Posted on 10/17/2007 8:07:13 PM PDT by lightman
Best wishes on your retreat!
I am a bit late to the party (I have been taking a partial break from FR lately). Just what did we on FR do to make them so mad?
You know, I have a tendency for being rather blunt at times. A few weeks ago, a friend of mine (who wanted to be an ELCA pastor until he went to seminary and found they are no longer Christian) brought along a friend of his. She was pro gay, pro infanticide, and pretty much as liberal as they come. Oh, and she wants to be a pastoress.
Well, she said that in front of my other redneck Lutheran friend, and he pretty much verbally tore into her. Starting with the book of Romans (if I got the story right) and working back to the early church he read her the riot act on just what being a Christian means in regards to morality, the Trinity, and the Incarnation.
To make a long story short she called him a “hater”. Which made him laugh and say “You should have said this to Red! He is less polite then I am”.
No Kolo, these people aren’t serious. But the damage they do to other’s souls is serious. Some day that disturbed little girl is going to stand up in front a congregation and tell them abortion and gay sex is just fine and dandy with God. And some day she and those she led astray will stand before Him and hear the truth. That is the serious part.
Yep, she'll say that Mamagod will just enfold us in her consoling breasts. Can't call those behaviors sin, or require redemption, because making the child of Mamagod suffer would be "divine child abuse".
Yes, the most radical elements of the ELCA Full Communion partner United Church of Christ have used that exact phrase.
I believe they are deadly serious. They really do believe, teach, and confess that God the Father, Allah, Shiva, and Ba'al are identical/interchangeable; that all sexual behaviors that are mutually pleasurable are part of this "god's" order of creation; and that the only sins are "intolerence" and "judgementalism."
They fully infected the United Church of Christ a quarter century ago and now that Full Communion has been declard the Lutheran Confessions have crumbled as a wall against heresy.
Heck, in some ELCA Seminaries one can take and pass a course ont he Lutheran Confessions without acually being required to read the Book of Concord!!!
The ELCA has a lot of worms in their apple.
“Yep, she’ll say that Mamagod will just enfold us in her consoling breasts. Can’t call those behaviors sin, or require redemption, because making the child of Mamagod suffer would be “divine child abuse”.”
Now here’s a thought for you Lutheran theologians. Why does the concept of a God “enfold[ing] us in her consoling breasts.” necessarily mean that sin and repentance go out the window? I am not laying any importance on the “female” aspects of the comment.
How is deification possible without redemption? And redemption without acknowledgment of sin?
“How is deification possible without redemption? And redemption without acknowledgment of sin?”
Certainly divinization is not possible without redemption (though that word “redemption” can be troublesome). It would be quite impossible. Christ’s restoration of our original created potential, however, is not dependent upon us acknowledging anything. Theosis is certainly dependent upon repentance which of course requires an aknowledgment of our sins.
Do you think the foregoing is inconsistent with a notion of God which posits that:
“God is good, dispassionate, and immutable. Now someone who thinks it reasonable and true to affirm that God does not change, may well ask how, in that case, it is possible to speak of God as rejoicing over those who are good and showing mercy to those who honor Him, and as turning away from the wicked and being angry with sinners. To this it must be answered that God neither rejoices nor grows angry, for to rejoice and to be offended are passions; nor is He won over by the gifts of those who honor Him, for that would mean He is swayed by pleasure. It is not right that the Divinity feel pleasure or displeasure from human conditions. He is good, and He only bestows blessings and never does harm, remaining always the same. We men, on the other hand, if we remain good through resembling God, are united to Him, but if we become evil through not resembling God, we are separated from Him. By living in holiness we cleave to God; but by becoming wicked we make Him our enemy. It is not that He grows angry with us in an arbitrary way, but it is our own sins that prevent God from shining within us and expose us to demons who torture us. And if through prayer and acts of compassion we gain release from our sins, this does not mean that we have won God over and made Him to change, but that through our actions and our turning to the Divinity, we have cured our wickedness and so once more have enjoyment of God’s goodness. Thus to say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind.” +Anthony the Great
The horrible anti-orthodox bashing—coupled with disdain for us on Free Republic—is spreading to other threads on the once-noble and orthodox alpb forum!
