Thoughts on The Chosen

A dear friend and fellow Christian has been, for some time now, trying to get me to watch the show, "The Chosen." If you're unfamiliar with it, The Chosen is a dramatic series created by Dallas Jenkins depicting the life of Jesus. The show has become very popular and is now in its fourth season. My friend has been a zealous and tenacious evangelist for the show. A conversation rarely passes with him in which The Chosen isn't mentioned or where some interesting scene isn't described. My friend maintains that I will be hooked if I just consent to watch it once. Thus far, I have avoided an entire episode, though I promised to watch one of his choosing before the summer is out.

My friend rightly asks me why I have a problem with the show. That is the strange thing. I can't quite put my finger on what bothers me about it. I haven't watched entire episodes, but I have watched enough clips online to know it isn't for me. My immediate thought is that I don't particularly care for any dramatic depictions of the Bible. Most of them, including Mel Gibson's "The Passion," make me uneasy. And I don't mean that the subject matter makes me uneasy. I mean that the interpolation used to "fill in the gaps of Scripture" and the blatant attempts to manipulate my emotions makes me uncomfortable. After watching a 10-minute talk by Dallas Jenkins on The Chosen app, where he answered some common concerns and myths about the show, I decided to codify my distaste. It boils down to these things: 1) Revivalism, and 2) Gospel Reductionism.

I mean revivalism, in that the show tries to manipulate people's emotions so they come to the place where they will decide to become a Christian. I mean Gospel Reductionism, in that anything that does not fit within the so-called Gospel of "Jesus Loves You" is abandoned.

I know that what I think about this show is not popular. Personally, I don't care if you watch The Chosen or not. These are my reasons for abstaining. Dallas Jenkins' 10-minute video was enough to solidify my position.

The Chosen is designed to affect people emotionally. That should not be surprising. That is part of what art and entertainment generally try to do. It is this effect that the show is going for where Jesus is concerned, just like revival preachers employing Finney's New Measures. They are trying to humanize Jesus; to make him relatable. In the pages of Scripture, we think we get a more sterile Jesus. He is one-dimensional. But the Chosen fills in the gaps. In the show Jesus laughs; Jesus cries; Jesus interacts with His disciples in ways similar to how we interact with our own friends. In short, Jesus becomes more "real." The show affects the viewer emotionally, and the result of that emotional reaction is supposed to be the viewer seeing Jesus less as a character or figure and more as a real person to whom the viewer can relate. Dare I say, a more "authentic" Jesus. In fact, my friend expressed this thought to me directly. That plan is fantastic for a fiction writer trying to create believable, relatable, and more sympathetic characters. However, it is dangerous to the Christian faith when we do this with Jesus. You might even say that we are being led to the conclusion that Jesus is just like us and, therefore, He "gets" us.

Dallas Jenkins said that The Chosen is not a replacement for Scripture. The show is, instead, supposed to drive people who watch it into the study of Scripture. Mr. Jenkins says that, in his experience, this is what has happened. In my experience, however, it has been the opposite. At Bible study, particularly a study of the Gospel accounts, I hear fellow parishioners who watch The Chosen interject things like, "They depict this [verse/verses/story/etc] in such-and-such a way on The Chosen," as though the show is meant to illuminate Holy Scripture. And, whether they realize it or not, that is precisely what is happening to them. Scripture is being informed by the fictional dramatic elements of the show, making Scripture, they wrongly think, more lively, meaningful, and relatable.

As a Missouri Synod Lutheran, it is probably a fair criticism of me to say that I find a Higher Critical Gospel Reductionist under every rock. However, I think that how one views Scripture is essential when one is discussing theology in general and the person and work of Jesus Christ specifically. Dallas Jenkins identifies himself as an Evangelical (no, I'm not accusing him of being a Mormon), but that does not give any clue to how he views Holy Scripture. Does he think that the Bible the divinely inspired inerrant Word of God, or is the Bible a literary creation of man that merely contains the Word of God for us to seek out? From what he has said about his approach to Scripture and the show, I suspect it leans more toward the latter view.

