How many here really accept the Athanasian Creed?

filosofer · #31 31st October 2009, 10:28 PM

Originally Posted by DaRev

(The LCMS and WELS maintain that the Bible is the inspired word of God, without error, and is applicable to all people of all time.)

As do ELS and AALC.

Protoevangel · #32 31st October 2009, 10:37 PM

Originally Posted by Basil the Great

If we read the Athanasian Creed carefully, it is clearly making the claim that anyone who does not believe in eternal torment for the lost, cannot himself be saved. Hum.... I wonder where this leaves one of the famous Eastern Church Fathers who clearly taught "the Restoration of all things" and did not believe in eternal punishment? Does this mean that he is in Hell? Then again, maybe he is in Heaven, since the Athanasian Creed was developed after his death?

Hi there Basil,

Which famous Eastern Church Father would you be speaking about here?

JoeCatch · #33 31st October 2009, 11:23 PM

Originally Posted by DaRev

You are missing quite a bit. It starts with their view of the Bible as "containing" the inspired word of God and that much of it only pertains to the people at the time it was written, which is basically a license to disregard those parts they do not agree with. (The LCMS and WELS maintain that the Bible is the inspired word of God, without error, and is applicable to all people of all time.) This leads to such unBiblical practices as women's ordination and open communion.
They also do not fully subscribe to the Lutheran Confessions. Their full communion with several Reformed church bodies is evidence of that.

I frequently hear this description of the ELCA's position (i.e., that we believe that scripture "merely contains the word of God" or some similar phrase), but honestly I never hear any actual ELCA Lutherans speak this way. These sorts of descriptions just always strike me as an attempt to define the views of the ELCA more in terms of what we don't believe than in terms of what we do.

The ELCA's view is that the true Word of God is, first and foremost, Christ himself, and then only secondarily the scriptures and preaching that testify to him. This is why, as I pointed out in my previous post, we view Christ as the true norm of scripture, as opposed to the conservative/confessional Lutheran view that instead grounds scripture's normativity more in terms of its inerrancy or verbal inspiration. For us the bible is authoritative because in it we have an encounter with the living Christ, not because God somehow verbally dictated its contents when its various texts were originally written. That encounter with the living Christ is certainly universal and applicable to all people in all places and at all times, and this is not denied by the ELCA.

Clearly this is a different view of scripture (and of authority) from the conservative/confessional Lutherans' understanding. But I want to make it absolutely clear that, despite the distorted characterizations being tossed around by the conservatives on this board, the ELCA does not deny the authority of scripture. As I pointed out earlier, when the ELCA's views are defined almost exclusively in terms of what we don't believe (e.g., the summarization of the ELCA's view of scripture as essentially "not-inerrantism"), it's easy to get confused about what we actually do believe. And the fact is that, despite what one might come away from this forum believing, we in the ELCA do believe in the authority and inspiration of scripture. We understand authority and inspiration differently from the way that conservative/confessional Lutherans do, but we do not deny them.

Studeclunker · #34 31st October 2009, 11:48 PM

Be careful Basil. You're a guest in this forum and have no right to insult, or bait the members. Your last post was not only sarcastic, but insulting. Besides, you're throwing stones in a glass house. With all the excesses exercised in the non-denom churches you have no cause to castigate the conservative Lutherans for the inconsistancies you percieve.

From Joe Catch:

The pattern of Scripture interpretation generally practiced in the ELCA seeks to consider carefully the meanings of passages and their form, including the time and place in which passages were written.

... And the Jehovah's Whitnesses make the same claim. What's your point? That one can twist and bend scripture to say whatever they, do or even don't, want? This statement is the key difference that's causing the great gulf that separates the rest of the Lutheran churches from yours.

We in the ELCA do not believe that inerrantism is a hallmark of Lutheran theology. As the LCMS Web site points out, this doctrine did not originate with Luther or his contemporaries, but with later theologians in the era of so-called Protestant/Lutheran Orthodoxy.

You are most certainly right. The doctrine of the inerrency of scripture came about because of the rise of the practice of 'Biblical Criticism.' This practice is what has produced most of the error that separates the ELCA from the rest of the American Lutheran community. That divide will continue to widen, if current events are any indication.

It's an open question, though, whether the theology of the Protestant/Lutheran Orthodox dogmaticians was faithful to the principles of the Reformation, or a diversion or regression from those principles. They certainly were not the only group claiming to be the rightful inheritors of the tradition and principles of Luther and the rest of the Reformers. Chiefly, their Pietist opponents rejected Protestant/Lutheran Orthodoxy's insistence upon doctrinal purity and propositional systematizaton. So these disagreements between the LCMS and the ELCA today have really been around pretty much ever since the first generation of Reformers left the stage.

