Monday, February 8, 2016

The Donkey Poem - Save for Palm Sunday





When forests walked and fishes flew
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood,
Then, surely, I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening bray
And ears like errant wings—
The devil's walking parody
Of all four-footed things:

The battered outlaw of the earth
Of ancient crooked will;
Scourge, beat, deride me—I am dumb—
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour—
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout around my head
And palms about my feet.

G. K. Chesterton, Notre Dame Visiting Professor
Kelmed from Norman Teigen's blog

Giotto di Bondone, Scenes from the Life of Christ 10.
Entry into Jerusalem, 1304-6,
Cappella Scrovegni, Padova

Follow Up - A Few Notes on Studying Greek

Come back with your shields or on them, soldiers!

One person responded to How To Study Theology with a question about learning Greek.

Here are a few steps to consider:

  1. Avoid classical Greek. The New Testament is Koine. Learn that. It is easier and relevant.
  2. Learn how to read the letters and pronounce the words.
  3. Read the text out loud until that gets easy.
  4. Always read the text out loud first.


Next -
Read John 1:1 in Greek. Translate the words you know. Guess the rest. Then check your KJV. Do not ever write words above the Greek or leave a Bible open. Our lazy brain will go to English first, just as kids will eat candy before meat if left side by side.

Read John 1:2 in Greek. Repeat.

Get used to reading the paragraph out loud. The key is immersion, not words lists, not grammar rules. If we had waited to learn interogatives and subjunctives as babies we would have starved to death.

Management by Sassy

Sassy is signaling me for her morning walk.
I must answer or get into trouble with her.

Everyone loves Sassy, so I decided to describe how she carefully manages our behavior and displays a remarkable amount of intelligence, independence, and humor.

Sometimes we work on threat gestures. I learned early that my intruder pose would get her leaping up and grabbing my hand. Simply by grazing my hand in a fast-moving gesture, she opened up a wound with her teeth. I was dodging without success, and I stopped. The blood stopped soon, and I did not try that again.

Sassy has assumed the role of protecting our yard from a wandering black lab. The neighboring dogs bark at the intruder walking down the grassy alley between our homes. They are large and muscular, but seem helpless. Sassy always asks to go out and take care of the lab. She goes to the fence and does her best German Shepherd attack. She plants her front legs down, barks and snarls furiously, displaying her teeth and moving her head back and forth close to the ground.  The lab takes off and the neighbor dogs bark impotently at him in a me too response.

Sassy even barked the lab out of our neighbor's yard, but the lab got its hind leg stuck up in the wire fence. Black labs matter, so I called Animal Control and got the dog freed in a few minutes. Unharmed and clueless, it came back to the same yard an hour or two later.


We have always worked on the gentle command with Sassy, and she is great responding. When I pretend to form a claw coming down on her flank, she bares her teeth menacingly. But she cannot hold her fierce pose for long, it turns into a grin. She loves the game. She has the fast motions of a Cattle Dog and snaps at my hand with incredible speed - always to lick my hand.

Sacky was our first Cattle Dog. Sacky could kiss my bare feet alternately as I walked, but never while I was looking. I never figured out how she could do that. To illustrate her speed, she simply snapped all houseflies out of the air in Phoenix.



Sassy and I walk twice a day, and she is keen to remind me when the sun is up or going down. I tired of the leash and she was quick to learn commands - wait, leave alone, cross the street, and so forth.
I can wiggle one finger and get her to run full speed at me, both of us grinning. She has to ask permission to cross the street or go meet someone. She has learned not to bark loudly in greeting adults and children. However, one friend loves her happy bark, so she lets loose when she hears, "Where is that happy bark, Sassy?" Left and right, she barks as loudly as she can.

However, Sassy's great response and intuition are tempered by her independent spirit. She loves to walk south down the side streets when we are walking west down Scott Street. Once she asked permission to cross the street and go farther down Scott. When I said yes, she darted left and ran about 20 feet south down the side street. Then she stopped and looked back, grinning. I said, "OK, let's go down that street." She pranced into each yard, catching up on all the signals left by other animals.

When one woman suggested that Sassy leave her front-yard family gathering, with Sassy meeting each child, Sassy responded by going to the woman, laying down her ears and reaching out for a final petting. The woman could not help laughing as everyone enjoyed Sassy trumping her ace. Sassy lays down her ears and reaches out in meek and friendly gesture that no one can miss.

Sassy's goal is to meet each person on our walks. She went up to one man, who said, "Oh, Sassy, you are the dog that loves everyone."

Sassy loves treats: she remembers and counts, always pushing for a greater number at any given time. One treat means two would be better. Two is the norm and three would be nice, as the dessert. The vet suggested breaking treats into small pieces so Sassy could get the count up with fewer calories.

