tuition free religious on-line-education: Concordia Theologica Institute For Biblit

Idle comments, unsupported by citation, self-defensive, still either ignorant of or playing fast and loose with church history: does this illustrate the intellectual standard expected of students/graduates of unaccredited or "nonwonderfully" accredited institutions? The C.P. dares not hazard a guess.

Dr Clifton has made statements, too numerous to count or to adduce, which do not accurately reflect the history of the church bodies which merged to form the United Church of Christ, or which formed in some instances predecessors to the various "anti-merger" denominations (from the Congregational Christian side), which objected to the formation of the UCC for various reasons. Dr Clifton has tended to invoke the lesser-known aspects what we might call UCC "pre-history," such as the Christian Convention and the Evangelical Protestant Church. He has invoked both Barton Stone and the EP's on behalf of his various endeavors. A thoughtful student of church history is compelled to ask indulgence: in light of the vast differences between Stone/Stone-ite Restorationism and the left wing of German protestant unionism (represented inter alia by the EP's), not to mention the, um, unusual perspective of the Aramaic New Testament (another of Dr Clifton's past public interests), not to mention the Baptist perspective of Bethany of Dothan, how could anyone, except Dr Clifton himself, keep track of his theological, ecclesiastical, and academic permutations?

Having recently had egg on its face over fairly silly articles temporizing on the topic of Islamic bigotry--articles energetically refuted and repudiated by many supporters of the magazine--one does not look to "The Congregationalist" as a journal of academic church history or ecumenics. To the credit of the magazine, and in an example some might profit from following, the magazine is modest in its claims and intentions, being an in-house newsletter for the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches--and does not pretend to be anything more than that.

The Carpathian peasant freely admits, that while he stands conspicuously uncorrected in regard to church-historical matters which predate the illustrious career of the esteemed Dr Clifton, he is indeed unable to track the path of this particular wandering planet, and must regretfully decline the suggestion that he do so.

He is equally sure that many a skilled "astronomer" is capable of tracking the refulgent orb.

 

Unk

Don't beat around the bush. Tell us how you really feel.

 

You're right, Dennis.

To no one in particular:

(rude noise mixed with strangled laughter)

 

Evangelical Churches

My Wolgadeutsch ancestors, upon arriving in America headed for the nearest church with evangelical in its name, as were the churches back home. Nobody told them they were Lutherans.

My grandfather figured it out and joined the liberal Missouri Synod church.

 

Re: Re: Re: PS

Don't forget the $25 annual fee, to be mailed in cash to a Mailboxes, Etc. that just happens to be near my house.


Bruce

 

Joa, joa Dennis. I got Wolga Germans here all over; they call them Russia Germans by here. Just for the record, the Mo Synod wasn't liberal when your grandfather signed up. That came a lot later.

 

I still can't fathom the word liberal in the same sentence as Missouri Synod.

 

I can't either.

I can't help associating the LCMS with the purge of those who practiced "liberal" (read: scholarly) forms of Biblical criticism back in the early seventies, resulting in the infamous Seminex episode.

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/8065/SEMI.html

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: PS

Bruce,

For the price of an answering machine/fax/copier/printer (and these come in a single unit now for less than $1000) you could begin your very own university out of that Mailboxes, Etc.

 

The Seminex episode WAS infamous: ultra-liberals spreading the big lie that their teaching was traditional Mo Synod doctrine, and their opponents resorting to unethical and totalitarian means to get rid of them. How nice for all concerned.

From a confessional Lutheran standpoint, the generic evangelicalism--and the assimiliation to the "religious right"--which characterize the LCMS are forms of liberalism: the sequelae of late-19th century experimentation in Reformed and Arminian theology. (I'm not implying that these sequelae represent normative Reformed or Arminian theology, btw.) I also don't use "liberal" as a theological swear word, merely as a descriptive term used from a Gnesio-Lutheran standpoint. The feminists at River Forest and the Promise Keepers all sorts of places in the LCMS represent departures to the left from old Lutheranism. We can agree to disagree on whether or not these departures are good things (I think not); it is difficult to claim that they are not in fact departures to the left in light of the starting point in a "repristination" of strict confessional Lutheranism.

 

I should point out that while Missouri likes to think of itself as the center of the universe, the C.P. does not share this estimate.

My original concern in all this hoolerei was to defend the LCMS schools from guilt-by-association with the nonwonderful and trickily named outfit mentioned in the thread caption. I would not for a moment question the academic integrity of the LCMS seminaries, which are accredited legitimately, offer real classes and real degrees, and which do not rely on name games to gain an ill-gotten credence. It is one thing to deplore a long sequence of theological developments, and another to criticize the institutional integrity of schools which happen to espouse frank departures from their original theological basis.

Lest I forget: if Montgomery defends Luther's anti-Semitism, shame on him. A confessional Lutheran is not bound to applaud every personal utterance of Dr. Luther; only people who falsely follow Kulturlutheranismus require him to be a Saxon tribal god.