See http://www.alpb.org/forum/index.php?topic=1006.0
See especially the post by the disruptor Charles Austin:
....This ALPB forum is rapidly becoming like that other place (the Freep or Creep forum or whatever). Anonymous posters blasting away with their assault rifles. Presiding Bishop Jefferts Shori deserves the title of her office and the respect due that office, no matter what one might think of her views. And if one wants to brand a person a “heretic,” (which her church has not done), common decency would require more than a blithe “something along the lines” of as “proof.”....
As with most disruptor posts, this one resulted in the hijacking of the thread to discuss issues that the heretical, revisionist disruptors are interested in, such as the bogus “many paths to God” theory!
I have news for the alpb disruptors: Yes, Abraham was saved centuries before the Incarnation. However, he had a revelation of the Most Holy Trinity, which was connected with the birth of his son Isaac and the eventual birth of Isaac’s descendant Jesus Christ!! Abraham’s salvation is no proof at all for the heretical, destructive, and dhimmi “many paths” theory!!!!
Moreover, I have no problem whatsoever calling the unapostolic head of the Episcopal Church “the New World Order feminazi heretic Katharine Jefferts-Schori”!!!! Not only has she expressed MULTIPLE heresies in public, but she has made the NWO “millennium development goals” the central mission of TEC! The Most Holy Spirit resides in the Church as a whole, including unworthy laypeople such as I. And we are NOT to follow or obey heretics, no matter what their office.
In the ELCA, TEC, UCC, etc., the disruptor mentality extends far beyond cyberspace. Revisionist disruptors hijack the time, talent, and treasure of “mainline” churches to support bogus issues that they are interested in—homosexuality, “inclusive” language liturgies, NWO programs and brainwashing, and prostrating subservience to islam. It’s time for the Rest of Us to go HOME, and leave the mainline mis-leaders with no one to mislead!!!!
I would think the more discerning of your colleagues would not miss the meta-message: that ECUSA's implosion and ELCA's incipient self-destruction have been observed with interest, and multiple emotions, and evaluated here, for months and years.
It would behoove leaders of a church in a state of decomposition to attend to how they are being seen by the larger community on which they depend for survival.
This forum holds tens of thousands of the very people ELCA could recruit to stanch the bleeding of membership. But all you can do in your "Christian" pastoral mask, is to insult and degrade those here who are seeking the true gospel and of whom you know not.
Now please, say what you really mean--that the ELCA you seek to create will have no room for traditional Christian sinners. You intend to be "inclusive" but not THAT inclusive, don't you John. Or perhaps we should just say, "We sinners are not good enough for your "New ELCA" church."
Now Charles Austin and some of his buddies have a thread aimed at elimating anonymous posters from the albp forum, which is a special “crusade” of the Austin/Dornheim crowd. (This is also what they say is wrong with Free Republic).
http://www.alpb.org/forum/index.php?topic=1018.0
These misguided “crusaders” forget that many posters are laypeople, with their own professions separate from their online identities as, say, orthodox Christian or pro-Serbian activists. Many such laypeople may have professional websites or blogs, and/or publications that appear on the open Internet. They may therefore wish to keep their professional identities separate from their controversial activist posts. If the alpb “crusaders” really believe, with Luther, that laypeople serve as priests in their professions, they should not begrudge us the right to keep these identities separate.
Moreover, even ELCA professionals (pastors, seminarians, AIMs, etc.) may wish for good reasons to keep their identities as controversial Internet posters separate from their professional identities. Liberal ELCA synods such as ours are snakepits, in which tyrannical revisionist “bishops” and their sycophants bash, blacklist, and push out traditionalist pastors, seminarians, and other church workers. Some revisionist seminary professors downgrade seminarians even for daring to call God “He” or “Father”. ELCA professionals should be allowed to use screen-names in order to protest these persecutory practices.
Finally, the real problem with the alpb forum is NOT the activities of anonymous posters, but the disruptor posts of revisionist trolls, which are designed to hijack threads to go the revisionists’ way!!!! The revisionists have even come to DOMINATE the alpb forum, in terms of numbers of posts, thus crowding out orthodox posters. When those who run the alpb forum recast it as an orthodox-only dicussion (for traditionalist Lutherans and former Lutherans now in the Orthodox or Roman Catholic churches), then the quality of the alpb forum will be restored to what it once was!!!!
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