Actually, the Lutheran Pietist movement can be directly traced to the teachings of Phillip Melangthon (sp??) starting shortly after Luther's death. Phillip had always been a Pietist and Luther was a moderating influence up till his death.

The rest of this statement is your opinion and you are entirely entitled to it. Historically, though, your foundation is weak.

Arguments between this group and that over which is the more faithful heir to Luther's Reformation have been going on practically since before his body was cold and in the ground. They're unlikely to stop anytime soon, though many of us do hope for a day when at the very least they can be rather less aggressive and vitriolic.

This is most certainly true. However, as long as the ELCA continues to make decisions that even NON-Lutherans denounce, there is not much hope for any kind of civil discorce.

It's important to note that these theologians were writing against a different backdrop from that of the first-generation Reformers. Some argue that, even though Luther never explicitly articulated a doctrine of inerrancy, a) it can be safely inferred from his writings nevertheless, and b) it was taken for granted and thus didn't need to be articulated explicitly. I don't buy this explanation from present-day defenders of inerrantism, and here's why: Descartes, Copernicus and Galileo's scientific and philosophical discoveries were dramatically altering what people even understood the term "authority" to mean. For that matter, the Reformation itself with its rejection of papal authority had already set that wheel in motion.

Well, once again you are entitled to your opinion. However, Descartes, Copernicus, and Galileo would be dismayed (in my opinion) that you would be using them to interpret scripture (judging by what they wrote). And here is the key of where this kind of technique (historical/cultural comparison and Biblical Criticism) will lead. One simply cannot pick and choose in the Scriptures. It's most certainly true that all Denominations are guilty of this practice to some extent. Some however, have gone a wee bit too far.

In attempting to post this, I am informed it is too large. I'll have to split it. See the next post: same TCL time same TCL channel!

Studeclunker · #35 31st October 2009, 11:51 PM

Now... where was I... Oh, yes:

So, when the theologians of Protestant/Lutheran Orthodoxy from the 16th c. onward wrote about "authority," it simply won't do to backtrack and import their ideas wholesale into one's reading of Luther, who absolutely didn't have any of the issues--or even the same notion of what authority even was--in mind that they did.

Once again, you have put your finger on the difference between your own and the rest of the Lutheran Denominations and turned it upside down. God doesn't change. Homosexuality (for instance) is an entirely unacceptable practice that must not, under any circumstances, be permitted in the Church's leadership. And yet, the ELCA has declaired exactly the opposite, among other things. All of the ELCA's excesses are used like dirt to muddy the water of discource and hide their true agenda of making the Church more of the world. We are certainly supposed to be in the world preaching and teaching the good news. We are most certainly not supposed to be taking on the World's fallen practices and allowing them to corrupt the Church!

The ELCA, obviously, does not view the Protestant/Lutheran Orthodox dogmaticians as the truest heirs of Luther's Reformation. Our reading of Luther does not read him through the lens of these theologians writing after his death in an entirely different epoch of human history. Rather, we hold that a reading of Luther in his own milieu grounds the authority of scripture in the person of Christ.

This is patently obvious in the way that ELCA behaves. However, it must also be pointed out that no other conservative Christian body considers ELCA an example of Luther's Reformation, let alone a good example. It's interesting to note that one's 'lens' can be producing an inaccurate picture. However, just because the 'picture' one has is convenient doesn't mean the lens is in focus.

From the ELCA Web site:
The Bible’s authority is interpreted through Jesus
By no means does that human presence in sacred Scripture detract from the Bible’s testimony to God. Rather, this human testimony provides layers of faith and insight by those who contributed to the canon. The Bible’s reliability lies not in reading it as science or proscription, but as humankind’s chief witness to God, reflecting on faith as it is to be lived. Again, ELCA Lutherans judge all Scripture through the window of God’s chief act — that of entering human flesh in Jesus of Nazareth — and they interpret Scripture by listening to the living Jesus in the context of the Church. Because Jesus’ person, life and witness become the lens through which we read and interpret all Scripture, we can judge slavery as "not of Jesus," yet understand the customs of the time and read Paul’s inspiring letter to Philemon, master of the slave Onesimus, as testimony to faith.

On several occasions, Martin Luther suggested that not all books of the Bible have the same value for faith formation. Similarly, as in all of life, ELCA Lutherans ask, "Is what we find here consistent with God’s revelation in Jesus?" This is a central question/prescription that provides guidance for acting as moral beings and for calling humankind to justice; it also becomes the authority for our reading Scripture, for it is the Jesus of Scripture, the living Word, who reveals God and judges Scripture, just as he is the judge for all else in life. Therefore, it is a question that ELCA Lutherans find best answered within the life of the Church in community, for this risen Jesus is Lord of the Church.

