband, whose theology was so far off that his own colleagues at Union Seminary (aka The Devil's Playground) were appalled at his Systematic Theology.

Braaten is quite proud of editing the enormous Braaten/Jenson Dogmatics, a set so vile that ELCA denied using it while making it required reading at every seminary. The two-volume set is about 25 years old and still in print. The authors denied every article of faith in the Apostles' Creed, clearly and boldly, then began screaming Apostasy! at the ELCA they helped create.

Braaten is clearly in love with himself and in awe of his great accomplishments. I doubt whether he will be remembered in a few years.

Hauerwas had to deal with severe personal trials. I do not agree with his theology at all. However, the photo above does a good job of portraying his character. He wrote about being self-absorbed in his book, but he was the most caring professor on the faculty, perhaps the only one. He looked out for his students and made some good things happen, without looking for recognition.

The Braaten book is great for inside dope about ELCA, but grating otherwise.