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.

The Health of the Church has more than just religious significance

In 1945, Easter fell on April 1. Walking backwards through the Lenten calendar – Holy Week, Judica, Week, Laetare Week, Oculi Week, Reminiscere Week, and Invocavit Week – we see that Ash Wednesday of 1945 fell on February 14 – Valentine's Day.

At the end of World War II, in a series of raids on an essentially undefended city, targeting primarily civilians and cultural artifacts, British and American bombers dropped over 3,900 tonnes of explosives on Dresden, Germany, including many thousand incendiary and phosphorous bombs, with such precision and timing as to create swirling drafts of superheated air that would engulf the city in a literal firestorm, leaving it in a heap of ashes. The double symbolism of February 14, 1945, being both Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday is significant, and it is probably more than just a coincidence that the days surrounding this date were chosen for this attack.

American and British government figures, continuing to defend the Dresden firebombing and to minimize the casualties, place the number of dead at around 25,000 to 35,000. Critics of the raid, however, including survivors of the Dresden bombing, have maintained a number nearly ten times higher. The 1945 firebombing of Dresden remains controversial to this day. The following video tells the story from the perspective of those sympathetic to the cause of the civilian victims:


The Dresdner Altmarkt, the central city square of Dresden and focal point of cultural life, was also the center of the Allied attack. After the the War, being under Soviet occupation, most of the Altmarkt continued to lay in various states of disrepair, the most iconic pile of rubble being that of the Frauenkirche, which lay in a heap for half a century until after the fall of the Berlin Wall (pictured at the top-left of this page). Under funding from a private effort which collected donations from all over the world, rebuilding of the Frauenkirche finally began in 1993. We briefly blogged about the Frauenkirche in April of 2011.

Dresdner Requiem
I thought about this last night as I was listening to Rudolph Mauersberger's Dresdner Requiem. We haven't blogged about Mauersberger on Intrepid Lutherans before, though many recordings under his direction have been recommended on our pages. In 1930, the Kreutzkirche¹, which is located just a few blocks from the Altmarkt, appointed Rudolf Mauersberger as “Kreutzkantor” of the Dresdner Kreutzchor – a boys choir initially “founded as a Latin school at the 'capella sanctae crucis'”² over 700 years ago, which continues “the medieval tradition of liturgical singing by a boy's choir”³ even to this day, specializing in choral works of the sacred genre (and especially, it seems, of Lutheran composers).

Rudolph Mauersberger was in Dresden during the 1945 Ash Wednesday firebombing. “The destruction... gave rise to a strong creative impulse,”⁴ within him. Not really known as a composer, most of his creations follow from the destruction of Dresden, beginning with the piece he is probably most well-known for as a composer, Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst (the first piece of the four-part choral cycle, Dresden), which was performed with the surviving members of the Kreutzchor in the ruins of the Kreutzkirche that following August. His Dresdner Requiem was composed a couple years later, and revised through 1961.

Apart from the Latin introit, Requiem aeternum, the entire work consists of German texts taken from passages of the Old and New Testaments in Luther's translation, and from versus in the German Evangelical Hymn Book... The work is divided into the following sections:


Introitus
Kyrie
Transitoriness/Death/Dies irae and Comfort through the Gospel
Sanctus
Agnus Dei
Conclusion

In its liturgical character it is, in the words of Mauersberger, an “Evangelical Mass for the dead, such as the Protestant Church does not yet possess.”⁵

Mauersberger's statement remains true. His compositions remain largely ignored and unknown. Yet, in my opinion, they make the distinct sound of the Church. They are a prime example of fine “Contemporary Worship.” Edifying artistic creations, in form and composition they properly display a prima facie catholicity, and call for wholesome and reverent execution. They are proper vessels for carrying the weighty and eternal truths of Holy Scripture. Here is an excerpt from Mauersberger's Dresden Requiem – the Agnus Dei:




Becoming One's Enemy
But as I listened to Mauersberger's Dresdner Requiem last night, I thought about more than just the firebombing of Dresden, the loss of innocent life and important cultural artifacts, and the music that such circumstances inspired. The Ash Wednesday firebombing of Dresden became a living representation of what happens when important distinctions between one and his enemy disappear – when he, by all appearances, becomes his enemy. By all accounts, the people of Dresden put their faith in the good-nature of America and Great Britain, “Christian nations” with a shared Western heritage that valued the cultural significance of Dresden, a relatively unimportant military target that by that late stage of World War II, no longer had any significant defense system. The Germans wouldn't trust Russia, of course, and the rest of the world wouldn't trust Germany, but America and Great Britain were recognized by the Germans as different from them – as distinct, separate from them. By all accounts, under the rules of the Geneva Convention, which both America and Great Britain were known to fastidiously observe and hold in high esteem, Dresden was a very unlikely target. Yet, by all accounts, Winston Churchill and military leaders working with him, betrayed what those characteristics called for. By all accounts, he repeatedly sought advice on how he could “roast and baste German civilians,” and operational orders for the Dresden raids laid out a plan that carefully explained how they would deliberately inflict maximum civilian casualties. In this way, in taking on the methods of his enemy, Churchill, became indistinguishable from his enemy, dragging the reputations of America and Great Britain into shame along with him. Adolph Hitler was known to be active implementing his “Final Solution”, a wanton extermination of Jewish people – a “megalomaniacal anti-semite.” Churchill, showing himself in this incident to be a “megalomaniacal germano-phobe,” made himself indistinguishable from his hated enemy. And with him, Great Britain and America.

