I love stuff like this….do you? This will come in very handy if you happen to stumble into one of those time portals and find yourself back in Ancient Rome.

Check it out at this link.

From time to time, I hear that there are still some Lutherans who are very confused about the doctrine of justification, specifically the aspect of it known as objective justification, the teaching that God was in the world reconciling it to Himself through the death of His Son. This was an issue of some moment years ago when a dear friend of my mentor, Kurt Marquart, had a member of his congregation that was unduly influenced by false teachers. He turned to Dr. Marquart for assistance in refuting errors regarding objective justification being spread by this layman. Dr. Marquart prepared this excellent response to errors concerning objective justification, which Pastor Mark Hendersen recently highlighted on his blog.

OBJECTIVE JUSTIFICATION

Having been asked by Trinity Church, Bridgeport, Missouri, for a theological analysis of certain papers by Mr. Larry Darby on the subject of “objective justification,” I herewith submit my findings first of all with profound regrets for the long delay, and secondly with the humble prayer that anything now said may still be of help to Christian consciences struggling with this issue.

Given the high level of conflict that has ensued in this matter, I have attempted scrupulously to restrict my remarks to matters of fact and theology, and to avoid inflammatory rhetoric or judgments about motives. I am conscious of no ill will or prejudice against anyone involved in this dispute.

By way of a basic frame of reference I shall first sketch out the standard Lutheran perspective on justification, as found above all in the Book of Concord itself, together with its biblical basis, and then evaluate Mr. Darby’s arguments in that context, spelling out specific agreements and disagreements with his theses.1

1. A Digression on Terminology

I agree with Henry Hamann that the terminology “objective/subjective justification” is less than ideal since “subjective justification . . . is every whit as objective as objective justification.”2

On the other hand, when Calvinists use the same terminology, it expresses their meaning very well: “Passive or subjective justification takes place in the heart or conscience of the sinner.”3 The Reformed reject universal grace, hence cannot mean general justification by “objective justification;” and “subjective justification” means for them something experiential—precisely what it does not mean for Lutherans. Biblically, justification is God’s act, which faith receives or believes, but does not feel or “experience.”

To avoid these problems, it would be best to retain the more traditional usage, which spoke of the “general justification” of the world in Christ and of the “personal justification” of individual sinners through faith alone. This corresponds exactly to the biblical distinction between God’s own completed reconciliation of the world to Himself in Christ (II Cor. 5:19) and our reconciliation to him by faith (v. 20).

If the sense is clear, one should not quarrel about words. The “visible/invisible” terminology in respect of the church is a case in point. Our Confessions do not use that language, but speak of the church in the “proper sense” and in the “wide sense.” Moreover, Calvinists mean something quite different and unbiblical when they speak of “visible” and “invisible” churches. Yet standard Lutheran theology since Gerhard has spoken of the church being “visible” and “invisible,” and meant the right, orthodox content by this terminology. Similarly one must assume—other things being equal—that when orthodox Lutheran theologians speak of “objective” and “subjective” justification, they mean to express biblical, confessional truth, and not Calvinist or other deviations.

2. The Standard Lutheran Pattern in Presenting Justification

The best starting point is Formula of Concord (Solid Declaration) III:25:

The only essential and necessary elements of justification are the grace of God, the merit of Christ, and faith which accepts these in the promise of the Gospel (Tappert, p. 543, compare Apology IV:53, p. 114).

We may put these essential ingredients of justification into a list, as follows:

The grace of God
The merit of Christ
The promise of the Gospel
Faith

Read more…

OK, this is really, really cool stuff and gives you a great sense of just how large and impressive ancient Rome was. Check this web site out.

Found this great blog post over at Intrepid Lutherans, by Pastor Spencer, passing it along here.

While such efforts are understandable, and certainly permissible in our system of government, it begs the question of whether or not the State should be in the business of regulating marriage in the first place, and if it should, to what extent it is empowered by God to do so.

Read more…

I’ve always had a keen fascination with World War II due to the fact that I had relatives fighting on both sides: American and German. My uncle was a combat medic who had his leg blown off during the Battle of the Bulge and my Grandfather’s brother flew in the Luftwaffe. As part of my interest, one of my hobbies is collecting period military firearms. The US Army did a series of training films on the “rifle that won the war” the M1 Garand. I collected the videos available and worked on enhancing the video and audio quality as best I can. Here’s the YouTube playlist where you can watch them all:

I ask all those who are not in the office of parish pastor to read this. Pause. Read it again and then, if you are so inclined, to get down on your knees before your Almighty God and ask Him to bless and keep your pastor faithful. HT: Musings of a Country Preacher blog for this excellent post.

Among the many issues that I have heard our Synod President address, the lack of good preaching hits closest to home for many pastors. At least, it does for me.  Despite years of preaching, I find that I am only beginning to understand the challenges a preacher faces.  It will take many more lifetimes to find the solution to those challenges.