Source: The Bible

The source is most certainly not the Bible. Wherever was Luther mentioned in the Bible? No, Paul didn't condone slavery. He did however, condone following the current laws as long as it didn't conflict with scripture. Onesimus was a slave lawfully held by his master Philemon. The master was reminded that his slave was his brother in Christ and commended to treat him as such. The following excerpt from the above illustrates the error in ELCA very clearly (enhancement mine):

The Bible’s reliability lies not in reading it as science or proscription, but as humankind’s chief witness to God, reflecting on faith as it is to be lived.

This statement comes dangerously close to saying that the Bible is nothing but the writings of men. This is the claim of the Church Of Religious Science among others. I would hope it to be just poorly said, however by the behaviour of the ELCA's leadership it seems to be an unintentional slip of truth (in regards to truth of belief).

The best way that I can put the ELCA understanding of inerrantism is that it has authority running in the wrong direction. Rather than scripture's authority resting in Jesus, inerrantism posits that our ability to trust the kerygma (preaching) about Jesus is dependent upon written texts that receive their authority from elsewhere (i.e., being verbally authored by God). On our view, inerrantism always runs this risk of wresting primacy of place away from Jesus and giving it to the bible (or, at the very least, forcing him to share primacy of place with it).

The question is; how does the ELCA define said authority of Jesus? The problem with the above statement is that Scripture itself declares the authority of God. Christ himself claimed the authority of both God and Scripture (with himself subject to the Father {God}). Without the inerrency of scripture (not to be confused with translation of such), The very words of Christ himself are cast into doubt. The Gospels are reduced to an eyewhitness account and are suspect as such. Besides, does not Paul commend the Bereans their wisdom in comparing the teachings they have received against the scriptures? All preaching must be submitted to the litmus test of the Word. If it doesn't agree with the word, no amount of preaching about Jesus is going to be correct or trustworthy.

In the following the bolding is mine:

It's important to note that inerrantism is not the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura. Conservative/confessional Lutherans (along with other conservative Protestant Christians) will often conflate the two, but they are not the same; one is not equivalent to the other. In articulating the doctrine of sola scriptura, Luther was rejecting some specific competing would-be authorities. His articulation of sola scriptura was motivated by a concern to free theology from the trappings of Greek philosophical categories that were rampantly employed in the Augustinian and Thomistic theological tradition that he had inherited. It had nothing to do with the entirely separate issues about the nature of authority that led the dogmaticians of Protestant/Lutheran Orthodoxy to articulate their doctrine of inerrantism. Thus one can affirm the Reformation principle of sola scriptura while rejecting the later theological innovation of inerrantism. Anyone who accuses the ELCA of abandoning sola scriptura because we are not inerrantists is simply confused about the real and important distinction between the two.

Ah, and here we approach the doctrinal result of the Biblical Criticism movement that came after Luther. Hence the reason, Luther never addressed the issue, it was assumed in his time. There was no question at all about the inerrency of scripture, just the inerrency of Papal and dogmatic authority. Again, the doctrine of Biblical inerrency came after Luther because it wasn't an issue till Biblical Criticism became popular many, many years after Luther and the rest of the reformers had died.

Luther would most likely have declaired any view, other than inerrent, of scripture to be heritical. But that's just my opinion.

Finally, we absolutely do not agree that full doctrinal agreement is required for fellowship at the Lord's Table. The Augsburg Confession, in its Article VII, clearly states what is required for table fellowship, and full doctrinal agreement is nowhere to be found there. Nor is there any good scriptural support for the view that communing is a public confession of doctrinal agreement at all. Thus our table remains free of sectarian prohibitions against partaking of it.

Here, one can find in my posts on this forum, to be conflicted. I don't entirely agree with this, nor disagree. Very upsetting, to be sure, but there it is. I do believe that a denom can be too restrictive and also too loose here. WELS is one extreme and ELCA is the other. However, I would rather err on the side of caution and would take the side of WELS anytime over that of ELCA.

You know, up here in the Pacific Northwest we have a wide variety of mushrooms. Some are really beautiful and quite deadly. some are bland in appearance, delicious and nutritious. Yet others are in the middle and classified as a 'controlled substance' as they are hallucinatory and sometimes can be deadly. One has to be very well versed as to which is which. Bad doctrine and theology can be like the first and last of these. They look a lot like the middle, and by this mistake, one can find themselves dead to the kingdom of God and part of the Kingdom of men. On that self-same wide road to destruction.

DaRev · #36 1st November 2009, 12:08 AM

Originally Posted by JoeCatch

I frequently hear this description of the ELCA's position (i.e., that we believe that scripture "merely contains the word of God" or some similar phrase), but honestly I never hear any actual ELCA Lutherans speak this way. These sorts of descriptions just always strike me as an attempt to define the views of the ELCA more in terms of what we don't believe than in terms of what we do.

