swimmerbabe11 said:

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WELS and LCMS will be in communion sooner than later.

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I think you are wrong about this, unless the LCMS is willing to subscribe to doctrines that would make many of their members extraordinarily uncomfortable. The WELS is not changing for your synod, or anyone else.

I think your point hinges on the nuance you're willing to ascribe to the word "real" in "real Christians".

And even Roman Catholics don't say "real Christians" they say they lack the fullness of faith.

The problem with your approach is that to have a confession or statement of orthodoxy, you immediately suggest that those outside are condemned by this orthodoxy. Obviously the lack of a standard is inclusive...but it's also kind of useless.

So modern evangelicals escape your point by having no standard by which to judge. I don't see the advantage.

k2aggie07 said:

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Obviously the lack of a standard is inclusive...but it's also kind of useless.

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Different types of standards: all groups have implicit norms, whether they are written down or not.

My point is that it is possible to have an understanding of the core of the Christian message that is at odds with some of the things that are written in the New Testament.

dcAg said:

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Let ye without sin cast the first stone.

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Go forth AND sin no more!

That makes absolutely no sense.

k2aggie07 said:

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That makes absolutely no sense.

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What makes absolutely no sense?

That you can separate the "core" of the NT from the rest of the NT.

k2aggie07 said:

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That you can separate the "core" of the NT from the rest of the NT.

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First of all, that is not what I said. I said the core of the Christian message, on which there is not complete agreement.

Even if I address your distortion, that is simply an opinion based on your personal theology.

If I should, for example, take offense to the books of Jude and Second Peter and strike them from the Scripture, it would be a strange interpretation indeed that concluded that the fundamental message of Christianity was lost without these texts.

Further, it is both possible and historically justifiable to interpret the high Christology of the gospel of John and the Pauline epistles as commentary about a legendary, mythical version of Jesus that is distinct from the historical person (and teachings) of Jesus of Nazareth. You are free to find those arguments convincing, or not, or to believe that following the teachings of a Jesus divorced from supernatural theism is valuable, or not.

What you cannot do is make a logical assertion that alternative interpretations and valuations of the Jesus story do not and can not exist.

YokelRidesAgain said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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That you can separate the "core" of the NT from the rest of the NT.

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First of all, that is not what I said. I said the core of the Christian message, on which there is not complete agreement.

Even if I address your distortion, that is simply an opinion based on your personal theology.

If I should, for example, take offense to the books of Jude and Second Peter and strike them from the Scripture, it would be a strange interpretation indeed that concluded that the fundamental message of Christianity was lost without these texts.

Further, it is both possible and historically justifiable to interpret the high Christology of the gospel of John and the Pauline epistles as commentary about a legendary, mythical version of Jesus that is distinct from the historical person (and teachings) of Jesus of Nazareth. You are free to find those arguments convincing, or not, or to believe that following the teachings of a Jesus divorced from supernatural theism is valuable, or not.

What you cannot do is make a logical assertion that alternative interpretations and valuations of the Jesus story do not and can not exist.

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I think history does a great job of showing a couple things:

1. You can add/remove books from the Bible to achieve whatever motivation you have. Martin Luther is a good example of this.

2. You can view the Bible however you want. The multitude of "Christian" denominations are proof that this occurs every day.

So if you argument is simply that you can change up books and/or views, then of course it's achievable and history is littered with examples. Some were labeled as heretics, others not.

The question I would have is what does this mean for a persons salvation?

Catholics would say that without the full 7 Sacraments, and anything less puts the person at risk for Hell.
Martin Luther would say there are only 2.
Orthodox has 7, but I don't think they are as concerned or forthright as Catholics.
Most Protestants would say 0 or 1.

What impact does that have on people's salvation? We will find that out come judgement day.

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Catholics would say that without the full 7 Sacraments, and anything less puts the person at risk for Hell.

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Isn't matrimony one of the sacraments? Catholics believe that not getting married puts a person at risk of hell?

AstroAg17 said:

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Making people choose between hell on earth and hell off earth? Diabolical.

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LOL It really does seem like a strange statement, however, given that they don't allow their clergy to marry and the author of basically half the NT was unmarried.

RetiredAg said:

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Catholics would say that without the full 7 Sacraments, and anything less puts the person at risk for Hell.

