LOL, The Lutheran World Federation just canceled The Nicene Creed in The West

Rev. Anne Burghardt, General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation

 

The Lutheran World Federation just resolved the problem of the insertion of the filioque with a reactionary surrender to the Orthodox, jettisoning reason for emotion.

"Let's just recite The Nicene Creed without 'and the Son' and then we can be friends". 

. . . we suggest that the translation of the Greek original (without the Filioque) be used in the hope that this will contribute to the healing of age-old divisions . . ..

Here.

Is there a better example in the long history of Christian theology of the failure of the church to be guided into all the truth?

The Protestant schism is only 507 years old, the East-West now 970.

The filioque was a reasonable development within Trinitarianism, stubbornly resisted by the church in the East because it wasn't explicitly Nicene (325). Its first known promulgation at the Third Council of Toledo in 589 in a context of Arianism, the primarily Eastern heresy from the early fourth century, spread in the West but rankled the East, so much so it became a red line by 1054.

They got tired of their reputation for mistakes, I guess.

The first Protestant Reformers insisted generally on the text of Scripture to guide into all the truth, in keeping with the thinking of ancient fathers of the church such as Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, and Epiphanius of Salamis, who specifically on the subject of the procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father "and the Son" thought it was the plain teaching of the New Testament.

The Reformers thought that the New Testament Scriptures were the result of that process described by Jesus in the Gospel of John, that the Spirit would guide into all the truth. To them the filioque was obvious.

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

-- John 16:13ff.

To contemporary Lutherans? Not so much.

Intellectually, if we may use that term elastically, the liberal Lutherans now have more in common with the enthusiasts, the Schwärmer, the 16th century's charismatics and radicals, than they do with the Protestant Reformation.

To them the Spirit is still revealing truths to all and sundry: His truth, her truth, my truth, your truth, hir truth, their truth, but the more important thing is the feeling of unity. Besides, most Christians today have no clue about an obscure topic like the filioque. It's a speedbump, not a roadblock.

The way for this in liberal Lutheranism was prepared for by their enthusiastic embrace of modern critical scholarship of the Bible, with the result that everything has been up for grabs: The theory of evolution, women's ordination, homosexuality, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Hey, why not the filioque? "Just take it . . . to the limit . . . one more time."

The origins of that, however, ironically enough, are in the Enlightenment rediscovery of . . . reason. What goes around, comes around, you might say, as the phonograph needle scratches across the vinyl.

Ultimately speaking, neither the well of human reason nor the well of human feeling produces rivers of living water.

I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. 

-- Ecclesiastes 1:14

The everlasting trinity of horribles: The fire, the damnation, and the destruction

Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire (πῦρ). 

-- Matthew 18:8

Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:  

-- Matthew 25:41

But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation (κρίσις): 

-- Mark 3:29

Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction (ὄλεθρος) from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;

-- II Timothy 1:9

Of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment (κρίμα).

-- Hebrews 6:2

Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.

-- Jude 1:7

 

 

The Archbishop of York has a much bigger problem than the Lord's Prayer and the fatherhood of God: The Trinity's pronouns are he/him

Lord’s Prayer opening may be ‘problematic’, says archbishop :

 

“I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That the Father is a man, the Son is a man, and the Holy Ghost is a man is shot through the Scriptures. They'll have to chuck the whole thing in the Thames.

 

 

See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. 

-- Deuteronomy 32:39

Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he. 

-- Isaiah 41:4

Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me.  I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.  ... Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it? ... I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.

-- Isaiah 43:10f.,13,25 

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. 

-- Isaiah 46:4

Hearken unto me, O Jacob and Israel, my called; I am he; I am the first, I also am the last.  

-- Isaiah 48:12

I, even I, am he that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man which shall be made as grass; 

-- Isaiah 51:12

Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I.  

-- Isaiah 52:6

The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he. 

-- John 4:25f.

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:  

-- John 15:26

Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man!  

