Gnostic America: A Reading of Comtemporary American Culture & Religion according to Christianity's Oldest Heresy – by Rev. Peter M. Burfeind (LCMS)

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From the paper,
Why is this Happening to Us? How the culture wars become religious wars among us
delivered at the
2012 Conference of Intrepid Lutherans
“As is continuously the case even in our own age, already before the first generation of post-Apostolic Christianity had come to an end, heterodox interpretations of New Testament teaching were being disseminated by false teachers, along with fraudulent writings purported to be those of the Apostles. Therefore, in addition to preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ, the task soon fell upon those descending from direct contact with the Apostles to defend orthodox teaching and differentiate between genuine and false Scriptures. An early example of one such false teacher is Valentinus (d. A.D. 160) – the most influential Gnostic teacher in history, who received his training in Alexandria before coming to Rome. Another early Gnostic teacher, based in Rome, was Cerdon – he was a disciple of Simon Magus (mentioned in Acts 8:9-24).

When gnosticism came in touch with Christianity, it rapidly adopted the outward garb of the latter (1) by using the Christian forms of thought, (2) by borrowing its nomenclature, (3) by acknowledging Christ dualistically as the Saviour of the world, (4) by simulating the Christian sacraments, (5) by pretending to be an esoteric revelation of Christ and his apostles, (6) by producing a great number of apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Revelations (apocalypses). Although gnosticism was utterly the opposite of Christianity, it was so well camouflaged by this borrowed garb that it appeared to the unwary as a modification or refinement of Christianity. In fact it soon claimed to be the only true form of Christianity, set apart for the elect, unfit for the vulgar crowd. Gnosticism, highly aggressive, became so widely diffused throughout the Christian churches that for several centuries, especially from the second to the fourth, it threatened to stifle Christianity altogether. Many of the early Church Fathers, especially Irenæus, made great effort to suppress and uproot it. The gnostic leaders were excluded from membership in churches, while gnosticism was denounced as heresy by the Church as a whole.

“However, it was the teaching of Cerdon’s student, Marcion of Pontus (d. A.D. 160), being closely related to that of Gnosticism, which was regarded as enormously and immediately dangerous to Christianity. According to the 4^th Century church historian, Eusebius of Cæsarea (d. A.D. 339), Justin Martyr defended against the heresies of Marcion in writing, from which Irenæus (d. A.D. 202), a disciple of Polycarp, quotes in one of his own works, as well. And Polycarp himself was active against the Gnostic heretics. Irenæus recounted the mission of Polycarp to Rome in order to defend orthodoxy in the face of Valentinus and Marcion, as follows:

But Polycarp also was not only instructed by the apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth... a man who was of much greater weight, and a more steadfast witness of truth, than Valentinus, and Marcion, and the rest of the heretics. He it was who, coming to Rome in the time of Anicetus caused many to turn away from the aforesaid heretics to the Church of God, proclaiming that he had received this one and sole truth from the apostles – that, namely, which he also handed down to the Church.

“And this was the key to maintaining orthodoxy in the face of false teachers, their fraudulent scriptures and their resulting heresy:

1. validating one’s Scripture sources as having come directly from the apostles, and
2. validating one’s teaching as descending only from those Scriptures.

“...These works of polemic – defenses of orthodoxy and documentation of the Scripture’s sources – were required of Irenæus, Polycarp and others, as a result of pressure from the world and from worldly heterodox teachers.

Amid the general confusion ushered in by the gnostics, the Church was obliged to set up certain standards to be acknowledged by anyone who claimed to be Christian. These standards included the Apostles’ Creed, the formation of the New Testament Canon, and the Apostolic Office, or the historic Episcopate... [while] the defense of the Christian faith lead to the formation of Christian dogma...

“So, very early in the life of the New Testament church, in order to protect the Scriptures and the Christian message from corruption, the genuine apostolic writings had to be identified and defended as genuine.”

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As readers of Intrepid Lutherans may be aware, the philosophy of post-Modernism is a relatively frequent topic on these pages. A related, and perhaps more important topic, is the re-emergence of a religious movement which seems to share in some sort of symbiosis with post-Modernism: the rise of Gnosticism in the West. In the words quoted above (and as they were expanded in the footnotes of that paper), the false religion of Gnosticism received brief treatment, and later in that paper, under headings such as “Gnosticism and Pagan Teaching, Monasticism and Aristocratic Merit before God” and “Gnostic Challenges, Pragmatic Issues of Governance, and the Romanization of the Church,” was identified as a primary cause of lasting corruption in the Church. To my knowledge, this is the extent of attention Gnosticism has received from Intrepid Lutherans. But it hasn’t been otherwise unknown to us.

More than once in the recent past has the fact been impressed upon me that the ideal of a secular society – often argued by Christian quietists who’d prefer that Christians squelch their religious convictions and disregard their Christian identity in the public square – is pure myth, long disproven by demographics studies since the early 1980’s, not much more than one decade after Western (and Lutheran) social scientists issued its initial hypothesis. This fact veritably forces one to admit that, like it or not, religious conviction and practice is fundamental to the establishment of any social order, and thus also forces one question: what affirmative and ascendant religious motivation stands behind the radical social changes we witness today, and behind the popular, near-militant anti-Christian sentiment we now experience in Western society? That is, since religion WILL function as a primary ordering force in society, which religion does it look likely to be, going forward? In answer to this, more than once have I heard Lutherans and other Christians forcefully warn of the re-emergence of Gnosticism.


Gnostic America
A Reading of Contemporary American Culture & Religion
according to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy

by Rev. Peter M. Burfeind
Rev. Peter M. Burfeind (LCMS) is one of those Lutherans who has personally warned me of this re-emergence. And now he is warning more broadly in his new book, Gnostic America: A Reading of Contemporary American Culture & Religion according to Christianity’s Oldest Heresy. An operator of Pax Domini Press, many of our readers may be familiar with his involvement with Sunday School curricula like A.D. The Acceptable Year of the Lord (a curriculum for ages 4-12 on the Gospel texts from the Historic Lectionary) or A New Song unto the Lord (a curriculum on the Biblical texts supporting the liturgy), and several Vacation Bible School programs. Pax Domini Press is one of those publishers that has been on our list of publishers since we first put that list in the column on the right. Having met him personally on a number of occasions, I recall the conversation we had the last time we had met. It was a broad conversation on the topic of gnostic manifestations in the church and in society today, which lasted into the early morning hours. It was during this conversation that he not only made apparent to me his concern, but revealed to me his ongoing research on the topic, mentioning that he had composed some material that he had shown to another pastor, who then encouraged him to continue developing his work into a book. Since then, I’ve thought of our conversation that evening, and as recently as this Summer, wondered if he had continued working or even completed his work. I received an email in late August announcing that his book, Gnostic America, is finally complete. I purchased a copy as soon as it was available on Amazon, and am currently about one-third of the way through it. At 362 pages, 16 chapters and 915 endnotes, one may expect that this book is rendered in painfully academic prose. Quite the opposite, however, being written by a parish pastor with a living concern for the laity (rather than a professional theologian, who daily functions outside of that environment), it is very accessibly written, without also being so “accessible” as to be insulting or condescending to literate adults – Rev. Burfeind is having a very serious conversation with his readers. I can say, even at only one-third through the book, that Gnostic America is a book which every Christian layman in America must read, especially if he wants a fuller understanding of currents in American and Western culture in terms of religious influence. With the influence of Christianity at a sharply contracting ebb, the influence of Gnosticism, which has always been a strong undercurrent, has risen to the surface again, and seems to now be directing the course of society. To give readers of Intrepid Lutherans a brief view into the subtle yet pernicious and pervasive influence that Gnosticism now has in Western Society (and with written permission from Rev. Burfeind), I quote extensively from the Introduction of Gnostic America:

Spiritual Artifacts of our Times“Easter, 2012. The audience gazed on in eager expectation, sitting in the stadium seating at the newest campus of the local mega-church. A giant screen towered over them. It revealed the countdown: four minutes forty-three seconds til the service... People filed in, they moved hastily to their seats ushered by well-trained worship attendants. The feeling was electric... Three...two...one.... The show began. The praise band stormed on the stage and churned the audience into a clapping, swaying, hand-waving throng... Then came the climax of the service. At the point where Christians have reverently received the Eucharist for two millenia, a song by Contemporary artist Chris Tomlin filled the building... As the singer, an attractive young female, segued into the final phrase of the song, she gave out a long impassioned moan, typical of the pop-vibrato style: ooooo ahhhhhh oooo ooooo ooooo. On cue the audience broke out into clapping and dance. The service ended.