But much of what I have heard that the ELCA believes runs contrary to 2000 years of Christian teaching and history.

The ELCA's view is that the true Word of God is, first and foremost, Christ himself, and then only secondarily the scriptures and preaching that testify to him. This is why, as I pointed out in my previous post, we view Christ as the true norm of scripture, as opposed to the conservative/confessional Lutheran view that instead grounds scripture's normativity more in terms of its inerrancy or verbal inspiration. For us the bible is authoritative because in it we have an encounter with the living Christ, not because God somehow verbally dictated its contents when its various texts were originally written. That encounter with the living Christ is certainly universal and applicable to all people in all places and at all times, and this is not denied by the ELCA.

It is true that the Word of God is primarily Christ. But what we have been given by Him to be the norm of teaching in the Church is the Holy Writ. He is, after all, it's Divine Author. And what does He say precisely in His word? "Make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you." What has He commanded us to teach? That which He has given to us in His Holy Writ. So, either the ELCA claims some extra-biblical "divine revelation", or they have simply failed miserably at what our Lord has called His Church to do.

Clearly this is a different view of scripture (and of authority) from the conservative/confessional Lutherans' understanding. But I want to make it absolutely clear that, despite the distorted characterizations being tossed around by the conservatives on this board, the ELCA does not deny the authority of scripture. As I pointed out earlier, when the ELCA's views are defined almost exclusively in terms of what we don't believe (e.g., the summarization of the ELCA's view of scripture as essentially "not-inerrantism"), it's easy to get confused about what we actually do believe. And the fact is that, despite what one might come away from this forum believing, we in the ELCA do believe in the authority and inspiration of scripture. We understand authority and inspiration differently from the way that conservative/confessional Lutherans do, but we do not deny them.

Then I guess it depends on what the ELCA considers Scripture, because the Bible that I read clearly condemns many of the actions of the ELCA.

Basil the Great · #37 1st November 2009, 12:40 AM

Studeclunker:
As a guest, I have no doubt overstayed my welcome. Let me offer my apology one last time and let me say that my "baiting and insulting" of conservative Lutherans was not meant to single them out more than other conservative Protestants. You are no doubt correct that excesses can be found with more frequency in places other than with conservative Lutherans. I guess I just chose to make a point in this forum because I have read so many anti-ELCA posts recently, both here and in non-Christian Forum sites, that I felt a little sorry for the ELCA and ELCA posters.

Now, I can understand why the recent ELCA decisions are a cause for concern and certainly would not try to defend their recent Assembly votes on sexuality. However, I also know some of the history between the various Lutheran bodies and have felt for many years that the Mo Synod and the WELS were not accepting enough of the ELCA. Unfortunately, I guess I can no longer so readily feel justified in thinking this way. (Perhaps the Mo Synod and the WELS have had the last laugh on me so to speak, regarding my 20+ year view of their attitude towards the LCA and then the ELCA?) Still, because I believe that all denominations and groups do pick and choose (and yes, it is a matter of degree), I do feel a little sorry for the ELCA for all the bad press it has received as of late within Christian circles.

To all offended conservative Lutherans: I admit I went a little too far in trying to make a point and humbly ask your forgiveness.

Basil the Great · #38 1st November 2009, 12:44 AM

Protoevangel:
I was referring to Gregory of Nyssa. Yes, there may be some dispute regarding his views, but there is at least considerable evidence to maintain that he doubted the reality of eternal punishment, if not actually refuted it.

Protoevangel · #39 1st November 2009, 12:45 AM

Originally Posted by JoeCatch

As the LCMS Web site points out, this doctrine did not originate with Luther or his contemporaries, but with later theologians in the era of so-called Protestant/Lutheran Orthodoxy.

I wonder how the LCMS website handles the clear words of Luther himself, then:

"I have learned to ascribe the honor of infallibility only to those books that are accepted as canonical. I am profoundly convinced that none of these writers have erred." (Martin Luther, WA 2, 618)

"I confess to your charity that I have learned to defer this respect and honor to those Scriptural books only which are now called canonical, that I believe most firmly that no one of those authors has erred in any respect in writing." (Augustine, Epistolae, 82. 1.3)

That's not to suggest he was right or wrong (I am not interjecting my own opinion, at this point, at least), but I just wonder how that legend about Luther's beliefs, and the wrong notion that te idea of inerrancy/infallibility has a late beginning, and is even repeated by the LCMS.

Basil the Great · #40 1st November 2009, 12:55 AM

Perhaps I should add that I do not believe that the "Final Restoration of All Things" view of the afterlife has a very wide acceptance within or without of Eastern Orthodoxy. Actually, it no doubt has a greater acceptance within liberal Protestantism than within Orthodoxy.