-- John 19:5

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; 

-- I Timothy 2:5

The root of iconoclasm is in The Ten Commandments, and some of its most ardent representatives remain Evangelical Protestants

 The Reformed Protestant view against images of any kind in worship or out is ably presented here, from which this important excerpt: 

Yet another strongly worded evangelical Protestant position against the creation of images of any member of the Trinity is found in the Westminster Larger Catechism, written in 1647. Question 109 asks, “What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment?” The catechism answers as follows: “The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counselling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind or image or likeness of any creature whatsoever.” Here, one of the most respected and widely used catechisms in Protestant Christianity since the mid-17^th century notes, in no uncertain terms, no member of the Trinity may be represented by any physical or mental image. 

The numbering of the commandments varies, but they begin this way in Exodus 20:3ff.:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 

 

The ideas here are the whole basis of Judaism, and they are the reason why Jews regard the incarnational theology of the Christians as wholly impossible and anathema, and why Muslims came to the same conclusion.

Trinitite, a creation of the Trinity test

And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that
had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. 

-- Revelation 15:2

The post-modern academy is the pre-modern academy but more perverse, arguing about how many gay angels can fit on the head of a pin

Seen here, where righteous Lot (2 Peter 2:7) might as well be the inhospitable bad guy and welcoming gay people might as well be the same thing as Abraham welcoming the Trinity at Mamre:

The men of Sodom were not “gay” in even the remotest sense of contemporary LGBT identity if for no other reason than the ancients did not share modern conceptions of sexual orientation. ... as Longman rightly insists, “We should not consider the city of Sodom to be filled with men who have same-sex attraction. Rather, these men want[ed] to humiliate their foreign visitors” through a heinous act of sexual violence. ... The ancient audience of this text would thus have seen the “abominable”/tôʿēbāh sexual acts of the men of Sodom as the culmination of gross inhospitality, not as sexual desire per se, and certainly not as a signifier of any kind of underlying LGBT sexual orientation. ... the sin of Sodom does not pertain to sexual orientation as conceptualized today. The men of Sodom were not sinful for “being gay,” but for attempting to commit an appalling crime—the humiliation of vulnerable foreign guests through an act of sexual violence. Despite the ugly caricature in Jack Chick’s Doom Town, the men of Sodom are emphatically not representative of loving, consensual same-sex couples today.

We're supposed to believe a town full of heterosexual men bent on sodomizing not Lot's daughters but his male guests is a more plausible tale?

Has a greater calumny been invented by the gay mafia against the heterosexual majority than this? Not even the Red Army invading Berlin in 1945 was said to have stooped to such lows, raping every German woman in sight.

The account in Genesis is obviously an etiological tale, invented to explain theologically the historical fact of the destruction of the cities of the plain in approximately 1700 B.C., as a place where predatory "men inflamed with lust for one another" (Romans 1:27) were fried to a crisp by "a Tunguskalike, cosmic airburst event". 

No, no, no, say our experts, defying the ancient theological explanations.

Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.  

-- Jude 1:7

We live in an age of delusion where facts exist merely as fodder to be blown to smithereens to please our perverted whims, including the fact of predatory homosexual promiscuity, which has existed proverbially since time immemorial for a reason, because it's real:

A 1978 study reported that 75 percent of male homosexuals had been with 100 or more partners; 28 percent, the largest subcategory, reported more than 1,000 partners; 79 percent said more than half their partners were strangers; and 79 percent said more than half their partners were men with whom they had sex only once. Another survey 16 years later found that while 67.6 percent of men and 75.5 percent of women had only one sex partner in the previous year, only 2.6 percent of men and 1.2 percent of women engaging in same-sex relationships had thus limited themselves. Supporters of homosexuality, and advocates of gay marriage, rarely acknowledge the many partners gays have -- including those living together as couples.

Trump hasn't lied 5,000 times, he's just channeling Norman Vincent Peale's power of positive thinking and the prosperity gospel's power of positive confession

Too bad more people don't understand this.

This guy certainly doesn't. 

Meet Daniel Dale, the man with the Herculean job of keeping track of Trump’s lies:

Usually, the lying is Trump ad-libbing — it’s him deviating from his text. In that [campaign] case, immigration lies in particular were being written into his rally speeches.