 

I don't know what the phrase 'Gnesio-Lutheran' means.

I don't know what 'repristination' means either.

It sounds to me like you are defining any kind of perceived deviation as a movement to the "left". Is it even possible to move to the "right", and if so, what would such a movement look like?

As for myself, I think of "liberalism" in a Protestant theological context as meaning some combination of a downplaying of the importance of dogma, an emphasis on human reason, the application of the full range of critical scholarship to the Bible, and an emphasis on practical applications of religion.

As I understand it, part of the motivation for the LCMS's suppression of Concordia was that its faculty were teaching and practicing such things as historical, form and redaction criticism. Hence from my layman's viewpoint, it's hard to characterize the imposition of Biblical inerrancy as a "liberal" move.

Perhaps the word "liberal" has more than one use.

 

Gnesio-Lutheran, as I somewhat jocularly use the term, refers to the doctrinally strict element in the Lutheran movement which wrote and required adherence to the Formula of Concord (1580). It can also be used to refer in a narrower sense to followers of Matthias Flacius Illyricus, who did rather go off the deep end on some things.

Repristination refers to efforts, largely 19th century, to maintain or to restore strict protestant confessionalism. The term is usually used in Lutheran circles, although some Reformed employ it as well. American examples of this tendency were C.F. W. Walther and Francis Pieper of the Missouri Synod and Adolf Hoenecke of the Wisconsin Synod; others could be adduced as well.

If inerrancy were "imposed" on a church body which did not adhere to it in its formally declared doctrine, that would be a move to the right, I suppose. But Missouri did adhere to inerrancy in the early 1970's; the faculty at the St Louis seminary departed from the traditional and then current doctrine of their church body, while hoping to move that church body to the left--and often using a great deal of doubletalk to conceal this intention.

What the so-called conservatives imposed, often through the most vicious kind of church politics, was a generic evangelical theological agenda, which happened to leave intact the Missourian belief in inerrancy, but which moved the Mo Synod more and more to the left on other issues (mostly involving assimilation to norms of American civil religion at the expense of strict Lutheran doctrine and practice). So the nasty purge of the Seminex prima donnas redirected, but did not stop, Missouri's slow, steady process of movement to the left; some would date the beginning of that process to the late 1930's, and others to the decade or so before the collapse of the Lutheran Synodical Conference just after 1960.

I did point out that I was using the term "liberal" from a specific theological standpoint. I would not deny that there are plenty of groups well to Missouri's left, just as Missouri is well to the left of thoroughgoing confessional Lutheranism. With all due respect to the evangelicals and fundamentalists who post on this board, "left" is not necessarily where they say it is in every church-historical context; with all due respect to mainlines who post here, "right" is similarly a movable point.

Then again, from Antarctica everything is north.

 

For the most part I agree with you Bill. Although, I would not tend to characterize what liberal theologians do as using human reason, or critical thinking skills (best example of liberal pseudo scholarship is the so called Jesus Seminar).

At any rate, I agree with your concerns regarding the use of 'liberal'. Unk, my brother I think for clarity we should stick to using liberal in the standard way it has come to have meaning. To call the LCMS liberal or left or anything similar is a riot because of the standard meaning of liberal (that is why you cracked up Steve L. with calling the LCMS liberal). For most people the LCMS in standard language is pretty darn conservative theologically and otherwise. I *do* understand what you are trying to communicate but you are going to end up sending some poor feminist who is reading this board to the LCMS believing she has found a Lutheran variant of the Episcopal Church and man is she going to be in for a shock.

North

 

I think I defined my terms fairly carefully, and gave a list of specific gravamina illustrating that the Mo Synod has liberalized. Let me draw an analogy for you. The folks at Bob Jones University would say that Fuller Seminary is liberal, or at the very least that it has moved far to the left of its original theology. Am I particularist? Yip. Am I perhaps a Lutheran analogue, for better or worser, to BJU-type fundies? In terms of left-right spectrum, I suspect so, although I would not care to push it beyond that, out of both ignorance about and respect toward theological details of BJU. (All I know about 'em is what I read on this BB.)

My doctrinal standpoint is that of late 16th century Lutheranism. For better or worser. Or worserer. Now because it is that precise standpoint, I reject Missourian atrocities such as casting doubt on the salvation of persons who do not belong to their denomination
because they don't belong to it. In my neck of the woods, that's false doctrine. I bring this up because I would very much dislike it if somebody posting on this board thought I was impugning his/her salvation simply because I am well to the "right" of the Mo Synod, through attributing to me their presumption in judging souls.

So arguing about doctrine is one thing, and throwing rocks at somebody's justification coram Deo is quite another.

I may be nuts, but I'm not a bigot. Now I will go eat my diet of worms.

 

Can I officiate at weddings and funerals?

Will a degree from this school make me a real "man of the cloth"?

 

The guardian spirit of this worthless piece of crap thinks CCHS is the greatest thing since, oh, GSST. Learn from your own sad experience. Aim higher. 'Nuff said?