Haiti Relief

By now we’ve all heard of the tragedy unfolding in Haiti, between the earthquake last week and the aftershock this week.  By all accounts, the situation on the island is one of unimaginable sorrow.  LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) World Relief and Human care was among the first organizations to respond.  Rev. Matt Harrison, in charge of LCMS World Relief, has been giving relief updates on his blog, Mercy Journeys, and on Issues, Etc.  LCMS World Relief and Human Care is a reputable charity that maximizes the amount of money and resources getting to those that need it.  They also stay behind long after the news cameras have gone, for example, they are still aiding rebuilding efforts for those that are still impacted by the tsunami tragedy of several years ago.  For those of you in the LCMS, my pastor did inform the congregation this past Sunday that we are in fellowship with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Haiti, and additionally, that he did attend seminary with 4 of their pastors.

If you’d like to donate money to the relief effort, follow the link below and click on the “Give Now” tab at the top of the page.

LCMS World Relief and Human Care

Megachurch City States

In the days of Antiquity, the Greeks and Phoenicians often formed their own city states – self governing, independent settlements with their own laws and government.  In ancient Greece, there was Sparta, Athens, Corinth, Argos, etc., the Phoenicians had Tyre, Sidon, Utica, and later Carthage, just to name a few examples of each.  Sometimes they’d band together in alliances to protect each other, such as the Delian League (Athens and her allies) against the Peloponnesian League (Sparta and her allies) during the Peloponnesian War.  Carthage would eventually take control of most of the Phoenician trade centers. The ancient Mayans, whose ruins are scattered throughout Central America also organized themselves into city states, such as Tikal and Calakmul.

During the Medieval and Renaissance periods, some Italian city states rose to prominence as centers of commerce, like Genoa, Florence, and Venice.  In Northern and Western Europe, the Hanseatic League was formed by cities to control trade in the North Atlantic and Baltic regions.  Some city states still exist, like the nation of Singapore in Southeast Asia.

In 21st century American Christianity, the city state is alive and well.  The megachurch movement has given rise to little church empires all over the country, in which the head pastor is CEO and ruler.  In Houston, Texas, there is the vaunted Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church, most well known among the Prosperity-ites and Word/Faith-ians.  In South Carolina there is Pastor Perry Noble of Newspring Church, with his empire controlling territories in Greenville, Columbia, and Anderson (much like Genoa and Venice controlled islands and cities all over the Mediterranean Sea during the Medieval period).  In North Carolina, Noble’s good friend Steven Furtick reigns in Elevation Church in Charlotte.  The list goes on:  Mark Batterson runs National Community Church in the nation’s capital, Granger Community Church is located in Indiana (Granger has a big leadership team which reminds of Carthage’s ruling oligarchy), Bill Hybels is head of Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, and we can’t forget to mention Rick Warren and Saddleback Church out in California.

These men run their own church empires like little popes and though claiming to be Protestants, they undermine the doctrine of sola scriptura, recovered in the Reformation.  Why, because they don’t hold themselves accountable to the Scriptures and they do not listen to criticism or rebuke.  Listen to the sermons, though many times Scripture is quoted  it’s often twisted and ripped out of context or mixed with self help hints and tips.  Many do not allow comments on their blogs, such as Noble and Furtick, and others only allow supportive comments and delete those from would be detractors, such as Mark Batterson’s blog.   Their word is Law, anyone who challenges them must be ignored and discredited by personal attacks and ad hominem arguments as to their character (see the Pajama Pages blog archives for more information).  They can bring quite a number of resources and technology to bear, and stick up for each other, as even Furtick once went after Osteen’s critics on his own blog.  And like any good ruler, they are charismatic and funny enough to keep public opinion on their own side to the point where even sound Biblical correction is portrayed as a below the belt personal attack and the accuser’s character is called into question.

This is not how Christians ought to treat brothers and sisters in the faith.  Imagine if Peter had ignored Paul when Paul came to discuss Peter’s concessions to the Judaizers, rather than listening to Paul as a brother in Christ and being corrected by him.  The church would have been torn in two in its infancy, but Peter listened to Paul and preached the true Gospel again without making it conditional with law.

I pray that these pastors would distinguish the Law from the Gospel and view criticism seriously, examining it in the light of the Scriptures and taking it to heart when shown that they have erred from God’s Word.