Mr. Jenkins said that he has chosen only to depict what is in the pages of Scripture and not give any sort of interpretation, personal, denominational, or otherwise. Not only is this confusing, it is impossible. It matters greatly who Dallas Jenkins says Jesus is. If he is an Evangelical, he believes that Jesus is God in human flesh, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. This view must necessarily color his portrayal of Jesus, just as an atheist's or agnostic's view that Jesus was simply a good man and moral teacher will inform and influence his portrayal. Just like with Bible translations, all translation is interpretation to some degree. No one is unbiased; no one can be completely neutral. Moreover, complete neutrality is an odd goal for an Evangelical to strive for in recounting the story of Jesus to the world.

Jesus Himself posed this, the most important question: Who do you say that I am? Jesus says that He is the Word made flesh. He is true God and true man at the same time. Jesus says that He and God the Father are one. Jesus says that He came to serve mankind by giving His life as a ransom for many; that He would be crucified and rise from the dead. Scripture, the very Word of God, tells us that Jesus' death was the propitiatory sacrifice for our sins, and the sins of the whole world, and that He will return to judge the living and the dead. Jesus proved that His word was true by the miracles He performed, chief among those being His resurrection. That is a different Jesus from the one presented by theological liberals (higher critics), the LDS, and other non-Christian cults.

Mr. Jenkins' desire to leave aside, as he says, the "traditions of religion" is concerning to me. The traditions to which he refers are the very teachings of God recorded in Holy Scripture. The fact that Christians debate the things that Scripture teaches, and decide questions of fellowship based on those arguments, shows how important doctrine is. Such an approach, one which focuses only on the Gospel narrative and does not explain what is said and done by Jesus and the Apostles, is similar to Gospel Reductionism. Here, it seems the only important thing is how Jesus makes me feel. All questions of "religion," the doctrine that Jesus commanded His Apostles to teach in its entirety, are secondary.

We don't need an emotional experience with Jesus for the Gospel to be true. The Gospel is already true whether we believe it or not. Our feelings are not to be trusted. Jesus is, and we find Him and what He taught in the Bible, in the Lord's Supper, and in Baptism. Similarly, God's Word does not need to be marketed. Men are brought to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins by the power and working of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God as it is preached, read, meditated upon, and received through water (in Baptism), and bread and wine (in the Supper). God needs no help from us in this regard. Finally, the so-called traditions of religion cannot be ignored in favor of the bare narrative of the Gospel story alone. Jesus commanded His Apostles to teach everything that He commanded; Scripture calls us to watch our lives and our doctrine closely because by it (our scripturally true teachings given to us by Jesus), we shall save ourselves and our hearers. And, to say that one is presenting the story of Jesus without personal bias is naive at best and disingenuous at worst. ###

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Thoughts on Demographics, Higher Criticism, and the Future of the LCMS

We members of the LCMS are delusional. I have suspected that for years. Now, however, there is a survey to prove it.

Lyman Stone, an LCMS layman and demographer, conducted a survey last year entitled "The 2023 Lutheran Religious Life Survey." According to the description, the purpose of the survey was to collect information on the attitudes, characteristics, and views of LCMS members. The section "Perceived Congregational Growth" gives some astounding insights.

According to the survey, about half of the approximately 2,000 LCMS members surveyed think that their congregations are staying about the same in terms of growth. Over 30% of LCMS members believe that their congregations are growing. Just under 20% of LCMS members think that their congregations are shrinking (Stone, 2024).

The reality is quite different. Over 70% of LCMS congregations are shrinking, approximately 20% are holding their own, and fewer than 10% are growing (Stone, 2024).

This should be obvious to anyone who has not been living in a cave for the past 40 years. Reports concerning our demographic crisis have even been discussed in convention in 2016.