“Harold Bloom went so far as to call the scene Orphic, referring to the ancient mystery cult where flutists worked initiates into an emotional froth, and then priests leveraged the emotion toward the desired goal, the vision of the mystery... In the history of the church, there is no precedent for this sort of emotion-laden, sacrament-less, erotically-charged religiosity. There is, however, a precedent outside the walls of the Church.

“That tradition is the Gnostic one.

“...[Drawing from philosophizing comments of a blogger, following the death of J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye] Everyone is fake...the world is a product of the meaning I impose on it...sleep and dreaming is where the real stuff is at...death is release... The blogger asks: Is there anyone who is truly authentic?

“Authentic. The word is everywhere. It’s the new pious , which traditionally was the proper state of mind one should have toward his deity. When God is distinct from me, my state of mind toward this other Being is that of piety. But what happens when my Self is God? Then the goal is authenticity. Being ‘true to my Self’ replaces ‘deny yourself’... Authenticity, or creating one’s Self, is the chief piety [of Existentialism, ‘the atheist's religion’]. Choice is [this religion’s] sacrament. It’s how creation of Self happens. In fact, there is a whole lexicon of words we use – authenticity, choice, freedom, Self, culture, values – whose meanings are shaped by this atheistic philosophy. But we have forgotten the philosophical contexts in which these terms arose, so we don’t question their premises. Why don’t we question their premises? Because that’s how faith works. It’s premises just are.

“Faith is far from on the decline in America. It’s held more fervently than ever, and its premises are more blindly adhered to and more absolutely grounded on thin air than Christianity ever was.

“A Neo-evangelical praise service, the anticipation of a progressive Utopian Age, the musings of an existentialist/New Age blogger, a young person’s discomfort with his/her gender, these are spiritual artifacts of our times, detritus from the spiritual path our culture is carving out of our age. They don’t stand out because no one notices the smell of the house they live in. They point to a dominant religious footprint so large no one notices it. The argument of this book is that the traits of ancient Gnosticism best explain this religious orientation.”

Gnosticism 101“What is Gnosticism? The Gnosticism 101 answer is, it was an ancient movement centered on esoteric knowledge. It held to a dualistic understanding of the cosmos, in which an evil, lesser god created all things material, and only those who had attained gnosis (knowledge) about their true Source (the higher deity) understood the bodiless Self-ness of their existence. Its salvation program of one of escape, escape of Self from materiality and this oppressive world order.

“Gnosticism’s major offense to traditional Christianity... is its rejection of nature, nature’s laws, and natures God. The gnostic is ever in rebellion against nature and... natural forms. Such naturally-arising concepts as gender, national boundaries, the cold hard realities of economics, cultural institutions like family and church (especially its rituals), marriage, even language, are deceptive impositions, says that Gnostic, of a foreign God upon which should be the authentic Self liberated from all impositions of form, freed to transcend them altogether.

“The Judeo-Christian orientation [however] centers on created forms. God’s first action was to separate the ‘formless and void’ of creation and bring about the various species ‘each according to its kind.’ After separating the elements he named them, which is to say: language arose out of the creation of forms... Gnostics reject this entire premise. The God who established forms ‘each according to its kind’ they consider an evil usurping god, a false tyrant deceptively thought to be the one true God, the God of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The true God, says the Gnostic, transcends all form, all that can be thought, all being, everything. Celebrating formless spirituality, Gnosticism rejects those formal things, peoples, and institutions marking traditional Christianity: the Church, its sacramental life, and its ministry. It despises the Jewish God and its regard for language and grammar, anything mooring spirituality to something so profane as a text.

“Thus the Gnosticism 101 summary, but where things get interesting (and pernicious) is where the Gnostic movement works its program through culture, politics and religion. Precisely because Gnosticism doesn’t have marked doctrines or creedal statements, being more a ‘spiritual orientation,’ it can easily be co-opted in non-religious arenas – in politics, marketing and media – without fear of being accused of religious imposition, when in fact this is exactly what it is.”

Irony & Nihilism
De-constructing Western mores & institutions; Re-constructing with the religion of Gnosticism“Gnosticism naturally rises out of nihilism, and ours is a nihilistic age. Nihilism is the view that nothing matters... [it] is the wrecking ball of society, an iconoclastic force tearing down traditional institutions, traditional moralities, traditional rituals, traditional habits, traditional customs, traditional grammar, traditional language and traditional reasoning. Nihilism begins in despair and cynicism, despair because these traditions seemed to fail human aspiration, cynicism that they could have ever satisfied it in the first place. To the nihilist, every institution is run by the ‘powers that be,’ or the ‘rulers of the universe,’ by people who only concern is control: power for its own sake.

“Nihilism often masquerades as a bitter sense of irony. Irony fits nihilism because it discharges any challenge to nihilism. Irony can cut anything good and beautiful down to size. It also raises the bad and ugly just enough to prove the high and great weren’t that high or great in the first place. Irony levels everything so that nothing has meaning.

“...Why is this sort of irony necessary? Because nihilism has taken root in the American mind. The moment any traditional institution or form or convention or custom – the nation, marriage, the Church, gender roles, freedom, the free market – is seen to have some worth or beauty or goodness (to say nothing of basic truth) attached to it, the demon of nihilism has a ready quip to deflate its pretenses. Hence the modern iconoclasm toward these institutions, their sentenced de-construction.

“But the human soul cannot tolerate such emptiness, the vacuum created by nihilism. Something must fill the vacated domain. Something must be re-constructed. Hollywood understands this. At the same time they manufacture irony toward traditional notions, they craft new fantastical realities... [But] irony, though fun and funny, is ultimately jejune and doesn’t satisfy. Hollywood cannot end with irony; it must offer new, transcendent realities... [which suggest that one has] tapped into something more real than life. The soul enters into the dark tunnel of nihilism, but finds a light at the end of the tunnel, on ...projection screens, ...television commercials, ...the internet, and in the other accepted conduits of reconstructed truth.

“The path from nihilism to meaning has a parallel in the history of philosophy. The most virulent, anti-Christian, atheist philosophers almost always ended up with some sort of spirituality. They must make some appeal to the transcendent, else they’d have no reason to lay down their philosophies in the first place. What is the transcendent, after all, but whatever I believe it true for more than just myself? That transcendency, then, soon takes on the characteristics of spirituality.

“Some simply end at irony, like philosopher Richard Rorty. But even Nietzsche, as ‘he assails the reason he will be enlisting,’ at the same time ‘ironizes a discourse that at the same time struggles beyond irony’... The quest for truth cannot end at irony; there must be something beyond.

“Heidegger displays the same tension between nihilism and transcendence. He too, like Nietzsche, saw the West coming to a nihilistic end because being, as understood in the Western philosophical heritage, disintegrated when the Christian and classical traditions propelling that heritage ran out of steam. Heidegger also didn’t leave it at that, at nihilism. In the words of political philosopher Michael Gillespie, ‘he believes he discerns in its depths the dawning light of a new revelation of Being.’ Nihilism, rather, is the ‘dawning recognition of Being.’ We must go through nihilism before getting to the new understanding of Being. At the same time, we face both ‘utter degradation and the possibility of salvation in a new revelation of Being.’ In other words, it’s as we’ve been contemplating: the point of nihilistic breakdown is also the point of new possibilities.”

The Structure of this Book
“This book is divided into four parts... The first part [being four chapters] introduces the basics of Gnosticism, with a brief outline of its mythologies, teachings and practices. These might be interesting on an academic level, to some, but far more interesting and important is how Gnosticism works through modern spirituality, how the Gnostic traits in its ancient version echo yet today. Considerable space, then, is devoted to the Gnostic traits. Finally, a history of Gnostic movements is given, taking us from the ancient world to today... The second part [being three chapters] explores Gnosticism in culture. It begins with the Existentialist understanding of the Self and goes on to the role media and music play in the development of Self... The third part [also being three chapters] tackles Gnostic politic, finding common themes in the totalitarian movements of the modern era. The central thesis driving this part is that a specific theological outlook of the Middle Ages – millenarian, Anabaptist, Pietist and Puritan – has laid the foundation for modern progressive politics... [and] the fourth part [being six chapters] deals with Gnosticism in religion, discussing how the Neo-evangelical movement has essential become the New Age wing of the Christian church.”