Pastor Harrison’s comment, however, reveals a challenge and burden that goes an entirely different direction, but is worth examining.  His complaint is that too often, pastors preach a generic law.  A symptom of this, he says, is the constant talk of we:  “We sin,” “We need forgiveness, etc.” Instead, he says, the pastor is to speak the Word of God to the people.  That is: “You sin,” “you need forgiveness,” etc.  An excellent point, to be sure.  This brings me to the burden of the Holy Ministry.  Pastors speak the Word of God to their people.  When they are doing it right, they are bringing both the law and Gospel to them.  That is, “You are a sinner. God forgives you.”

But even more than just saying, “God forgives you”, the pastor stands in Christ’s stead and says, ‘’I forgive you.”  He does this in Holy Absolution to be sure, but he also does it in his preaching. He does it as he administers the sacrament.  It is what the pastor does.  But what is missing from this is the “For me.”  The pastor can not continually give forgiveness, without at some point receiving it.  Or, put another way, the pastor has no pastor. Pastors are somewhat on their own.  In the average parish, the pastor serves alone at altar and pulpit.  Monthly pastor’s conferences are not the same thing.  There is no “Here is my pastor” for the pastor.  It is the burden of the office.

This is not intended as a complaint.  Just as observation.  How do pastors deal with this? In this age of easily printed books and electronic gadgetry, there are any number of devotional works a pastor can use to help himself.  There are apps for that.  There are all sorts of things.  I read a great deal. I study and write.  I make sure the sermons apply to me too.  And yet…

If I were giving advice to a young pastor, fresh out of the seminary, it would be this: Find a Father Confessor.  We can debate endlessly about whether pastors should go to their circuit visitor or district president for confession, or whether they should find someone else.  But do whatever it takes to find someone to whom you can confess and from whom you can receive the absolution.  You need it.  You need to be told that your sins are damnable, and that you are forgiven those very sins.  And you need to hear it from a mouth not your own.  Not a rotation of pastors who serve as preacher at pastor’s conferences.  You need to hear from A mouth.  Someone who knows your sin, and forgives you anyway, just as you do for your people.  (Do not pick your best friend. The relationship between pastor and penitent is different.  As a penitent, it will change your relationship to your friend.) Find someone and do it.

It is the best defense (next to the Lord’s Prayer) against the attacks of Satan.

Oh, yes, and pray the Lord’s Prayer, as well.  Pray it often.

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Words fail, just go to this web site and read more about this.

This is a great video….

HT: Pastor Larry Peters

When the Old Testament strikes a leak, the water soon flows in to the New Testament. — Norman Nagel (Australian Lutheran theologian).

Note: this is humor, only humor, and nothing but humor.

“Preach one thing: the wisdom of the cross!”

That is Luther’s answer to the vital question posed by the ministers of all ages: what shall I preach? The wisdom of the cross, the word of the cross, that great stumbling block to the world, is the proper content of Christian preaching, is the Gospel itself. So teaches Luther and the Lutheran church with him.

The Christian world regards the preaching of the cross as greatly one-sided. The cross is just part of the Christian message beside others. The second article of the Creed is not the whole creed, and even in the second article the cross takes its place among the other facts of salvation. Thus Luther is guilty of a narrowing of Christian truth when he limits real Christian preaching to the theology of the cross. Even some Lutherans say the same thing today!. After all, is there not also a theology of the incarnation and a theology of the resurrection? Ought we not supplement what is taught about God in the second article with what is taught in the third article of the Creed about the theology of the Holy Spirit and his activity in the church? Luther did indeed have much to say about these matters too – for example in his teaching on incarnation and on the sacraments. He also understood the article of creation as few theologians before him did. How then shall we answer the charge of the one-sidededness of Luther’s theology of the cross, which is a criticism much heard? What do the critics mean by the alleged narrowing? Apparently it does not mean that the whole church year shrinks to Good Friday, but rather that one cannot understand Christmas, Easter, or Pentecost without Good Friday. Luther, like Irenaeus and Athanasius before him, was certainly one of the great theologians of the incarnation; yet he was so because he saw the cross behind the manger. While he understood the victory of Easter as well as any theologian of the Eastern Church, he understood it because he saw Easter as the victory of the Crucified One. The same can be said about his view of the Holy Spirit’s activity.

According to Luther, then, all topics of theology are illuminated by the cross. Why? Because the deepest meaning of revelation lies hidden in the cross. For this reason Luther’s theology of the cross wants to be more than one of many theological theories which have appeared in the course of church history. In contrast to that other theology prevailing in Christendom, which Luther calls the theology of glory, the theology of the cross claims to be the correct scriptural theology by which Christ’s church stands or falls. The preaching of the cross alone, Luther contends, is the preaching of the Gospel.

Hermann Sasse, Letters to Pastors, No. 18.

Excellent blog post by Pastor Philip Hoppe.

Listen to his own words:

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together; when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Roberts in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.