So who is the enemy of the Christian? Of the Church on Earth? I have been taught that the Christian's Great Enemies are three: the Sinful Flesh, the Devil, and the World. The Christian, along with the Church, is called to separate himself and remain distinct from all three. But what happens when a Christian unites himself with Worldliness? What happens when the Church “becomes the culture?” We, at Intrepid Lutherans, addressed this question over three years ago, in a blog post entitled, Law and Gospel: What do they teach? -- Part 3.2, What Happened to the Events of the Gospel? (When the Church "Becomes the Culture"), from which the following lengthy quotes are excerpted:

It was stated above, that the Church “has struggled mightily and in various ways against the withering onslaught of man's great enemy – the World – yet has been forced into retreat.” Following this, a litany of false teaching, in which some truth and great struggle is evident, was produced to show how the Church has conducted its struggle: from within the context of having “become the culture.” In point of fact, the recent history of the Christian Church is littered with the theological ruins of Christian movements which have, in a flailing desperation for the “survival of the church,” become the culture, either not realizing, forgetting or rejecting the fact that the World is one of the Christian's Great Enemies. In the modern West, doing so has meant adopting one of two perspectives: that of rationalistic Empiricism or of mystical Existentialism. In reality, neither perspective is acceptable; both place mankind at the center of truth, and argue their way to God and for man's relationship with Him from (a) the intellectual (objective), or (b) experiential (subjective) attributes of man's existence – the historical record of God's Special Revelation of Himself to mankind no longer being relevant for this purpose, by the World's standards.

In response, one option has been the route taken by American Christian Fundamentalism. Recognizing that the church was “becoming the culture” by absorbing or importing its false ideas and anthropocentric priorities, and concerned that the Bible's teaching would be lost as a result, Fundamentalism began developing among Presbyterian theologians at Princeton in the late 19^th Century; and into the early 20^th Century its influence spread to include Baptists and other Christians. In an attempt to articulate and draw attention to the doctrines of Christianity which were under attack by liberal theology, and to secure continued adherence to Biblical teaching among Christians, a public confession to the “fundamentals of the faith” was secured by those desiring to stand on these teachings and be identified with the fundamentalist movement. Those fundamentals were:


1. Biblical Inerrancy,
2. the Virgin Birth
3. the Vicarious Atonement and bodily Resurrection of Christ, and
4. the authenticity of the miracles recorded in Scripture.

Because of the stark contrast between these “fundamentals” and the liberal consensus in greater Christianity, Christian Fundamentalists in America also began to take on a “separatist” platform over time, which called for not only theological, but, increasingly, social separation from those outside the fundamentalist movement, including separation from non-Christians in society...

As a result of sequestering themselves from society in this way, Fundamentalists almost entirely lost their influence among liberal theologians – their separatism being cause for suspicion among liberals on the one hand, while causing a growing ignorance among Fundamentalists regarding relevant categories of thought and modes of expression on the other. Yet, their Christian piety was still a highly potent witness in society. Nevertheless, by the late 1930's, discontent with separatism had grown sufficiently among Fundamentalists that a counter-movement began to develop from within it: Evangelicalism. This movement initially stressed a healthy involvement in the World – in the context of evangelism and ecumenical dialog. By the close of the 1950's, however, it was clear that Evangelicals had begun to absorb Worldly perspectives from the liberal Christians they had, in evangelical zeal, endeavored to associate with, Dan Fuller and other leading elements of the Evangelical Movement at Fuller Theological Seminary having introduced neo-orthodox controversies over the inerrancy of the Scriptures (the institution eventually rejected inerrancy in the early 1970’s), while that institution had begun to develop philosophies and techniques for evangelism that were engineered to bring about mass conversion – which was the basis of today's “Church Growth Movement” (see our blog post dedicated to this topic, as well, The Church Growth Movement: A brief synopsis of its history and influences in American Christianity. See also various articles on Intrepid Lutherans dedicated to the topic of The Church Growth Movement). Once again, the Church in America set itself on the road of “becoming the Culture,” eventually insisting that, for the survival of Christianity, the church must become the culture.

That the Church must “become the culture” is a lie. That it has increasingly “become the culture” is the manifest reason Western Christianity has slowly disintegrated over the past three centuries. Taking on the culture of the World has produced a vacillating imbalance between emphasis on intellect and emotion in the Church, between reason and experience, objectivity and subjectivity – and not just an imbalance, but a thrashing between these emphases that has drawn the attention of the Church away from the saving events and message of the Gospel, away from the centrality of Christ, and instead upon man and the dual fundamental characteristics of his existence. No, Christianity must not “become the culture” any more than it should it cut itself off from society. No, the Church must not abdicate in the face of its great enemy, the World, either by joining it or by running from it. Rather, as an historical institution, with an historical and saving message, it must stand and face the World on the basis of its confession, it must earnestly contend for the faith (Jude 3), by (a) holding on to the specific and historic truths of Scripture in its doctrine, and (b) defending and proclaiming this truth in its practice.

It has been said that a good summary of Christianity and its influence in Western Civilization can be stated simply:

“In the 18^th Century, the Bible died, in the 19^th Century, God died; and in the 20^th Century, man died.”

This is really just the recent history of secular Natural Law, from the Enlightenment to our current, post-Modern era. We detailed this progress a little more fully on Intrepid Lutherans, as well, in a blog post entitled, Law and Gospel: What do they teach? -- Part 2, The Teaching of the Law, as follows:

Though acknowledging natural law, Enlightenment philosophers and scientists did so primarily as an enemy of the Church, in an attempt to sweep away any need for, or recognition of, Special Revelation and the divine law it contains. Enlightenment “Natural Theology” represented the notion that all there is to be known of God can be determined from a study of nature. A recognition of God and His law in the created order, while rejecting specific knowledge of Him or of His will from Special Revelation, is the foundation of modernistic deism. Following from this foundation, very sophisticated and intellectually honest attempts to systematize nature produced clear evidence of design and of a nameless “Intelligent Designer” that was admitted with little question.

