Dr. Lito Cruz Quoted Sasse in 2010

Sasse.

The unity of the Lutheran Church can come only if our churches return to the diligent use of the means of grace, to a serious study of the Word of God and the confessions of the Reformation.  Hermann Sasse (LW II, 265)
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LPC has left a new comment on your post "The Unity of the Lutheran Will Not Come from Publi...":

Pr. Greg,

You have been echoing this now for so many years, still no one likes to listen.

LPC


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GJ - It is the sound of one hand clapping, to coin a phrase.

Many of us find it discouraging that the Lutheran leaders will not even talk in Biblical, Lutheran, Confessional terms. They have nothing to confess.

I know how to avoid the Third Rail topics that infuriate the Reformed. I could sell a lot of books if I avoided those topics.

The terms are: baptismal regeneration, infant baptism, the Real Presence, the efficacy of the Word alone, the Means of Grace.

The Lutheran leaders dance around these terms because they do not want to annoy the Enthusiasts in their midst. Avoidance has made these synodical leaders Enthusiasts, if they ever were Lutheran - I doubt it.

The seminary professors comprise a capon chorus singing the praises of their (fill in the blank) synod while mocking the Word, Luther, and the Confessions.

 Dr. Lito Cruz, math PhD and Lutheran pastor - and his wife Lynne.

What Sasse Says: A Confession Is Nothing, Unless It Is Confessed

What Sasse Says: A Confession Is Nothing, Unless It Is Confessed

A Confession Is Nothing, Unless It Is Confessed

… In every church there can be and exists error, and even heretical opinions may occur. Every church is confronted with the problem how to deal in an evangelical way with such errors. What matters is, whether or not a church is prepared to maintain its doctrinal standard, whether it regards its confession as a real confession, and not only as a statute valid before men. I can assert a confession only if I believe it. …Training future pastors belongs to the highest ecclesiastical functions. The confessional obligation of the faculty of St. Louis is obviously different from that of Upsala where the chair of church history was occupied by a Methodist, to take only this example. Here lies for me the root of all differences between Missouri and the LWF churches. For you a confession is nothing, unless it is confessed…


Hermann Sasse, in a letter to Dr John W. Behnken, President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, March 1, 1958.

HT Rev. Matthew Harrison
http://mercyjourney.blogspot.com/2010/12/sasse-to-behnken-for-you-confession-is.html

What Sasse Says: The Primacy of Scripture

What Sasse Says: The Primacy of Scripture

The Primacy of Scripture

If there is no Bible - as God's Word, as Scripture - in which and through which God speaks to men, then there is no theology, which is man's speaking about God. And if Holy Scripture does not exist as the source and norm of church doctrine, then there is no church doctrine, and therefore there is no church. For this reason then, there is no more burning issue for the Evangelical Lutheran Church today than the doctrine of Holy Scripture.

From Letters to Lutheran Pastors No. 14 (1950), On the Doctrine of Holy Scripture

What Sasse Says

What Sasse Says: "Why Are There Different Interpretations of Scripture?

How it is possible for Christians who really want to obey this Word, and seriously ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten them, to arrive at contradicting conclusions as to the meaning of a certain passage no one can know. The reason is not, as the Catholic churches claim, the lack of an infallible teaching office which through the unfailing enlightenment of the Holy Spirit is able to decide authoritatively which exegesis is right and which is wrong. Otherwise, one should expect that the churches which reject the sola Scriptura, the church of Rome and the Eastern churches, would agree which that infallible teaching office is. The reason is rather to be found in the nature of God's revelation. God's Word always comes to us hidden in his humanity. Thus, not by our own reason, but rather by the grace of the Holy Spirit, can we perceive the divine truth in faith. This applies also to the understanding of God's Word by the Reformers. They are fallible like us.

From This Is My Body, Luther's Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar (Revised Australian Edition, Lutheran Publishing House, Adelaide, 1977) p.232."

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GJ - This Sasse quotation seems a little tentative, but it is only an excerpt. Overall, he is quite good.

Difference in interpretation comes from the wrong view of the Word. Inerrancy is not the main issue. An inerrancy conference can feature 57 varieties of the Christian confession. They only agree about inerrancy - at least they think so.

When the Holy Spirit is divorced from the Word, any foul error can creep in and take over. The basic issue is treating the Bible as an old-fashioned textbook, a classic, but not taken seriously the unified Truth, the Book of the Holy Spirit.

Thus we are taught by yahoos who disagree with what the Word of God teaches about itself. They have more respect for the owner's manual of their SUV. The so-called conservative Lutherans are among the worst offenders. That explains why they love worshiping with Andy Stanley, Driscoll, Leonard Sweet, Stetzer, and Martin Marty.

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rlschultz has left a new comment on your post "What Sasse Says":

It is very popular today to view the Bible as an owner's manual for life. As Luther said, "doctrine is heaven, life is earth". Now, we have "Bible studies" for everything, because the church must always be relevant. Those influenced by the Church and Money Changers like to peddle their snake oil as Bible-based financial planning. All of these methods are sanctification based, with a wrong view of sanctification. You may as well put a yellow cover on the NIV and sell it at Barnes and Noble as "Life....for Dummies".

