The Gottesdienst Crowd

TGC 134 — Feminism, Complementarianism, & Patriarch (Part 2)

In the first part of this series, a follow up to the episode on the Persuasiveness and Pervasiveness of Feminism, David Ramirez and I looked at the roots of feminism and why it’s so hard resist, and Satan’s back door of bringing feminism into the church: Complementarianism. In this part, part 2, we look at what is actually commanded in the Scripture, that is, what God’s good order actually looks like. We also seek to answer objections. 

Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Special Guest: Fr. David Ramirez

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TGC 133 — Trinity 17 Sermon Prep

This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for Trinity 17, Luke 14:1–11.

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[Gottesblog] Did Luther Actually Say? — Larry Beane

Did Luther Actually Say...?

“If men only believe enough in Christ they can commit adultery and murder a thousand times a day without periling their salvation.”

— MARTIN LUTHER

“This is truly one of the most disturbing things Martin Luther ever said. He would have done well to remember the words of St. Paul, ‘Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase? God forbid it!’ Romans 6:1-2.

I know that Luther is a very important figure for those in protestantism, for those in the cults, and even for secularists, since all of them trace their movements to a great degree to what Luther did.

However, the idea that a person can rape and murder their [sic] way into heaven because they [sic] have ‘imputed’ righteousness should be abhorrent to anyone who has the Holy Spirit dwelling in them [sic]. And I think statements like this should at least make us pause and reconsider whether his influence has been for better or worse.”

— A SOCIAL MEDIA WRITER WHO DESCRIBES HIMSELF AS A "THEOLOGIAN, MYSTIC, AND PHILOSOPHER"

The above quote attributed to Luther was used by a Facebook friend to make a case against forensic justification. It seems this is from Table Talk, though I did not invest the time to run down the quote and secure a page number. But assuming that the quote is true, Dr. Luther’s critic puts words into the Wittenberg reformer’s mouth, that Luther is expressing a belief that “a person can rape and murder their [sic] way into heaven.”

It should be obvious to any scholarly opponent of Luther that this is clearly not the argument that he is making. He is clearly employing the literary device of hyperbole to make a point. It is apparent to anyone willing to be fair-minded about the whole thing that Luther nowhere argues that a person can rape and murder his way into heaven, but rather the argument is that God’s grace is greater even than the sins of the world.

The use of hyperbole and other figures of speech is nothing new when it comes to theology. In fact, our Lord shocked His hearers by saying that they should poke out their own eyes and chop off their hands and hate their parents, wives, children, and siblings. St. Paul cited an old saying that people living on the Greek Island of Crete “are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons,” adding, “This testimony is true.” One of Paul’s more amusing turns of phrase intended for effect is that he wished the guys making such a fuss about circumcision would go big or go home, so to speak, and chop off the whole kit and caboodle. That is, of course, a paraphrase, and it has nothing to do with certain surgical procedures that are all the rage right now.

For as long as men have put pen to paper, or chisel to stone, there have been figures of speech. Our Lord often spoke in this way, to the point where the disciples one day were stunned when he spoke to them literally, “Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech!”

So I find it hard to believe that a self-professed theologian and philosopher should be dumbstruck by something like a figure of speech on the part of a theologian - especially one as prolific and playful with language as Dr. Martin Luther. In fact, there’s a whole lot more where that came from! It’s certainly not an honest way to frame someone’s beliefs based on a figure of speech pulled out of context. And in fact, this treatment of Luther is not unlike the stunt pulled on our Lord at His trial before the Sanhedrin, when one of His figures of speech was trotted out and trumped up as evidence to suggest that our Lord should be tried as a terrorist under Imperial jurisdiction (where there was conveniently a death penalty). After all, Jesus was conspiring to start an insurrection by talking about destroying buildings. Yes. I’m sure it was an honest mistake on their part rather than the deliberate and dishonest placing of words into our Lord’s mouth. And by the way, what I just said was sarcasm, another literary device.