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Isn't matrimony one of the sacraments? Catholics believe that not getting married puts a person at risk of hell?

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I'm not Catholic, so I'm guessing a bit. From what I've learned, it's the recognition of all 7 Sacraments is what is important, not whether they are partaking in them. This would be how they justify Priests not getting married, and some Sacraments that only Priests can administer.

Also holy orders. If you're not a priest, straight to hell!

Of course, priests can't get married, so they're going to hell too.

That's not what holy mysteries / Latin sacraments are. They're not a checklist.

k2aggie07 said:

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That's not what holy mysteries / Latin sacraments are. They're not a checklist.

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Sarcasm detector on the blink?

YokelRidesAgain said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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That you can separate the "core" of the NT from the rest of the NT.

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First of all, that is not what I said. I said the core of the Christian message, on which there is not complete agreement.

Even if I address your distortion, that is simply an opinion based on your personal theology.

If I should, for example, take offense to the books of Jude and Second Peter and strike them from the Scripture, it would be a strange interpretation indeed that concluded that the fundamental message of Christianity was lost without these texts.

Further, it is both possible and historically justifiable to interpret the high Christology of the gospel of John and the Pauline epistles as commentary about a legendary, mythical version of Jesus that is distinct from the historical person (and teachings) of Jesus of Nazareth. You are free to find those arguments convincing, or not, or to believe that following the teachings of a Jesus divorced from supernatural theism is valuable, or not.

What you cannot do is make a logical assertion that alternative interpretations and valuations of the Jesus story do not and can not exist.

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One -- everything is based on personal opinion driven by experience. There's no way around it, we all interact with an underdefined reality. Leveling it as a point of accusation is not very useful.

Second, it's not my personal theology. I try to express the theology of the Church to the best of my knowledge. I'm not presenting this as new research or basing it off of my own experience or encounters.

The difficulty with your statement about the 'fundamental message' of Christianity is what the definition of fundamental is. Your approach also shows an ignorance to how ancient Christians viewed Holy Scripture in relation to the faith. The faith defined scripture, defined the canon, not the other way around. Texts were included or rejected based on their harmony with the life in the Church, as demonstrated by their suitability for liturgical use. So the fundamentals of Christianity already chose the canon. Depending on how you define fundamental, taking a part of this expression of the Faith and removing it may or may not mar the validity of the expression.

As for the possibility and historical validity, sure. You can do whatever you like. But this must necessarily stand apart from the Faith. It has a different litmus test, a different approach, a different use for the scriptures, and a different lens to reading them. It's not the same thing, and to say that it is makes no sense.

You're using the wrong measuring stick. Your logic, your interpretation, your valuation. Those are all personal and subjective as well, but ultimately they're not very interesting to me. I'm much more interested in the father's logic, their interpretation, their valuation --- because they were the people who, if any, are trustworthy to convey the message.

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You're using the wrong measuring stick. Your logic, your interpretation, your valuation. Those are all personal and subjective as well, but ultimately they're not very interesting to me. I'm much more interested in the father's logic, their interpretation, their valuation --- because they were the people who, if any, are trustworthy to convey the message.

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That's nice. I find the perspective of the early church interesting, and occasionally illuminating, but the decisions about what was and wasn't scripture tell us more about the beliefs and attitudes of the early church than they do about the actual historicity of what was written.

The reality is that there will never be any definitive resolution as to who the historical Jesus was or what he taught; thus your claim that the message of Paul was substantially equivalent to the message of Jesus is simply an article of faith, and you thus fail to make the point that you believed you were able to make.

YokelRidesAgain said:

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You're using the wrong measuring stick. Your logic, your interpretation, your valuation. Those are all personal and subjective as well, but ultimately they're not very interesting to me. I'm much more interested in the father's logic, their interpretation, their valuation --- because they were the people who, if any, are trustworthy to convey the message.

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That's nice. I find the perspective of the early church interesting, and occasionally illuminating, but the decisions about what was and wasn't scripture tell us more about the beliefs and attitudes of the early church than they do about the actual historicity of what was written.

The reality is that there will never be any definitive resolution as to who the historical Jesus was or what he taught; thus your claim that the message of Paul was substantially equivalent to the message of Jesus is simply an article of faith, and you thus fail to make the point that you believed you were able to make.