Sassy likes to take one more trip outside once I am settled in bed to sleep. My transition from writing and grading to sleep is quick and easy to make. The bed is the best chair I have used for the painful process of grading 25 essays at a time.

To get Sassy outside before I am nodding off,  I have tried various things, such as snapping my fingers. I even dragged her off  the bed gently - and she crawled back. I used a snack once to get her up and out and another small one to reward her coming inside. After that happened once or twice,  I invited her in. She stopped in the kitchen and glared at me. "Where is treat #2?"

Talking and Singing - The Tell-Tale Tail
Sassy has many ways to talk. She uses her Cattle Dog (kelpie) voice at times. If she yips a little, I ask, "Are you going full kelpie on us?" Then she yips in that high-pitched wild dingo voice of hers, and we laugh.

She is great at singing along, as she did when we sang Happy Birthday to grandson Alex.

The ears, face, and tail are part of her signals. She may make a little whining noise for a moment. We look and ask, "What's wrong?" Her tail rotates slowly. That means she needs a treat or a walk. If I delay or miss the signal, she rotates rapidly and with great force. That can include whipping my arm as I work. Her tails is soft, but the perpetual rotation makes work impossible.

If that fails, she uses her powerful claws to pull me down on the bed for lovey time.

The rotating tail is often paired with her stupid dog look. Sacky pulled that on me too, to show how clueless I was.


How To Study Theology - For Latecomers



Some enter the study of theology later in life, sometimes as laity bewildered by the false doctrine being promoted around them, sometimes as men sensing a calling into pastoral work.

The temptation to regret a late start should be quashed with the facts. Those who go through a system have to grow away from the synod worship imposed on them by years of training. The veterans of a system also have to develop critical thinking skills to replace the rigid conforming imposed by Holy Mother Synod. Few can escape the gravitational pull of both soul-destroying forces.

Roland Bainton trained many generations of church historians;
we were blessed to hear him lecture at Yale.
He also helped me with my dissertation and offered
to xerox some pages of a book for me.


Languages. 
Greek is the most important to learn, and Greek is remarkably easy to learn. I can get kids translating John's Gospel from Greek to English in two weeks. After that, the key is regular practice and use of Greek, so the New Testament is easily read in Greek and not translated at all. As my Latin teacher told us, "Keep at it - and one day your brain will switch on and Latin will be as easy as the newspaper." I kept reading Aquinas in Latin and one day - boom - as easy as skimming the Moline Dispatch. Ditto Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

Language professors seldom grasp this concept and try to make their language akin to rocket science, so they can occupy the high ground with furtive pathas and iota subscripts.

Hebrew is good to know because the entire Old Testament is different with a knowledge of Hebrew. Someone can be tutored in Hebrew and read Jonah or a little Genesis or Joshua. Psalms are entirely different in Hebrew, which also gives us insight into Arabic. But Hebrew is not going to be used as easily or as often in pastoral work. That is no reason to bypass it altogether. My LCA seminary president discouraged me from taking Hebrew, because "It is not required and will not earn credits." I graduated early anyway and won the uncoveted Hebrew prize for being the only Hebrew student that year.

Language professors awe people by flourishing the rules of grammar in their language, as if humans learn a language by memorizing grammar rules and vocabulary lists. Just the opposite is true. We learn our first language through immersion. Parents say "No, no" and shake their heads. The baby soon learns to say "No, no" and shake his head - and the parents stand back in awe.


Latin is shockingly easy to learn. Roland Bainton taught me the Gospel of John approach. The Fourth Gospel has very simple grammar, short phrases, and repetition of the same word in many passages. Like Greek, learning to read the endings is the key to reading the language. A little tutoring is good for a start and continued reading in Latin (without a pony or a jimmy - nicknames for a Bible as a crutch) will do the job. German, Spanish, and French are similar - easily learned from the Gospel of John. Bainton learned 20 languages this way and had no sympathy for someone who said, "But that is not written in English."

In Latin and Greek, I had Little Ichabod go over the text of John, chapters 1 - 4, carefully. Then we started over, because learning curve had been flattened. After that, he became a rapid reader and ending up translating Latin to English, Greek to English on the fly.

Languages - Conclusion
The best and most worthwhile start is Greek, constantly rewarding and easily repaying time spent getting past the early language study frustrations.

Biblical Theology Is Learned More Than Taught
The more engaged I became in writing about Lutheran theology, the more I realized that most clergy - especially the synod leaders - were simply relying on talking points from seminary, where no one was really challenged to move beyond the trite affirmations the institution's glory.

Example - Mequon would teach against the errors of Calvinism in one class and promote the same errors in the next, with the errors being emphasized as the only way to get things done. In 1987, only one professor was left who was Lutheran in thought and teaching. The rest - like Wayne Mueller - were Pietists with no grasp of Lutheran theology and a decided ignorance of anything outside their enclave on Mt. Zion.