As far as defending Luther goes, it goes without saying that Luther was wrong about many things. By definition, he was a poor miserable sinner just like the rest of us, with his own foibles and errors, poor judgment, subject to mental lapses, and with more than enough ability to be wrong about things. That’s the nature of being a fallen human being. And many non-Lutherans are under the impression that we canonize Luther’s words or treat his writings like sacred oracles. Though history has tagged us with the label “Lutherans,” it does not follow that we are “Lutherists” or “Lutherolatrists.” And it also goes without saying that Luther was a brilliant and prolific theologian, professor, scholar, church father, lecturer, preacher, and debater. But again, we do not impute infallibility to him, even though his name was put upon us. But Luther’s greatest work was not in the scholarly realm, but in the pastoral. For when He spoke the words of Holy Scripture, he was infallible. When he pronounced absolution, he spoke as an oracle of God - as do all pastors. His greatest works were his evangelical proclamation, baptizing, absolving, and administering the Holy Eucharist, speaking and acting ex officio in the stead and by the command of Christ.

Perhaps some Lutherans go too far in their admiration of Luther. And perhaps this is an unfortunate result of his name being placed on those of us whose churches confess the Augsburg Confession. All that said, Luther is as entitled as anyone else of being quoted fairly, in having figures of speech interpreted as they were intended, and not in a comical, cartoonish literal sense that would make him out to be a monster - which is precisely what this writer did.

As far as the author’s invocation of Romans 6:1-2, Luther did indeed “remember the words of St. Paul,” and what’s more, he preached, lectured, and wrote on these very verses - even as he lectured extensively on the Epistle to the Romans.

Lecturing on Genesis 29:1-3, probably in 1542, Luther cites Romans 6:2:

“For promises are not given for the purpose of snoring, loafing, and sleeping, or for doing what is in conflict with the promise. No, they are given for working, being watchful, and bearing fruit. Thus I am not baptized, do not partake of the Lord’s Supper, and am not absolved for the purpose of sleeping and snoring at home in idleness. But if you have the promise, Baptism, and absolution, remember that you have been called to be watchful and to be anxiously concerned about the things that pertain to your faith and calling. ‘How can we who died to sin still live in it?’ says St. Paul (Rom 6:2). We are not absolved from sins in order that we may live for them and serve them, but in order that we may fight against them and stoutly persevere in the promise, in order that I may chastise and mortify my flesh and bear it with a calm mind when God imposes a cross, in order that we may be purged and bring forth richer fruit. ‘By this,’ says Christ, ‘My heavenly Father is glorified, if you become my disciples,’ (cf. John 15:8); that is, if you suffer as I did, and if you become like Me. For he who is not a ‘Crosstian.’ so to speak, is not a Christian; for he is not like Christ, his Teacher.”

— AE 5:274

Or consider Luther’s lecture on Isaiah 43 (covering verse 24, probably in 1529) in which he posits: “Only this teaching of Christ frees us from our burden. One has sinned, another bears the punishment…. The sinner does not make satisfaction: the Satisfier does not sin. This is an astounding doctrine.” He goes on to say how this doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction for us can well be abused:

“This teaching opens window and door to carnal people, who say, ‘Let us do evil that good may come of it, because we have someone to make satisfaction’ (cf. Rom 6:1). Although this offense arises, this teaching must not be silenced. Scripture fights against it altogether. If we are freed from sins, it is not proper for us to take them up again. As if one cured and freed from a fever should embrace it again by an evil and extravagant life.”

— AE: 17:99

In his 1539 treatise On the Councils and the Church, Dr. Luther also famously railed against antinomians who might have said something like “Listen! Though you are an adulterer, a whoremonger, a miser, or other kind of sinner, if you but believe, you are saved, and you need not fear the law. Christ has fulfilled it all!” To this, Luther replied: “For there is no such Christ that died for sinners who do not, after the forgiveness of sins, desist from sins and lead a new life.”

So our self-described theologian, mystic, and philosopher - who deduces that Luther was somehow teaching the ability to “rape and murder [one’s] way into heaven”, and that this is the result of the doctrine of imputed righteousness - has either not read very much of Luther’s works, or he is deliberately lying to defame and debase, and to win people dishonestly to his side. The charitable thing would be to conclude the former (that is, ignorance) rather than the latter (that is, malice).

TGC 132 — Feminism, Complementarianism, & Patriarchy (Part 1)

In this first episode of a two-part series, a follow up to the episode on the Persuasiveness and Pervasiveness of Feminism, David Ramirez and I look at the roots of feminism and why it’s so hard resist, and Satan’s back door of bringing feminism into the church: Complementarianism.  

Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Special Guest: Fr. David Ramirez

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[Gottesblog] Weoponized Vice — Larry Beane

Weaponized Vice

How often have you heard people say that all sins are equal?

