Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Last Big Installment - Calvin Ruined the Protestant Faith






John Sparky Brenner worked on this research for his doctoral dissertation at a Catholic university. He substitutes “individual appropriation of forgiveness” for Justification by Faith, because he has already misused Justification for the “Justification of the World,” his favorite term for Objective Justification.
If anyone wonders where so many errors begin in the LCMS, WELS, and ELS, they only need to look at Walther’s Pietistic version of Calvinism. The polyps have all turned into cancer, so swaths of the Synodical Conference are Pentecostal, Universalist, or sinuflecting toward Rome.

Limited Atonement

Nothing strikes the ears so blatantly as the cacophony of Calvin’s limited atonement. But, if mankind’s salvation and damnation are determined at the beginning of time, the atonement cannot be universal in their thinking. Once again, separating the Holy Spirit from the Word generates gross errors, because the claims replace the revealed, inerrant Word as the foundation. Oddly, this strange term is used by the Calvinizing Lutherans against the Chief Article. LCMS radio broadcaster and fund-raised Todd Wilken chuckled and said, “Justification by Faith is Calvinism.” The advocates of Objective Justification also imagine that the Chief Article assumes the limited atonement, a sad commentary on LCMS knowledge of Calvin, Luther, and the Scriptures.

Irresistible Grace

If man is so utterly depraved, then grace must be irresistible. This claim, nowhere to be found in the Word, diminishes and defames the Means of Grace. Since baptism and communion mean little as symbols and mere ordinances, they count little among most Protestants. Can anyone find a hymn about baptism or communion written by non-Lutherans? They must be as rare as hen’s teeth, but Lutheran hymns about the Sacraments are beautiful, comforting expressions of faith.

Perseverance of the Saints

Vance has accumulated many quotations to show that Calvin and Calvinists are scattered in their definitions. This problem is another reason why Christians should avoid ambiguous terminology not found or supported in the Scriptures.

Denial of the Word’s Efficacy Undermines Support for Creation


Some issues are not hotly debated today, but God’s Creation in six 24-hour days is rapidly separating the good from the bad. The 16th century did not deny Creation, but Zwingli and Calvin denied the Spirit-Word connection in the Bible, setting the table for Christians to understand and believe the science of their era rather than the mysteries of God revealed by the Scriptures.

Ironically, the scientific Protestants of today are thralls of 19th century theories, derived by Charles Darwin and from Charles Darwin. Therefore, they plunge forward with little grasp of the created world around them, the perfect synchronizing of plants, animals, seasons, the sun and moon, even fungus and bacteria in the soil.

The sovereignty of the Holy Spirit is defined by Calvin as fickleness, chance, beyond man’s control. This error is corrosive, so the denial of the Sacraments begins to work upon the miracles, the divinity of Christ, Creation, the Trinity, and finally the existence of God.

When we follow the plain teaching of the Scriptures, we know that the Word always brings Christ to us, grace through the Instruments of Grace, never doubting God’s Promises –
For rebirth, washing, a new creation;
For the forgiveness of sin;
For everlasting life.

The power of the Word is so great that we can trust its effectiveness at all times, always accomplishing God’s will, never returning void, but prospering His will. That may mean hardening and blinding those who persistently and obstinately oppose the Word, as so many clergy, denominational leaders, and professors do today. They are like the thieves who want to steal copper and cannot grasp the energy in those thick, high-power lines. They turn what is good for society into death for them.
When my baker father found mealworms in his flour, he did not say, “Leave them alone. We do not want to split or diminish the flour supply.” Instead, he said, “Get these out of here. They will take over the bakery if we let them alone.”
Likewise, the Word divides the good from the bad. We can also depend on the Gospel Word to foster the growth of the fruits of the Spirit. At that point we can see how damaging the cancer of Calvinism has been in the name of growth.