The fact of the matter is that we have stopped having babies. That may not be the only problem we have where membership is concerned, but it certainly is a significant one. Getting married, starting a family, and having children is the surest way to grow. The other side of that coin is, if our members do not have families, if they do not procreate above the replacement rate, then we will shrink. During the last several generations, the LCMS has imbibed many progressive philosophies from our pagan culture here in the United States. The most destructive one, after the introduction of Higher Criticism and Gospel Reductionism, are the effects of the sexual revolution. We at least attempted to fight against the higher critics hijacking our seminaries. We did not do nearly as well resisting the sexual revolution.

We can see the trends if we look at some other statistics. According to reports published by the LCMS School Ministry between the school years 2014-2015 and 2021-2022, the number of children baptized in Synod increased by a moderate 2.6%.[1] That sounds OK until we look closer. In 2014-2015, 1,756 children were baptized. The number peaks in 2016-2017 at 2,486. From that point onwards, however, the trend is downward, to 1,794 in 2021-2022, the latest available statistics.

Instead of sending the children we did have to Lutheran schools, we sent them to progressive government schools. We thought that having extra-curricular activities in which they could participate was more essential to their formation as a person than keeping Christ at the center of their education. But it turns out that weekly Sunday school and catechism class just is not enough to combat the onslaught of the godless Leftist culture which is offered to them at every opportunity.

Over the past eight years, the number of LCMS schools has declined by approximately 12%.[2] In 2014 there were 2,111 LCMS schools. In the 2021-22 school year there were 1,855 schools. Because of inconsistency in the number of schools reporting statistics each year, the student enrollment data is less straightforward. Overall, the trend was downward from 2015. In 2015, the reported enrollment for LCMS schools was 191,340 with 81% of congregations/schools reporting. By 2021, that number was 162,074 with only 73% of congregations/schools reporting. It is likely that, had the number of congregations that reported statistics for the 2021-22 school year been similar to the 2015-16 school year (approximately 19% non-reporting rate) the decline would be less severe. It would, however, likely still be a decline.

At the government school, they were given a feeling of belonging and purpose. They are, after all, kept there, on average, around eight hours a day, five days a week. They were taught a secular anti-catechism that is a mix of moral relativism, Marxism, sexual perversion, and radical environmentalism. They were taught to worship the planet, to worship the culture, to worship their feelings, to worship themselves. They were taught what to think, to conform, and that such conformity was really tolerance. All the while, we parents were in denial. We told ourselves that stuff might be happening in the big cities or on the coasts. But it is not happening in my hidden little Mayberry, USA.

But it is. It happens anywhere a teacher who was trained at a secular Leftist university is teaching children. They were all trained in progressivism.

And we were surprised that, when our kids returned from college, they no longer confessed Christ and Him crucified as the atonement for the sin of the world and claimed to be the opposite sex. But we should not be surprised when, to paraphrase Voddie Baucham, our kids return to us Romans, after we have sent them to Caesar for their education.

Knowing us, we will grab onto whatever the hottest trend was 20 years ago among American Evangelicals to try and grow our congregations. I’ve seen us do it. We will probably also continue to blame traditional liturgical practices, chanting, vestments, "dead orthodoxy," and not being "loving" (otherwise known as being doctrinally uncompromising). All the while, we will continue to ignore the fact that the Marxist-Leftist-racist-environmentalist religion has also infiltrated our Synod, particularly our Concordia university system, and dismiss those who try to warn about this danger as "mean."

Ironically, the so-called conservative, confessional, and traditional congregations are among the ones actually showing growth (Stone, 2024).

Don't get me wrong: I would bet that the LCMS is less far gone than most of American Christianity. We can probably attribute that to three things many in our Synod also dislike: our theological foundation, which is justification by faith in Christ alone, our high view of the Holy Scriptures as established and protected in the Book of Concord and by theologians such as Walther and Pieper, and our tendency to isolate ourselves from the broader culture because of our "German-ness."

It's just too bad we also have some kind of theological/cultural/academic inferiority complex to go along with all those things.

