From a seeker. [Archive] - Christian Forums

Colabomb

19th July 2005, 04:32 PM

Hello all.

You guys may have seen me lurking around the lutheran forums lately.

Well, I'll be honest as to why. I am seeking.

I have been looking and praying to try to find where God wants me. And I have been convicted of two things.

1) The Scripture is Perfect, and as such is much higher, and much more authoritative than the tradition of man which is imperfect.

2) Looking to Scripture I see that Bishop and Presbyter are the same thing.

Both of these lead me away from Anglicanism.

However I stil have questions. While I find myself leaning more and more towards Lutheranism, I have not been convinced enough to "jump ship".

I ask dear Bretheren that you have patience with me. I will be asking many questions, and often playing devil's advocate in an attempt to search for the Truth.

Please know that I am not trying to be argumentative.

Your Brother in our One Lord Jesus Christ!
John ><>

Jenna

19th July 2005, 05:04 PM

I ask dear Bretheren that you have patience with me. I will be asking many questions, and often playing devil's advocate in an attempt to search for the Truth.

Please know that I am not trying to be argumentative.

It is wonderful to meet another person who is interested in seeking out God's truth. :) I surely don't want you to think that because conversation can become passionate in here, that we are less than "seeker friendly". I strongly urge you to take everything that is said in the forum, and weigh it firmly against scripture. :)

Anywho, it's good to have you around! I like questions, even if I don't have the answers (or don't know how to best phrase them). It gives me practice. Yay!

SPALATIN

19th July 2005, 05:29 PM

Jim47

19th July 2005, 05:35 PM

Welcome John :wave:

I pray that The Lord will show you the way.

ctay

19th July 2005, 06:26 PM

Welcome!! I'm sure if you have some questions, someone will probably be able to answer them....
God Bless and Peace be with you.

C.F.W. Walther

19th July 2005, 06:28 PM

Get down on your knees and pray for what the willl of God is in your life. Search the scriptures and then humble yourself before God and sacrifice pride and then run to the nearest Christian shelter/soup kitchen and learn what really being a servant is as Christ was a servant to mankind.

Mathew 23:12 12And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

Philippians 2:6-8 (King James Version)
6Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

7But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

There are many more references to serving and being a servant and the humility it ensues. Many times we get it backwards and think that because we are well versed in dogma and theology that we have the inside scoop. All the head knowledge in the world will not replace the knowledge in our heart. It's only 16 inches from our head to our heart but it is the longest journey in the world.

ctobola

19th July 2005, 09:04 PM

John,

Welcome to the group. I hope we can support you on your faith journey.

Although the Lutheran tradition places greater emphasis on Scripture than the Anglican, there are some strong parallels.

Of all the Lutheran bodies, the one with the strongest "flavor" of the Anglican faith is probably the LCMS -- they have a more hierarchical system, and in some cases they tend to be more "high church." I'm not familiar enough with the WELS to speak to that. Someone else might want to comment.

In spite of this, the ELCA (the more "liberal" branch of Lutheranism) has some formal ties to the Episcopal Church USA, in spite of some theological differences. (Including differences on the role of bishops. For the ELCA, what we call bishops are essentially the same as district presidents in the LCMS. They serve a fixed term and do not hold the role for life.)

All the best on your journey.

In Christ, -Cloy

Hello all.

You guys may have seen me lurking around the lutheran forums lately.

Well, I'll be honest as to why. I am seeking.

I have been looking and praying to try to find where God wants me. And I have been convicted of two things.

1) The Scripture is Perfect, and as such is much higher, and much more authoritative than the tradition of man which is imperfect.

2) Looking to Scripture I see that Bishop and Presbyter are the same thing.

Both of these lead me away from Anglicanism.

However I stil have questions. While I find myself leaning more and more towards Lutheranism, I have not been convinced enough to "jump ship".

I ask dear Bretheren that you have patience with me. I will be asking many questions, and often playing devil's advocate in an attempt to search for the Truth.

Please know that I am not trying to be argumentative.

Your Brother in our One Lord Jesus Christ!
John ><>

Colabomb

20th July 2005, 08:47 AM

SPALATIN

20th July 2005, 10:16 AM

I was an REC Anglican, I don't like the liberalism in ECUSA, so should I "cross over" to Lutheranism it would not be to an ELCA Church.

There is a LCMS church where I live, also and independant "Orthodox Lutheran Church" and I would Probably end up at one of those.