When I was in Cisco training we had to learn the arcane science of sub-net masking, using base two, which few could comprehend when we started. I knew base two from math in Moline, and agreed with the conclusion of two students who said, "Sub-net masking has to be learned. It cannot be taught." The teacher was a burn-out and he could not teach anything, so I began to make my little charts on sub-net masking. When I took the Cisco CCNA test, I scored 8 out of 8 on sub-net masking, which included some devilish examples to break down. However, the test concluded that I really needed some experience before I became an Internet manager, so I donated my books to LI and changed history at a grocery store chain.

How does this apply to theology? someone is asking.
Although it is good to read books and their opinions about Biblical topics, the only way to learn theology is to work through the topics in the Bible itself. Does the Bible really teach the efficacy of the Word, the Word/Spirit combination, the Means of Grace? Each person must teach himself, and that is why so many laity can run rings around lazy pastors stuck in their dog notes from 1884.

The second part of this is to read the non-Lutheran sources and see how Calvinists and Roman Catholics fail to see this and also how they distort concepts with the same name and yet twisted in a new and diabolical way.

Luther said we must know the opposition's dogma better than they do, so much that we could teach it if we had to. Thus we stop their attacks and defeat them with the very weapons they would use against us. Sadly today, that is more true of synodical leaders and professors than other denominations, because the other sects realize Lutherdom is self-defeating with its rainbow coalition of dogmas and fantasies.

Best Lutheran Theology Sets - Two To Own for Mandatory and Continuous Use
This claim is non-negotiable and cannot be swapped for another contingency.

I. Luther's Sermons - Lenker Edition
This is often bought with the Postils, which are also excellent. I will concentrate on the Lenker portion.

Luther did not emphasize evangelism as such, which is a fetish of the Evangelicals and Pentecostals, and by coveting and imitation, the Lutherans today. The Reformer believed and practiced the sermon as the key work of the congregation and the pastor.

We act according to our beliefs, and beliefs are taught. Everyone seems to say Luther was the greatest Biblical scholar and expositor ever, but precious few follow his example of preaching expository sermons from the historic text.

Jesus converted through the external, the spoken Word. He did not break up the crowds into cell groups and give them Reformed tracts to study.

Luther changed the world forever by writing and preaching.

The only way to learn Lutheran theology is to study Luther's sermons, each and every week, and commit passages to memory.

The individual pastor's sermons should be like Luther's almost always verse by verse expositions, delivered without notes - other than the text itself, which should help considerably.

I have taught thousands of working adults to give their oral presentations without notes. Believe me, there is no substitute for 100% eye contact and knowing the content from previous study. Those who free themselves from notes agree. One team of working adults said, "We thought having five resources each was a burden when we started the class. Now we think of five as a beginning. And we do not need notes because we know the subject so much better."

So the use of Lenker, above other sources, should be weekly and continuous until the end of life. There is no better school for Biblical studies, comparative dogmatics, theology, and practical examples.

II. The Book of Concord
Lemme see, which is better - yellowed dog notes from seminary, the collected works of CFW Walther (BA, Leipzig, Pietist Extraordinaire), Paul Tillich, Charlotte Kirschbaum's Church Dogmatics - with notes by Karl Barth,  or -

The Best Writing of Luther, Melanchthon, Chemnitz, and other geniuses of the Reformation?

The Book of Concord is the best one-volume Biblical commentary, the best theology text (apart from Luther), the best comparative dogmatics book, the best sermon starter, the best example for quoting.

The Book of Concord is more of a theology text just as Luther's sermons are Biblical studies, but observe how closely related both are. The Book of Concord organizes the Biblical studies into topics, while Luther preaches theology based on the text for the day.

Warning! Warning! Once the student becomes familiar with Luther's sermons and the Book of Concord, the hollow claims of the "Confessional Lutherans" will become far too evident. Their puffery will sound like the cries of peacocks who struck around with their feathers on display while making the most horrible cries. As Luther wrote, it is as if they have seen their feet of clay and began screaming in protest at their ugliness and fragility.

Father Richard John Neuhaus was a "Confessional Lutheran," just before he became a Roman Catholic priest. So if that is a "Confesional Lutheran," I agree that WELS, Missouri, and the Little Sect of the Prairie are all packed to the gills with them.



The vainglory of the false teachers is so powerful that they cannot abide anyone who knows how ugly are their feet (that is - their doctrinal foundations). They will drive away or peck to death anyone who starts to have a complete and abiding trust in the Word, Luther, and the Confessions. They smugly smile when their deluded disciples praise them and repeat their toxic words verbatim.

Graduation day at ELCA, LCMS, WELS, ELS, CLC (sic)
and the Institute of Lutheran (sic) Theology seminaries.
Almost all of them are UOJ Stormtroopers -
lots of firepower, cannot hit anything.