Braaten the Pietist |
Plus Jenson the Pietist |
Equals Braaten-Jenson, the new version of Knapp's rationalistic Pietism - only worse. |
OJ/SJ sounds familiar to the Lutherans, even though this came from a Calvinist translator of Knapp. |
Encomium for an Evangelical Catholic | Carl E. Braaten | First Things:
Robert Jenson was my closest friend and collaborator for sixty years. We first met when we were both students at Luther Seminary in St. Paul in the early 1950s, though we did not become friends until we were both graduate students at Heidelberg University in 1957. We met virtually every week during that one year, with our spouses, Blanche and LaVonne, eating and drinking together, while coming to terms with the great theological minds and issues of that era: Bultmann’s demythologizing, Barth’s dogmatics, Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison, Tillich’s systematics, Ebeling’s hermeneutics, Rahner’s neo-Thomism, the Lundensian theology of AulĂ©n and Nygren, and the revival of confessional Lutheran theology undertaken by Peter Brunner and Edmund Schlink at Heidelberg University. That year we also met Wolfhart Pannenberg, who at that time was head of a circle conceiving a new theology of “revelation as history,” beyond Barth and Bultmann.
Karl Barth moved his hawt assistant, Charlotte Kirchbaum,into his home. She is standing next to him. Fuller Seminary's main theologian is Karl Barth. Karl and Charlotte lived together in a cabin each summer, where they wrote "his" Dogmatics together. |
The paragraph above is first-hand evidence of the rationalistic training enjoyed by two ELCA theologians. Let us now pause for LCMS-WELS-ELS gurus to sigh and moan about how liberal ELCA is.
Now - deep cleansing breath.
WELS and Missouri are just the same, because they groove on Fuller Seminary nonsense, founded upon Karl Barth and Charlotte Kirschbaum's Dogmatics. Barth the Marxist plagiarist and adulterer became the theologian for Fuller, and Fuller became the graduate school for the LCMS-WELS-ELS. To make it clearer, the G. Forde, part of the Bratten-Jenson Dogmatics, is currently a big deal in the LCMS.
Braaten cannot get over ELCA spurning him after all the great things he did for God and his sect. Listing the marvelous theologians who trained him and Jenson is the best indictment one could write for both of them - and for ELCA, LCMS, WELS, and the ELS. Excluding Sasse, the modern theologians are all rationalists who play with words while rejecting their meaning.
2 Thessalonains 2 8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
They are all cut from the same piece of cloth and headed downhill fast. They will gladly make a buck from Luther's 500th, but they can hardly mention Luther, so intoxicated they are with the rationalists of this era.
All the theologians listed follow the Knapp model, using the words of faith without having faith in Christ. They despise the fisherman's voice of the Holy Spirit, so they concoct their own elegant philosophies, which have the shelf life of yogurt. Their loss of influence appalls them, but that is the result of their own work -which is not so great, good, or readable.
1 Timothy 4 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
2 Timothy 4 I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom;2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.