Yet, the discoveries of science did not yield a tranquility and peaceful harmony as, perhaps, some may have thought that neutering revealed religion, by depriving it of Special Revelation and of a voice in society on that basis, would achieve. Instead, the same observations of the primitives manifested themselves: natural systems are inherently corrupt, they deteriorate and decay; cells, like animals, attack and devour one another; there is struggle, exploitation, and miserable death at every level of nature; over time, entropy is the dominant reality of the universe. Escaping the moral consequences of such observations, it seems, by the end of the 19th Century, even the deity was eliminated from natural law (some of the final blows being struck by the philosophical contributions of Immanuel Kant), making “natural law” entirely anthropocentric.

The philosophy of Materialistic Rationalism, with which Western man was equipped as he entered the 20^th Century, was a very optimistic philosophy – the pinnacle of Modernistic thought. Declaring the future equivalent to progress, and limiting reality to the scientifically observable, it confidently identified man's capacity for scientific achievement as the source of that progress, and with this as foundation for the ordering of society, held high-expectations for cultural advancement. Yet, the 20^th Century is on record as the bloodiest in history. Indeed, it took less than two decades for serious doubt to develop, as the destruction and human suffering of World War I simply galvanized the sensibilities of modern Westerners. Man was indeed powerful, yet demonstrated that he was not powerful enough to restrain his own inbred evil. The horrors of World War II sealed the fate of Modernism, and the West has increasingly advanced beyond it, into post-Modernism – an essentially experiential philosophy questioning the adequacy of formal language as a vessel sufficient to carry the message of Truth, which is thus utterly dismissive of objective truth-claims and ambivalent toward the future.

The caption under the image at the head of this post reads, “The state of the Church on Earth, today.” And in my opinion, this is an accurate picture. It is nearly everywhere in utter ruin. Though the message of the Gospel continues to stand on its own, it by definition stands as a remedy for man's sinfulness and the certainty of his eternal separation from God apart from the promises offered through it. Post-Modernism rejects certainty. It is ambivalent toward the future. And most of the Church has united itself with the thought patterns and priorities of post-Modernism. Neither certainty nor the future can be experienced in the present. The only message that can be known with any certainty by a post-Modernist is one that can be verified by experience. And the one experience with any genuine religious significance that seems to endure is fundamental to the message of the Law, a message which is increasingly rare in Lutheran circles and misused nearly everywhere else: a realization that the world is full of evil, that people act selfishly and often with evil intentions toward others – they are not “basically good,” they are “basically bad,” and the smart person today acts in ways that will preserve himself from the thoughtlessness of others, and will place him in a position of advantage should he need to defend himself. This is a world set against itself, individual by individual. It is a world absent the wholesome cultural impact of Christian teaching, which, for the sake of Christ and the Gospel, impels the Christian to daily put down the old man, to restrain the evil that inheres and to put the welfare of others before his own, and which, by Christian example, inspires others to do the same. If the image of Luther, still pointing to the Word, but standing alone in a pile of rubble that used to be one of the most awe inspiring churches on the planet, is representative of the state of the Church today, then the ashen landscape of Dresden is a suitable representation of the World without the influence of a healthy, robust Christianity. The evidence is all around us.



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

1. It is worth noting that the Kreutzkirche has not been an insignificant church in Saxony. Through the end of the Age of Lutheran Orthodoxy, the rise and fall of Lutheran Pietism, to the birth of the Enlightenment in Germany, the Kreutzkirche served as the seat of the Saxon Bishop, which (as we read in our post, Music for the Twelve Days of Christmas, Part 3: Johann Sebastian Bach), was held by the “last of the Lutheran theologians from the Lutheran Age of Orthodoxy, and vigorous opponent of Pietism, Valentin Ernst Löscher (1673 – 1749).” Among many other things, from his post at the Kreutzkirche, he oversaw the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche as one of the wonders of church architecture for which it is recognized today. “A large Gothic structure since the Middle Ages” (as we read in our post, Music for Holy Week, Part 2 – excerpts from Markus Passion), by 1722 the Frauenkirche “had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it needed to be demolished and rebuilt. The rebuilding began in 1726...” Even as society was sinking into Enlightenment thinking, and the church was dying all around him, Löscher, a champion of Lutheran orthodoxy to the last, spared no expense overseeing the construction of a Masterpiece of Christian Architecture, that has remained a symbol of the Gospel beloved by all who see it.
2. Direct quote taken from the liner notes of the following album: Dresdner Requiem, by Rudolph Mauersberger
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Intrepid Lutherans: Gaining in Popularity?

Last December, as Intrepid Lutherans progressed beyond two-and-a-half years of age and one-half-million page reads, we posted a list of the top twenty most-visited posts since our inception, Memorial Day weekend 2010, in our post Having Accumulated One-Half Million, We Continue On. Since that list of most-visited posts has changed, somewhat dramatically, since last December, I had planned to post an update following my series on the 2013 ELDoNA Colloquium and Synod. Of course, I had intended to have that series finished and posted in time to post that list for our Three Year Anniversary, this past Memorial Day. Even though Memorial Day Weekend is almost two month in the past, however, the changes in the list of most-visited posts are significant enough that I though it would be interesting to post them anyway.

At the time of that previous blog post, last December, we had posted 355 articles and were seeing an average of 900 page reads per day. Since then, according to Google Analytics, we've accumulated an additional 252,000 page reads (with some of the highest page reads per month we've ever had, approaching 50,000, occurring in February and March 2013), we've added another 65 articles, and our average visitor rate has grown to almost 1100 page reads per day – though that has tapered off considerably since May, probably due to a lower publishing rate that month, and also the lack of variety through June and July, in addition to seasonal decline in readership (historically, page reads decline over the Summer months anyway). The disparity between the figure for page-reads reported by Google Analytics and the Flag Counter is indicative of another dramatic change in readership behaviour: our bounce rate has declined significantly, meaning readers are spending more time on our blog, and are taking in more of our articles (Flag Counter only counts initial page-reads of a visitor who has not accessed a page over an extended period of time). Up until last December, Flag Counter and Google Analytics were running about the same count, in terms of page-reads. Not anymore.