ELCA is going to split…

So it seems that LutheranCore, a group within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA),  is going to break off and form a new church body.  However, as Scott Diekmann points out over on his blog Stand Firm, they don’t appear to want to take Scripture any more seriously than the rest of the ELCA.  The Issues, Etc. interview with the chairman of CORE is evidence of this enough when he admits that they will likely not strengthen their position on the inerrancy of Scripture from that of the ELCA.  It is sad that CORE seems poised to repeat the errors of the ELCA and appears to have decided to break away based over the issue of homosexuality alone, and not address other areas where they have strayed from the Word of God and our Lutheran Confessions.  Why is this one sin enough to finally force them to split, when something such as full communion with another church body that teaches differently on the Lord’s Supper than the Lutherans isn’t so much as an afterthought?  The vote to enter into full communion with the United Methodist Church, during the latest Churchwide Assembly in August, is evidence of this enough and is overshadowed by the vote on human sexuality and the change in ordination policy.

Oh, that they, and we in the LCMS now, and all Lutherans worldwide, would repent of our sins and actions, as Rev. Matt Harrison would say.   That we in other more confessional church bodies will not sit smug and feeling high and mighty.  That we would look to our own sins as well and repent and realize that we too will follow the ELCA and CORE if we do not take notice and above all trust in the forgiveness of Christ crucified for our transgressions.

Lord have mercy on us all.

Pieper on Confession

I thought the writing for yesterday in that great resource, The Treasury of Daily Prayer, was a great complement with my entries on private confession.

“False doctrine of the Reformed and other sects: That a preacher does not have power to forgive sins in the place of God but should only proclaim the forgiveness of sins in general.  Against this the Lutheran Church teaches according to God’s Word (John 20:32; 2 Corinthians 2:10; 2 Samuel 12:13; Matthew 3:6; 18:17-20): The preacher can and should, at Christ’s command and in Christ’s place, forgive the sins of him who desires this forgiveness, and the Christian should consider that “his sins are thereby forgiven before God in heaven.”  For the Absolution is “not the voice of the man who is present, but the Word of God who here forgives the sin.”  It is chiefly for the sake of this comforting Absolution that we Lutherans retain private confession, in exchange for which Luther would not accept a thousand worlds. ” – Francis Pieper

Mike Horton on Issues, Etc.

It’s a big day here for the On Rough Seas blog, I now have the capability to upload audio files! To celebrate, I thought I’d post an interview that’s a real home run. Michael Horton was on Issues, Etc. yesterday talking about his new book “The Gospel Driven Life.”  As always, he gives an honest look at problems with Pop American Christianity and the remedy for the situation: make the Gospel the focus of the church.  The interview is about an hour long so if you got some time or want something to listen to at work, here ya go.  Enjoy…

Charles Finney, And Why No One Can Ask Jesus Into Their Heart

In Lutheran Studies Class at church we are going through the book “Why I Am A Lutheran,” by Daniel Preus.  Currently, in the book we are covering the portion where Preus discusses Pelagius, Arminius, and Charles Finney.  There is nothing new under the sun, as for all intents and purposes the three of these men pretty much held the same theology, modified a bit every time though.  It is an interesting study in seeing how such old ideas have been recycled and returned to the Church under a new proponent and label every time.  These beliefs were condemned and shown to be false by the Early Church fathers then and they haven’t become any more true through the passage of time.  In the Lutheran confessional documents the early Lutheran theologians argued against Pelagian ideas still present in the church.

Pelagius, living in the fourth century, denied original sin and taught that man could, through free will, follow the commandments of God on one’s own.  Jacobus Arminius, in the sixteenth century, taught “that a person participated in their own conversion” (Preus, pg 60) , that they become enabled by God to choose to believe in Christ.  In the nineteenth century, this sort of teaching resurfaced and was recycled and repackaged and once again was pushed to the forefront of Christianity.   Charles Finney, founder of modern revivalism, carried on with Pelagius’ and Arminius’ ideas and incorporated them heavily into his theology.

Preus discusses Finney’s deeply held belief that every person had the choice, the “responsibility,” to choose to accept Christ or to reject Christ (pg. 64).   So strong was Finney’s self determinist theology that he even denied Christ’s imputed righteousness to sinners.  On page 66 Preus lists the following quote from Finney:

“The doctrine of an imputed righteousness, or that Christ’s obedience to the law was accounted as our obedience, is founded on a most false and nonsensical assumption.  After all, Christ’s righteousness could do no more than than justify himself.  It can never be imputed to us…It was naturally impossible, then, for him to obey in our behalf.  This representing of the atonement as the ground of the sinner’s justification has been a sad occasion of stumbling to many.”