Please be sure to check out the Independent Lutheran church really well. They are sometimes moved to Pietism which is a movement that almost ruined the Lutheran church in the 1700s.

BigNorsk

20th July 2005, 01:43 PM

I guess I'll bite as about the only person who is regularly here from a Lutheran church with a pietistic background, though it isn't from the movement in the 1700's. When Scott says independant Lutherans it would probably be better to say "Free Lutherans". Free Lutherans heritage comes from those Lutherans who left the state Lutheran churches in Europe and established their own congregations. The term pietist was coined as a put down by those whose authority it challenged. There have been several pietistic movements within Lutheanism over the years. One of the last was within the LCMS and from what I've been able to understand, it really had nothing to do with peitism and all to do with imposing a set of rules on peoples lives.

The movement to which Scott refers was back in the 1700's and it arose in response to the dead orthodoxy and sacramentarianism that held the established Lutheran churches in Europe. Scott would say it almost ruined Lutheranism but take a look at the dead state churches of Europe today. In several you don't even need to be a christian to be a minister. They put their faith in being a member of the church and in receiving sacraments. Effectively, they have a law that spells out what you must do in order to be saved. Looking at the dead orthodox Lutheran churches of today in Erope, it is difficult to say why Scott thinks that a movement stressing a live faith in Jesus could be what almost ruined them. Maybe he will share more.

Pietists stressed that there must be a personal relationship between the person and Christ. They said a christian should lead a christian life not just go to church on a regular basis and take sacraments. The life one lives on the outside is a reflection of what has taken place on the inside. You hear people complaining about what the pietists were complaining about when you here them taking about the hypocrites in church. People who perform christian rites, but whose lives are a witness to nothing. Pietism would stress that one does not have a church life and a real life but only one life.

Some things that you will usually see in a lutheran church with a pietistic background are things like adult bible studies often in little groups within the larger congregation. You see many of the mega-church people have taken this as their own in their small group emphasis. The priesthood of all believers is stressed more than in other Lutheran churches. Pietists tend to be real sensitive to any movement to set up a heirarchy with ministers or officers being a "higher class" of christians. While knowledge is important (as evidenced by the bible studies), a life that lives that knowledge is also important. The heterodox and unbelievers should be treated kindly and with sympathy, we've all been there ourselves. Better to keep the door open so that they can hear more of God's Word than to chase them away with a broom. (Interestingly, Jehovah Witnesses tend to avoid pietistic Lutherans, something about inviting them in for a few hours of Bible Study just doesn't fit in their agenda.) The style of preaching generally changes because living a godly life, or application is added to what non-pietistic lutherans preach. Piestists work on a person by person basis. You won't generally find them trying to reach agreement with another synod or denomination, you will find them talking to individuals who belong to another synod or denomination and trying to reach agreement with them.

Pietists look a lot to Luther's life, not just his writings. We see the most important point in Luther's life as what is referred to as his tower experience. It was from that time that Luther started to really develop in his understanding of the Bible and his true christian life. We also see how Luther's home was a sanctuary for people fleeing persecution, sometimes even for critics of Luther.

Now when you have most lutherans talk about pietism, they will talk about pietism gone bad. One very sad thing is that something that starts out stressing the importance of God's grace and the inner changes that produce the outward changes, can be twisted into a set of laws that spell out how the person should live, so the outward living can become the important thing. That isn't pietism, that is pietism gone bad.

The equivalent in, shall we say, orthodox Lutheranism is the same. Instead of God's grace given to sinners, life becomes a creed bound, sacramental mess. People can rattle off the creeds in their sleep, but ask them to explain them and they have no idea what they just said. Or they think if sacraments are good, then more sacraments must be better and they can effectively cloister themselves within the church, constantly performing rituals to appease for sins that one starts to wonder when they have any time to commit.

So if you want to see more about how Lutherans from pietistic backgrounds "do" Christianity, I would suggest the Association of Free Lutheran Churches (http://www.aflc.org/)
and the Church of the Lutheran Brethren. (http://www.clba.org)

I should probably mention that the Evangelical Free also have many of their roots in the pietistic Lutheran movements, though that is only part of their heritage. They abandoned the sacraments which they didn't get from any Lutheran movement.