Also, the article with the all-time highest page-reads was written in the time since December – an article of fairly critical importance, covering a topic that has seen recurring treatment on the pages of Intrepid Lutherans since the WELS TEC announced, at the 2011 WELS Synod Convention, their full and unreserved endorsement of the feministic NIV 2011 and emphatic recommendation to adopt it as the Synod's standard translation for all of its publishing efforts. Until the next revision of the NIV, at least. The name of that blog article is, How does one interpret language in a post-Modern Age? What about the language of the Bible?. It was published December 11, 2012, currently stands at 7267 page reads, and continues to see over 100 page reads per week.

There have been many other changes in the top twenty, as well. Some have been bumped from the list since last December, other, new articles have appeared on the top twenty, and others have moved up or down the list. I list them in the table, below, from currently most popular to twentieth. For those articles remaining in the top twenty, I (mostly) retain the summary written in December. I hope you find the list interesting, and I hope you take some time to revisit the articles featured in it.

	Page Title	Page Views	Date	Author	Comments	Observations
1.	How does one interpret language in a post-Modern Age? What about the language of the Bible?	7267	12/11/2012	Mr. Douglas Lindee	17	I am not certain as to the precise reason for the popularity of this post – those who link to it, link to it directly, so it must have been passed around via email. However, this article was unique from all the others addressing translation issues, as it makes a doctrinal case for Formal Equivalence (FE). If we say that Scripture doctrine is built from “direct positive statements of Scripture, only” then this is a grammatical definition of doctrine, which requires a faithful grammar in a translation if those who use that translation are expected to rely on it as a source of True doctrine (laymen, for instance). Just as important, in the discussion that follows, the case for Dynamic Equivalence (DE) is destroyed. In supporting DE, one commenter insisted that “the most important issue in translation is not reproducing grammar but reproducing meaning” – an assertion with which I vehemently disagreed, stating, instead, that such a position “is tantamount to establishing levels of importance within God's Revelation, and ultimately defining the source of Scripture's meaning – that which was directly inspired by God – as outside the relevant scope of what God revealed to mankind.” The Scriptures very clearly state that words and grammar are what was inspired by God, that “meaning” is only that which emerges from what God directly inspired. A translation that attempts to reproduce so-called “meaning,” while dismissing the inspired grammatical form and vocabulary from which that meaning emerges, intrusively places man between God's Inspired Revelation and the reader of Scripture, making man – the translator, in particular – the “arbiter of Scripture's meaning.” And we've covered the consequences of this “Magisterial Use of Reason” on Intrepid Lutherans, as well. No thank you. I'll take what post-Modern advocates of Dynamic Equivalence refer to as a “clunky” FE Bible – something that the rest of the world still recognizes as an avowed “Masterpiece of the English Language” like the KJV, for instance – any day of the week, because it was translated according to a far more Scripturally faithful ideology of translation.
2.	Dear Pastors Jeske and Ski: You are clearly in the wrong	6069	02/15/11	Intrepid Lutherans	13	Juicy controversy – everybody was interested, relatively few had the courage to comment.
3.	Fraternal Dialogue on the Topic of “Objective Justification”	5920	09/26/11	Mr. Douglas Lindee	54	Rev. Webber (ELS) recommended “Fraternal Dialogue” on the topic, so we opened it with a position and a series of questions to debate, and attempted to keep the ensuing “dialogue” civil and centered on Scripture and the Confessions.
4.	The NNIV, the WELS Translation Evaluation Committee, and the Perspicuity of the Scriptures	4029	07/28/11	Mr. Douglas Lindee	71	The catch-phrase, “There is no perfect translation,” ultimately devolves into a denial of Scripture's clarity and an affirmation of the Roman position that the literate Christian still needs a “Priest” to explain it to him. The sufficiency and authority of Scripture being one of the planks of the Protestant Reformation, this will never happen among Protestant Christians. Not directly. Translators now take on this role in the Protestant world, under the translation ideology of Dynamic Equivalence.
5.	Thoughts on Gender-Neutral Language in the NIV 2011	3978	09/15/11	Intrepid Lutherans	9	Intrepid Lutherans aren't the only ones in WELS concerned that whitewashing gender differences in the Bible, by way of imposing a feminist ideology of translation over the entire text, will lead not only to doctrinal error, but to a culture of thought among supposedly “conservative” Christians that is at war against the Nature of God itself and incompatible with His message to Man. And let's be clear, Feminism, Abortion, Gay Marriage and Communism are all intimately linked, as exposed in the following Intrepid Lutherans (sub)-article, Nietzsche, Marx, Darwin and America Today: A Very Brief Look at the Tip of the Iceberg
6.	Why I No Longer Attend My [WELS] Church	3926	02/06/11	Intrepid Lutherans	26	Cross-post from Mr. Ric Techlin's blog, Light from Light, publicly revealing difficulties he was having in his congregation, namely, the refusal of his congregation to address his concerns regarding error in doctrine and practice that was being promoted in his congregation. A handful of local pastors volunteered to work with Mr. Techlin, his congregation and district to resolve these difficulties...
7.	Luther's translation of 2 Cor. 5:19	3816	02/01/2013	Rev. Paul Rydecki	137	In this article, Rev. Rydecki warns of corrupted editions of Luther's Unrevidierte Ausgabe von 1545, that are used to defend Universal Objective Justification and the notion that Luther believed, taught and confessed this doctrine – a potent defense indeed, except that those corrupted editions change the tense of certain verbs in this passage in a way that is not insignificant to the Doctrine of Justification. The verbs in uncorrupted editions of Luther's Unrevidierte Ausgabe do not support UOJ at all.