Obama become Pro-Gay marriage relationally.  He knew people who were gay and wanted no longer to offend those people by denying them the rights other couples have.

He did not come to this position through biological reflection.  No one discovered a hereunto unknown gene which shows that people are born genetically gay.  Every male and female born today are still born with private parts that suggest the only biologically compatible relationship is that between man and woman.  It  remains the only relationship which can propagate the species.  Nothing has changed there.

He did not come to this position after re-examining the Scriptures Christianity holds as sacred.  For again, those scriptures still testify from the first book to the last that marriage and sexuality are given only to men and women.  Those wish to argue otherwise are required to come to the scriptures with a Jeffersonian love for excising troublesome parts of the Book at their own discretion.

He did not come to this position historically or sociologically.  The research all shows that homosexuality is not a practice that prospers societies.

Obama become Pro-Gay marriage relationally.  And he is not alone.  I would suggest that everyone who does not come to this position by virtue of personally embracing homosexuality as their own sexual identity comes to this position relationally.  They know someone who claims homosexuality as their identity and cannot bear to stand in opposition to them.

And I do not wish to minimize this struggle for a moment.  It is a dark and torturous place for anyone to be. I have experienced it personally though not as closely as many of you may have.  But the fact that it is hard to stand in opposition to those we love does not make it okay to not do so.

Matthew 10:37-39  Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

If you have not felt the heat of this crucible yet, you surely will.   You will know someone and love someone who will choose homosexuality as their way of life.  You will desire to keep both them and your beliefs close. 

When it happens, do not melt away.  Do the truly loving thing, stand firm, and speak the truth in love.  Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you may save both yourself and them.

And yet be prepared for the opposite also. For if that person does not turn after much loving counsel, the intensity of the heat will grow.  Eventually it may dissolve the connection between you and them.  And while that is never the intention, it is far more important that you remain connected to Christ.  You must remain relationally connected to Christ.  It is your life.

News release from the vatican….for a refutation of the theology behind this kind of thing read this.

Vatican City, 10 May 2012 (VIS) – The Holy Father today received in audience Cardinal Angelo Amato S.D.B., prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. During the audience he extended the liturgical cult of St. Hildegard of Bingen (1089-1179) to the universal Church, inscribing her in the catalogue of saints. He also authorised the promulgation of decrees concerning the following causes:

MIRACLES

- Servant of God Tommaso da Olera (ne Tommaso Acerbis), Italian professed layman of the Order of St. Benedict (1563-1631).

- Servant of God Maria Troncatti, Italian professed sister of the Congregation of the Daughters of Our Lady of Help (1883-1969).

MARTYRDOM

- Servants of Gods Frederic Bachstein and thirteen companions of the Order of Friars Minor, killed in hatred of the faith at Prague, Czech Republic in 1611.

- Servants of God Raimundo Castano Gonzalez and Jose Maria Gonzalez Solis, professed priests of the Order of Friars Preachers, killed in hatred of the faith at Bilbao, Spain in 1936.

- Servants of God Jaime Puig Mirosa and eighteen companions of the Congregation of the Sons of the Sacred Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and Sebastian Llorens Telarroja, layman, killed in hatred of the faith in Spain between 1936 and 1937.

- Servant of God Odoardo Focherini, Italian layman, killed in hatred of the faith at Hersbruck, Germany in 1944.

HEROIC VIRTUES

- Servant of God Raffaello Delle Nocche, Italian bishop of Tricarico and founder of the Sisters Disciples of the Eucharistic Jesus (1877-1960).

- Servant of God Frederic Irenej Baraga, Slovene American, first bishop of Marquette (1797-1868).

- Servant of God Pasquale Uva, Italian diocesan priest and founder of the Congregation of Sisters Handmaidens of Divine Providence (1883-1955).

- Servant of God Baltazar Manuel Pardal Vidal, Spanish diocesan priest and founder of the Secular Institute of the Daughters of Mary’s Nativity (1886-1963).

- Servant of God Francesco Di Paola Victor, Brazilian diocesan priest (1827-1905).

- Servant of God Jacques Sevin, French professed priest of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) and founder of the Catholic Scouts of France and of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem (1882-1951).

- Servant of God Maria Josefa of the Blessed Sacrament (nee Maria Josefa Recio Martin), founder of the Congregation of Hospitaller Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (1846-1883).

- Servant of God Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, American professed sister of the Congregation of the Sisters of Chraity of St. Elizabeth (1901-1927).

- Servant of God Emilia Engel, German member of the Secular Institute of Sisters of Maria of Schonstatt, (1893-1955).

- Servant of God Rachele Ambrosini, Italian lay woman (1925-1941).

- Servant of God Maria Bolognesi, Italian lay woman (1924-1980).

On 14 March, the Supreme Pontiff authorised the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate the decree regarding the heroic virtues of Servant of God Felix Francisco Jose de la Concepcion Varela Morales, Cuban diocesan priest (1788-1853).