If that’s the case, committing genocide is the moral equivalent of copying your friend’s homework in fifth grade. Yes, both are sins. Yes, both can be mortal sins if one doesn’t repent. Yes, both break the commandments (the former the fifth, the latter the seventh) - and yes, someone is going to point out that other commandments are involved here too.

But even the most dogmatic Lutheran will be forced to admit that there are indeed worse sins than others.

There is a category of sin that is known as “vice.” Vices are sinful personal failings that are not acts of aggression against someone else. One could call them “victimless” crimes. And yes, I realize that there are unintended “victims” of vices (such as family members of a father with a gambling addiction) - but there is a categorical difference between a man who physically rapes a woman vs. a passing lustful thought. Even the most doctrinaire Lutheran would probably not want people jailed or sent to the gallows for gossip or for coveting thy neighbor’s Mercedes.

There is a danger that Pharisaic people make a big deal out of vices for the purpose of pointing to their own self-righteousness. A teetotaler may enjoy gossiping about the crowd gathered in the bar for happy hour. Someone with no interest in gambling may scowl at the betting going on at horse races. The war on vices has led to blue laws and even national alcohol prohibition, not to mention the horrific unintended consequences of the War on Drugs. Censorship has now come full circle and is being used to stifle the free speech of conservatives and Christians.

Examples of vice abound. Every family and every community have examples of those who go a little overboard with the drinking. Aunt Sally may not be face down in the ditch, but maybe she has one or two too many and begins to embarrass herself. Your brother in law Bill may foolishly blow his tax refund at the casino, but he’s a young single guy with a lot of money, so it’s not that big a deal. Nobody is calling for his excommunication or for a police investigation.

And in days past, everyone had an uncle who was unmarried, who always seemed to have a close male friend hanging around, who went out to bars on the weekend. Everybody knew that he had same-sex attraction issues, but nobody berated him for it, but neither did anyone condone it. So, he wasn’t ostracized from the family - he was your uncle after all - but neither did he bring up sodomy at the Thanksgiving table. There was a social arrangement. And as long as he stayed away from underage young men, there was a sense of tolerance toward his vice. The pastor may have even given him communion because his sexual proclivities were so well hidden that he genuinely didn’t know. Or maybe your gay uncle knew that this was a sinful lifestyle. Maybe he even confessed to the pastor and struggled against this sin - you wouldn’t know because it’s none of your business, and the pastor probably knows more than you think he does.

But we live in a different era. It is as if everything before 2015 was the age of black and white television and Marcus Welby doling out paternal advice on “Father Knows Best.” Today, homosexuality is no longer considered by society as a whole to be a vice, but a virtue. It is a point of pride. It is socially celebrated without exception in movies, TV, music, and every aspect of popular culture. There are local holidays and lurid celebratory parades. It is venerated by mental health professionals and politicians, and now the celebrated category even includes people with sexual fetishes, gender dysphoria, and a host of subjective sexual issues. But nearly every sexual vice has been metamorphized into being the the moral equivalent of, if not the superior to, heterosexuality. At this point, even pedophilia and bestiality are losing their stigma. And there is a concerted effort to normalize sexual deviancy even to pre-school children.

I recently saw a back-and-forth on social media between a rostered LCMS male teacher at a Lutheran high school whose FB profile includes a pro-LGBT statement and the six-color rainbow. He also happens to champion Critical Race Theory. When he was challenged on it, he did not address the questions, but simply retorted that “there are gay members of the LCMS” and that people “seem awfully hung up on one sin out of millions.” He never answered the question about whether this view of sexuality was congruent with the Scriptures. He ended up just deleting the thread.

In this day and age when Critical Theory and the endorsement and celebration of violations of the Sixth Commandment have become the norm in the secular world, parents who don’t want their children “educated” in this manner either homeschool or put their children in Christian schools. They especially turn to LCMS institutions, given our confession of the infallibility of Scripture and the role of the Word of God as the “norming norm” to which we unconditionally submit. For this is not the case with denomination after denomination that has surrendered to the world.

So why do we have a rostered teacher who is openly flouting and celebrating adultery?

That’s what homosexuality and other sexual proclivities celebrated by the secular culture are according to our Small Catechism. Sexuality is a matter of holy matrimony - between one man and one woman for life. In the church, we don’t wave flags celebrating divorce. We don’t throw a party when a man is unfaithful to his wife. We don’t tell an unrepentant woman that she is “courageous” for admitting that she cheats on her husband and has no intention of stopping. We don’t have a parade to laud people for looking at pornography.