8.	The Witch Hunt Has (Officially) Begun	3711	01/15/2013	Rev. Paul Rydecki	32	This post was issued in response to an item that appeared on the immediately previous quarterly CoP meeting, addressing not only Intrepid Lutherans, but those who have lent us their names in support of our endeavors to raise issues of doctrine and practice – even if the are uncomfortable issues – that need to be addressed. The agenda item indicated a need to begin a asserted effort to follow up with those who have lent us their names. This, of course, wasn't the only agenda item of interest to, and significant consequence on, Intrepid Lutherans, as we indicated a month later in the slightly less popular post, What on Earth could the CoP possibly have meant by THIS?. With only 2162 page reads, we nevertheless heard directly from “Certain Personages” on that one...
9.	Suspended from the WELS – Why?	3518	10/09/12	Rev. Paul Rydecki	0	More “juicy controversy...”
10.	Differences between Reformed and Lutheran Doctrines	3466	04/13/11	Mr. Douglas Lindee	9	The majority of hits on this post are from Reformed and Evangelical sources, as it has been passed around and discussed in a number of different forums, and continues to be frequently read. People still comment occasionally, as well.
11.	Change or Die – Update	3424	02/24/11	Intrepid Lutherans	13	The “juicy controversy” continues, as does both interest in the controversy and reluctance to become involved.
12.	What's Missing in Groeschel's Sermons? – A brief review of Craig Groeschel, Part 2	3316	09/07/2010	Rev. Paul Lidtke	22	This one has been simmering for sometime, but has finally come to a boil. Most of the page reads we receive on this article are the result of people searching not just on “Craig Groeschel,” but on “problems with,” “errors of” and “information about” the man and his ministry.
13.	The WEB: A viable English Bible translation?	3052	09/18/11	Rev. Paul Rydecki	94	Discussion over an unsuitable version of the Bible degenerates into a melee over Universalism, and this version's mistranslation of certain sections which support it.
14.	The whole flock won't survive 'jumping the shark'	2912	02/02/12	Mr. Brian Heyer	42	Thoughtless and ridiculous last-ditch efforts to “save the congregation” by abusing the term evangelism are transparently pathetic acts of desperation, make the congregation a laughing stock in the community and bring shame upon the name of Christ. The methods of the Church Growth Movement are not methods, they are antics, and kill the church by trivializing Scriptures' teachings. Shame on Lutheran congregations who do such things! Another similar and more recent, though less popular, post on Intrepid Lutherans, exposing the same pop-church shenanigans was entitled, Real? Relational?? Relevant??? O THE HORROR OF IT ALL!!! – equally worth the reader's time to revisit.
15.	Emmaus Conference – Recap	2756	05/10/11	Rev. Paul Rydecki	17	Were some people excitedly thinking that perhaps this event represented the reunion of Missouri and Wisconsin? Most new page-reads are probably looking for updates on more recent conferences...
16.	NNIV – the new standard for WELS?	2723	07/15/11	Mr. Douglas Lindee	62	Yup, it sure looks that way...
17.	Intrepid to the Last: Rev. Paul Rydecki has been Suspended from WELS	2640	10/06/2012	Intrepid Lutherans	0	More juicy controversy, lots of people interested, but no one with the courage to comment. Intrepid Lutherans remains and continues.
18.	Pietism and Ministry in the WELS: A brief review of Craig Groeschel, Part 1	2596	08/30/2010	Mr. Douglas Lindee & Rev. Steven Spencer	6	This is Part One of the slightly more read Part Two, listed above, in which Rev. Lidtke compares the Law & Gospel Lutheran preaching common WELS to that of Craig Groeschel. In Part One, we address corrosive effects of Pietism which clearly lies at the foundation of Groeschel's ministry. 'Tis too bd that many confessional Lutherans look to Groeschel as the oracle of post-Modern ministry necessity. This includes WELS Lutherans, as the following recent post illucidates: Do any Lutherans want to be Dresden Lutherans? Meanwhile, the Groeschelites continue their agenda...
19.	Ambivalent	2568	06/27/12	Rev. Steven Spencer	47	Does no one care about the threat of doctrinal error and sectarian practice? One might pardon the laity for not being informed, but what do we make of the silence and inaction of Lutheran clergy?
20.	The Silence Is Broken: An Appleton Update	2540	05/08/11	Rev. Paul Lidtke	29	An update on Mr. Techlin's difficulties, from one of the pastors personally involved in his defense. After formally objecting to what he was concerned were unscriptural practices and teachings in his congregation – and asking to be corrected where he might be in error – Mr. Techlin was simply removed from fellowship: no discussion with him over the issues he raised was entertained, no brotherly attempt was made to work with him through these issues, no example of Christian humility was displayed by his “brothers” which might have suggested they were themselves open to correction. Instead, without Mr. Techlin's or his family's knowledge, the congregation scheduled a meeting, and without even offering him the opportunity to defend himself, voted to remove him and members of his family from fellowship. To his surprise, he received a “Certified Letter” in the mail informing him of the congregation's action against him. Not so much as a phone call from a “concerned brother” or even from his pastor. Just certified mail. Furthermore, this letter made no mention of any doctrinal error to which he obstinately clung, regarding which the congregation collectively determined “further admonition would be of no avail.” To this day, Mr. Techlin has no idea what his error may have been, as no admonition has ever been attempted, certainly none by a “genuine brother” who was himself open to correction. Moreover, this congregation's action was openly defended by their Bishop, and formally approved by a committee he personally appointed to review Mr. Techlin's appeal, which found that “[his] congregation had Scriptural reasons for removing [him] from membership,” without, of course actually enumerating them for the benefit of Mr. Techlin and all other lay members of WELS congregations who may have an interest in knowing what their actual rights as laymen really are, “and, in doing so, acted in the spirit of Christian love.” Mr. Techlin's is not the only recent example of similar processes used to remove “undesirables” from WELS, but his is very well-documented and betrays what seems to not only be acceptable practice but one which Christian congregations are apparently not above employing. The same “We-won't-have-a-conversation-with-you-on-this-topic” approach was used in the case of Joe Krohn, and, as recounted in one of the articles above, was also adhered to in the case of Rev. Rydecki's suspension.