Here Finney came into, it is safe to say, outright heresy (Of course we never ought to fight against heretics with anything but the Word of God to show them the Truth of the Scripture in love and correction  so that they might too be brought to repent and be forgiven as we ourselves are shown mercy by God).  In saying that Christ the Lord’s shed bled does not forgive sinners, he’s denied the Scriptures themselves and the very purpose for Jesus entering our time and world.  Isaiah 53:4-5 foretells Christ’s crucifixion on our behalf:

“⁴Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

⁵But he was wounded for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his stripes we are healed.”

This “decision theology,” as it is commonly called, is still alive and well in American Christianity, as it has been around for centuries.  While many pastors and church leaders wouldn’t go to the extreme that Finney did to deny the Christ’s atoning death and resurrection, nevertheless the same ideas he propagated, as Arminius and Pelagius did before, are still are present in the church Now it can be seen on tv, or heard on the radio or from the pulpit in an “altar call”, as, “accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour,” or some variation thereof.  While well-intentioned, these invitations to “invite Christ into your life/heart,” carry on in making people think that their salvation lies in their own hands, when Christ has really fulfilled all that is necessary to rescue people from sin, death, and the devil.   This inward focus can be troubling when a person begins to wonder how exactly they open their heart, if they were sincere enough or if they didn’t open their heart wide enough for God.  It’s a bit like the picture of Christ knocking at the door to a house hoping the people will just let him in so He can do His work.  There are accounts of people repeatedly participating in altar calls trying to somehow get it right this time, to make sure they did it good enough this time…

Consider the following Scriptures:

Psalm 51:5,

“Behold I was brought forth in iniquity,

and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (ESV)

Psalm 14: 3,

“..there is none who does good,

not even one.” (ESV)

and Psalm 143:2

“Enter not into judgement with your servant,

for none one living is righteous before you.” (ESV)

So here David’s Psalms drive home the point that apart from Christ no one is righteous and can do a righteous deed on their own.   In the book, Preus, on page 69, goes to Ephesians, Chapter 2 to show where faith comes from and how one is made righteous.

“¹And you were dead in the trespasses and sins ²in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience- ³among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. ⁴But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, ⁵even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ- by grace you have been saved- ⁶and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, ⁷so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. ⁸For by grace by you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹not a result of works, so that no one may boast. ¹⁰For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:1-10, ESV)

St. Paul makes it clear here God is doing the action in converting and saving sinners through His Son Christ Jesus.  What can a dead corpse do on its own?  Nothing, it has ceased to function.  God gives this free gift of faith through the preaching of the Word and the distribution of the Sacraments.  It all comes from Him through Gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection.   Indeed, in Romans 10:14-17, Paul says,

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

In the notes for the above passage from Ephesians, the Lutheran Study Bible notes several passages from the Lutheran Book of Concord which address this point, and which I will use to end this post.

First up, from the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article II:10,

“Likewise, the Scriptures teach that a sinful person is not only weak and sick, but also finished and entirely dead (Ephesians 2:1-5, Colossians 2:13).”

and then, from the Formula of Concord, Epitome, Article II:3,

“Just as a dead body cannot raise itself to bodily, earthly life, so a person who by sin is spiritually dead cannot raise himself to spiritual life.”

Sources:

Preus, Daniel. Why I Am A Lutheran: Jesus at the Center. 2004. Concordia Publishing House. St. Louis.

Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, A Reader’s Edition of the Book of Concord. 2006. Concordia Publishing House. St. Louis.

Anglicans Now Have Fast Track Into Rome- Lutherans Up Next?

By now its been covered pretty well in the media that the Vatican has decided to allow disenfranchised Anglicans from all over the Anglican Communion to move into worldwide full communion with the Roman Catholic church.  This will make it very easy for those frustrated with the Anglican church to convert and retain distinctive elements of the Anglican church such as their liturgy and even some of their church structure like their own priests and bishops.  Apparently even married priests will be allowed to continue shepherding their parishes if the congregation as a whole switches over to Rome.  The Vatican says this is in response to continued requests and pleading from Anglican refugees to be allowed into communion with the Catholic Church.  At any rate it appears this is a smart move for the Papacy, to welcome into fellowship conservative Anglicans from all over the world from a church body caught at a crossroads.