Major difference between those two Lutheran groups is that the Free Lutheran Churches would be more recognizable by what most people would use to recognize Lutherans, that is outward appearances. Services are more liturgical, with an altar at the center front of the church and usually two pulpits at the front of the church. Some people think when they come into a Lutheran Brethren church that they came into a Baptist church by mistake. While the service has order, it doesn't include a lot of the exact same things over and over. There is usually just a simple cross at the front, and the pulpit is placed in the center of the front, to emphasize the importance of God's Word.

Hope that helps a little,
Marv

BigNorsk

20th July 2005, 01:47 PM

Since you are Anglican, I should have added that the pietistic Lutheran movement of the 1700's was what inspired the Anglican priest, John Wesley, to start what became known as the Methodist movement. He didn't take Lutheran doctrines from it, as we would say here, unfortunately, but the emphasis on a Christian life.

Marv

SPALATIN

20th July 2005, 02:53 PM

I guess I'll bite as about the only person who is regularly here from a Lutheran church with a pietistic background,

I am such a good fisherman. ;)

though it isn't from the movement in the 1700's. Looking at the dead orthodox Lutheran churches of today in Erope, it is difficult to say why Scott thinks that a movement stressing a live faith in Jesus could be what almost ruined them. Maybe he will share more.

No, I want to keep it all to myself. You can't make me share. :(

Oh alright. The reason Pietism is so wrong is because they stress that it is something you have to do rather than God empowering you and giving you the desire to do it. I will agree that the state churches in Europe are pretty dead and could use a shot in the arm to pump some life into it, but I am not sure that pietism is the way to go.

Pietists stressed that there must be a personal relationship between the person and Christ. They said a christian should lead a christian life not just go to church on a regular basis and take sacraments. The life one lives on the outside is a reflection of what has taken place on the inside. You hear people complaining about what the pietists were complaining about when you here them taking about the hypocrites in church. People who perform christian rites, but whose lives are a witness to nothing. Pietism would stress that one does not have a church life and a real life but only one life.

True christianity would not deny a personal relationship between the believer and Christ. While Pietism does not deny that God's power is behind it they don't give it much credit either. We have a weak part in sanctification. We can't possibly serve God without the power of the Holy Spirit. But those in the Pietist movement put sanctification more on our shoulders than it should be.

Some things that you will usually see in a lutheran church with a pietistic background are things like adult bible studies often in little groups within the larger congregation. You see many of the mega-church people have taken this as their own in their small group emphasis.

I have no problem with adult bible studies as long as they have been given direction by the Pastor to make sure correct theology is being taught.

The priesthood of all believers is stressed more than in other Lutheran churches. Pietists tend to be real sensitive to any movement to set up a heirarchy with ministers or officers being a "higher class" of christians. While knowledge is important (as evidenced by the bible studies), a life that lives that knowledge is also important. The heterodox and unbelievers should be treated kindly and with sympathy, we've all been there ourselves. Better to keep the door open so that they can hear more of God's Word than to chase them away with a broom. (Interestingly, Jehovah Witnesses tend to avoid pietistic Lutherans, something about inviting them in for a few hours of Bible Study just doesn't fit in their agenda.)

Marv, tell you what. I'll point the JWs in your direction but I won't tell them what you have planned for them. They won't know what hit em until the youngest one is ready to join your church. ;)

. You won't generally find them trying to reach agreement with another synod or denomination, you will find them talking to individuals who belong to another synod or denomination and trying to reach agreement with them.

I can see some danger in this method, but please continue.

Pietists look a lot to Luther's life, not just his writings. We see the most important point in Luther's life as what is referred to as his tower experience. It was from that time that Luther started to really develop in his understanding of the Bible and his true christian life. We also see how Luther's home was a sanctuary for people fleeing persecution, sometimes even for critics of Luther.

Luther would be the first to say that his faith is due to God's help and nothing to do with his own merit. Do Pietists recognize this?

Now when you have most lutherans talk about pietism, they will talk about pietism gone bad. One very sad thing is that something that starts out stressing the importance of God's grace and the inner changes that produce the outward changes, can be twisted into a set of laws that spell out how the person should live, so the outward living can become the important thing. That isn't pietism, that is pietism gone bad.

The equivalent in, shall we say, orthodox Lutheranism is the same. Instead of God's grace given to sinners, life becomes a creed bound, sacramental mess. People can rattle off the creeds in their sleep, but ask them to explain them and they have no idea what they just said. Or they think if sacraments are good, then more sacraments must be better and they can effectively cloister themselves within the church, constantly performing rituals to appease for sins that one starts to wonder when they have any time to commit.

