Monday, December 16, 2019

General Council - The Three Greats Are - Krauth, Jacobs, and Schmauk.
Schmauk Will Soon Be in Print

 The Schmauk ebook is here, from Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry.
The Schmauk print version comes from the Lutheran Librarian on Amazon.


“No Creed but Christ”

If you simply content yourself with the assertion, “The Bible is my creed,” you are leaving unanswered many of the most important and vital questions of faith and life. When you refuse to take a definite stand on vital issues in the Christian Faith, but say, “The Bible is my creed,” are you really confessing Christ?’


On This Page

“Ten Thousand Questions”

The Bible raises ten thousand questions. If you answer any one of them in your own way only, and without looking farther, and say, “This is what I believe,” you are setting up a personal creed of your own. If you simply content yourself with the assertion, “The Bible is my creed,” you are leaving unanswered many of the most important and vital questions of faith and life. And a Church’s answer, more than your own, must be ample to meet all questions. When you refuse to take a definite stand on vital issues in the Christian Faith, but say, “The Bible is my creed,” are you really confessing Christ, or are you taking the problems of religious life easy, and evading the unpleasant but important doctrines which the Spirit of God has brought to an issue in the development of the Faith and His Church in history? – Theodore Schmauk. The Confessional Principle


Section I. Historical Introduction

Section II. The Christian Confessional Principle

  1. The Question of a Confessional Foundation: What is the Question?
  2. How Is The Question To Be Discussed?
  3. What Are Confessions? Definitions.
  4. Does The Church Need Confessions?
  5. Do Confessions Constrict, Or Do They Conserve?
  6. Should Confessions Condemn and exclude?
  7. What Gives The Confession Validity?
  8. Do Confessions Bind?

Section III. Its History and Development in Christianity

  1. The Rise of the Confessional Principle in the Church
  2. The Development of The Confessional Principle in The Church
  3. The Confessional Principle In The Augsburg Confession
  4. The History and Tendency of The Confessional Principle in The Church
  5. The Confessional Use of The Word “Symbol”

Section IV. The Lutheran Confessional Principle.

  1. The Lutheran Confession
  2. The Origin of the Augsburg Confession. Kolde’s Introduction
  3. Melanchthon’s Unsuccessful Attempts as a Diplomatist. Kolde’s Essay
  4. Kolde on the First Known Draft, or Oldest Redaction of the Augsburg Confession, and its Discovery
  5. The Oldest Redaction of The Augsburg Confession
  6. The Hand of God in the Formation of the Augsburg Confession, as shown by the Course of Events in 1529 and 1530, and in the Letters of Luther, and of Melanchthon
  7. The Augsburg Confession Remained Unaltered
  8. The Augsburg Confession: The Further History of its Editions and Manuscripts. Kolde’s Essay, With A Summary of the Argument as it Bears on the Confessional Question, by T. E. Schmauk
  9. Protestantism Under The Augsburg Confession To The Death of Luther
  10. Protestantism From The Death of Luther To The Death of Melanchthon and to the Disintegration of Lutheranism
  11. Melanchthon and The Melanchthonian Principle.
  12. The Need of A Concordia Realized, and its Origin Attempted
  13. The Formula of Concord: its Origin Based on Kolde’s Introduction and on the Formula in Hauck
  14. The Introduction of The Concordia, and The Augustana Preserved
  15. Is The Formula of Concord A Confession?
  16. The Answer of a Providential Origin to the Question - Is the Formula a Confession?
  17. The Answer To The Criticism Made On The Motives and Men, as Touching The Question, Is The Formula A Confession?
  18. The Answer of The Formula’s Outer Form to The Question, Is The Formula A Confession?
  19. The Answer of The Formula’s Subject Matter, Touching The Question, Is The Formula of Concord a Confession?
  20. The Person of Christ and The Formula of Concord
  21. Concordia Is The Church’s Great Confession of Christ.
  22. What The Formula of Concord Accomplished As A Confession of The Lutheran Church.
  23. The Book of Concord. The Facts of its Origin and Publication. Kolde’s Essay.

Section V. In America.

  1. From the Book of Concord to the Present Day
  2. The Book of Concord and Historical Lutheranism In America.
  3. The Confessional Principle of The Book of Concord and American Protestantism
  4. The Confessional Principle of The Book of Concord and Christian Cooperation
  5. The Confessional Principle of The Book of Concord and The Brotherhood of The Christian Church
  6. The Confessional Principle of The Book of Concord and the Future of the Church In America.




The Faith of Jesus - Too Great an Obstacle for the Ft. Whiners.
The Dastardly NIV Cannot Extirpate the Truth

The Faith of Jesus, Amazon


KJV Romans 3:22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

δικαιοσυνη δε θεου δια πιστεως ιησου χριστου εις παντας και επι παντας τους πιστευοντας ου γαρ εστιν διαστολη

KJV Romans 3:21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;

22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;


24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:


---

I ran across this stumbling block for Objective Justification blockheads some time ago, saw a website and then an academic book - The Faith of Jesus - on this ignored topic.

This skandalon does not trigger unfaith but destroys Enthusiasm and nurtures faith.

This is their key argument, their only argument - "God pronounced the entire world forgiven, absolved, and saved" at some point in time (still to be resolved, like whether Mary was assumed into heaven before or after death).

As my Greek students know, an anarthrous phrase (without the article "the") calls attention to itself. My best rendition in English is using the dash: Jesus-faith in this case, water-Spirit baptism in John 3.

This phrase is not an accident or typo - Paul used it in Galatians and Philippians. However, it is largely overlooked. Richard B. Hays studied at Yale Divinity, wrote his dissertation on the topic at Emory and taught at Yale, elevated to a named professorship at Duke. His book is highly regarded.

The advantage of Ft. Whiners is their lack of New Testament Greek and their reliance on theses independent of the Scriptures.

ELCA Presiding Bishop Liz Eaton - her incredible powers to shrink her synod and seminaries has caught on with LCMS-WELS-ELS. Lead on! with ambiguous genders and unambiguous dogma.

But their little fad will join the rest of the Ringwraiths as their rush to save the One Ring that rules them all. Note who controls it now.

This verse is central to Justification by Faith and destroys all attempts to claim anyone is justified or declared righteous without faith. Please note that their seldom-mentioned Subjective Justification is just as much opposed to faith as OJ is. Why? Because SJ only means "agreement, even making a decision for Justification without Faith."

To paraphrase Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who knew more Greek than all the Ft. Whiners put together - Jesus graciously gives His faith to believers in justification.

"Thus we see that even our faith is not ours in its origin: but is the faith of the Son of God graciously communicated to us." Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
(cited in Hays, The Faith of Jesus, page li)

This also explains "from faith to faith" (Romans 1:17) -which has puzzled New Testament expositors. 

The faith of Jesus emphasizes His human nature. Knowing the torture and humiliation ahead of Him, the desertion of the disciples, the jeers of the opponents, Jesus' faith led Him forward to complete the will of His Heavenly Father. As my mother reminded me decades ago, He prayed "Take this cup from Me. But not My will, but Thine."

Hays, The Faith of Jesus


Contrast the faith of Jesus with the hideous dogma revealed in the following books, adored by Missouri, WELS, and ELS alike.

Everyone is saved, Yahoo!

  Make a decision!

 Make a decision!