In many cases, I think it is unstrategic. I think it’s just Trump being Trump. I don’t know if it’s his natural state, or if it’s a learned behavior, after lying successfully as a real estate guy and lying successfully as a playboy celebrity to get his name in the tabloids. ...

I do use the word lie, but for my database, I call it a database of false claims, because I think while a significant percentage are lies, I'm not sure about all of them.

As we know with this president, he’s often confused or ignorant of policy specifics. And so I don’t know that he intentionally attempted to deceive with all 4,900-plus. So many of those are lies, but I can’t say that for all of them.

This guy, on the other hand, does.

Commentary: Prosperty gospel may be United States' new civil religion:

In terms of religion, this inauguration exhibits the confluence of two major currents of indigenous American spirituality.

One stream is represented by Norman Vincent Peale's longtime bestseller "The Power of Positive Thinking" (1952). The famous Manhattan pastor is Trump's tenuous connection to Christianity, having heard the preacher frequently in his youth. For Peale and his protege, the late Robert Schuller of Crystal Cathedral fame, the gospel of Christ's death for human sin and resurrection for justification and everlasting life was transformed into a "feel-good" therapy. Self-esteem was the true salvation.

Another stream is represented by the most famous TV preachers, especially those associated with the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN). Kenneth Copeland, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen and Paula White are the stars of this movement, known as Word of Faith. ...

Besides throwing out doctrines like the Trinity and confusing ourselves with God, the movement teaches that Jesus went to the cross not to bring forgiveness of our sins but to get us out of financial debt, not to reconcile us to God but to give us the power to claim our prosperity, not to remove the curse of death, injustice and bondage to ourselves but to give us our best life now. White says emphatically that Jesus is "not the only begotten Son of God," just the first. We're all divine and have the power to speak worlds into existence. ...

Some representatives, like Osteen, offer an easy-listening version that seems as harmless as a fortune cookie. It's when he tries to interpret the Bible that he gets into trouble, as in his latest book, "The Power of I Am." "Romans 4 says to 'call the things that are not as though they were,' " he says, but the biblical passage is actually referring to God.

But it's not really about God. In fact, one gets the impression that God isn't necessary at all in the system. God set up these spiritual laws and if you know the secrets, you're in charge of your destiny. You "release wealth," as they often put it, by commanding it to come to you.

"Anyone who tells you to deny yourself is from Satan," White told a TBN audience in 2007. Oops. It was Jesus who said "anyone who would come after me" must "deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24).

Most evangelical pastors I know would shake their heads at all of this.

Prosperity gospel grifters have their own watchdog, Texas' Trinity Foundation

The preachers getting rich from poor Americans:

 

Ole, who always had a have-a-go approach to problem-solving, felt an urge to step in. First, he tried approaching the ministries on behalf of the penniless donors, thinking he could explain the circumstances and get the money refunded. However, like Larry, he found no-one willing to talk.So he took it to a Christian broadcasting association - but it didn't want to get involved. Then he approached local district attorneys, who explained that many preachers were protected by the First Amendment (guaranteeing freedom of religion and free speech), so there was nothing they could do. So he turned back to the media, this time major networks and publications, which said investigations would be too time-consuming.Ole was faced with a multibillion-dollar industry built, as he saw it, on exploiting the poor - and it was completely untouchable.And this is how a community church became an investigations office. The Trinity Foundation felt compelled to tackle the prosperity preachers because no-one else would.

 

The Arminian Roger Olson, hostile to Augustine, does not believe God is "infinite" and is therefore outside the catholic faith

Here, already from a young age, which ought to tell you something (enthusiasm dies hard):

I long ago rejected the notion that God is “infinite.” I rejected it when I first heard it articulated which was probably in some seminary class. I immediately thought that the concept itself was beyond comprehension (except perhaps in mathematics) and that attributing it to God led away from thinking of God as personal, present, involved, loving and able to be affected by us. With Brightman (who I only learned about later) I thought of that attribute of God in traditional theology as an inappropriate expansion of the concept of God brought into Christian thought through philosophy, not the Bible.