An important work on a subject little understood in our era, and almost never mentioned, I encourage our readers to purchase and read it.

Treating the Symptom

Thoughts from Thunder Mountain

["Huachuca" - A Chiricahua Apache word meaning "thunder."]

 

Treating the Symptom

 

BJ: "You treated a symptom. The disease goes merrily on." (M*A*S*H, season seven, episode 22, "Preventive medicine")

Of course, in a very real sense, this is the way of the Gospel ministry. Pastors, Elders, Deacons, and Christians in general deal with the symptoms of sin every day; some at times much worse than others. But, try as we might, with ourselves or others, we can't get rid of the disease - sin itself. That won't happen until we die or Jesus returns, whichever comes first.

But this is not just true of the conflict between the New Man, created through faith in Jesus Christ, given by the Means of Grace, and the Old Adam, created at our conception. This is also true of many problems in this all too human institution called the visible church. Look at the issues that IL has been raising the past few years: the spread of contemporary worship, use of Reformed and/or Arminian songs and sermons, denigration of the visible Sacraments, felt-needs approach to outreach, giving in to feminist tendencies in Bible translations so as not to offend certain segments of the population, and so forth. How would we sum up all these items and others like them? What's the common denominator?

In this reporter's opinion, it is - once again - a kind of fear. This time it is fear of growing smaller and smaller; of getting so small as to pass into insignificance; fear of becoming a mere footnote in the history of Lutheranism in America; fear of getting so small that full-time positions in the church body can no longer be funded; fear that schools can't remain open, or even fear that churches will grow so small that many Pastors will end up selling shoes in a department store or driving an ice crème truck in order to put food on their tables. But isn't this shrinkage exactly what Jesus Himself predicted of the Last Times? Did He not wonder out loud that if the Last Day was put off beyond the time set by His Father, would there be any believers left on earth at all? See Luke 18.

So what happens? All too often it seems - and maybe it's only an impression I have - but it seems that Pastors and leaders will grasp at anything to fill the chairs, and worry about whether what they grasp is true orthodox, Biblical, confessional Lutheranism later. Thus, we get five-man-electrical-bands cluttering up the Chancel, churches with no public celebration of the Lord's Supper, "relaxed" worship with very little awe and reverence for a transcendent God. In short, congregations following the latest fad in church work. Very often these tricks pull in lots of people, that's true. But there used to be an old adage my seminary professors taught me, "If you get people for sociological reasons, you will also lose them for sociological reasons!" And so we often see these same "successful" churches with a kind of revolving door, as people come to be entertained for a year or two, if that, then leave out the back door once they've become bored with the "show," and go looking for something more fun and exciting.

Therefore, what is happening is that we end up treating the symptom - trying to make the Gospel "real, relevant, and relational," while the disease; rejection of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, goes merrily on. And all the time, God has given us the antidote to this disease; preaching the Law to show people their sin, and preaching the Gospel to show them their Savior; calling people to repentance and faith in God's Son for the forgiveness of their sins and the salvation of the souls; and bolstering this preaching with the tools God has also given, Holy Baptism, Holy Absolution, and Holy Communion. True, even this will not stop sin from occurring again and again, but it can and it will keep the disease in check and bring comfort and peace to hurting souls. That is the kind of "operation" that God has given us to do.

As a classmate back in seminary used to say when studying the latest Church Growth gimmicks, "Tricks are for kids!" Let's all get back to the serious business of battling Satan and the disease he brings, using only the best medicine of all, the Word and Sacraments!

Deo Vindice!

Ahead of Convention: “Issues Facing Confessional Lutheranism Today”

The following podcast is a July 12, 2013, Issues, Etc. interview of Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) President Rev. Dr. Matt Harrison, ahead of the 2013 Triennial LCMS Convention (July 20-25, 2013). Heading into our own WELS Convention next week, SP Harrison's remarks are a good reminder of the issues underlying the challenges we face, as well.

 

This podcast is taken from the July 12, 2013 edition of Issues, Etc.
(Right-click here to save MP3)
Listen to this podcast to hear how SP Harrison characterizes the Issues listed below:

Worldwide Issues...
• Human Sexuality
• Ordination of Women
• Gay Marriage
• Natural Law
• Culture Wars
  
• Gospel Reductionism
• Historical Critical Method
• Death of Systematic Theology
  
• Biblical Inerrancy
• Confessional Integrity
• Unionism
• Open Heterodoxy

Issues within LCMS (and maybe WELS, too?)
• Too many pastors languishing in CRM status
• Two tier pastorate (“called & ordained” -vs- “staff minister”)
• Roles of Men & Women
• Church Growth Movement

Are there Synodical or other fundamental issues that were not directly addressed by SP Harrison in this interview, that confessional Lutherans in America ought to concern ourselves with? Yes, of course. A couple that come to mind – which seem to currently be on prominent display on the LCMS website – are:

• National Rural and Small Town Mission Conference: The plight of the small rural congregation is a serious concern. In some corners of LCMS, there seems to be a concerted effort to strengthen rural congregations, to keep them serving Lutherans into the future instead of abandoning them and forcing rural Lutherans to travel inordinate distances each week to attend suburban mega-churches. I know of two rural LCMS congregations nearby that are languishing (one of which is hanging on by its fingernails, with basically only a couple large dedicated families remaining), and another in a nearby small town (a “small town” that is actually the largest town in the county) that can't get a pastor and is very near giving up – and will be giving up a nice masonry gothic structure on main street, as well. The local pentecostals will thank them for the building. Far too many rural WELS congregations are being counciled to close up shop, and sell their property, as well (and again, it's usually the renegade pentecostals that gobble up that property). I know of two in my own vicinity that have been so counciled, and continue to refuse – but finding pastors to serve them seems to be getting more and more difficult. I know of another nearby rural congregation that left WELS for a more accommodating Lutheran church body, after being pressured to merge with a larger WELS congregation.


• How can we as Lutherans live in but not succumb to the culture?: Too many Lutherans are under the mistaken impression that “being in the world but not of it” really means “look like you're of the world in every possible way, but deny it when asked and act offended when a fellow Christian mistakes you for being worldly.” Perhaps there was a time when Christianity was of such positive and overwhelming influence in society, that it was hard to distinguish being “of the world” from merely “being in it.” Not anymore. Society has progressed so far beyond what Christian liberty can justify, that there can now be no possible way of maintaining fidelity to our faith while also adopting the World Views and Worldly Ways of unregenerate society. We are called out by God from among them, such that now there can be no mistaking, “being in the world but not of it” means that, as we continue to live in all Christian propriety, we actually appear differently to our unregenerate neighbors. Much like the early Christians in pagan culture were noticeably different – yes, even weird, though in a curious and endearing way – as they helped those around them in their various forms of need.

What other fundamental issues can you identify?

 

The Average Layman is Defenseless!

Today, we reprise a lecture we featured twice in 2011 under the title, 'non rockaboatus' is an organizational disease: Lectures by Dr. Walter Martin, but with a different emphasis. After the facts exposed in last week's post, Do any Lutherans want to be Dresden Lutherans? Meanwhile, the Groeschelites continue their agenda..., it is abundantly clear that our Synod is wracked with division and, as a consequence, is in steep decline right along with the rest of the visible Church. And with the Church, so goes Western Civilization itself, whose political, legal and educational structures were built upon the framework of Christian teaching.

Stating as much in our conclusion to that post (the section entitled The Collective Descent of American Lutheranism), we submitted that the time of inaction, the time of armchair lamentation over the state of our Synod and of American Lutheranism, the time of complacent Synod watching as if it were a mere spectator sport, has come to a close. Yesterday was the time to act. Today is the time to do so feverishly. Tomorrow will be too late. After tomorrow, it will be time to separate and start over. The following will suggest one of the more potent actions laymen can take, but the reader will have to read to the end to discover what it is, and why it is among the most potent forms of action.

Dr. Walter R. Martin (d. 1989) was an expert on the occult, and from the 1960’s onward, disseminated countercultic and apologetic information through his organization, Christian Research Institute (CRI). At least one of Dr. Martin’s works, The Kingdom of the Cults, remains a very valuable resource, one which I consult with semi-regularity as need arises. An associate of Dr. Rod Rosenblatt and Dr. John Warwick Montgomery, Dr. Martin was, like they, an influential Christian intellectual, a man with the courage and ability to engage in public debate with his opponents, and, as a fierce defender of Christian orthodoxy in the face of truly diabolical liberal Christianity, more than equipped to defeat them.

