Lutheran - another Confederate Flag

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  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    So are you, or aren't you, is your Jesus damnationist or not? That's one and the same question. It's quite simple mate. It's that simple. It comes down to that. Yes. No. Don't know. Which is no. (I'm sorry, but with no malice, no finger pointing, I doubt you. I don't believe you. I perceive doubt. A yeah but. If I'm wrong, I am so sorry. If I'm wrong, you know that I will atone. If that means never posting again, fine.)

    The same goes for anyone and everyone else here.

    Steve Chalke has redeemed Christianity, the Bible, the NT, the gospel, Jesus, Paul. We no longer have to move on from that as not good enough in our hopes and fears. We no longer have to wring our hands and hope for universal reconciliation beyond Jesus fearfully mixed message. His message of universal reconciliation is clear as it always was, as perfectly, fully, sufficiently explicated by Paul.

    If God, then universal reconciliation in, through, by Christ. No exception, no yeah but. No doubt. Doubt is pushed back to where it belongs. Looking at the vast sky outside my window.

    Can we fail better now? My journey here, of an aging, crippled, blind, deaf, screeching, stupid, compulsive, broken, wailing, self piteous yeah yeah yeah graceless fool has got to this significant rise well up the direct ascent of rise upon peat hag on Wolf Hole Crag. If not the summit in the fog. We'll see.

    And yes, I'm pissed off with all of you too.

    Forgive me. As I do you. All. And that means you too mousethief.
  • And my answer to you is that I simply don't know.

    The word for the kind of judgement you're talking about in the Bible is "the judgement of God / divine judgement".

    It's very clear about who is doing the judging. And it's not me or anyone else. Despite some people's desperate attempts to fill the gap left by the Lord's silence.

    It's less clear about outcomes etc.

    So, maybe yes Jesus does have the power to send people somewhere there is an absence of God. Whether he uses that power is another question entirely. That's when things like grace and forgiveness etc kick in.
  • Tubbs wrote: »
    It seems a better approach than attempting to do His job for Him by shouting my prejudices from the rooftops and assuming He shares them.

    There's a fair bit of that about. To the extent that if you are in the vicinity of more than a couple rooftops you can hardly hear yourself think.
    @mousethief, you started serving Coolers yet? I can bring savoury snacks for anyone who doesn't want cookies.

    I can crank up production if demand requires.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Thank you Tubbs, mousethief. Pressed send on WIP response.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Tubbs wrote: »
    And my answer to you is that I simply don't know.

    [a] The word for the kind of judgement you're talking about in the Bible is "the judgement of God / divine judgement".

    [ b] It's very clear about who is doing the judging. And it's not me or anyone else. Despite some people's desperate attempts to fill the gap left by the Lord's silence.

    [c] It's less clear about outcomes etc.

    [d] So, maybe yes Jesus does have the power to send people somewhere there is an absence of God. Whether he uses that power is another question entirely. That's when things like grace and forgiveness etc kick in.

    @Tubbs

    [a] Thank you. For your courage and grace. In engaging with me, my rampaging elephant. In articulating the almost universal understanding by the best; by liberal evangelicals, Francis I and others, here, virtually if not all here. Until reading The Lost Message of Paul I was in the same position, no matter what the Bible says, what Jesus says, we yearn for universal reconciliation despite that we fear - and sorry, I can't find the quote that's been with me for decades - Barth's undeniable dread possibility of reprobation (which he may have repudiated, I don't know). For decades I was annihilationist, 'So be it, thy will be done', then hopeful, in that regardless of what appeared to be the mixed messages of Jesus, which I postmodernly deconstructed, but could not reconstruct universal reconciliation from, except by going beyond what He and his first and best interpreter Paul, and others, said; so be it, all will be well for all even though you could not categorically prove it from the Bible. I've spent a 'good' couple or three years here pushing out that boat, trying to have that cake and eat it. I believe all here are in that position at best, reaching for universal reconciliation knowing that it isn't 100% Biblical, Christian, Pauline, Jesuist; that none here have reached Chalke's superior antithesis to that near universal, almost best case but no cigar synthesis. Western folk Christianity is inevitably much worse off as a result, especially Protestant.

    Now you can categorically, orthodoxly, parsimoniously, rationally, faithfully, exultantly prove it from the text. The Bible redeems itself.