Since the early to mid-20th Century, our theologians and professors have wanted to be seen in a more favorable light by mainstream American academia. We wanted our schools, universities, and seminaries to be taken seriously and our professors to be accepted as serious scholars. We did not want to be seen as crazy immigrant fundamentalists who ran some backward Bible colleges. And, as we shed the German language and cultural customs, we looked less and less like outsiders. The more we engaged in academic debate, the more the ideas of mainline American academia and Protestantism began to gain traction in the Synod.

Rev. Dr. Scott Murray describes this situation well in his book, "Law, Life, and the Living God: The Third Use of the Law in Modern American Lutheranism."

Murray explains that the LCMS was seen as old-fashioned by the Lutheran theologians and academics in Germany. They derisively referred to the LCMS repristinators of theology from the age of Lutheran Orthodoxy. When LCMS theologians met with them in the late 1940s, they were surprised that the Germans had little regard for the Book of Concord, except for the Augsburg Confession. They particularly dismissed the Formula of Concord, which they saw as Melanchthonian and a corruption of Luther's theology.

The Luther Renaissance influenced theologians in Germany to focus on Luther and his writings rather than on the Book of Concord. Consequently, the status of the theologians and writings from the age of Lutheran Orthodoxy was diminished. As Murray points out, the problem with this is how do we know which Luther is the real Luther. As is well-known and documented, early Luther was a much different theologian than older Luther. He developed into a Lutheran out of Augustinianism over time. There is a danger that writings from Luther's various periods could be used to support views held by modern theologians but that Luther had grown out of.

The LCMS participated in ecumenical meetings in Germany in 1947-48. This was the LCMS theologians' first significant contact with German Lutherans, who had been heavily influenced by Kierkegaard and Existentialism. Murray says that the LCMS theologians were particularly enamored with Werner Elert. While the LCMS would continue to claim their orthodoxy and so-called repristination theology following the meetings, they did bring back certain existential Lutheran influences. Among those influences, writes Murray, was a distaste for the Third Use of the Law. But that wasn't the only thing.

Existentialism in Lutheranism comes from Soren Kierkegaard. To the existentialist Lutheran, faith is an existential communication between God and man, where man encounters God. Faith is more than just knowing the right doctrines and how to express them using the correct formulas of jargon (Murray, 2002). To them, Murray explains, faith is a subjective experience for each person.

Pieper and Walther were the prime examples of LCMS repristination to the German Lutherans. This was, Murray explains, because they primarily cited sources from the age of Orthodoxy, chief among those sources being the Book of Concord, rather than adding their own insights. Pieper and Walther held the Formula of Concord in high regard. At the Bad Boll meetings in 1947-48, the German Lutherans criticized Pieper and Walter, and accused them of holding Biblical inerrancy as more important than the Doctrine of Justification (Murray, 2002). Here, we see the beginnings of what would develop into Gospel Reductionism in the Missouri Synod in the coming decades.

By 1960, LCMS theologians were criticizing the "dead orthodoxy" of Pieper and Walther. They were moving toward a theology that was "personal and dynamic" (Murray, 2002). This movement, influenced by existentialist thought, leads to a weakening of objective truth. In existentialist theology, only subjective experience is of value. Such thinking, suggests Murray, would eventually lead to abandoning the Third use of the Law (Murray, 2002). It would also develop into Gospel Reductionism.

Gospel Reductionism is a term coined by John Warwick Montgomery in 1966 to describe how theologians in the LCMS were using only "Christ and the Gospel" as the rule for determining doctrine rather than the whole council of the divinely inspired and inerrant Word of God as we have it in the Bible (Harmelink, 2024). These professors viewed the Bible through the lens of Higher Criticism. They believed that the Bible, rather than being the Word of God, merely contained the Word of God. Our job was to sort out which bits were God's word and which were not. They reduced everything down to the Gospel. Doctrines that did not impact the Gospel did not need to be kept.