Over the past three years, several of Dr. Martin’s lectures have been featured by Chris Rosebrough on his internet radio show, Fighting for the Faith – a daily program in the lineup of Pirate Christian Radio (PCR). I remember these PCR features, since I am of about the same age as Mr. Rosebrough, and remember Dr. Martin’s voice and manner of teaching from my youth, in a way similar to Rosebrough’s reminiscences. We confessional Lutherans would be mistaken if we should think that our struggles are unique to us. Others have already gone through the struggle that is now hard upon us. We would be fools not to learn from their experience and take their advice.

---

Dr. Walter Martin on the Cult of Liberalism

 

(lecture begins @~58min, 30sec)
A Cue to Theological Change: A Change in the Terms used by the Church
“Any person who does not know that today in the United States, and in denominational structures worldwide, we are in an accelerating apostasy, does not know, I repeat, does not know what is going on...” (1hr 12min)

“They were using all of our terminology... What you have to understand is very hard... the major denominational structures on the United States today have pumped all of the meaning out of Christian terminology, and have nothing but a hollow shell. And people are attracted by the shell...” (1hr 28min 50sec and following)

Questions:

1. What happens over the course of a generation or two when the church begins to use old familiar terms with subtly, though increasingly, different emphasis?
2. Or, what happens when entirely new words, words previously unfamiliar in Church usage, words with less precise meaning, words with less established theological meaning, replace the old, precise, established and familiar terms? Is the deprecating declaration, “these terms are synonymous,” a sufficient explanation?
3. What happens when well established ecclesiastical terms, having widely understood meaning, are simply dropped from use?
4. What ecclesiastical terms can you identify which meet the above three conditions?
5. If we are to heed Dr. Walter Martin's warnings, ought laymen to be suspicious whenever pastors or theologians use the authority of the church to push their language games as authoritatively binding on the laity?

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The Average Layman is Defenseless!
“You can see these people in the cults and the occult if you have any degree of discernment at all, because they are outside the church. But how do you see the Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Episcopalian professor of theology? How do you get him in a place where you can find out what his theology really is? The moment you question him, he reverts to orthodox terminology, and then if you press him for the definitions of his terminology, he claims that you're being suspicious, bigoted and unloving. The average layman is defenseless! He's got to take what comes from behind the pulpit and recommended by his church authority because the moment he opens his mouth, he's accused of being divisive in the church, unloving, and disturbing the fellowship of the faith! When it is the devil behind the pulpit, not the victim in the pew, that's responsible for it!...” (1hr 36min 12sec)

“That is why I am concerned about the cult of liberalism as never before. We can identify the other cults, but how do you identify somebody that looks like you, acts like you, sounds like you...? Do you want the answer? ...1 Thessalonians 5:14ff ...put everything to the test, cling tenaciously to what is good...” (1hr 38min 30sec)

Questions:

1. Is it proper for the layman to assume that ALL pastors who may serve him, or that ALL theologians who may serve his church body, are orthodox on every point of Scripture teaching?
2. When St. Paul commended the Bereans for verifying his teaching by searching the Scriptures, what was he commending if it was not a cautious reception of his words? Was he commending an open and uncritical reception of his teaching?
3. How can a layman identify potential theological corruption in his pastor or his church's theologians? Unfamiliar terminology, or unfamiliar use of familiar terminology, perhaps?
4. How then does the layman examine a pastor or theologian who, by definition, by virtue of the Office he holds, is not allowed to wrong, about anything, ever?
5. How does a layman examine a Minister of the Word, whose operating assumption is that he is always orthodox and that laymen always need guidance and correction? Will a personal conversation bring about correction in the Minister's theology? Will writing a letter suffice?

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Theological Language Games and the Destruction of Orthodoxy
“British theology was corrupted by German theology – Friedrich Schleiermacher, Albrecht Ritschl, David Strauss – and finally [it came] to America... Where do you think we got the God is Dead Theology from? From historic Christianity?... We did not! We got it from a good solid Baptist theological seminary, known as Colgate Rochester in New York, which was absolutely orthodox, but which sold out to liberalism! And when it did, they embraced the theology of Paul Tillich, and ended up with God is Dead. It was called at the time, The Gospel of Christian Atheism – did you ever hear such linguistic nonsense in your life!?” (1hr 40min 30sec)

Questions:

This is at least the third point in Dr. Walter Martin's lecture where he emphasizes the language games of theologians as evidence of changing theology.

1. How can changes in the use of language possibly result in changes to one's theology, if one's use of language doesn't change the way he thinks about theology?
2. What is the potential threat to the Christian when his pastors and theologians defend dramatic changes in the language he ought to use when contemplating and expressing his Christian convictions?
3. From what primary source might Christians be most vulnerable to subtle, or even overt, changes in language use and the threat of its impact on their theology?
4. Why is it safest to stay with historical and well-established terminology of the church?
5. If the concern is that our "contemporary generation" doesn't use historic ecclesiastical terminology in everyday conversation and therefore doesn't understand it,
   1. Was there ever a time when ecclesiastical terminology was in such wide use in everyday conversation that it was understood on the basis of its everyday usage?
   2. How might catechesis have helped people understand the church's use of language in the past?
   3. How might catechesis help in the same way, today?

Dr. Walter Martin also makes the strong suggestion here that not only can "orthodox" seminaries go liberal, but gives evidence that they have done so.

6. Is it possible for an orthodox Lutheran seminary to go liberal?
7. How can a Lutheran layman know, or even suspect, that his seminary is going liberal?
8. What can the Lutheran layman do to correct problems in his Synod's seminary, if he suspects, or if it is confirmed that such problems exist? Will a personal conversation bring about the desired correction? Will writing a letter suffice?

Finally, Dr. Walter Martin singled out three Germans – European liberal theologians from the era of 19^th Century European Evangelicalism – as having ruined British and American theology. Surely, these German theologians had no impact on 19^th Century American Confessional Lutheranism... did they?

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A Declining Regard for the Scriptures: Spiritual Death and Social Destruction
“[Liberalism] is a cult because it follows every outlining structure of cultism. It has its own revelation, its own gurus, and its denial, systematically, of all sound systematic Christian theology. It is a cult, because it passes its leadership on to the next group, that takes over either modifying, expanding or contracting the same heresies, dressing them up in different language, and passing them on. It is theologically corrupt, because it is bibliologically corrupt; it denies the authority of Scripture and ruins its own theology. And, it ends in immorality. Because the only way you could have gotten to this 'homosexual,' morally relativistic garbage, which is today in our denominational structures, is if the leadership of those denominations divide the authority of the Scriptures, and Jesus Christ as Lord. That is the only way we've gotten there.” (2hr 28min 50sec)

Questions:

1. How does the Christian's view of the inspiration, inerrancy and perspicuity of the Scriptures impact his theology?
2. How does the teaching of the church impact society in general – that is, apart from its immediate impact on the people who sit in the pews and hear it directly?
3. How might false doctrine, therefore, in addition to destroying faith, also become a social evil?
4. Given that most liberal churches have abandoned orthodoxy, and have embraced the "social gospel" in place of the "Gospel of Jesus Christ," can their fixation on issues of "social justice" be classified as precisely the opposite? Not as the "good" they would have it to be, but as an unmitigated evil perpetrated by liberal churches, which result, rather, in gross injustice?

---

Immunizing Christians against Theological Poison
“Every major theological seminary that has turned from orthodox Christianity began with disbelief of biblical doctrine... Corrupt Bibliology led them to the next step. Theology began to be touched by it... And finally they had emptied the Gospel of all its content, and simply were using the outward shell so that they could go on collecting money from the people and the churches, because they knew that if the people in the pews knew that they were apostate they'd throw them out. So the strategy was: hang on to the trust funds, hang on to the money that we've got, hang on to the properties we control, we will gradually educate the laymen into this new approach to theology. And then, finally, we will take control of everything. This is the gradual process of feeding you theological poison, until you become immunized enough so that you don't know what is happening to you. And when you wake up to what is happening to you, it's too late. They've got everything...” (1hr 26min 10sec)

“Look what happened... Look at the votes. We were very subtly, systematically, squeezed out. All of the positions of leadership were given to people who denied the foundations of the faith...” (1hr 30min 35sec)

Questions:

1. The fixation of liberals is what:
   1. Preserving sound teaching? ...or
   2. Preserving the organization as an institution?
2. The process of changing theology while maintaining the organization requires that liberals retain the laity while retraining them "gradually" – through a use of familiar terms with subtly, though increasingly, different emphasis, by introducing foreign terms and dropping common ecclesiastical terms.
   1. Why do they need to retain the laity? What does the laity offer them?
   2. Why is the change gradual?
   3. Why is changing the organization's language the best way to change the thinking of those in the organization?
3. Is it possible for an orthodox Lutheran Synod to go liberal?
4. How can a Lutheran layman know, or even suspect, that his Synod is going liberal?
5. If sound teaching is not valued by a liberal Synod as highly as the organization itself, what does the Lutheran layman have that would be so sufficiently valuable that a corrupt organization would pay heed to the orthodox advice of a layman?
   1. Merely his orthodox advice? ...or
   2. His money?
6. Can organizational change which laymen must purchase with their money be relied upon as genuine?