So if you want to see more about how Lutherans from pietistic backgrounds "do" Christianity, I would suggest the Association of Free Lutheran Churches (http://www.aflc.org/)
and the Church of the Lutheran Brethren. (http://www.clba.org/)

I should probably mention that the Evangelical Free also have many of their roots in the pietistic Lutheran movements, though that is only part of their heritage. They abandoned the sacraments which they didn't get from any Lutheran movement.

Major difference between those two Lutheran groups is that the Free Lutheran Churches would be more recognizable by what most people would use to recognize Lutherans, that is outward appearances. Services are more liturgical, with an altar at the center front of the church and usually two pulpits at the front of the church. Some people think when they come into a Lutheran Brethren church that they came into a Baptist church by mistake. While the service has order, it doesn't include a lot of the exact same things over and over. There is usually just a simple cross at the front, and the pulpit is placed in the center of the front, to emphasize the importance of God's Word.

Hope that helps a little,
Marv

Marv,

Much is true of what you write in these past few paragraphs. I also am not a fan of a heirarchical church government, but I am a bit wary of Pietism because of the stress they put on sanctification.

I hope my explanations helped as well

Qoheleth

20th July 2005, 04:09 PM

The Heresy called “Pietism”

We give the name “pietism” to a phenomenon in church life which stresses “personal piety” as distinct from doctrine or the teachings of the church.

With its stress on personal piety, pietism undermines (if not also denying) unity among the body of believers and so also communion in God. For it focuses attention on the individual who is able to “appropriate” (apply to himself) his own salvation. As such, it transfers the place of man’s salvation away from the Church and into the realm of the individual and his moral endeavors.

For pietism, salvation is not primarily the fact of the church—the way Christians live in communion with God and each other. Neither is salvation man’s dynamic, personal participation in the body of the Church’s communion. So man is not saved despite his individual unworthiness. Rather, pietism sees salvation as individual attainment—the way an individual accepts Christ, believes in His saving work, and lives up to moral commitments.

In pietism, then, the Church becomes a place which assures not growth in God. Neither is it a community where one person helps save another. Rather, the Church is the gathering of justified individuals. She is nothing more than the assembly of “regenerated individuals”—a gathering of those individuals who understand themselves to be justified.

With pietism, liturgy is incidental. It exists only to uplift those individuals who find the ceremonies, hymns, and texts “meaningful” and “edifying.” The Eucharist, also, no longer embodies the fact of salvation, but is distorted into an individual event—a means of assimilating Jesus spiritually.

Pietism is a heresy—especially a false teaching about the church. It denies the very truth of the Church. It transfers the event of salvation away from the body of Christ gathered in liturgy to an individual. It divorces piety from the Trinity—that is, from living in community. And by emphasizing individual salvation, it denies that our salvation is to live life in Christ together—in constant communion with all others.

Pietism doesn’t deny the existence or helpfulness of the Church. It simply disconnects the church from salvation, and says that man’s life and salvation can (and sometimes “must”) be lived apart from the church. And so it fuels the false and unchristian notion that a person can take “time off” or “time away from” the church and her liturgy.

The truth, however, is that no salvation comes apart from the church; and no salvation is given elsewhere but in the church; and no salvation can be sustained except in the church. And the truth is that we are saved not as individuals, but to lose our individuality and to live as persons—men and women in loving communion with our God and (because of this) with each other.

Fr. John W. Fenton, S.T.M.
Based on “The Freedom of Morality”

BigNorsk

20th July 2005, 04:19 PM

Oh alright. The reason Pietism is so wrong is because they stress that it is something you have to do rather than God empowering you and giving you the desire to do it. I will agree that the state churches in Europe are pretty dead and could use a shot in the arm to pump some life into it, but I am not sure that pietism is the way to go.

Scott,

Pietism doesn't teach that it is something that we do anymore than orthodoxy teaches that first you get a little water splashed on you and then you drink some wine and eat some bread and "poof" you're saved.

There are people in both traditions that teach or believes those things, but that doesn't mean that's what is taught.

I agree with you that sanctification is stressed much more in a pietistic Lutheran church, but isn't that what it means to get past drinking the milk of the new child of God and on to the solid food of maturity? Salvation isn't the end of a Christian's life.

See how I tried to rope you into a corner you never wanted to occupy?