I could be wrong, but I don’t believe this new agreement allows Anglicans to retain their own theology and doctrine, especially that which differs from Roman Catholic teaching.  However, Anglican theology and doctrine was never really nailed down to begin with since their split from Rome during the Reformation and Henry VIII’s rule.  So an Anglican identity is a difficult to define to begin with, and thus makes a swim across the Tiber easier if the interested individual(s) parties don’t have a great deal of deeply rooted doctrine and theology to cling to from their old tradition.  They do have the 39 Articles of Religion, but other than that they lack confessional documents outlining the Anglican faith.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but the question has been asked around the Lutheran blogosphere, “Are we next?”  It isn’t that far fetched a possibility, with the current turmoil in the ELCA especially, and other Lutheran church bodies at a crossroads of their own, the Vatican could make a similar offer to disgruntled Lutherans.  The Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation did try to come up with that Joint Declaration on Justification.  Lutheran clergy and laity have gone to Rome and have gone East.  Unlike the Anglicans though, Lutherans have a set confessions set down in the Book of Concord, saying, “This is the Christian faith laid down in Scripture.”  Seeing that Reformation Day is right around the corner on Halloween, it’s certainly timely to consider such things and ask why one is a Lutheran, or an Anglican or other Protestant for that matter.  The doctrine of Justification, hinging on God granted faith alone through Christ’s work on the cross alone, is still the great dividing line between the confessional Lutheran churches and the Catholic churches.  Though the Roman Catholic church does teach that a sinner is justified by faith they disagree with that pesky word “alone.”  Like it or not that difference is there, it still remains after almost 500 years.  Until that is resolved, until the Pope says the Augsburg Confession, is alright by him, I am sorry my Catholic brothers and sisters, I’m staying on the Wittenberg Trail.

Pirate Christian Radio and Issues, Etc.

I’m gonna take some time here to plug the best Christian radio station in existence right now, running on the web.  It’s a tremendous resource for the thinking Christian and anyone else that wants to connect with the historic Church.  That would be Chris Rosebrough’s Pirate Christian Radio internet radio station.

Now PCR is primarily dominated by confessional LCMS Lutherans but more programs keep getting added to the lineup, like Michael Spencer, the famed Internet Monk as he journeys on to the American evangelical wilderness and Two Words, a program done by conservative Anglicans/Episcopalians.  The centerpiece program, Issues Etc., is quite possibly the best Christian talk radio program in existence.  Theology, history, and doctrine all from a traditional Lutheran point of view.

This isn’t the same sort Christian radio that you’ll find panning through the lower reaches of your FM dial in your car.  This is weighty, theologically heavy, doctrinally meaty, Biblically anchored programming that hits on a range of issues with a variety of guests.   You won’t hear praise music, but you’ll probably hear some hymns from time to time, especially if you listen to Time Out.

For all intents and purposes I used to be evangelically minded on certain topics and issues and this radio station reintroduced and reconnected me with historic Biblical Christianity.   I owe quite a bit to this internet radio station.  It was programs like the The God Whisperers, Table Talk Radio, and Radical Grace that showed me what being a Christian was and brought me to my knees in repentance of the modern evangelicalism I had swallowed.  The beautiful, freeing simplicity Gospel that told me that I don’t have to do battle on every hill in the culture war, that many of these issues are confusing, as Luther called it, the Two Kingdoms.

I urge you to have a listen, and if you like what you hear consider donating because Issues Etc. is, and PCR itself soon, will be funded by the listeners be as well.

First Encounter With Private Confession – Part II – Or Another Way Forgiveness Was Delivered To Me (Continued)

Now in the last post, I think I put the cart before the horse, which I am prone to doing.  I’d like first offer some Scriptural support for Confession and the free gift it brings along with the pronouncement of absolution.   I’ll explain a bit from the Small Catechism section in the front of the Lutheran Study Bible just why we do Confession.  The Catechism notes Matthew 16:19, where Christ tells his disciples,

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

and Matthew 18:15,

“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between and you and him alone.  If he listens listens to you, you have gained your brother. “

There is also John 20: 22-23, where Christ is in the upper room with his Apostles,

“And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

This last verse here is where the Office of the Keys has been entrusted to pastors to forgive the sins of the penitent but not those of the unrepentant.  Hence, the pastor’s forgiveness is Christ’s forgiveness, it stands, it’s “legally binding” or what have you, but it is valid.

Dead man walking…that is me, killed dead in my sinful failings, knowing the demands and expectations of a Law I cannot fill in this current fallen flesh.  It was a bit like Walking the Green Mile into the church, ready to admit I was guilty on all accounts.   The pastor sent me into the sanctuary while he put on his vestments.  He came in then, I went up to the communion rail in front of the altar, knelt, and we went through the order for Private Confession and Absolution in the LSB, which is the same one as in the Treasury of Daily Prayer, so I had seen the order before.  I confessed what troubled me, what lingered in my mind like a broken record.  The pastor listened, and then I heard the Pastor speak the words of Absolution, telling me Christ forgives me.  “In the stead and by the command of the Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” he said.