Harmelink explains that Gospel Reductionism abandons divine inspiration, inerrancy, and the authority of Holy Scripture. Instead, doctrine is subject to the Gospel only. This might sound okay on the surface. In reality, it is a way to grant permission not to believe in difficult or troublesome teachings.

Gospel Reductionism makes man the judge of Holy Scripture when it should be the other way around. The Bible is not subject to our reason (the magisterial use of reason); instead, our reason should be subject to the Word of God (the ministerial use of reason).

Gospel Reductionism uses "Christ and the Gospel" to do away with other teachings the Gospel Reductionists see as problematic while keeping the Gospel, or so they claim. Without a divinely inspired and inerrant Word of God as a foundation, as Harmelink says, it is impossible to hold on to the Gospel. The Word of God delivers Christ and the Gospel to us.

Thankfully, with the Walkout of the faculty majority who taught these things from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis 50 years ago this past February and the firm line taken by the faithful and confessional leadership of Synod at the time, Lutheran Orthodoxy decisively won the Battle for the Bible.

But we must realize that, though we may have won the battle, the war is far from over. It will continue as long as Jesus tarries and we live in this fallen creation.

What must we do to stop the theology of the world from regaining a foothold and regaining ground? I do not have the answer. I can tell you what we absolutely must not do, though: drop our Bible and Books of Concord so we can embrace this world's philosophies. The instant we forsake the preaching of Law and Gospel, and the authority of Scripture, we are finished as a church body. We will no longer be part of Christ's body; we will have fallen from grace.

We must realize that this stance might mean some uncomfortable times for the LCMS. We might have to shrink the scope of what our Synod does. We might have to endure some ridicule from the culture at large. We might have to think about our priorities in terms of funding, in terms of where mission work is done, what it looks like, and how we train our pastors. Our institutions may need to get smaller. Maybe our universities are not accredited through secular institutions, and they focus on church work. Maybe we spend more effort encouraging our families to choose the one thing needful and send their children to faithful Lutheran schools instead of the government schools, so that they may grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe we should start by encouraging Lutherans to get married and be open to having the number of children that the Lord will bless them with; to be fruitful, and multiply; to fill the earth and subdue it.

Yes, embracing these things may mean rejection and persecution by the world. But it will mean that, if those children we have and raise in the church persevere in the faith, they will receive a crown of life when Christ comes again.

And He is coming soon. ###

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Works Cited

Harmelink, D. (2024, February 19). It’s All About the Gospel . . . Isn’t It? The Lutheran Witness. Retrieved May 26, 2024, from https://witness.lcms.org/2024/the-walkout/

Murray, S. R. (2002). Law, Life, and the Living God [Kindle]. Concordia Publishing House. http://books.google.ie/books?id=L3XuNAAACAAJ&dq=Law,+Life,+and+the+Living+God&hl=&cd=1&source=gbs_api

Schmidt, R. (Director). (n.d.). Lutheran School Statistics. In LCMS School Ministry. Retrieved May 26, 2024, from https://www.lcms.org/school-ministry

Stone, L. (n.d.). Those Who Are Being Saved: Report on the Results of the 2023 Lutheran Religious Life Survey. https://www.lutheranlifesurvey.church/. Retrieved May 26, 2024, from https://www.lutheranlifesurvey.church/

What Do You Say Scripture Is?

 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel – which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned (Galatians 1:6-9).

All the arguments we have about Higher Criticism, about Gospel Reductionism, about Justification; they all have at their central point the same kernel: What is Scripture?

Either the Holy Scriptures are the divinely inspired and inerrant word of God, or they are corrupted. Either the Bible is the product of the omniscient God who created the universe, and spoke to mankind through men as He moved those men by His Holy Spirit, or it is just a collection of texts, created by men, out of which we might be able to extract some kind of significance if we do the right kind of mental gymnastics. Either the Holy Scriptures are the source of all Christian doctrine, and the norm for evaluating that doctrine, or they aren’t. And, if they aren’t, then the only source for doctrine is the devil and the human heart.