The Church Growth Movement: A brief synopsis of its history and influences in American Christianity

This post was originally published on Intrepid Lutherans in May of 2012, under the title, Vatican II, the Church Growth Movement, contemporary “Sectarian Worship”, and Indiscriminate Ecumenism: A Brief History and Synopsis of their Relationship

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Sectarian Worship (also known as “Contemporary” or “Charismatic” Worship) is not just a benign preference that some choose to engage in for strictly personal or otherwise irrelevant and inconsequential reasons, but is always adopted with a purpose in mind. Often, that purpose is to use man's choice of practice as a necessary means of drawing or keeping people within the family of Christ, apart from which, people will unnecessarily spend eternity in Hell and the Church on Earth will shrink and die. This necessity, whether confessed or not, is demonstrated in the rejection of other forms historically associated with confessional Lutheranism, forms which are viewed as old, irrelevant, and thus incapable of drawing a crowd (which is supposedly necessary for worship practice to accomplish, since true Christian worshipers won't come on their own), of keeping its interest for one hour a week (which is also supposedly necessary, since true Christians don't normally have an internal motivation to remain interested in Law & Gospel preaching and the Sacrament for one hour a week), according to the shifting fads and priorities of contemporary pop-culture (which is also supposedly necessary, since true Christians are unable to recognize and appreciate the uniquely cross-cultural and consistent historical practices of the Church Catholic). Thus, also involved in the purpose behind adopting Sectarian Worship, is, as the title of this worship practice implies, to volitionally express a separation and “apart-ness” from the catholicity of the Lutheran Confession, and consequently, whether confessed or not, a togetherness with all those who likewise reject the notion of catholicity, regardless of their confession.

These supposedly evangelical motivations view the Divine Service, not exclusively as the privilege of the passive Believer to be served by His Lord and Saviour in Word and Sacrament, but, eschewing this notion, views the worship assembly as primarily an assembly of unBelievers; they do not view the function of the “Worship Service” solely as a process for focusing the Believer on the centrality of Christ and the Means through which He serves His own (as does the Divine Service), but primarily as a stage upon which is mounted the active foci of the worshiper – musicians and orators – as those foci engage in the age-old task of mass-manipulation and crass salesmanship. And because of the inherent ecumenical nature of these “evangelical motivations,” there is, among those Lutherans who adopt Sectarian Worship forms, a palpable fear of distinguishing Believer from unBeliever in the worship assembly, and worse, of distinguishing orthodox Believers from heterodox – a fear which results in two equally egregious abuses: an invitation to everyone to partake of Christ's Body and Blood (upon the functionally meaningless condition of “private self-examination,” of course), or the elimination of the embarrassing Sacrament from the Service altogether.

Modern Sectarian Worship is a contemporary peculiarity of the Church Growth Movement (CGM), which sprung mostly from Arminian and Baptistic influences in mid-20^th Century America oblivious to the the Lutheran and Scriptural teachings of the Church, of Predestination, and of the Means of Grace, and is today being referred to by confessional Lutherans as Functional Arminianism. In fact, the topic of Functional Arminianism (in the context of Predestination, no less) came up relatively recently on Intrepid Lutherans, in a comment to the post Circuit Pastor Visitation. In that comment, I directed readers to a recent and important paper on the topic of Functional Arminianism, stating

“...a very recent paper delivered to the LCMS Indiana District by Rev. Heath Curtis, has finally resurrected this discussion in a fruitful way – of applying Predestination to evangelical practice. Here are the links to his essay, in four parts:
“Part I: Freed from the Shopkeeper's Prison - Election, Evangelism, and Functional Arminianism
“Part II: Bible and Confessional Study on Election and Evangelism
“Part III: What is the Pastor's Job?
“Part IV: How to Run a Lutheran Evangelism Program”

As a choice, the Sectarian Worship of the Church Growth Movement, in distinctly Arminian evangelical fervor,

• vaunts man and his efforts with respect to the Church;
• augments by man's efforts, or entirely eliminates, the Holy Spirit from His own work, and
• thus inherently and unavoidably discards the Means of Grace as insufficient and ultimately superfluous;
• removes Christ and His service to man from the center of the Divine Service, and instead places man, his interests and his entertainment needs at the center, calling it "his service to God" in the Worship Service;
• and blasphemes God by crediting the results of man’s work, outside of and apart from the direct use of the Means of Grace (i.e., bald numeric growth in the visible church), to the Holy Spirit, with statements like, “Such an increase in numbers! Surely, this is the work of the Holy Spirit, alone! Praise God, that He equipped us with the right organizational tools to save all these people!”

It is no accident that the Charismatic Renewal in greater American Protestantism coincided with the rise of Church Growth theories emanating from Fuller Seminary, and it is no accident that the introduction of Church Growth theories emerged from Fuller at the same time this institution was the center of doctrinal controversy – indeed, the epicenter of a veritable crisis in American Christianity.

Fuller Seminary and the Church Growth Movement
Established in 1947 as the flagship theological institution of the burgeoning Evangelical Movement – an ecumenical movement begun in reaction against the separatism of Fundamentalists (viewed as a barrier to spreading the Gospel and to engaging in constructive dialog with errorists) – Fuller Theological Seminary initially stood as a theologically conservative Evangelical bulwark, and progenitor of “the new paradigm” of evangelical methodology. Among pop-church Evangelicals, it is still a widely respected institution. Within a decade of its founding, however, cracks in the foundation of this bulwark began to reveal themselves, and by 1972 they had become chasms, as Fuller went on record officially questioning the veracity of the Scriptures by striking the phrase “...free from all error in the whole and in the part...” from their statement concerning the inspiration and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures. The environment created at Fuller by raging internal struggles over the inerrancy of the Scriptures, coupled with ecumenical predilections under the waving banner of the “new evangelicalism,” provided both the soil and the atmosphere in which the ideas of the Church Growth Movement (CGM) could germinate and flourish.

In 1965, “the father of the church growth movement,” Donald McGavran, became Dean of the Fuller School of World Mission (now the School of Intercultural Studies), moving that department to Fuller from the school at which he had founded it in 1961. Thirty-four years' experience as a missionary in India led him in 1954 to begin developing his own entirely pragmatic notions of “cultural contextualization” for the purpose of “Christianizing whole peoples,” etc. One can immediately see the preoccupation with mass appeal and the inordinate fixation on popular culture that these notions engender, and the displacement of concern over individual souls, along with any sense of catholicity, that result from them – indeed, McGavran, in his Bridges of God repudiated the notion of carrying the Gospel to individuals as counterproductive to true evangelical “Church Growth,” inevitably leading to the acceptance of particularly revolting and unscriptural Church Growth principles, such as “scaffolding”¹. C. Peter Wagner was a disciple of McGavran’s at Fuller, and was later passed the mantle of CGM prophet.

But these were not the only influences at work at Fuller.

Ecumenism and the “Pentecostal Experience”
A primary purpose of the Evangelical Movement, as a reaction against Fundamentalism, was ecumenism, and this Evangelical purpose was seriously supported and engaged at Fuller. Enter “Mr. Pentecost,” David J. du Plessis, who had been active through the 1950’s as an ardent proponent of ecumenism on behalf of the Pentecostals, convinced that the Pentecostal “experience” could serve as an effective ecumenical bridge to non-Pentecostals (namely, the historic mainline denominations) and help bring unity to Christianity worldwide.