Marv

SPALATIN

20th July 2005, 05:29 PM

Scott,

Pietism doesn't teach that it is something that we do anymore than orthodoxy teaches that first you get a little water splashed on you and then you drink some wine and eat some bread and "poof" you're saved.

There are people in both traditions that teach or believes those things, but that doesn't mean that's what is taught.

I agree with you that sanctification is stressed much more in a pietistic Lutheran church, but isn't that what it means to get past drinking the milk of the new child of God and on to the solid food of maturity? Salvation isn't the end of a Christian's life.

See how I tried to rope you into a corner you never wanted to occupy?

Marv

Remember who Boris Badenov was?

BigNorsk

20th July 2005, 10:19 PM

Hey Rocky, watch me pull a name out of my hat...

Is Natasha coming too?

BigNorsk

21st July 2005, 04:34 AM

The Donatistic Controversy

In the third and early fourth centuries AD, persecutions became severe in the Roman Empire under Emperor Decius (249-251), Emperor Valerian (253-260), and Emperor Diocletian (294-305). During this time, all people were required to sacrifice to the Roman gods, (which probably included worshipping the emperor, who believed himself to be a god). For a Christian,
this was not acceptable. To worship a false god, to declare, “Caesar is Lord,” would be idolatrous. At other times, Rome demanded that Christians surrender their sacred writings to the state for destruction; this Christians could not do with a clear conscience.

When the persecution ended, many of those who had fallen into this idolatry were filled with remorse and wanted to be restored to the Church. Some of the fallen were bishops.

Controversy arose on two fronts: 1) what was required of those who had lapsed in order for them to be restored, if possible; and 2) what about the validity of an ecclesiastical act performed by a bishop who had lapsed?

There was a rigorist group that said those who had fallen could never be restored to the church. Novatian, a Roman presbyter, led a group of people who left the church because of its lax discipline. Novatian believed that those who had once been believers and who lapsed into apostasy, murder, or adultery, could never return to fellowship.

Donatus began a schism in North Africa on a different level. His issue was with lapsed clergy. If your baptism, ordination, etc. was done by someone who was lapsed, that ecclesiastical act was not valid. If you were baptized by someone who was ordained by someone who was fallen, your baptism was not valid. The issue centered on the idea of what it was that made a sacrament valid: the quality of the one who administers or the authority of the word of God.

The issue also asks the question about the church itself, “Is the church the place where the word of God is taught and the sacraments administered correctly, or is it the place where the bishop is or where the bishop declares the church exists?” Is the unity of the Church found in its clergy or in its adherence to the Word of God?

Cyprian (Bishop of Carthage 248-258) taught that the church was the bishops. He believed that the unity of the church was episcopal (meaning derived from bishops), not theological (meaning derived from the Bible). He wrote that there is no salvation outside of the visible church where the bishops can trace their clerical lineage back to Peter and the apostles.
He wrote, “He cannot have God for his father who has not the church for his mother” (Elwell: 291). He did however teach an equality of apostles and was reluctant to affirm the supremacy of the bishop of Rome.

Donatus took that teaching from Cyprian and added to it the idea that the bishop also had to be spiritually qualified. In the controversy, Donatus ran into Augustine who insisted that the validity of a sacrament is in the Word of God and not in the person who administers it.

Donatism died out when the Islamic armies overran North Africa.

Commentary on the
Statement of Faith of the
Church of the Lutheran Brethren

My apologies to Colabomb

Qoheleth

21st July 2005, 10:50 AM

Donatus took that teaching from Cyprian and added to it the idea that the bishop also had to be spiritually qualified. In the controversy, Donatus ran into Augustine who insisted that the validity of a sacrament is in the Word of God and not in the person who administers it.

St Augustine, in arguing against them (Donatist), did not want to say their sacraments were worthless or blasphemous, but that Holy Spirit miraculously worked outside the boundaries of the visible church for the good of men. So he called these Donatists members invisibly of the church—for they were not members of the visible church (i.e., the catholic church of Africa).

What he did NOT mean is that members invisibly of the church was the norm, or the chief definition of church; but that this category helped explain the working of the Holy Spirit outside the boundaries of the visible church. The thrust of St Augustine’s argument, And it serves as a warning as well to all Donatists; namely, don’t fiddle or wallow too long in your Donatism since the longer you do, the greater the risk of missing the boat of the church.

Q