Friday, October 16, 2009

Than which fewer wiser things have been said on any discussion board....

EO negative theology would be a lot more convincing if it weren't so concerned about terms and definitions yourselves, and didn't demand that everyone adopt your exact way of saying things.


http://tinyurl.com/ylxm6nv

UPDATE: Link fixed

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Things could be worse...


More about John Calvin at Calvin 500

Monday, October 12, 2009

If you want to be the Church, deny the Augsburg Confession!

From Cyberbrethren:

“The Commission for Theology advises the Council of the EKD not to accept the Augsburg Confession as a primary confession in the EKD fundamentals.” The Commission is co-chaired by Michael Beintner (Münster) and Professor Dorothea Wendebourg. The vote was unanimous and agreed to by the EKD Council, which affirmed its readiness to continue strengthening the bonds of the EKD. Instead of accepting the Augsburg Confession, a document that both Lutherans and Protestants in Germany agree “has been the core confession of all of German Protestantism from 1530 to 1806″ (Prof. Dr. Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, Münster), the Council referred dissenters to its 2001 adoption of “Church Fellowship in Evangelical Understanding” (KneV). There it states that the EKD does not seek to form “a canonical church, like her member churches,” since the EKD already is [the] church in the fullest sense of the word. Perhaps mindful that KneV was German Protestantism’s response to the Vatican’s August 2000 document “Dominus Iesus,” which affirmed the primacy of the Roman Church over all other “ecclesial communities,” EKD President Hermann Barth stated, “Measures by which the EKD must first become the church are not necessary, since she is already it in the theological sense, since church fellowship is church.” The EKD reaffirmed it’s continuing commitment to the Leuenberger Konkordie.


So, if someone is already the Church, what do they need with the Augustana? Put another way, it seems that the EKD (Evangelische Kirche Deutchland?) has no need for the primary Evangelical confession, which makes one wonder why they consider themselves "Evangelical".

I am really beginning to think that Liberal Protestantism is becoming so unhinged from any semblance of history or tradition they they are becoming--funny! I don't really mean that in a glib way, it is as if we were playing the game "how far can they go?"

Apparently, quite far. Think about it, the ultimate end of being Evangelical is to deny the doctrines of the Evangelical Church are binding, the ultimate end of being Christian is to deny Christ (UCC, others on the way), the ultimate end of studying the Scriptures is to deny the Scriptures (modern critical theory). All the while, they are "church", because they say they are, and all that matters is a few specific words and some scholarly mambo-jumbo.

It is actually pretty funny if you think about it, though in a tragic way.