 

Do any Lutherans want to be Dresden Lutherans? Meanwhile, the Groeschelites continue their agenda...

Those of you who have been following us on Facebook and Twitter probably could have seen this coming, as you've recently been fed a steady diet of links to some of our older posts reprising topics like Pietism, Sectarian Worship, Lay Ministry, along with a few links featuring the advice of orthodox Lutherans from previous eras regarding genuine Lutheran practice that also does the job of confessing our separation from sectarians.

But they are just a bunch of old dead dudes, and who really cares about ancient history anyway. Yeah, they said stuff. So what. We say stuff, too, and what we say is what matters today.

Meanwhile, an email rather circuitously made its way to our inbox yesterday. It was initially sent to the pastors of an entire circuit in the WELS SEW District, and included a passel of attachments for their review ahead of their meeting of this Friday. They will be discussing the opening of an INTERDISTRICT MULTI-SITE CONGREGATION. The congregation, Hope Lutheran in Oconomowoc, WI (Western Wisconsin District), had been planning a multi-site effort since 2010, and, with the encouragement of their District President, had been communicating their plans with WW DMB throughout this time. In July of 2012, a conversation with Wisconsin Lutheran College (WLC) President Dan Johnson resulted in his offer to use the facilities of WLC as a "cradle to launch the second location of Hope" – in the Southeastern Wisconsin District (SEW).

Click here for the documentation.

Multi-site Congregations? Whence comest thou?
In a previous exposé on the teaching of Craig Groeschel, entitled Pietism and Ministry in the WELS: A brief review of Craig Groeschel, we critiqued the thirteen points of his Vision and Values document. Point one, along with our response to it, reads

"1. Since Christ is for us and with us, we are a fearless, risk taking, exponential thinking church. We refuse to insult God with timid thinking or selfish living.

"Interpretation: We like to tempt God.

"There is nothing laudable in casting Christian Stewardship aside, to openly take 'bet-the-farm' risks with resources God has given to us, which he expects us to wisely invest. 'Betting the Farm' is not wisdom, but foolishness."

Compare this, the FIRST POINT of Groeschel's Vision and Values statement, with THE FIRST POINT listed in the Mission Vision Values statement of Hope Lutheran, from the documentation packet linked above:

"Since Christ is for us and with us, we are a fearless, risk taking, exponential thinking church. We refuse to insult God with timid thinking or selfish living."

Already we see, Craig Groeschel is their guide – they have adopted his Vision for Ministry and made it their own, quoting from it verbatim. But it doesn't end there. Here are points four and seven from Craig Groeschel's Vision and Values document:

"4. We give up things we love for things we love even more. It's an honor to sacrifice for Christ and His church.

"7. We will lead the way with irrational generosity. We truly believe it is more blessed to give than to receive."

You can read our 2010 exposé on Craig Groeschel to see our responses to these points. But compare these points to POINT SIX listed in Hope Lutheran's Mission Vision Values statement, again from the packet linked above:

"We love to give up things we love for the things that God loves."

We did a post or two on plagiarism, did we not? Yes, I think we did. Here is the series we posted in 2010 on the sin of plagiarism. Craig Groeschel makes an appearance in this series, as well – commenting on those who do not give credit to their sources:

A Superfluity of Naughtiness: Plagiarism and Pastoral Fraud – Part I
A Superfluity of Naughtiness: Plagiarism and Pastoral Fraud – Part II
A Superfluity of Naughtiness: Plagiarism of Sectarian Sources in the WELS – A Case in Point
A Superfluity of Naughtiness: Plagiarism of Sectarian Sources in the WELS – A Case in Point (cont'd)

Re-read these old posts, and read the rest of our 2010 exposé on Craig Groeschel and his connection to the WELS. What we said then still applies today, and that application is most assuredly expanding.


Recently, Craig Groeschel wrote an editorial for FoxNews.com, which was titled, Christians, here's why we're losing our religion. Aptly titled, his objective is, in fact, to lose religion. He writes:

"You see, religion alone can only take a person so far. Religion can make us nice, but only Christ can make us new. Religion focuses on outward behavior. Relationship is an inward transformation. Religion focuses on what I do, while relationship centers on what Jesus did. Religion is about me. Relationship is about Jesus... religion is about rules, but being a Christian is about relationship."

Compare Groeschel's statement, above, to POINT SEVEN in the document Mission Vision Values, again, in the packet linked above. It reads:

"We will not let our behavior or church culture create a barrier between Jesus and a person he died for."

The relationship between statements like this and Evangelical leadership emanating from the likes of Craig Groeshel is obvious. Yet, such leadership is Scripturally incompetent – a clear example of allowing an enemy of the Christian AND the Church (i.e., the World) to dictate our terms. In reality, those who separate religion from Christianity, as Groeschel suggests, have no idea what either religion or Christianity is. Sure, Christianity is a relationship between the individual and Jesus, but Scripture's testimony on the matter is clear and abundant: for as much as it is a relationship between the individual and Jesus, it is also a relationship of confessional unity between fellow Christians AND a relationship between the congregation and Christ. Christianity is NOT strictly a matter between the individual and God, in its visible manifestation, it is principally corporate in nature! One cannot separate the idea of "religion" from Christianity! To even suggest it is nonsense.


Craig Groeschel continues in his editorial:

"But in order to reach the current generation and generations to come, we must change the way we do things. That's why we like to say, 'To reach people no one is reaching, we have to do things no one is doing.'"