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You can't prove the first point at all, because it would require additional information you don't possess, because it was not preserved, because the Church did not find it worth preserving. So you're essentially speculating based on your own theories which are completely unsupported.

If the beliefs and attitudes of the early Church are not reliable but are merely "interesting", then the faith is empty and the scripture is full of lies. If Christ came, Truth incarnate, and was so inept at teaching his closest disciples that they in turn failed to teach correctly -- and He as God is so powerless as to not preserve what He attempted to teach -- then we're wasting our time. There's no point in worshiping a defunct God.

For your second paragraph, you're basically echoing what I've said above. If we discount the veracity of the scriptures we're left with nothing but speculation.

Anyway, you're flipping the burden of proof. The original poster in this side discussion said that there is a difference in character or essence between St Paul's writings and the gospels. The demonstration still hasn't been made. You've said they have value separately, or that there's separate value a person can find, or that you can't really know about Jesus anyway, etc. etc. And now you put it back on me to prove the equivalence.

However, that step was already done. The people who set the canon - effectively the entire church, quite quickly -- determined that these books were useful expressions of the faith delivered once for all to the saints. As I said, they are not the faith, but they reflect the faith. Just like the Gospels are not Jesus or the teaching, but they reflect it (even the gospels themselves do not claim to be exhaustive documentation of His teaching or message). Now you're attempting to reevaluate the selective process, but you're only left with the remains of the selective process, except you're selecting from that existing subset based on a new and different criteria -- "value" or "fundamental" or "core" which really are just code words for "whatever I think belongs or doesn't". There's no end to this. You can whittle it down further based on whatever subjective concept you like. What you can't do is go back to the original dataset that the canon is a subset of, and refine your selection criteria based on that.

k2aggie07 said:

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The original poster in this side discussion said that there is a difference in character or essence between St Paul's writings and the gospels. The demonstration still hasn't been made. You've said they have value separately, or that there's separate value a person can find, or that you can't really know about Jesus anyway, etc. etc. And now you put it back on me to prove the equivalence.

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You are the one who made the claim, and thus the burden of proof rests upon you.

You have not, and cannot, prove what you assert.

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What you can't do is go back to the original dataset that the canon is a subset of, and refine your selection criteria based on that.

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Certainly you can evaluate the entirety through the lens of historical-critical scholarship. As I have asserted from the beginning, I would agree that it is somewhat ridiculous to claim that "red letter" sayings of Jesus from the Bible are true articles of faith and the rest is open to negotiation.

Nonetheless, you can certainly subject the entirety to critical inspection.

There is no doubt that Paul, and the gospel writers (increasingly so, the farther away the author got from the time of Christ) were operating from a perspective of establishing a religion with Jesus as (a) god. If one does not find value in supernatural theism, it is hard to find much that is instructive or valuable in a lot of Paul's teaching.

On the other hand, there is still a message in the parables and aphorisms of Jesus that is not dependent on the messianic/apocalyptic verses, which have been viewed as unlikely to reflect the actual words of Jesus by some scholars (e.g., the Jesus Seminar).

k2aggie07 said:

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The original poster in this side discussion said that there is a difference in character or essence between St Paul's writings and the gospels. The demonstration still hasn't been made.

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Further, this is again not an accurate representation of what was said. You have a habit of stating the argument that you would like to have instead of the one that was actually advanced.

The claim was that there is a difference in "Christ-like" and "Paul-like" teachings--I probably would have used the term "Jesus-like"; Christ is a character in the Christian canon; but that is really just semantics.

Many highly credible scholars certainly have perceived a difference in what Jesus taught and the religion that was erected around those teachings, from several perspectives. You may not agree with those interpretations, but you cannot prove that they are not credible (much less non-existent).

You can't excommunicate someone who is repentant. You can and should remove them from current and future leadership if necessary.

YokelRidesAgain said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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The original poster in this side discussion said that there is a difference in character or essence between St Paul's writings and the gospels. The demonstration still hasn't been made. You've said they have value separately, or that there's separate value a person can find, or that you can't really know about Jesus anyway, etc. etc. And now you put it back on me to prove the equivalence.

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You are the one who made the claim, and thus the burden of proof rests upon you.

You have not, and cannot, prove what you assert.

