ICHABOD, THE GLORY HAS DEPARTED - explores the Age of Apostasy, predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, to attack Objective Faithless Justification, Church Growth Clowns, and their ringmasters. The antidote to these poisons is trusting the efficacious Word in the Means of Grace. John 16:8. Isaiah 55:8ff. Romans 10. Most readers are WELS, LCMS, ELS, or ELCA. This blog also covers the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and the Left-wing, National Council of Churches denominations.
One layman asked me to write about the issue of adiaphora - matters of indifference in Latin. The term is abused in today's Lutherdom, because education is so poor and continued study is lacking, except for phony degrees from Fuller Seminary. The master's degree after a divinity degree was once called - Latin word order - STM - a master of sacred (Christian) theology. Fuller should have retained the practical Doctor of Sacred Theology - STD. Then no one would attach the initials to the name. That is far more sensible than Doctor of Ministry, though D.Min. sounds pleasingly like Demon. Fuller has produced many demons.
I would pay money to hear the Church Growth experts in WELS, LCMS, and ELCA say, "All of us picked up STDs at Fuller Seminary, so pay attention to us."
Enough ruminations! Article VII of the Augsburg Confession states that unity comes from general agreement, not from every possible picky thing anyone can imagine. That is used with Article X of the Formula of Concord to label everything as adiaphora, Latin plural for "matters of indifference." WELS specializes in everything being matters of indifference, including women consecrating Holy Communion, bedding down with ELCA, and promoting Calvinism.
Confidentially, WELS knows as little about the Book of Concord as the Missouri Synod. That is shown by their shared ignorance and mutual opposition to an important part of Article X in the Formula of Concord.
X. 5. Namely, when under the title and pretext of external adiaphora such things are proposed as are in principle contrary to God’s Word (although painted another color), these are not to be regarded as adiaphora, in which one is free to act as he will, but must be avoided as things prohibited by God. In like manner, too, such ceremonies should not be reckoned among the genuine free adiaphora, or matters of indifference, as make a show or feign the appearance, as though our religion and that of the Papists were not far apart, thus to avoid persecution, or as though the latter were not at least highly offensive to us; or when such ceremonies are designed for the purpose, and required and received in this sense, as though by and through them both contrary religions were reconciled and became one body; or when a reentering into the Papacy and a departure from the pure doctrine of the Gospel and true religion should occur or gradually follow therefrom [when there is danger lest we seem to have reentered the Papacy, and to have departed, or to be on the point of departing gradually, from the pure doctrine of the Gospel].
How about this, synodicals, ye who worship the organization and bow down before the fancy-robed and fish-hatted dictator?
The synods - with ELCA - endorsed and promoted the Roman Catholic three-year lectionary.
The synods - with ELCA - love every Biblical paraphrase except the Apostolic Text, aka the Majority or Traditional Text of the KJV, and promote the snip and clip monstrosities of apostate liars Tischendorf, Westcott, Hort, and Aland.
The synods - with ELCA - endorsed and promoted Rome's San Francisco color scheme for the paraments, adding pink, sky-blue, and who knows what.
The district and synod presidents -with ELCA - have become more Roman in their liturgical finery than ever before.
WELS - suffering from withdrawal, giving up their black Geneva gowns - brazenly adopted an expensive Calvinist hymnal of their own and demanded big bucks from the parishes to pay for it.
The synods - with ELCA - despise Biblical Lutheran doctrine, if they even deal with it, and pile up experts of their own from Rome, Calvinism, and the popcorn praise band advocates of the Babtists.
Rome and the Calvinists have made such incursions into Lutheran doctrine and worship that all these "adiaphora" should be removed. No one should be indifferent about the adiaphora coming in the back door, no pun intended, but that is what the thieves like best (John 10).