But the vice is now a virtue. It is no longer a vice. This alternative morality, this rejection of Scripture, is being normalized even in our churches. We had at least one Concordia in our university system that had a student club dedicated to the breaking of the Sixth Commandment: an adultery club that met with the blessing of the former university president. Why not a pro-abortion club? Why not a club dedicated to profaning the name of God? Why not a club dedicated to character assassination? Why not a club mocking the idea of church attendance?

This teacher’s line of reasoning that the Sixth Commandment is being treated differently than all the others is actually true. One could not imagine him promoting Atheism or lusting after his neighbor’s wife or committing acts of aggression against other people or even killing them - without incurring the ire of the school’s administration or the District President. But this teacher’s advocacy of adultery - specifically the socially acceptable variation of sexual inclinations and behaviors that are not heterosexual - seems to be just fine.

What we are seeing all around us is weaponized vice.

The old social contract of not persecuting your “happy” uncle so long as he was not making it public and keeping his activities between consenting adults has been torn up. Now, your uncle is on a rampage. He will compel business owners to violate their consciences. He will sue them and harass them. He will show up at your church with his friends and protest outside. He will call you names and make you out to be the moral reprobate. He will dox you at your job and try to render you impoverished and socially ostracized. Some of his friends will insist on their right to expose their genitals to women and girls in a spa. He will argue in court for the right of school children to use whatever bathrooms and dressing rooms that they like, and will argue that you parents have no say in the matter. He will make sure that the virtue of violating the Sixth Commandment makes its way to children’s TV shows, cereal boxes, and even on the flagpole at the hospital where Christian families may be dealing with illness in the family. He will make sure that his flag flies alongside of national and historical flags - even at American embassies. He will successfully agitate so that federal government jobs include a day set apart to honor the violation of the Sixth Commandment and that all employees will take part. Any Christian who so much as winces will be written up or fired.

And now, he will also insist that rostered LCMS teachers celebrate the breaking of the Sixth Commandment, and the school administration and the District President will either pretend not to see it or openly support it.

In time, we will get new pastors and seminary professors who will read the Sixth Commandment - and all of the Bible - with a different hermeneutic, one befitting of a hashtag campaign. In time, our churches will redefine marriage to conform to the state and to the New Orthodoxy. And whatever pockets of resistance that are left will just be marginalized and bulldozed over. And who’s to say the Nine Commandments in our catechism won’t become the Eight Commandments, or the Two Commandments, or the Zero Commandments?

We either hold to our confession, or we change it. He either hold our RSOs and DP’s accountable, or we will not. We either believe the Holy Scriptures and submit to them, or we don’t.

TGC 131 — Trinity 16 Sermon Prep

This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for Trinity 16, Luke 7:11-17.

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[Gottesblog] We Will Not Shut Up — Larry Beane

We Will Not Shut Up

The Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear arguments against a new Texas law that outlaws abortion once the child has a heartbeat. President Harrison caught a lot of grief - even from many claiming to be LCMS members - because he wrote on the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod Facebook page (September 6, 2021, 9:56 AM), “Thank God the folks in Texas and on the SCOTUS think 63,000,000 dead babies is enough.”

For this advocacy of human life, President Harrison was pilloried. In the comment thread, the Synod President doubled down: “SIXTY THREE million. I’m just not shuttin up.”

And this is precisely what his detractors want. They want to gag him, our church body, and members of Synod, including pastors and representatives of our schools and universities from expressing any support of the pro-life movement. The arguments are the usual canards: we hate women, we only care about babies when they’re in the womb and when they’re born we don’t care about them, men have no right to an opinion on this issue, we don’t support crisis pregnancy centers, the Bible never addresses abortion, the Bible was only written by men, etc.

One lady decided to take a different tack with me. She attacked my personal Facebook posts dealing with politics and historiography. What this has to do with the Abortion Holocaust is beyond me. It is a classic case of ad hominem argumentation, gaslighting, and passive aggression. I’m not going to be bullied or intimidated.

But it is also a case of deflection.

The new Texas law doesn’t outlaw all abortions, but it goes a long way towards defending the innocents in utero (which all of us were at one time, and which our Lord Himself was as well). Ad hominems and deflection are actually the best strategy that pro-abortion Christians - especially LCMS members who are angry about the new Texas law and are on the attack against President Harrison and other members of Synod who support it - can muster.