Calvin and Barth-Kirschbaum Feed the Church Growth Cancer


Dr. Walter A. Maier (PhD, Harvard) correctly stated that Justification by Faith and the inerrancy of the Bible are the capstone and cornerstone of the Christian Faith.[1] How can someone argue for studying the dogma and methods of a seminary boasting of anti-inerrancy and marketing statistics, in the name of missions?
David Hubbard had another idea about inerrancy at Fuller. The topic was a distraction that hampered their work for missions. He wrote with pious wrath some years ago:
"We resent unnecessary distractions; we resist unbiblical diversions. Can anyone believe that all other activities should be suspended until all evangelicals agree on precise doctrinal statements? We certainly cannot."  David Allan Hubbard, "What We Believe and Teach," Pasadena, California: Fuller Theological Seminary.
Because Fuller was changed by faculty devotion to the dogmatics of Barth and Kirschbaum, the entire program was changed and expanded. That degeneration was destined to happen, because it began with the creative Enthusiasm of Zwingli and Calvin, followed later by the turning point at Halle University – with Schleiermacher as professor and dogmatics author.

Unfaithful Theologians and Their Dogmatics

Innocent laity and clergy think theologians are writing as faithfully as they can about God, using the Scriptures, but modern efforts are no different from writing novels and short stories based upon some research and experience. No boundaries exist, and the peers of theologians admire someone who is different, challenging, shocking, and rebellious toward the Bible and Christianity.
·        The late Paul Tillich was a celebrity theologian, featured on the cover of Time magazine, but his own colleagues at the Left-wing Union Seminary were shocked at his radicalism, which was a form of pantheism: all the people, planets, plants, and animals are god. He explained that nonsense in three volumes of his Systematic Theology.
·        Karl Barth and Charlotte Kirschbaum worked closely together to fashion an entire industry of publishing and writing about Barth. Only lately have writers opened up about what was known in the 1970s about their Marxism and blatant adultery. Their 14 volume Church Dogmatics often sells at an extreme discount.
·        Rudolph Bultmann kept the world of Biblical scholarship stirred up by finding almost nothing truly known about Jesus, claiming the Bible needed to be de-mythologized.
·        Braaten-Jenson wrote the pre-ELCA Christian Dogmatics, two volumes, where every article of faith in the Apostles Creed is mocked and rejected. The set still sells today, and Carl Braaten complains about the apostasy of ELCA, which he did so much to establish.
·        The Missouri Synod spent many years creating a two-volume Confessing the Gospel: A Lutheran Approach to Systematic Theology. Unfortunately, these great scholars repeated the error of Walther and Pieper, devoting their energies to substituting Objective Justification for the Chief Article of Christianity, Justification by Faith. The St. Louis Seminary professors also back-pedal on Creation, so readers know that Seminex has been reborn at its original OJ location.

The Prussian Union Church Reborn

The government forced the Lutherans to stop emphasizing the doctrine of Reformation, in favor of peace through unity with the Calvinists. Schleiermacher participated in making this happen.
By attracting so many Lutherans and Protestants to Fuller Seminary and making that school their unifying institution, with massive help from Thrivent Insurance, all the Lutheran synods have been amalgamated into modern Calvinism, with an emphasis on rationalism, marketing, and outward success.

When I became the Lutheran I always was[2], every Lutheran congregation in town had liturgical services, hymns, the Creed, and Biblical sermons. The Disciples of Christ congregation I left was all gimmicks, paleo-Church Growth, now empty and unwanted. Since that time in the 1960s, I have found the Lutheran Church in all its forms retreating into the Disciples of Christ model, where the always-tanned minister arrived in a fire truck one Sunday, rode down the aisle on a Hog another Sunday.


All about the Numbers

One dense WELS pastor said they had to stick to Fuller Seminary because “We cannot give up all their world mission statistics!”
Church Growth was initiated at Fuller by a sociologist from the Disciples of Christ and World Council of Churches – Donald McGavran. His doctorate favored statistical analysis, which works well in discovering that Pop Tarts sell like crazy before a big storm. Numbers have served as a delightful opiate to let the addicts find comfort in staring a charts and working on new plans.