    (I have clearly seen PSA in Jesus and had to deconstruct and rationalize that as the product of His enculturation, go beyond the text; most here will not see it, but still fear reprobation. Now there is no orthodox need for the latter at all, I wonder how that feeds back in to the former? In a previous outing with Chalke, he moved me - against my will - from an analogous understanding that Paul was homophobic and we must simply move on from that, to seeing that Paul was nothing of the kind. And of course he ridiculed PSA as cosmic child abuse in 2004 and has suffered for it ever since as he did 10 years later for redeeming Paul on homosexuality. He's now redeemed Christianity.)

    'Faced with a world in rebellion, a world full of exploitation and wickedness, a good God must be a God of judgment,’ Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope (London SPCK, 2007), p. 150.

    Absolutely: 'We must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.’ 2 Cor. 5:10

    ‘God will judge people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares’, ‘You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt? For we will all stand before God’s judgement seat . . . Therefore let us stop passing judgement on one another' Rom. 2:16, 14:10-13

    Back to Tom again, 'I find it quite impossible, reading the New Testament on the one hand and the newspaper on the other, to suppose that there will be no ultimate condemnation, no final loss, no human beings to whom . . . God will eventually say ‘Thy will be done’. I wish it were otherwise . . .' ibid, pp. 192-3.

    But the world runs on systemic injustice, inequality. How were such human beings forged?

    Jürgen Moltmann - Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Tübingen - was forged in WWII, tormented by what his culture had done when confronted with Belsen. As a 20 year old POW ‘I didn’t find Christ, he found me.’

    'In his book The Coming of God, in a chapter entitled ‘The Restoration of All Things’, he discusses the idea of eternal life for some and eternal death for others (what is sometimes referred to as ‘double-destination’ theology), but reaches a very different conclusion from Wright and others, suggesting that final judgement was originally the idea of hope for the losers of history, and that only under Augustine was it transformed from this liberating expectation into a threatening and fear-filled idea.' Steve Chalke, The Lost Message of Paul
    * (London SPCK, 2019), p. 155.

    For a start! There is much, much more.

    Another tack:

    We should all look forward to the resurrection and the the judgement of God where all of our dross is purged with fire, the fires of Heaven, not Hell, and we are refined, made fit to be forged for eternity, as portrayed by Lewis,

    “Then the lion said — but I don’t know if it spoke — You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

    “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was jut the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know — if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

    “I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.

    “Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . . .”

    C S Lewis, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” C.S. Lewis quotes | Peeling Dragon Skin (wordpress.com)

    [ b] I hear no silence.

    [c] It's crystal clear on outcomes.

    He does not have that power, it's meaningless, Love cannot, would not, will not do that.

    Please, everybody, come back on anything and everything.

    This changes everything.

    [redacted]
  • Hostly hammer and sickle brandished

    Fucking HELL, @Martin54 - no one will be sending their bank account details to you. Have you taken leave of your senses? (No, actually don't answer that) Absolutely, unequivocally not the thing you should have posted, and don't do it again or you'll be getting some Advential shore leave.

    Doc Tor
    Hell Host


    Hostly hammer and sickle resheathed.
  • I'm sorry, but in business we do it all the time, including with with personal as well as business accounts, via email. I accept what you say of course, but it's perfectly safe. Ever written a cheque? It's all on there. It makes no difference at all, the account cannot be compromised. Card information is virtually useless without PINs and other security. Haven't you found how difficult it is to pay somebody new from your bank account? Of course it won't happen again. But there is no risk.
  • Hostly hat on

    Usual rules. If want to say anything but 'yessir', you do it in Styx. I couldn't give a rat's arse what you do elsewhere, you don't do that here.

    DT
    HH
  • Doc Tor wrote: »
    Hostly hat on

    Usual rules. If want to say anything but 'yessir', you do it in Styx. I couldn't give a rat's arse what you do elsewhere, you don't do that here.

    DT
    HH

    Yessir.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Martin,

    Have I understood you right ?

    You've outgrown the Protestantism you grew up with ? You were unhappy at the sort of compromise that most of us come to, giving lip service to venerating the Bible whilst denying significant chunks of what it appears to say ? You've tirelessly read modern writers in search of a way of resolving the tensions (when many of us have lapsed into a despairing cynicism which involves just living with the fact that a big chunk of everything is crud ?)

    And you've now come to an understanding, a way of reading what's written, that does satisfy you ?

    And it involves rejecting Luther, as a way of not having to reject St Paul ?

