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I advise against treating it as a formality. If you don't actually make a case for yourself in this meeting, it'll only be that much harder to convince someone higher up to take your cause seriously. Besides, you don't know what sort of good could come from this meeting unless you actually...

For those who have pointed out the need for examination, what sort of examination do you have in mind? What are we examining ourselves for? What are we looking for in those self-examinations?

Radiata, If you "know that nothing good can come from this talk" with your professor, why are you having the talk? Was it your idea, or is it required? If it was your idea to go to her and talk about the grade, then your assertion that you know that nothing good can come from it is puzzling...

We should erect no barriers whatsoever to allowing anybody to partake of the Lord's Supper, except in the case of church discipline. Even then, I'm not certain that a ban from the table is the most proper means of discipline; I suspect that in almost all cases, it is not. Surely there is...

In my congregation, we do re-use unconsumed elements from one week to the next. We have a tabernacle (a small, plush-lined wooden box) in the sacristy, and any unused wine left in the ewer that has been consecrated is poured into a corked glass vessel (probably has a name, but it escapes me at...

When you say you've "brought about a calm atmosphere in Unorthodox Theology forum," would that be referring to the thread you started there in which you: complained that "there are too many 'unorthodox' people" cluttering up the Unorthodox Theology forum; asserted that the sole purpose of...

There is nothing in the INA that suggests that feeding or clothing an undocumented immigrant should be construed as harboring. This is, on my view, one of the most frequently misunderstood passages in the entire Pauline corpus. I do not believe, nor do the majority of Paul scholars today...

Point of clarification, as a quick Google search would show, H.R. 4437 was never signed into law.

Thanks for all of this, but none of it really answers my question. I know that this is the way that the now-traditional moral/ceremonial distinction in the Law works. My question was, how far back can we trace this theological concept? Did anyone prior to Aquinas use it, or was it his own...

Yes. Whom did he ever turn away? Only two people come to mind: the rich, young ruler and the Syrophoenecian woman. The young ruler wasn't turned away, though; he departed from Jesus of his own accord because he found Jesus's teaching too difficult. And the Syrophoenician woman appealed to...

Please see my response from earlier today to wildboar. I'm placing the accounts of the Lord's Supper within the broader context of Jesus's entire ministry, rather than viewing it in isolation. My contention is that there's no disconnect between the Lord's Supper and the rest of the ministry of...

Does anyone here know what the origin of this moral/ceremonial distinction is? I know that Aquinas introduces it in his Summa Theologica (along with a third category, civil law), but I'm not aware of the distinction being discussed by anybody any earlier than that. I'm under the impression...

Yes, many times. No, turning the Lord's Supper into a party wasn't quite the issue he was addressing. Please refer back to my first reply to CantateDomino, wherein I discuss precisely what the issue was at Corinth (viz., divisions between the rich and the poor among the Corinthians). You...

OK, wildboar, I owe you a few responses, so here we go: No, Jesus didn't corrupt the meal that he himself instituted. I'm placing the Lord's Supper/passover meal within the broader context of Jesus's entire ministry, in which open commensality was absolutely integral. Can you fill me in...

I don't see why we even need the natural/supernatural distinction; it's just not clear to me that it really adds anything to the picture or brings in any extra explanatory power. I don't need the natural/supernatural distinction in my theology because my view of God is panentheistic. That is...

No, everything I wrote about Jesus is absolutely integral to what it means, on my view, to be a Christian. Sorry there was a misunderstanding about that. And certainly the Jesus whom we encounter is the Jesus of history. The entire point of the Incarnation is that God became flesh in a...

Having spent several years as a conservative, confessional Missouri Synod Lutheran, I'd say I've got an entirely credible basis for my position. Yes, at one point, my theology was every bit as conservative as anybody's at TCL; I'm well acquainted with the views of confessional Lutherans and...

I think it's probably just a matter of time before the infighting begins among the newly formed synod that's going to emerge from Lutheran CORE.

No time to respond to the rest at this time, but I'll get to it when I get a chance. Nice job cutting out everything that I wrote about the importance of Christ in everything that I said that being a Christian was all about. You really couldn't have been any more intentionally...

First of all, I just flat out don't buy that Lutheran CORE's primary concern isn't homosexuality. First, the ELCA's position on the authority of scripture never has been the view that Lutheran CORE advocates, so it's puzzling to me how they can claim that they're just trying to reform the ELCA...