Luther Worship - in WELS?

Someone anonymous posted that the Wisconsin Synod worships Luther (as I supposedly do). Now that is truly funny on both counts. First of all, I do not worship Luther. He is the finest Christian theologian of all time. I have read enough theologians - from Augustine and Aquinas (both in Latin) to the modernists like Rahner, Tillich, Barth, and Olson - to say that with confidence and credibility.

I agree with Walther - the closer to Luther, the better the theologian.

One ELS pastor was sounding off about Luther, so I asked, "How much Luther have you read?" The answer was - not much at all. He was simply repeating what he remembered others had said.

I wonder about the number of Lutheran pastors who seem to avoid reading Luther at all. I check the footnotes and endnotes of books and papers I read. Seldom is there a serious grappling with Luther's work.

I published something about studying footnotes in Christian News. An ELS professor came into the Little Library on the Prairie and began quoting me out loud. He died soon after. That just shows how dangerous it is to read my publications.

I never saw anyone in WELS show the slightest knowledge of Luther's doctrine. Just the opposite was true. The heritage of Wauwatosa seems to be a self-inflated ego that declares the truth of a small sect to be something marvelous to behold. Wauwatosites do not need commentaries, Luther, or even the Book of Concord. They are so expert that they can extract pure gold from the Scriptures. Just ask them. Don't even bother - they will say so.

No wonder they fell for Fuller's fatuous fables. They were Biblical and conservative (antinomian Universalists, in reality) so they would grow faster than the national debt if they just got the marketing going.

In the Collected Heresies of WELS (Wauwatosa, 3 vol., Our Great Heritage [sic], 3 vol.) is the opinion that they do not really have a quia subscription to the Book of Concord. Those same great minds expect their memos and letters to be norma normans (the ruling norm). That is no hyperbole. One WELS pastor was excommunicated by a letter because he insisted on the efficacy of the Word alone (apart from the personality of the pastor). An administrative drone sent the letter, ex cathedra, I imagine.

The two Kokomo families were kicked out of WELS the same way. They would not pledge fidelity to the Kokomo Statements, authored by the Holy Spirit Himself at WELS headquarters, so they were outsted. WELS then denied their own statements. Sorry, buddies, I held the originals in my hand and got Xerox copies of them. The letter is copied verbatim in Thy Strong Word.