Compare the Athanasian Creed:

And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite [et unus immensus]. 

Hilary of Poitiers, On the Councils (composed in 359), thought it was a mark of safety to employ expansion in theology in order to avoid error (unlike Olson), and that the profusion of definitions appropriately mimics the boundlessness of God:

The infinite and boundless [infinitus et immensus] God cannot be made comprehensible by a few words of human speech. Brevity often misleads both learner and teacher, and a concentrated discourse either causes a subject not to be understood, or spoils the meaning of an argument where a thing is hinted at, and is not proved by full demonstration. The bishops fully understood this, and therefore have used for the purpose of teaching many definitions and a profusion of words that the ordinary understanding might find no difficulty, but that their hearers might be saturated with the truth thus differently expressed, and that in treating of divine things these adequate and manifold definitions might leave no room for danger or obscurity.

The reductionism of the Reformation is a contrary tendency.

Like others WaPo calls Paula White, picked by Trump for an inauguration prayer, controversial

White and new husband Jonathan Cain of Journey fame both on marriage #3 

In "Paula White, prosperity preacher once investigated by Senate, is a controversial pick for inauguration" :

When White’s role in the swearing-in ceremony was reported Wednesday, the Daily Beast said in a headline, “Shady Pastor to Pray With Trump at Inauguration.” Erick Erickson, an influential Christian writer who strongly opposed Trump during his campaign, fumed on his website: “An Actual Trinity-Denying Heretic Will Pray at Trump’s Inauguration.”

ISIS' view of St. Paul is that he corrupted Christianity, which is a view derivative of Islam's knowledge of 4th century heretical Christianity

From the story here:

As for St. Paul, he is referred to [in ISIS' latest magazine issue] in turn as a “criminal” and “treacherous Jew” who “intentionally sought to deviate the monotheistic Nazarenes in order to tarnish Jesus’ name – even if it meant Paul’s own persecution.” The Holy Trinity being an essential concept of St. Paul’s writings is a form of polytheism, according to Islamic State jihadists, one intended to deceive Christians. ...  [T]he “debate between Trinitarians and Unitarians reached the heights of popularity during the fourth century of the Christian calendar.”

Dimwit religion professor from Alma College blames Constantinian Catholicism for the tyranny of orthodoxy

One Kate Blanchard, here, who seems to be as seriously in thrall to an idyllic albeit anarchic world pre-Constantine as the Pentecostal fanatics among us are to its "Spirit-filled" environment. Well, Alma College was a Scottish Presbyterian institution where the Catholics must have been guilty of something, sometime.  

'There is no simple way to explain why some of us submit to the whole shebang and others don’t. In the spirit of gross oversimplification, I blame not social media but Constantinian Catholicism—not for intra-religious diversity, but for the idea that life should be any other way. Before 325 CE there existed a vast network of small clusters of pagan and Jewish Christians around the Mediterranean, mostly meeting in people’s homes, sharing a collection of related but not uniform sacraments and stories about Jesus.

'But when Constantine became the Roman Caesar he decided he needed to build a more uniform religion for his empire. The religious power elite saw their chance and spent the next decades fighting over which version of Christianity would prevail, developing a biblical canon, determining official formulae for Jesus and the Trinity, and approving only certain ways of doing baptism and communion. By the end of the century, Theodosius I would outlaw all “wrong” forms of Christian belief and practice and punish them severely.'

This is just plain silly. Constantine didn't submit to the "whole shebang" himself, and encouraged a process meant to achieve consensus among the fractious Christians, not "orthodoxy", even as he maintained religious freedom for non-Christians throughout his tenure. He was baptized on his deathbed by a heterodox Arian, Eusebius. It is anachronistic to speak of "Constantinian Catholicism", which is a relic of the medieval Roman Catholic imagination.