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GJ - Randall Schultz is correct, and that is the common thread uniting the fraud named Joel Osteen with the make-me-rich folks at LCMS/WELS Cornerstone. WELS pays consultants to tell them they need expensive buildings for masonry evangelism, which means they will need to pay consultants to show them how to raise all that loot.

What Sasse Says: Synergism and Catholicism

Hermann Sasse, Adelaide, c. 1975

What Sasse Says: Synergism and Catholicism

18.10.10

Synergism and Catholicism

"If we ask how it is possible that the 'tradition' of the sacrifice of the mass could arise, and gain such an authority that up to the Reformation practically no theologian and no Christian, except a few Waldensians, had any doubts about it, our answer can only be this: The whole idea is another expression of that synergism which entered the church so early, and which became the most characteristic feature of Catholicism, Eastern and Western. Just as the sola gratia and sola fide of the New Testament were abandoned in favour of the theory that in the process of salvation God and man, divine grace and human freedom must cooperate; just as Mary'sfiat(Luke 1:38) was regarded as the necessary human answer to God's redeeming will, so the mass became a sacrifice in which Christ the High Priest and the human priest work together."

From This Is My Body, Luther's Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar (Augsburg Publishing House 1959; publication rights assigned to Lutheran Publishing House, Adelaide 1975; qoutation taken from the Revised Australian Edition 1977, page 17.)

As I write this, Mary MacKillop, Australia's first Roman Catholic 'saint', is being canonised in Rome. It seems to me that if Sasse were writing today, he would be pointing to the continued practice of canonising saints as evidence for Rome's continued adherence to synergism. For Rome the saints, through their exhibition of "heroic virtue", have perfected grace and merited final justification, and thus gained immediate entry into heaven upon death.

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GJ - I used the eevul Blog This to create the link and fill in the content. Is this the best one? Another post is coming up.

The Unity of the Lutheran Church Will Not Come from Public Relations Efforts

Sasse.

The unity of the Lutheran Church can come only if our churches return to the diligent use of the means of grace, to a serious study of the Word of God and the confessions of the Reformation.  Hermann Sasse (LW II, 265)
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LPC has left a new comment on your post "The Unity of the Lutheran Will Not Come from Publi...":

Pr. Greg,

You have been echoing this now for so many years, still no one likes to listen.

LPC


***

GJ - It is the sound of one hand clapping, to coin a phrase.

Many of us find it discouraging that the Lutheran leaders will not even talk in Biblical, Lutheran, Confessional terms. They have nothing to confess.

I know how to avoid the Third Rail topics that infuriate the Reformed. I could sell a lot of books if I avoided those topics.

The terms are: baptismal regeneration, infant baptism, the Real Presence, the efficacy of the Word alone, the Means of Grace.

The Lutheran leaders dance around these terms because they do not want to annoy the Enthusiasts in their midst. Avoidance has made these synodical leaders Enthusiasts, if they ever were Lutheran - I doubt it.

The seminary professors comprise a capon chorus singing the praises of their (fill in the blank) synod while mocking the Word, Luther, and the Confessions.

Confession and Liturgy - Sasse on Whoopee Worship

The Missouri Synod treated Herman Sasse like dirt.

Confession & Liturgy

Confession and liturgy belong inseparably together if the church is to be healthy. Liturgy is prayed dogma; dogma is the doctrinal content of the liturgy. The placement of liturgy above dogma, for which one hears calls in the liturgical movements of all confessions with the well-known saying "lex orandi lex credendi"..., has been opposed in the Roman Church by the present Pope Pius XII] in his encyclical "Mediator Dei", in which he points out that one can also turn this saying around and that in all circumstances dogma should be the norm for the liturgy. If that is already known in Rome, how much more should it be known in the church that makes...the right understanding of the Gospel also the criterion for the liturgy.

What Would Sasse Say?

Bullet-head Jim Aderman could be another Sasse,

but instead he is another C. Peter Wagner.

Mark Henderson has left a new comment on your post "Sasse on the Holy Spirit":

Thank you Dr Jackson for mentioning my blog 'What Sasse Said'. I am continuing to add to it as often as I can, especially for the sake of lay people who might not be familiar with Sasse's wisdom.

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GJ - At an early point in leaving the LCA, I latched onto Sasse's This Is My Body, a brilliant book about the Real Presence and not compromising with the Reformed. I am happy for the Sasse blog and will now link it on the main page.

Jim Aderman, a founder of Church and Change, contributing editor of FIC,

recent retiree and school-closer.

Sasse on the Holy Spirit

Missouri made a point of treating Herman Sasse like dirt.

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

What the Word of God is no longer trusted to do is achieved with the psychological techniques of such modern evangelization. There is of course talk of the Holy Spirit, but one no longer knows who He is. It seems He can be measured and quantified. - Hermann Sasse, *We Confess: The Church* p. 23.

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GJ - The quotation above is from Weedon's blog. A good source of Sasse wisdom is the Sassedotalist blog.