He is repeating, here, the sixth point of his Vision and Values statement – which we commented on in our previous exposé. Hope Lutheran echoes this thought in POINT FIVE of their Mission Vision Values statement, contained in the documentation packet linked above:

"We are committed to reaching people that churches are not reaching."

But is Hope Lutheran, or anyone else who copies Craig Groeschel, really living out this vision statement? Hardly. Following the model of those 'who are doing what no one else is doing', those so doing such only succeed in doing what everyone else is doing. It's called a bandwagon. The fact is, it is on the basis of his multi-site church model that Craig Groeschel's LifeChurch.tv was recently named the most innovative church. Those who copy him aren't at all "doing what no one else is doing to reach those no one else is reaching," but are simply doing what everyone else is doing, as they climb on board the bandwagon to do what has apparently been "successful" for Craig Groeschel. Everyone without a shred of creativity of their own, that is. Professor John Schaller has better advice for Lutherans. Read what Schaller writes, to see what he says about doing what everyone else is doing, instead of what Lutherans, alone, can uniquely do.


Craig Groeschel continues further:

"[A]s churches, we don't have the liberty to change the message, but we must change the way the message is presented. We have to discover our 'altar ego' — and become who God says we are instead of who others say we are."

Note that by "we", Groeschel is not referring to the Church anymore. By this point in his editorial, he has already separated corporate religion from the individual. The "we" he is referring to is individual Christians, and nothing more. Thus, the change he is calling for is not change in the Church, but change in the individual Christian, beginning with the separation of the individual Christian from the Church, and continuing with a change in his focus, calling the Christian to dwell on his own behaviour. Not only is this rank Sanctification oriented Pietism (which we detailed in our post, Lay Ministry: A Continuing Legacy of Pietism, and highlighted as a problem with Craig Groeschel in our 2010 exposé), it is a "change in the message." It is a manifestly duplicitous perspective on Christianity. All he is saying here is, "We must change the message to eliminate "religion" from Christianity (yes, change), we must change the message to eliminate "labels" from our identity (i.e., to eliminate a Christian's public confession from his Christianity), we must change the message to focus on what Christians do for God or what Christians do for man in the name of God instead of what the Holy Spirit does for man through His appointed Means, and we must change the message in these ways to accommodate the demands of the unregenerate who won't listen to us otherwise (who, the Scriptures tell us, are at war against God and don't want to listen to Him anyway). Moreover, we must change the message the way others say we must change the message, we must change the way they say we must change, and become who they say we must be." Who are these "others" but Craig Groeschel and similar Evangelical leaders! Separating the Christian from his religion and from his confession, they insert themselves to take over for the visible Church.


The Collective Descent of American Lutheranism
In our post, C.P. Krauth explains how orthodox Lutheran Synods descend into heterodoxy, we quoted Charles Porterfield Krauth as he identified the Course of Error in the Church, well-known since the time of St. Augustine and operating as well as it ever had in his own time:

"When error is admitted into the Church, it will be found that the stages in its progress are always three. It begins by asking toleration. Its friends say to the majority: 'You need not be afraid of us; we are few and weak; let us alone, we shall not disturb the faith of others. The Church has her standards of doctrine; of course we shall never interfere with them; we only ask for ourselves to be spared interference with our private opinions.' Indulged in for this time, error goes on to assert equal rights. Truth and error are balancing forces. The Church shall do nothing which looks like deciding between them; that would be partiality. It is bigotry to assert any superior right for the truth. We are to agree to differ, and any favoring of the truth, because it is truth, is partisanship. What the friends of truth and error hold in common is fundamental. Anything on which they differ is ipso facto non-essential. Anybody who makes account of such a thing is a disturber of the peace of the Church. Truth and error are two coordinate powers, and the great secret of church-statesmanship is to preserve the balance between them. From this point error soon goes on to its natural end, which is to assert supremacy. Truth started with tolerating; it comes to be merely tolerated, and that only for a time. Error claims a preference for its judgments on all disputed points. It puts men into positions, not as at first in spite of their departure from the Church’s faith, but in consequence of it. Their repudiation is that they repudiate that faith, and position is given them to teach others to repudiate it, and to make them skillful in combating it."

Krauth, C.P. (1871). The Conservative Reformation and its Theology. Philadelphia: Lippincott. (pp. 195-196).

For almost three years now Intrepid Lutherans have been warning of this danger, educating our readers on the differences between heterodox sectarianism and orthodox Lutheranism, and demonstrating those differences along with giving evidence of its incursion into our Synod. Some have joined us by lending us their names; though some have been threatened for this, many remain. But these few do not account for the nearly 1500 daily page reads we see on average. Many folks read our essays and informational posts, and are confronted with the stark reality: our Synod is deteriorating right along with the visible Church everywhere, which almost unanimously now invites the World and worldly influences to abide with her in determining doctrine and practice. If they would aspire to be Dresden Lutherans of any sort, it is high-time for our readers to do more than just read. It is time for them to assert their Confession, to begin acting on their convictions in a way that will bring an end to this sort of thing.

“What was missing in my life was Absolution”: One Christian's Journey from Evangelicalism to Confessional Lutheranism

On Tuesday, we published a short blog post highlighting the research of Rev. Matthew Richard (CLBA), who is working on a doctoral degree at Concordia Seminary - St. Louis, entitled, 'Crucible Moments' and 'Becoming Lutheran'. Afterward, while perusing his blog, PM Notes: Evangelizing Moral Therapeutic Deists; Comforting Post-Evangelicals; Strengthening Monergists, I stumbled across one of his posts from last December: Confessions Of A Former Evangelical (Encore). It is a brief post, featuring only a broadcast from Chris Rosebrough's Fighting for the Faith, regarding which he comments:

A wonderful message from Chris Rosebrough on his journey from Evangelicalism to Lutheranism. A close friend and Baptist blogger posted this sermon on his blog saying that it was "Perhaps the Best Defense of the Gospel You'll Ever Hear (From a Lutheran)". Please listen, it is well worth your time.