    So now you're struggling to see why everyone else hasn't reached the same conclusion and anathematised Luther ? And are baffled at how any good Christian people can continue to call themselves Lutheran ? As they undoubtedly do...

    Am I reading you aright ?

    I'd guess most of us can sympathize with that sort of journey. And be glad for you that you've succeeded at wrestling into submission at least some of the issues that torment you.

    But it's the way you tell 'em...

  • Edward I expelled all Jews from England in 1290, having just previously carried out a very significant cull of the Jewish male popuation, on the excuse of "coining".

    Had no idea Edward I was a Lutheran or that he believed in Justification by Faith alone.

    His mother and wife also hated Jews with a passion. I had this odd idea they were faithful Catholics.
  • LydaLyda Shipmate
    God bless St. Hugh of Lincoln, who put his life on the line to protect Jewish people from marauding, armed mobs in 1190.
  • Russ wrote: »
    Martin,

    Have I understood you right ?

    You've outgrown the Protestantism you grew up with ? You were unhappy at the sort of compromise that most of us come to, giving lip service to venerating the Bible whilst denying significant chunks of what it appears to say ? You've tirelessly read modern writers in search of a way of resolving the tensions (when many of us have lapsed into a despairing cynicism which involves just living with the fact that a big chunk of everything is crud ?)

    And you've now come to an understanding, a way of reading what's written, that does satisfy you ?

    And it involves rejecting Luther, as a way of not having to reject St Paul ?

    So now you're struggling to see why everyone else hasn't reached the same conclusion and anathematised Luther ? And are baffled at how any good Christian people can continue to call themselves Lutheran ? As they undoubtedly do...

    Am I reading you aright ?

    I'd guess most of us can sympathize with that sort of journey. And be glad for you that you've succeeded at wrestling into submission at least some of the issues that torment you.

    But it's the way you tell 'em...

    Not bad Russ. Unlike all from me that has led up to this.
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Sighthound wrote: »
    Edward I expelled all Jews from England in 1290, having just previously carried out a very significant cull of the Jewish male popuation, on the excuse of "coining".

    Had no idea Edward I was a Lutheran or that he believed in Justification by Faith alone.

    His mother and wife also hated Jews with a passion. I had this odd idea they were faithful Catholics.

    So was everyone at the time. As in everyone East and West, even during the Great Schism which was half way in progress. But West of the Drina was far worse of course. Luther became a murderous antisemite (ADL usage) 340 years later when the Jews rejected his absurd 'theology' which holds hundreds of millions in thrall to this day. His helplessly enculturated benighted nature is the root of both.

    What 'very significant cull of the Jewish male popuation' (sic) was that?
  • 240
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    Seems to me that the merits or otherwise of Luther's theology is one discussion. (In which I lack the expertise to participate).

    And there's a separate discussion as to whether calling oneself a Lutheran means agreeing with everything he wrote, or merely that one in some sense stands in the tradition that he founded.

    Seems to me that a scientist whose understanding of the way things work owes much to Darwin's theories is in some sense Darwinian, even if their understanding of the mechanisms at work is a considerable refinement on what Darwin actually wrote.

    And that doesn't cease to be true if evidence emerges that Darwin beat his wife...
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    Russ wrote: »
    Seems to me that the merits or otherwise of Luther's theology is one discussion. (In which I lack the expertise to participate).

    And there's a separate discussion as to whether calling oneself a Lutheran means agreeing with everything he wrote, or merely that one in some sense stands in the tradition that he founded.

    Seems to me that a scientist whose understanding of the way things work owes much to Darwin's theories is in some sense Darwinian, even if their understanding of the mechanisms at work is a considerable refinement on what Darwin actually wrote.

    And that doesn't cease to be true if evidence emerges that Darwin beat his wife...

    I don't let that stop me. How much 'expertise' does one need?

    If one believes in justification by faith, that

    'salvation or redemption is a gift of God's grace, attainable only through faith in Jesus'

    "This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification", is the chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all godliness." Luther

    'For the Lutheran tradition, the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone is the material principle upon which all other teachings rest.'

    (er, either the first two alones are errors, or there should be a full stop after the first and nothing more, or best of all, 'universal salvation is as per the scriptural gospel of the faithful grace of Christ')

    'Lutherans believe that humans are saved from their sins by God's grace alone (Sola Gratia), through faith alone (Sola Fide), on the basis of Scripture alone (Sola Scriptura).'

    'justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ's righteousness alone is the gospel, the core of the Christian faith around which all other Christian doctrines are centered and based'

    'forensic (or legal) justification, a divine verdict of acquittal pronounced on the believing sinner. God declares the sinner to be "not guilty" because Christ has taken his place, living a perfect life according to God's law and suffering for his sins'

    (wiki)

    then one is a Lutheran? No? The Jewish rejection of that led to Luther's murderous antisemitism to add to his murderous anti-Catholicism. And no, acceptance of that doesn't make one an antisemite, far from it from the century after Luther, even in Germany.

    But it is that that is wrong. From the heterodox translation of pistis Christou. Salvation doesn't come from the minority's work of faith in Christ, but from His all-inclusive work of faithfulness.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    The term Lutheran was coined by the Council of Trent to demean the followers of Luther. Technically, the actual name for those followers is Evangelical.

    All "Lutheran" bodies of any import have repudiated Luther's views on the Jews about 50 years ago.

    In other words, this is a red herring.

    Well ...
    It was no accident that Kristallnacht was launched on the eve of Marty Luther's birthday ...
  • Most of those in power were content to let Jews live in their own communities within the cities though with second class status.

    Huh ...
    Not a few modern very vocal critics of The State of Israel seem to feel that way even today ...
    The "Good Old Days" of Exile and Dispersion ...

  • Most of those in power were content to let Jews live in their own communities within the cities though with second class status.

    Huh ...
    Not a few modern very vocal critics of The State of Israel seem to feel that way even today ...
    The "Good Old Days" of Exile and Dispersion ...

    Name three who have said anything to indicate that.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    The term Lutheran was coined by the Council of Trent to demean the followers of Luther. Technically, the actual name for those followers is Evangelical.

    All "Lutheran" bodies of any import have repudiated Luther's views on the Jews about 50 years ago.

    In other words, this is a red herring.

    Well ...
    It was no accident that Kristallnacht was launched on the eve of Marty Luther's birthday ...

    Ws Luther's permission sought? Or that of any of the relevant church(es) in Germany and elsewhere?
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    The term Lutheran was coined by the Council of Trent to demean the followers of Luther. Technically, the actual name for those followers is Evangelical.

    All "Lutheran" bodies of any import have repudiated Luther's views on the Jews about 50 years ago.

    In other words, this is a red herring.

    Well ...
    It was no accident that Kristallnacht was launched on the eve of Marty Luther's birthday ...

    Ws Luther's permission sought? Or that of any of the relevant church(es) in Germany and elsewhere?

    Luther's writings gave the permission ...
  • Martin54Martin54 Shipmate
    Most of those in power were content to let Jews live in their own communities within the cities though with second class status.

    Huh ...
    Not a few modern very vocal critics of The State of Israel seem to feel that way even today ...
    The "Good Old Days" of Exile and Dispersion ...

    Name three who have said anything to indicate that.

    One would do. I've heard nothing from these very vocal critics, none quoted on the BBC.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    The term Lutheran was coined by the Council of Trent to demean the followers of Luther. Technically, the actual name for those followers is Evangelical.

    All "Lutheran" bodies of any import have repudiated Luther's views on the Jews about 50 years ago.

    In other words, this is a red herring.

    Well ...
    It was no accident that Kristallnacht was launched on the eve of Marty Luther's birthday ...

    Ws Luther's permission sought? Or that of any of the relevant church(es) in Germany and elsewhere?

    Luther's writings gave the permission ...

    Perhaps better to say that his writings were used as the excuse.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »
    The term Lutheran was coined by the Council of Trent to demean the followers of Luther. Technically, the actual name for those followers is Evangelical.

    All "Lutheran" bodies of any import have repudiated Luther's views on the Jews about 50 years ago.

    In other words, this is a red herring.

    Well ...
    It was no accident that Kristallnacht was launched on the eve of Marty Luther's birthday ...

    Ws Luther's permission sought? Or that of any of the relevant church(es) in Germany and elsewhere?

    Luther's writings gave the permission ...

    Perhaps better to say that his writings were used as the excuse.

    Luther's writings were and in many circles still are regarded with near reverence ...
    Yes, his over the top rhetoric is often excused as being a reflection of that time in history, and OTOH invoked as an excuse for for all sorts of evil ...

    I have long preferred Melanchthon over Luther ...
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Accepting all that, your comment was that Kristallnacht was launched on the evening of Luther's birthday - as if that somehow made Luther responsible.
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