That “experience” had its modern genesis partly in the Brethren movements of Europe² in the early/mid-1800's (the left-overs of Scandinavian and German Pietism), but especially in the practices of the Scottish Irvingites with whom John Nelson Darby (Plymouth Brethren) spent much time during their outbreaks of agalliasis (“manifestations of the Holy Spirit,” which, among the Irvingites at that time and place, included practices such as automatic writing, levitation, and communication with the dead³) and whose practice and theology (including the foundations of Dispensationalism) influenced him greatly. Passing from Darby to James H. Brooks and Cyrus I. Scofield in America, his teaching has continued to see development over the years and is still disseminated by Dallas Theological Seminary, Moody Bible Institute, Bob Jones University and others.

These experiential practices began finding their way to America at about the same time that a charlatan known as Charles Finney exploited the use of these “New Methods,” as they were called, during America's “Second Great Awakening,” fueling the fever of “revivalism” and captivating Christians with the allure of the “Anxious Bench” as a means of saving souls⁴. Widespread use of such practices strengthened the Brethren movements and touched off the Holiness Movements within Methodism (which later developed into [and at Azusa Street, Los Angeles in 1906, was confirmed as] full-blown Pentecostalism). By the mid- to late-1800's, such radical practices defined “American Worship” – and it was precisely these forms that Walther notoriously condemned. Even the Old Norwegian Synod, in the 1916 edition of its Lutheran Hymnary, Junior stated its warning against Sectarian “American Worship” forms:

The songs of childhood should be essentially of the same character as the songs of maturity. The child should therefore learn the easiest and best of the songs he is to sing as a communicant member of the Christian Congregation. Old age delights in the songs learned in childhood. The religious songs learned in children should therefore be worth while. We want childlike songs, but not childish songs. The early songs should be the choicest congregation songs adaptable to his age and capacities. In the same manner as he is taught the rudiments of Christian theology through Luther's “Smaller Catechism” and the chief Bible stories through the “Bible History,” he should also be taught the words and tunes of our most priceless church songs and chorals. It can be done just as easily as teaching him a number of equally difficult and perhaps new songs and tunes which will never be sung in his congregation. It should be done, for a child should be trained up the way he should go (Pr. 22:6)

...The songs of Lutheran children and youth should be essentially from Lutheran sources. The Lutheran Church is especially rich in songs and hymns of sound doctrine, high poetical value and fitting musical setting. They express the teachings and spirit of the Lutheran Church and help one to feel at home in this Church. Of course, there are songs of high merit and sound Biblical doctrine written by Christians in other denominations also, and some of these could and should find a place in a Lutheran song treasury. But the bulk of the songs in a Lutheran song book should be drawn from Lutheran sources. We should teach our children to remain in the Lutheran Church instead of to sing themselves into some Reformed sect.

By engaging in such forms, the Old Norwegian Synod insisted, Lutherans will wind up singing their way out of their own Confession. A sound application of lex orandi, lex credendi.

With widespread criticism against these experiential “American Worship” forms, and, let’s face it, their rather shallow substance, infantile antics, and transparently manipulative purposes, such practices fell out of fashion by the early 1900's (as “contemporary” forms have a habit of doing anyway). Nevertheless, Pentecostals continued to cling to them, and continued to develop them alongside their theology. Accordingly, such worship forms have come to mean much of the following:

• the actions of the worshiper are themselves Means of Grace, or means through which the Holy Spirit supposedly comes to, and works in, the worshiper;
• the Holy Spirit's work in and through the worshiper’s actions is generally regarded as a function of the zeal with which the worshiper engages in them;
• the purpose of these acts is human centered, “to draw near to God in the act of worship,” that He would reciprocate by drawing near to the worshiper and experientially confirm for the worshiper that the Holy Spirit is with him, and that he is therefore accepted and loved by God;
• these acts of “drawing near to God” are really acts of man's yearning, tarrying, and striving, of wrestling with God through worship and prayer with the expectation that He give the blessing of spiritual experience in return;
• the assurance of one's salvation is measured by the magnitude of the blessing which proceeds from successfully wrestling with God – in the experience of God Himself through worship;
• such experience of the Holy Spirit's presence in worship or prayer, or “the Baptism of the Holy Spirit,” is public confirmation of an individual's “spiritual anointing,” of his salvation and approval before God, and serves as divine qualification and appointment for ministerial authority in the congregation (creating levels of Christians in the congregation based on relative “spirituality”);
• apart from such visible experiences, the individual is naturally prompted to introspection regarding why God does not bless him with His presence (with the usual explanations being sin or doubt, or not really being saved, or even demonic possession), and is looked upon with suspicion by fellow worshipers as one who is not visibly accepted and blessed by God – both factors leading individual worshipers who lack spiritual experiences to guilt and dismay;
• as a result, many of those who have habituated themselves to the “Pentecostal Experience,” also have a keenly developed ability to whip themselves into a frothy lather (to avoid introspection and the suspicion of others, and to vaunt their spirituality in the eyes of others); if they cannot, or do not, or are unable to reach a pinnacle of spiritual euphoria according to their own expectations, or those of their peers, they just blame it on the band for “not doing it right;”
• worship accompaniment must therefore serve the need of the worshipers to have particular spiritual experiences, by manufacturing those experiences for them;
• and these experiences are referred to as “the working of the Holy Spirit,” even though they are little more than the cooperative effort of human worshipers seeking hard after emotional/psychological “spiritual experiences,” and of human entertainers, mounted on stages in classic entertainment-oriented venues, who are skilled at providing those experiences for their audiences;
• thus, the “Pentecostal Experience,” and all of its derivatives (including contemporary “Sectarian Worship”), are the epitome of anthropocentric worship practice, which, as stated above, remove Christ and His service to man from the center of the Divine Service, and instead place man, his interests and his entertainment needs at the center... and blaspheme God by crediting the results of man’s work, outside of and apart from the direct use of the Means of Grace, to the Holy Spirit..

The “Pentecostal Experience,” Vatican II and the Charismatic Renewal
Pentecostalism dwindled over the early decades of the 20^th Century to near insignificance. It was in the throes of this insignificance that David J. du Plessis, the ardently ecumenical Pentecostal, secured a position as Pentecostal Representative to the Second Vatican Council. Following Vatican II came implicit encouragement to Roman Catholics to reach out to Protestants through investigation and even experimentation with worship forms that appeal to them, which eventually led in the 1960’s to the opening of the “Catholic Charismatic Renewal.” The Charismatic Renewal had already begun in some quarters of liberal protestantism, but following the start of the “Catholic Charismatic Renewal” it began to rapidly spread among Episcopalians and liberal Lutherans, until finally, beginning in the late 1970’s it spread to Reformed Evangelicalism where it was swiftly incorporated by the Church Growth Movement as a necessary component of the congregation’s corporate experience – specifically, necessary to the salvation of souls, since appealing to unregenerate culture on its own terms, and to individuals directly through means of physical and emotional manipulation (rather than the public use of the Means of Grace, Word and Sacrament), was considered necessary to attract the un-churched from pop-culture, secure their conversion, and increase the membership of the congregation. Hence the connection of “worship style” to so-called “evangelism” – similar to Papistic ritualism which was also considered necessary for salvation, and was the cause of its repudiation by the Reformers.

Fuller Seminary, the Charismatic Renewal and the Church Growth Movement
The incorporation of “Charismatic Worship” as a necessary component of the Church’s practice was immeasurably influenced by the ecumenical and evangelical work of Fuller Seminary. By the mid-1970's du Plessis had an ongoing partnership with Fuller Seminary, as a consultant on ecumenical issues, and by the mid-1980’s, Fuller Seminary had erected the multi-million dollar David J. du Plessis Center for the Study of Christian Spirituality in his honor. It was also about this time, in 1974, that the Quaker, John Wimber, was hired as the founding Director of the Department of Church Growth at the Charles E. Fuller Institute of Evangelism and Church Growth. Wimber left that position in 1978, starting what would become the very influential Vinyard Movement. By the mid-1980's C. Peter Wagner was not only the chief exponent of CGM, he was, along with John Wimber, also one of the chief prophets of the Signs and Wonders Movement, inextricably linking CGM with Pentecostalism and Charismaticism.