There it was, Law and Gospel.  Confessing the plain truths of the Law and how I haven’t lived up to them.  And then the sweet Gospel was administered, giving me forgiveness on account of Christ’s work on the cross for me, his shed bled covering those failings.  I was forgiven, indeed, already forgiven,  it is just a matter of getting it through my head.  The pronouncement of absolution comes from someone outside myself telling me that Christ’s blood covers my sin and I can’t be tried for them by a Holy God.

The crucifix that hangs up in front of  my church was also a point I could ponder.  It is at once an image of Law and Gospel.  Christ hangs there dying to redeem the world.   There I can see what the wages of my sin incurred, of what was owed to me in that painful death but also the beautiful forgiveness in Christ’s death and resurrection.  Christ’s shed bled reconciles me to the Father and through baptism I am adopted into God’s family and promised eternal life.  Christ’s shed bled is for us, for me and you individually and every sinner on this earth.  It is there for all.

Did I feel any different, no not really.  Still don’t really.  The biggest difference I could perhaps come close to noting is that these sins feel a bit distant, forgotten, in my mind.   That’s why as Lutherans we tend to shift the focus less on how we feel, which changes from day to day, and focus on the objective truth of these matters.  The pastor tells me I am forgiven because Christ forgives me and has forgiven me.  The forgiveness is already there whether I believe it or not.

Does going to private confession somehow make me a better person or instantly give me the urge to stop sinning?  No, though in time perhaps some of these sins may fall away.

What does it make me?  A forgiven sinner.  And here is the only way I can stand before a perfect Holy God, not on account of me or anything I have done, but on account of what Christ has done in shedding His blood and dying and rising again and giving me this sort of executive pardon for all that I have done.

First Encounter With Private Confession – Part I – Or Another Way Forgiveness Was Delivered To Me

I know that I said the next post would come sooner and be about the Law, but I think I’m going to set that aside for a little while because I am not completely sure, once I started how I wanted to go about that post(s).  So that’s on the backburner for the moment.  I’ve also had a bit of writer’s block which hasn’t helped either.  But this multipart post does deal with the Law, as in me being crushed by it.

The Lutheran Church never did away with private confession.  Back in the day in Europe that was still primarily the mode of confession used.  It is not widely used today, especially here in America, but in the LCMS the pastors, when ordained, are supposed to hear the confession of a parishioner when requested and never reveal the sins divulged to them.  Since my own “awakening” to Biblical Christianity through learning the teachings of the Lutheran Church, I have realized that, at one point, I would find my way into private confession.  I figured at some point I would almost have to.  Not because it is anything that is required or mandated but because I knew I would have a need for it, a need to physically hear someone speak the words of absolution to me for my sins.  We can all torture ourselves over things we have done, not letting them go, not grasping hold of and fully realizing that we are forgiven through Christ’s death and resurrection.  Today I finally went for private confession.

Now I’ve heard people say that the church just wants to control peoples’ lives through telling stuff they’ve done and make people feel bad with guilt.  That this is some means of a power play.  I disagree, I knew these things that I have done were wrong and not right even before I realized they came under the scope of the Law of God through reading Luther’s Large Catechism.   Studying the Catechism merely better informed me why they were wrong and why I felt guilty for committing those trespasses.  I’d perhaps even tell you what commandments that encompassed my confession but really you could make a case that I had broken them all.

To anyone who says Lutheran churches are emotionless and dead, that Lutherans don’t have feelings or feel the spirit or whatever measure of subjectivity you want to choose, I submit exhibit A.  I spent chunks of the day up until my meeting with the pastor coming to grips with the Law.  I was coming to terms with these sins that still haunt me, be it specific instances where I know I sin and cannot let it go, or sins that I just repeat.  I needed to hear the words of forgiveness, needed to get it through my head that I am forgiven and be given the gift of absolution by the pastor acting as a mouthpiece of Christ’s words.

On one hand, the pastor is a bit like a deputy of the Law, he has the office of the keys given to him by Christ to bind and loose sins.  On the other hand the pastor is something of a medic, a doc for the soul.  Because we are terminally ill and sick with sin, the pastor delivers God’s gifts to us, a sort of therapy to cure our sins.   And repenting of our sin and acknowledging how wretched our state is, the pastor must give us the Gospel and deliver the forgiveness for our transgressions.  That is a comforting thought indeed.

So I made sure the Pastor could hear my confession at an agreed upon time.  My pastor advised me to read Psalm 6 and 32, and go through the Ten Commandments, which I had done using the handy Preparation for Confession in the back of the Treasury of Daily Prayer.

Then it was time to go hear the words of absolution and receive Christ’s grace and mercy won for me, a poor sinner…