I recall this episode from Fighting for the Faith, and agree: It is well worth your time. I've included it in this post, below. Give it a listen.

Incidentally, that post, linked to from Rev. Richard's blog to his Baptist friend's blog, is no longer there. Perhaps his Baptist friend was just cleaning up old posts, but nothing before January 2013 is available. However, maybe this following fact is pertinent. On February 28, 2013, his Baptist friend, a Baptist minister, announced that he has left the Southern Baptist Convention. He has many very interesting, and familiar, reasons for doing so. Please read his post: Why I’ve Left the Convention.


A Journey From Legalistic Pietistic Evangelicalism to the Cross
delivered at the First National BJS Conference, February 2009
by Chris Rosebrough

 

Quotes from Chris Rosebrough's “Plenary Speech” compiled for those of who won't listen to the podcast, who haven't been through the transition of “Evangelical” to “confessional Lutheran,” who don't know what a genuine Worldview Crisis really is (See our recent post, 'Crucible Moments' and 'Becoming Lutheran' for more information on “transition” and “Worldview Crisis”.) They've completely transformed the church service. It's no longer a pastor who is an undershepherd of the Good shepherd, feeding God's sheep with God's Word, making disciples, giving them Word and Sacrament, proclaiming and announcing the forgiveness of sins won by Jesus Christ on the Cross. Instead, it has been turned into a psychological freakshow. How about this from Saddleback Church: “When you're running on empty, learn the ancient secrets from God's Word for a less stressful, more relaxing, lighter and free-er lifestyle.” Now here is the fun part about it. All of these churches... when these guys launch -- four, five or six hundred people. They are marketing experts, they are running circles around us. And the people coming to their churches, are they hearing the Gospel? Not at all... All of these guys "claim" that they are doing these things to reach the lost for Jesus Christ, and to give them the Gospel, and that they are not compromising. HOGWASH! What are the results of all this? ...After 20 years, 40% of their people don't believe in salvation by Grace... 57% don't believe in the Authority of the Bible... 56% don't believe Jesus is the Only Way to Eternal Life. Former Evangelicals, they're like ex-smokers... So you can say that, at that time, I was "On fire for the Lord!" -- and you bet I was, because I was told if I wasn't, I was going to burn in Hell. There was no Grace. There was no forgiveness. Only an endless rat-wheel of good works with no assurance that I was even meeting the lowest standard necessary for me to be saved. That's the thing about the Law: How do you know when you've done it enough to please God? I did everything I could to stand out as a Christian among Christians, and at the time if you were to ask me if I was going to heaven when I died, my answer would have been. “I hope so... I hope so.” Beneath the Christian facade was a young man who was struggling with his sin, and who knew he wasn't winning that battle. And I knew that I was not good enough to be saved. “We believe that 'Entire Sanctification' is that act of God, subsequent to regeneration, by which believers are made 'free from original sin, or depravity,' and brought into a 'state of entire devotion to God', and 'the holy obedience of love made perfect'. It is wrought by the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for a life of service. 'Entire Sanctification' is provided by the Blood of Jesus, is wrought instantaneously by faith, preceded by entire consecration into this work and state of Grace, the Holy Spirit bears witness. This experience is also know by various terms representing its various phases, such as 'Christian perfection', 'perfect love', 'heart purity', the 'Baptism of the Holy Spirit', the 'Fullness of the Blessing', 'Christian Holiness', and 'Second Blessing of Holiness.'” Perfection... and that's really the Material Principle of Pietism... Modern day Evangelicals, the center of their preaching is 'the changed life', and, their Formal Principle is 'The Bible as Guidebook for Living.' That's what they preach for. Life change. I was literally fed a steady stream of tactics and practical methods for 'living a God-pleasing life'... But there was no peace for me, no assurance, no hope, my sin problem wouldn't go away, and I knew that I would face shame and rejection if I had to stand before Jesus and give an accounting of my life. Because that's all they were preaching: an Accounting. “Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” Yeah, but I wasn't... I obviously didn't love God... I came to [my pastor] for Grace, and he gave me more Law. Looking back on it I now realize, the teaching and preaching of my church literally cut me off from all hope of salvation. I diligently searched God's Law for little shreds of hope and tiny crumbs of sunlight that could tell me that I would be okay. But there is no comfort in God's Law. There is no forgiveness offered in God's Law. A person can only live under despair for so long. And that is what this kind of teaching produced in me: utter despair. I was literally withering under the heat of God's Law. But what I didn't know, is that that is exactly what God's Law is supposed to do to us. What was missing in my life was Absolution. There's no way he can make it into heaven, he's not even trying! He comforted me with Christ's shed blood on the Cross, he told me over and over again that Jesus' Blood was shed for me, for my sins, all of them, FREE, even the one's I've committed today. I'd never heard a Christian talk this way before. And I'm telling you, there are millions of Evangelicals who've never heard a Christian talk this way before. They don't know the Gospel! He openly confessed his overwhelming need for a Saviour and his utter dependence on Christ's shed Blood on the Cross for his sins. “But now the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the Law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for their is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are Justified freely by His Grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” I had stopped my incessant worrying about whether I was good enough, holy enough, or perfect enough to be saved. Instead, I was asking a far more important set of questions: “Was Jesus Christ good enough?” “Was Jesus Christ holy enough?” “Was He perfect enough to save me?” “Did Jesus' Blood, which He shed on the Cross, cover all of my sins? Or just some of them?” These texts show that it is all about Jesus Christ [not ME]. His obedience, His ministry, His perfection, His righteousness, His taking my sin and suffering my punishment for me, on the Cross!