The notions under which “Sectarian” or “Charismatic Worship” was introduced to the Lutheran Church in the era of the Charismatic Renewal were entirely foreign to her practice. Striving to achieve ecumenical unity through shared experience across denominations, it was also foreign to her Confessions. Clawing for approval by Arminian standards of evangelical necessity, it betrayed her entire body of doctrine. The fact is, the Church Growth Movement and Sectarian/Charismatic Worship, insomuch as they evangelically strive to achieve by man’s own alternative means what the Scriptures say is exclusively the Holy Spirit's work through the Means of Grace, by definition begin with a low view of the Scriptures and the Sacraments, and with a dismissive attitude toward the Holy Spirit’s work through those Means. Insofar as CGM “evangelically” regards such manufactured worship experiences as necessary for the salvation of souls, CGM practices directly serve the synergistic doctrines of Arminianism. The ancient liturgical principle of lex orandi, lex credendi must be respected with regard to these points. Moreover, Church Growth methods along with Sectarian/Charismatic Worship were designed to function cross-denominationally as ecumenical bridges, and whether engaged in with these purposes in mind or not, they are nevertheless understood among those who regularly practice them as ecumenical expressions, and thus, when engaged in by confessional Lutherans, make a mockery of our Confessional unity and voluntary separation from the heterodox.

False practice leads to false thinking, and eventually false belief
It has been said that there are no non-smokers like former smokers. The same can be said of former Evangelicals, particularly those of us who lived through the height of the Charismatic Renewal and nevertheless emerged with an intelligible, articulable Confession – in other words, who miraculously emerged rejecting vapid Evangelicalism, mindless Charismaticism and the Arminian Church Growth theories that have facilitated their proliferation, who have emerged with a clear view wrought from long experience with how false practice induces false thinking and eventually false believing, having watched friends and family lose their faith as a result, and having only been saved ourselves “as though escaping through flames.” Experience. Decades of first-hand experience with false practice and the false belief that follows from it. I’m not about to live through it again, nor am I going to subject my children to it.



------------
Endnotes:

1. According to the purely utilitarian CGM theory of “scaffolding,” the backs and money of established and active members of a congregation exist solely for the use of that organization's “leadership,” on which they are not only free, but ordained by God, to build something new and foreign according to the “vision” God directly reveals to them, regardless of anyone's objections. When those who object, or realize they've simply been used, leave the congregation as a result, their departure is happily accepted by “leadership,” who appeal to a twisted version of God's sovereignty to excuse their gross actions against those entrusted to their spiritual care, by concluding that God, having led such departing members away from the congregation, has merely indicated to them that their work on the “scaffold” of such former members has been exhausted, and that thus the old scaffolding ought to be dismantled, while the focus of their leadership ought to be more fully directed on the new scaffolding that had been erected as work was being accomplished on the old. Hence, the need for interminably new “fads” in the pop-church – these are nothing other than new “scaffolding” to erect on the backs of new or continuingly gullible members, as the usefulness of the old “scaffolding” wanes along with the enthusiasm of increasingly disenfranchised members who realize they've just been used.
   
   In this CGM theory we see prima facia evidence that at its foundation, CGM does not consider that the visible Church exists to minister to Believers, but solely to use Believers in its task to convert entire people-groups. It is myopically fixated on incessant change because people and pop-culture incessantly change, which is also why “congregational leadership” is continuously exhorted to create and re-evaluate “Mission” and “Vision” statements, to frequently engage in “Strategic Planning” to verify the relevance of these statements to continuously shifting strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats with respect to a single, narrow and immediate objective: bald numeric increase in the organization. Thus, the Church Growth Movement calls upon the congregation to continuously re-invent itself and to this end leverages contemporary leadership theories which exult and glorify the role of a congregation's “leadership class.”
   
   Because the Believer is not the purpose of the congregation's existence and the focus of its ministry, continuous back door losses are an inevitable reality in CGM congregations. The repulsive CGM theory of “scaffolding” was invented to explain and justify it. Because continuous back door losses are an inevitable reality in CGM congregations, continuous numeric growth, or at least continuously driving new people through the church doors, is vital to the existence of the congregation as an organization. Because evangelism is the Biblical process of achieving numeric growth in the congregation, the “Mission” and “Vision” of the congregation must fixate on evangelism as a process of achieving numeric growth. Rather than the Means of Grace, a congregation's “leadership class” is central to the practice of a CGM congregation, and because leaders must have something to lead, the health of the congregation as a visible organization is the focus of the leaders’ vision and of the organization’s effort. In CGM congregations, the congregation as an organization, and the people in that organization, serve the organization’s leadership, rather than the leadership serving the souls entrusted by God to their care.
   
   
2. Gerstner, J. (2000). Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth: A Critique of Dispensationalism, 2^nd Edition. Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications. pp. 17-59.
   
   
3. Please see following works:
   MacPherson, D. (1980). The Incredible Cover-up: Exposing the Origins of Rapture Theories. Medford, OR: Omega Publishing.
   MacPherson, D. (2000). The Rapture Plot, 2^nd Edition. Simpsonville, SC: Millenium III Publishers.
   
   
4. For more information on the errors of Charles Finney, see the following article written by Michael Horton almost two decaes ago:
   Horton, M. (1995). The Legacy of Charles Finney. Modern Reformation, 4(1), 5-9.

Change or Die IV

It wouldn't be another year without another Change or Die conference, hosted by Pastor Mark Jeske and Time of Grace.

http://tentalentsforchrist.com/#/change-or-die-conference

The list of "Inspirational speakers" can be found here:

http://storage.cloversites.com/danae/documents/Change%20or%20Die%20IV%20Speakers.pdf

The agenda can be found here:

http://storage.cloversites.com/danae/documents/Change%20or%20Die%20IV%20Agenda.pdf

The irony just keeps growing.

Thrivent selling hangman's rope

At what point will Lutherans scrum up the courage to confront Thrivent's ecumenism?  

Last fall Thrivent For Lutherans co-sponsored an evening lecture at the Interfaith Center at the Presidio near San Francisco by author Lynne Twist. Although Thrivent has recently openly communicated its intention to abandon its Lutheran heritage (as if its Habitat for Humanity and Salvation Army efforts weren't clear enough), it had no excuse as a "faith based organization" (as Thrivent describes itself) to financially support a Mystic trying to improve the condition of people's souls.

Alarmingly, Lynne Twist was the keynote speaker for Thrivent's 2010 national sales conference at the Minneapolis HQ.

Reading my partial transcript below of the Interfaith presentation doesn't do it justice. It must be experienced. Too many times she approached what could have developed into a Scriptural point on stewardship or contentment in Christ, but swerved off the road and into the "Self," "The Other," or "Consciousness." Here is the embedded video.

I'm talking about sufficiency; we're trained to want more than we need.  Sufficiency is precise. It's being met by the universe with exactly what you need over and over and over again.  And I say that that's the radical surprising truth about your life, about my life, and about life: that we actually get exactly what we need.  It's not an amount of anything, now that you're looking in the 'amount' category there. I want to disabuse you of that.  It's a way of seeing, a way of being, a way of perceiving the world. 

And I'm going on to say something else if I could, because this really kind of makes my point. I have another 80+ year old teacher [editor's note: the other teacher mentioned earlier was Buckminster Fuller] who is Brother David Steindl-Rast the great Benedictine monk, who is the greatest living scholar on 'gratefulness' n the world or many people would say that and I'm one of them.  And Brother David is steeped in gratefulness and he has a website [redacted] which I recommend. He writes on gratefulness, he speaks on gratefulness, he lives it, and I see people who know him and say, "Don't you just love Brother David?"  And so I asked him, "What's the difference between gratefulness and gratitude?"  His answer fills out what I'm saying, so I want to give that answer to you from Brother David. He said: gratitude has two great branches. One is gratefulness. The other is thanksgiving. 

Gratefulness is the experience of life when the bowl of life is so full that it's almost overflowing but not quite.  The bowl of life is so full that it's bowed to the top, but not yet dribbling over the edges. And that's the great-full-ness of life. That's when you're in the great-FULL-ness of life. And when you're in the great-FULL-ness of life, when you're in that experience, you're one with god, you're one with the universe, there is no 'other.'  And that's so 'full-filling' that the bowl of life overflows and becomes a fountain which puts you in the other branch of gratitude called thanksgiving.  

And when you're in the branch of gratitude called thanksgiving, the bowl of life is overflowing and you're so grateful that there's an 'other.'  All you want to do is serve and give and contribute and make a difference. And that's so full-filling, that it puts you in the great-FULL-ness of life again, so etc.  You can go back and forth between the two branches of gratitude. 