The passion for orthodoxy is hardly a Catholic invention. The idea is built into the Christian religion, and is at least as old as Paul himself, who in 1 Corinthians 16:22 anathematizes those who do not love the Lord, and in Galatians 1:8f. does the same to any who preach a different gospel than his.

Last time I checked, this Paul was a hero of the Presbyterians, but apparently no more, at least at Alma College.

For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.

 

-- 1 Corinthians 11:19

Catholic George Weigel says Charlie Hebdo is as corrosive of decency as the jihadists are destructive of order

The Holy Trinity by Charlie Hebdo's Luz

Quoted here:

Issue after issue, Charlie Hebdo mocks, not vice and folly (which are fair game), but many people’s most deeply held and cherished beliefs, including their religious convictions. I won’t describe its cover cartoon lampooning the doctrine of the Trinity after the Catholic bishops of France had opposed so-called “gay marriage;” if that cover was not pornographic, than the word “pornographic” has no meaning.

In the world of Charlie Hebdo, sadly, all religious convictions (indeed all serious convictions about moral truth) are, by definition, fanaticism—and thus susceptible to the mockery of the “enlightened.” But that crude caricature of religious belief and moral conviction is false; it’s adolescent, if not downright childish; it inevitably lends itself to the kind of vulgarity that intends to wound, not amuse; and over the long haul, it’s as corrosive of the foundations of a decent society as the demented rage of the jihadists who murdered members of Charlie Hebdo’s staff.

Why Did God Create The World?

It is one of those odd sweeping questions of idealistic youth which I've never really outgrown.

Today I cannot remember what caused the original fascination with the question. During college I think it might have gained some momentum from the ideas of the creation theologians of Europe whom Bo Reicke once told me about. I've still got those books . . . in a box somewhere. I'll have to dig them out and look at them again.

I do remember thinking at the time that an appropriate theological answer had to be "love," but every time I discussed this with serious people, the discussion, I think by mutual perception, always ended up feeling kind of, well, corny! 

The trouble was I couldn't exactly nail down any sources which propounded that answer, nor could I really point to a fully worked out history of the idea. I dabbled with it for a while, and like so many ideas and enthusiasms of youth, it ceased to preoccupy my attention eventually.

And then I happened to read this today and all that came flooding back. The selection finally gives me an historical fix on the problem, from an essay on the trinitarian theology of Jonathan Edwards, by one Daniel M. Harrell, here:

The infinite happiness of God in community generates a delight that cannot be contained (for then God would be less happy, a logical impossibility). God's love radiates outward, emanating forth like a fountain. Edwards preached:

There is in heaven this fountain of love, this eternal three in one, set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it. There this glorious God is manifested and shines forth in full glory, in beams of love; there the fountain overflows in streams and rivers of love and delight, enough for all to drink at, and to swim in, yea, so as to overflow the world as it were with a deluge of love.

It was this unhindered, radiating deluge of love that resulted in creation. Trinitarian love is manifest in the interrelatedness of creation—nothing exists in pure independence. Trinitarian love is manifest in redemption that ushers saints into participation in God's overflowing happiness, a happiness that extends infinitely into eternity.

As it turns out, Edwards was also responsible for another aspect of Christian theological thinking which prepared the way for the psychological-social interpretation of the Christian life as "relational," a concept derived directly from his conception of the trinity and necessarily following from it. It is uncanny how in Edwards' conception of the trinity the only begotten son of God is a kind of perfect projection of the infinitely perfect thoughts of the father, which conception has an interesting bearing on what people mean when they say they have a personal relationship with Jesus. Is he not also a projection of our own minds, mediated by the thoughts we have of him, absorbed through the Bible?

In retrospect it's no wonder that the interdisciplinary department in which I studied religion so long ago with experts in Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism and Islam failed me on this one. The Great Awakening wasn't exactly their forte.

Looks like I have some work cut out for me. At least I know where to start.

(originally posted June 2011)  

To Infinity! And Beyond!

There was a young fellow from Trinity

Who took the square root of infinity.

But the number of digits

Gave him the fidgets;

He dropped Math and took up Divinity.

-- George Gamow, 1961