Needless to say, when numbers are first, then fidelity to the Christian Faith is dead last. The proof comes from the leaders who refuse to admit they bought and paid for this debacle
1.     By their religious apostasy,
2.     By their devotion to Fuller and likeminded synagogues of Satan,
3.     By their destruction of anyone who dared to tell the truth about their corrupt practices, felonies, and subsequent lawsuits.
As the misled have shouted at various times, “Either we are growing or we are dying!”

The Word of God Needs Help – Entertainment

At the Chicago Inerrancy Conference, a Calvinist rudely charged Dr. Robert Preus with not explaining and making relevant his summary of Christian doctrine. Preus condensed a number of descriptions of God, a pleasure to read and hear. The late-comer to the Reformation knew what should been done. “I would not let one of my students get away with this.”
The Fuller kamikaze pilots have attacked every denomination, every parish, a few facts leavened with great big lies.
1.     Pipe organs are no good, old-fashioned.
2.     Sermons are no good, too boring.
3.     The liturgy, any formal Christ-centered worship, has to go.
4.     Traditional Christian hymns must be replaced with Vacation Bible School songs and praise bands who praise themselves and sell their music.
5.     The minister should dress for the south forty or a day of tag football.
6.     The church sign must be generic, like Grace Point, or Family Center.
I heard a rich business man declare all this as the program for the congregation, as the WELS pastor nodded his head in submission. Who was the source of all this? – one of the great church destroyers, known for his infidelities.

We Must Have Plans, Goals, and Strategies
Peter Drucker, Management by Objectives, cleverly attached himself to Fuller Seminary and sold everyone on his secular style of planning. Jim Huebner’s face went white when I told him I knew all about Drucker. In fact, the LCA taught the same things because their leaders studied at Fuller, just like Huebner, Kelm, Olson, Bivens, Valleskey, Oelhafen, Adrian, and many more.
Thanks to this Fuller-Drucker team, everyone is taught that they must have goals, that their church will never grow unless they have gigantic visions, with specific and achievable and measurable goals to make the visions become reality. Strangely, every denomination had visions suggesting inhalant abuse – hundreds of new missions, thousands of new members. A pastor (now an atheist) dreamed of having a world-famous valet parking ministry with 8,000 communing members. That parish is now almost empty.
The only goal should be fidelity to the Scriptures, from which spiritual fruits and gifts will emerge for God to carry out His plans.

Shallow Teaching, Instant Members

Long ago, people figured out that children do not grow healthy and strong on a diet of candy and desserts. However, the Fuller brain-washed lust for measurable results, so they need instant members.
One rock-ribbed Walther Enthusiast, considered a Bronze Age Missourian, said this, “We needed more members, so we hired Waldo Werning to come in and teach Church Growth. We were desperate!”

Those pastors who teach prospects for one-hour and make them members are creating a fragile and volatile congregation. A little conflict will make them melt down like a meringue pie left on a sunny ledge.
Genuine teaching will strengthen the couples, families, and congregation, knowing that people move and take the Gospel they know with them.

Busy But Not Busy Visiting

The ideal Church Growth pastor is a rancher with enormous herds, even multiple sites, so individuals seldom see them, even after the service. Most congregations are not like that, but the wannabees are too busy, so they tell us, to visit their own members. Nothing is more important than to take the Gospel to the hospitalized, the sick and shut-in, the elderly who have done so much. Why does it take a metaphorical cattle-prod to get a Church Growth pastor to visit?
The short conclusion will be a positive, therapeutic program based on the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace.



[1] This quotation is on the back cover of Herman Otten’s book about Maier – The Word Still Listens.
[2] Father Richard John Neuhaus (LCMS, AELC, LCA, ELCA, Rome) gave a talk at Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne, entitled “How I Became the Catholic I Always Was.” Many Ft. Wayne students and graduates nodded their heads in agreement as he spoke.