The best argument for supporting the new Texas law and supporting similar laws to be passed in other states is the simple reality of what the law now bans. Here is a video. And although it is an illustration, it is still disturbing and horrifying. You may not even want to watch it. But those who support abortion as a right, those who oppose the new Texas law, those who are lambasting President Harrison really should watch this:

 

As you can see, even the decidedly left-biased YouTube finds this too intense to imbed in this article. To watch it, you have to click on the YouTube link and state that you are 18 years of age or older. This is the way our society used to deal with pornography. We all intuitively know across the political spectrum that this procedure is barbaric and morally indefensible. And that is why the argument has to be deflected to ad hominems and discussions of anything and everything except what exactly happens to the baby.

Although the lady’s attack on my views of American History are an irrelevant distraction, there is something to be said about historical symbols of the past and why it is not wrong to honor our ancestors and our heritage in spite of their flaws.

When I’m in uniform, I stand at attention when the flag of the United States is posted. I salute the flag. The flag represents my home and my American ancestors who were already here before the United States was founded. Many of them fought in the War for American Independence and in subsequent conflicts. I have affection for the flag in spite of the fact that it flew over slave ships, segregation, war crimes, ethnic internment camps, adventurous imperialism, and in spite of the fact that every stripe represents a slave state when the states declared their independence. Moreover, Old Glory flies over the Holocaust of the Unborn: 63,000,000 children killed in utero with the protection and blessing of the United States government, namely the Federal court system and the Supreme Court. The decree Roe v. Wade compelled all of the states to legalize, allow, and defend infanticide within their borders. At the time of Roe, gone was the old federalism of the founders that decentralized such decisions and allowed the people of the states to protect the unborn. Hamiltonian Nationalism replaced Jeffersonian Federalism (states’ rights), and until now, the State of Texas has been powerless to protect the powerless.

Without the top-down Hamiltonian interpretation of the Constitution - not as a compact between the states but as the master of the states - converting the states into provinces of a single unitary state - my own State of Louisiana and many other states (especially, but not only in the South) would have passed laws protecting the unborn. Perhaps the pendulum is now starting to shift from Hamilton to Jefferson, and maybe a new federalism and decentralization of authority from Washington will once more allow the people of the states to protect our little ones without interference from Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court. I’m certain the Nationalists won’t simply roll over. This may lead to court-packing so they can maintain their dominance over the Jeffersonian view and over human life itself.

And speaking of Jefferson, I have a bust of him, admire him, and consider him to be a great man. To many people, this would make me a “racist.” But that just isn’t true. I honor Jefferson because of his greatness and because of his ideas of decentralized government and the idea that rights come from God and not from the State. I don’t honor Jefferson because he was a slaveowner, because of his 18th century views on race, or because he did not believe in the divinity of Christ. I honor him in spite of those realities. The Left has no place for such nuance. This is why they are on a jihad against patriotism, against our American heritage, against our founders, and against a Jeffersonian historiography that does not interpret American history along the Socialist lines of Howard Zinn and Eric Foner.

I love my country, its history, its heritage, its heroes, and its symbols: slavery and the Holocaust of the Unborn notwithstanding. Slavery was eventually abolished, and one can hope that abortion will be as well. Perhaps a hundred years from now, there will be museums dedicated to this Holocaust, and the world will look in horror at what their ancestors did.

And nevertheless, hopefully they will continue to uphold the Fourth Commandment by honoring their male and female ancestors (as the Hebrew text reads), flawed as they were.

At any rate, thank you President Harrison and to other leaders of our Synod for defending the unborn, created in the image of God, knit together in their mothers’ wombs, known by God, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

We will not shut up indeed.

TGC 130 — Eckardt Medley

In this episode, Fritz Eckardt, the Editor-in-Chief of Gottesdienst, thinks out loud about all things on his mind lately. 

Host: Fr. Jason Braaten

Regular Guest: Fr. Fritz Eckardt

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TGC 129 — Trinity 15 Sermon Prep

This episode is devoted to the Gospel reading for Trinity 15, Matthew 6:24–34.

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TGC 128 — On Dying Well

From the moment we are born we are dying. We are brought into newness of life in Christ and the Church through the death of Holy Baptism. Much of our Lord’s teaching and the teaching of Scripture is about learning to die well, which leads to a life lived well, now and for all eternity. In this episode, Travis Berg (pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church, Latimer, IA) walks us through the art of dying well and thus living well. We will confront the charge that Christians are so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good, and much more. 

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