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What you can't do is go back to the original dataset that the canon is a subset of, and refine your selection criteria based on that.

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Certainly you can evaluate the entirety through the lens of historical-critical scholarship. As I have asserted from the beginning, I would agree that it is somewhat ridiculous to claim that "red letter" sayings of Jesus from the Bible are true articles of faith and the rest is open to negotiation.

Nonetheless, you can certainly subject the entirety to critical inspection.

There is no doubt that Paul, and the gospel writers (increasingly so, the farther away the author got from the time of Christ) were operating from a perspective of establishing a religion with Jesus as (a) god. If one does not find value in supernatural theism, it is hard to find much that is instructive or valuable in a lot of Paul's teaching.

On the other hand, there is still a message in the parables and aphorisms of Jesus that is not dependent on the messianic/apocalyptic verses, which have been viewed as unlikely to reflect the actual words of Jesus by some scholars (e.g., the Jesus Seminar).

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I'm tired of this discussion, because it's of no use arguing. So, this is the last response I'll make unless something else other than the same tired point is brought up. You're either not understanding, or not willing to understand. Either way, I'm unable to fix it.

You can go read in the first page -- you chimed in to respond to me asking to demonstrate that Christlike and Paullike are different. So, no, it's not my burden of proof.

//

You can't evaluate the entirety because the entirety is lost to history. That's the entire point I've been trying to make. We can only examine what was preserved. (Yes, I'm aware that there are a few spurious texts that were preserved ((gospel of Thomas, and so forth)) but the exception proves the rule in this case).

Any critical scholarship you're doing is already on a pre-defined subset of the actual picture. There is an inherent selection bias at work here. To evaluate from within this subset without acknowledging the effect of the selection bias is illogical. And it is pretty well impossible to free ourselves from this selection bias, because other potentially significant information is no longer available. We can't even reliably know what exactly the unorthodox position was in major heresies (e.g., Arius) much less unorthodox texts that may have existed earlier.

You keep returning to this subjective value approach. I've never once denied that you can do that. There's a message there, sure, but you're making a value judgment on a section of a complete work. This is like taking the first three chapters in a physics book and removing the rest -- except in physics we can test the usefulness of this claim. Here, it's just "well this has value for me and that doesn't". What's the use in that?

Either Jesus was God, in which case we had better pay attention to Him because He was God. Or He was not God, and His words carry no more weight than any other man's. In which case they should not be accepted or even given special consideration regardless of their historical veracity or verifiability, any more than we should accept or reject Aesop's fables, Spartan laconic turns of phrase, or any other gem of distilled ancient wisdom.

They get moved into a different category that is no longer scripture but just potentially good stuff. Scripture you change your life for, you use as the datum or basis for a moral code. It is self-referential. Why? Because its scripture. We even have a term for this, "taken as Gospel". Is there value in Aristotle's Politics? Sure, I love it. Herodotus' Histories changed my life, and Plato's Republic will never lose importance. But they're not scripture.

When you do what you're suggesting to Holy Scripture, you make them no longer scripture.

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Because it works.

I'm not sure what you mean by "real", but science does a very good job of making predictions about our world. "Very good job" is somewhat arbitrary I suppose, since there's no benchmark, but I think most people are impressed with the success of the natural sciences.

Your description of the Big Bang is pretty rough also, either by intention or ignorance. I'd guess it's probably a little of both.

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If our rationality is a result of an accident, why would we trust it to tell us what's real? If we are the results of a Big Bang, which would be a cosmic accident, why would we trust our brains to tell us the truth about reality?

If the big bang was not an accident then it was intentional thus meaning there's a mind behind it that put it in motion. if there is no God or Creator, then we are left with matter, energy, and time. We are reduced to molecules colliding and chemical reactions, yet we treat each other as more than buckets of chemical processes. If one says it's only a desire to survive then even the desire to survive is not explained by what happened at the big bang. We treat each other with a value that is not explained by science.
[url=https://texags.com/forums/15/topics/2845815][/url]

k2aggie07 said:

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Either Jesus was God, in which case we had better pay attention to Him because He was God. Or He was not God, and His words carry no more weight than any other man's. In which case they should not be accepted or even given special consideration regardless of their historical veracity or verifiability, any more than we should accept or reject Aesop's fables, Spartan laconic turns of phrase, or any other gem of distilled ancient wisdom.