What I'm illustrating here is (gesturing) this is sufficiency and this is abundance. In my understanding of life, I say that true abundance only flows from sufficiency, from enough. It never comes from more.  Grasping for more will only lead you to lack and thinking you need more again. But from the context of sufficiency, of wholeness, of the great-FULL-ness of life, that overflows into true, authentic abundance from which we share, give, contribute, serve, and have a depth of your own wholeness and sufficiency and abundance in your heart. 

The speech is not an aberration. Her book, The Soul of Money, holds up each of the following as illustrative in learning how resources and ideas flow:  evolutionary biology, "Nature," Buddha, pagan indigenous peoples, Planned Parenthood, "His Holiness the Dali Lama", Buckminster Fuller, "Mother Earth," and the visions/dreams of Muslim women.  Note anything missing?
Of course it wouldn't be a lecture in San Francisco without a collectivist motivation.  

I have a mission on this planet to facilitate the reallocation of the world's resources - financial resources - away from fear and help move them towards love. Away from death, destruction and consumption, and help move them toward life, and sustainability, and the health and well being of all children, and all species, for all time. 

Vladimir Lenin gloated that Capitalists would sell to Communists the very rope they'd use for Capitalism's noose.  It's the same irony that the proverbial "little old ladies" premium payments are funding the erosion of the Gospel. 

[Speaking of Communism , Rick Warren modeled both his 40 Days framework and cell groups after the success of the Communists, but that's another essay. 'Communist Success' is a non sequitur, as it results in mountains of human corpses.] 

Ambivalent

Dear Readers,

 The post below contains some of my thoughts in reflection on our recent conference in Oshkosh. They were written on the train-ride back to Arizona, in the wee, small hours of a very dark night, rolling across the flat-lands of western Kansas, as I sat all alone in the lounge car listening to the rhythm of the rails. It is my opinion, nothing more, nothing less, and as such not necessarily the opinion of the management and staff of Intrepid Lutherans, Inc.

 Intrepid Lutherans: How Am I Ambivalent About Thee –

Let Me Count the Ways!

Well, as of the first of this month we've been in operation for two years. There have been two years of articles, comments, editorials, and we have recently completed our first national conference. About seventy people showed up at that meeting in Oshkosh, from the WELS, ELS, LCMS, and a couple of Protes'tants. But among all these were very few WELS Pastors. And when we look a bit closer, the same is true of articles, comments, and "signers" on Intrepid Lutherans. As any good Lutheran might ask, "What Does This Mean?"

 Does it mean that the other Pastors of the Wisconsin Synod don't care about doctrine and practice at all? No, I don't believe that would be accurate. The fact is, the vast majority probably still don't even know Intrepid Lutherans exist in the first place!  Of the fourteen hundred or so ordained ministers of the Gospel in the WELS, I would venture to say that about two-thirds to three-fourths don't know anything about Intrepid Lutherans. Of those that do know, most are leaders – District Presidents, Administrators, and Circuit Pastors. I know, because two years ago I personally sent each and every one of the men in these categories an introductory email about us. So, this opinion piece is not about them – repeat, NOT about them. I'll save that for another time.

 So, besides the leaders, I figure maybe another two to three hundred WELS Pastors know about Intrepid Lutherans and what we're trying to do. Of that, I believe maybe a good one-third or more are dead-set against what we stand for. Ok, where does that leave us now? Perhaps a hundred to a hundred and fifty Pastors in our synod know about us and don't oppose us outright, maybe even vigorously agree with our general aims and objectives. I think we could add to that number another fifty or so from the ELS. So, the question then becomes – why only about twenty Pastor "signers," and about that number at our meeting earlier this month? The answer, in my humble opinion – and once again, that's all this is, just my opinion – is sheer ambivalence, nothing more, nothing less. Now, the question is – why?

 I can think of a few reasons, and these are in no particular order of importance.

- There are those that truly don't care. Oh, they care about doctrine and practice, just not about problems and issues with doctrine and practice in our church body. Also, many in this group simply refuse to believe that there ARE any problems or issues with doctrine and practice among us. They just do not want to know or believe in such. They don't want to get involved, period! They believe it is just none of their business. This attitude can best be summarized by what an older Pastor said to me many, many years ago, when I was starting up my "Orthodox Lutheran Forum" (an early fore-runner of Intrepid Lutherans). When I asked him for his help and support on this earlier venture, he said, "I take care of my congregation. I let God take care of the synod." But let's examine that philosophy for just a second or two. I replied to him something like, "But what if Martin Luther had thought that way – where would we be now!?" To which he quickly replied, "So, now you think you're a Junior Martin Luther?" Ouch! Touché! No question, I do not put myself in Father Martin's shoes! And OK, I will admit that, technically, "reform" was a part of Luther's Call and position as a "Doctor of the Church." That's the way he saw it. He felt he HAD to do what he did – like it or not. Fine and well. So, who are the "Doctors of the Church" today in the WELS, who have the explicit Call to reform it, if necessary? Certainly we could say that District Presidents, Seminary Professors, and Circuit Pastors have this right and responsibility. But is that all? Really? I believe that in our system today all Pastors are charged with maintaining doctrine and practice throughout our church body. We are all our brothers' keepers in this regard, and we all have a right and a duty to hold each other accountable in this regard. If I'm wrong on this, I invite correction.

- Much like this attitude is another one like it – maybe we're right about our concerns, but we're going about all the wrong way. I've been asked, "Haven't you ever heard of 'channels?' And what about the 8^th Commandment? Matthew 18? Proper procedure?" All these issues about proper channels, correct procedure, and supposedly speaking ill of others behind their backs and so on, have been addressed over and over and over again on Intrepid Lutherans. I maintain that we are not guilty of any of these "sins." If we are, then we have certainly not been formally charged with such. The fact that such has not happened proves either that we are indeed not guilty, or that those who should make such charges are themselves ambivalent. In addition, part of the "channels" we are encouraged to use are conventions, conferences, and other such meetings. But ask just about any WELS Pastor today about these gatherings, and if robust discussion and debate takes place there anymore, or actual thorny issues and difficult problems are addressed and argued, and most will have to admit such is most certainly not the case. Why? Once again, ambivalence raises its ugly head.

- Then, of course, there is . . . fear. Fear, as we all know, is a very powerful motivator, both for action and inaction. What should WELS Pastors fear when it comes to publicly and openly aligning with Intrepid Lutherans? Ah, now there is an excellent question! It is also an almost impossible question to which to give finite and definite answers. Indeed,  there may be as many answers as there are Pastors in our synod! And how can it be answered right now without reverting to suspicion, gossip, and slander? I could give free reign to my thoughts and speculation here, but that's all it would be, and would solve or answer nothing. Suffice it to say for now that I believe fear is out there and it is a very strong and basic reason why we have so few Pastoral "signers," or Pastors willing write for us, or even to comment on our site. That having been said, I also think we can all agree that fear is lousy motivation for an historic, orthodox, confessional Lutheran Pastor to do or not do anything!  

- Finally – at least for now – another reason for ambivalence is, I am told, most Pastors believe they just don't have the time or energy to get involved with broader synodical matters. Really? Oh, come on! I don't know of a single Pastor who doesn't have some "extra" time these days. If we don't, there's something very wrong with our time management! [That too, is a topic for another occasion!] Besides time with our families, which, of course, is essential, we still have time leftover. Time to play computer games. We have time to post on Facebook. We have time to golf, hunt, fish, go to baseball and football games, and so on, and so on, and so on. We have more "free time" than our ancestors could ever even imagine. So, what it comes back to is that getting to know and getting involved with wider church issues is just not a priority to many. The attitude is, very simply – "I don't want to talk about it or think about it or know about it – please just leave me alone!" Fine, but don't say there isn't "time," because that's just not correct. Once again, it's just pure and simple ambivalence, nothing more.

So, I have reached the conclusion that, basically, a certain percentage of my brother Pastors want nothing to do with Intrepid Lutherans or any kind of discussion over possible problems in doctrine and practice among us. Another percentage know about us, but would like to silence us. Yet another percentage know and agree with our objectives but don't want to join us publicly. I believe many of my dear brothers think "something should be done by somebody," but just not them, or even us. These believe that we must all simply trust our leaders and have patience. Maybe things will be taken care, maybe they won't. If not, oh well, that's ok too. And that, my friends, is ambivalence! Like it? I hope not.

 I also hope that this little opinion piece will prick at least a few consciences and move a few more of my dear brothers to care enough to stand with us openly and publicly. Come on, men, take a chance. Stick your necks out. Be bold. Be brave. Be  . . . INTREPID!

Deo Vindice!

Pastor Spencer