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Here you take it as more or less an a priori assumption that your version of your religion is superior to others. Millions of people, for example, find infinite meaning in the words of Buddha without regarding him as God. Jefferson found the message of Jesus entirely compelling without believing in the supernatural aspects of the Bible. Because you do not understand such viewpoints does not invalidate them.

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Scripture you change your life for, you use as the datum or basis for a moral code.

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You are welcome to do this for yourself, but you have no cause to consider your opinion binding upon others.

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When you do what you're suggesting to Holy Scripture, you make them no longer scripture.

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What's the downside?

k2aggie07 said:

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You can't evaluate the entirety because the entirety is lost to history. That's the entire point I've been trying to make.

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This particular claim makes no sense at all; you can certainly apply inductive reasoning to the Biblical texts, particularly in light of their historical context, just as you can for any ancient work. For example, applying the methods of redaction criticism to the gospels.

DirtDiver said:

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Because it works.

I'm not sure what you mean by "real", but science does a very good job of making predictions about our world. "Very good job" is somewhat arbitrary I suppose, since there's no benchmark, but I think most people are impressed with the success of the natural sciences.

Your description of the Big Bang is pretty rough also, either by intention or ignorance. I'd guess it's probably a little of both.

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If our rationality is a result of an accident, why would we trust it to tell us what's real? If we are the results of a Big Bang, which would be a cosmic accident, why would we trust our brains to tell us the truth about reality?

If the big bang was not an accident then it was intentional thus meaning there's a mind behind it that put it in motion. if there is no God or Creator, then we are left with matter, energy, and time. We are reduced to molecules colliding and chemical reactions, yet we treat each other as more than buckets of chemical processes. If one says it's only a desire to survive then even the desire to survive is not explained by what happened at the big bang. We treat each other with a value that is not explained by science.
[url=https://texags.com/forums/15/topics/2845815][/url]

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It seems you're confusing cosmology with evolution. It would do us no good to evolve a consciousness that fails to accurately perceive physical reality. No species would survive long in that state. Additionally, science can very easily explain why we treat each other the way that we do. Again, covered under evolution.

YokelRidesAgain said:

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k2aggie07 said:

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That you can separate the "core" of the NT from the rest of the NT.

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First of all, that is not what I said. I said the core of the Christian message, on which there is not complete agreement.

Even if I address your distortion, that is simply an opinion based on your personal theology.

If I should, for example, take offense to the books of Jude and Second Peter and strike them from the Scripture, it would be a strange interpretation indeed that concluded that the fundamental message of Christianity was lost without these texts.

Further, it is both possible and historically justifiable to interpret the high Christology of the gospel of John and the Pauline epistles as commentary about a legendary, mythical version of Jesus that is distinct from the historical person (and teachings) of Jesus of Nazareth. You are free to find those arguments convincing, or not, or to believe that following the teachings of a Jesus divorced from supernatural theism is valuable, or not.

What you cannot do is make a logical assertion that alternative interpretations and valuations of the Jesus story do not and can not exist.

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Ironically enough, Second Peter came up during "Catholic Answers" as justification for why Catholics say it is important to rely on the Catholic Church to correctly interpret the Bible.

(I'm not Catholic, but it's one of the better shows to listen to in terms of apologetics)

So your example would seem to fundamentally change the Catholic perspective.

swimmerbabe11 said:

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May I ask what church? I attend Memorial. Pastor Murray is the 1st VP of the synod.. i think we will eventually replace pastor Harrison. We are hosting the issues etc conference this year. I'm very excited for it. I'd love to invite yall to join us!

There are definitely still elca congregations out there that didn't make the move, especially in the midwest and rural areas that aren't as radical as ELCA hq. i think most of those eventually will transition

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Figured I would update on this.

Met with the Pastor today and he admitted he was shocked at what we told him. He spent a while explaining his and the LCMS views on some of the key things we brought up. He made it clear he would figure out how to handle this issue, but that he was glad to have been told about it.

He's got some work to do to get this Church in alignment, but he gets help starting this week with an actual associate Pastor. It will be interesting to see the direction this all goes.

Im actually at a church retreat now, but if you'd ever like to visit memorial, I'd be happy to introduce yall around.