Those are our options, as I see it. It will do no good arguing about fine doctrinal points with someone who does not believe that the Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant. That person, even if he doesn't recognize or admit it, has no standard for doctrine. He may come up with anything he likes. The only limit to his creativity is his own intellect. Personally, that terrifies me. I think, however, that this is what is so attractive about modern theological and philosophical schools of thought. The higher critics abandoned the things that limited their thought, and they were free to search out what God really said in the human work of scripture. But that was the whole point of God giving scripture to us in the first place. It serves as an objective standard. It is supposed to be our limiting principle.

And I am at once suspicious of men who look at the word of God and ask the question, “Did God really say?”

But how do we know that scripture is divinely inspired and inerrant? Well, it tells us that it is. That isn't the simplistic argument that it seems. Scripture tells us that it is the product of God inspiring human writers to record His revelation to mankind. It records the movements of people groups; it describes wars and other events of human history. And we tend to find the archeological remnants of those people and their activities where the Bible tells us we will. Alas, secular scholars will dismiss what the Bible tells them about what they have found simply because the information comes from the Bible. But the archeological evidence, as Joel Kramer describes it, is like having five pieces of a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. The only way to make any sense of those pieces is to look at the picture on the box. The Bible is, for us, that picture.[1]

Moreover, its revelation was accompanied by miracles to confirm the authenticity of its message. The most important proof to an old “Biblicist” such as myself is that Jesus taught the divine character and perfection of the word of God, and He proved that He was God by rising from the dead, so we should pay attention to what He said.

Jesus said that the Bible was about Him. He is the center of all Holy Scripture. After His resurrection when He taught two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus, Jesus explained this to them:

He [Jesus] said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself (Luke 24:25-27).

When Jesus declares to the Pharisees in John 10:25 that the Scriptures cannot be broken, he is declaring that the Scriptures are true and correct; that they are the source from which all teachings are derived. In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declares that He came to fulfill the Scriptures:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:17-19).

Jesus did not set up a new religion. From Genesis to Malachi there is one primary message: all people are sinful because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience; all deserve God’s wrath because of our corruption. But God promised to send a Savior to deliver us from sin and death. Through faith in that promise, of which Jesus is the fulfillment, people living before the time of Jesus received God’s forgiveness and salvation.

And then, Jesus showed up, said that He was God in human flesh who came to die as the atoning sacrifice for sin, and rose from the dead after He was crucified to death. I'm going to listen to what He says.

But the higher critics won’t. My argument is, to them, a quaint remnant of a less enlightened time. The mere mention of miracles, actions that defy the laws of physics, would have them laughing in my face. They subscribe to the idea that nothing supernatural can be taken at face value. That's why you see higher critical scholars trying to explain Jesus’ walking on the water of the Sea of Galilee by some anomalous weather event that caused ice to form and provide a platform for our Lord to deceive the disciples.[2]

And that means all miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus. Modern scholars will twist themselves into knots talking about a “spiritual” resurrection. They will twist the scriptures any way they have to, to deny that Jesus actually rose from the dead. With St. Paul, however, I say that if Christ is not raised from the dead our preaching is useless, our faith is useless, all the dead are lost, we are still in our sins, and we are the most pathetic people of all:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men (1 Corinthians 15:14-19).

I do not, however, believe that the ESV Bible in the pew racks at your church is the divinely inspired inerrant word of God (That would be the NIV 1984, of course.../joking). It is generally taught that the autographs, those original copies which the divinely inspired authors produced, are the inerrant copies.[3] The manuscripts copied from those autographs certainly have errors in them. They don't, however, have errors as the modernists would like you to believe.[4] They will tell you that there are thousands of discrepancies, called textual variants, found between manuscripts![5] How are we to know the truth! So many differences! This might sound impressive until you realize that those so-called variants are incredibly minor. They are things like word order and spelling differences in manuscripts. And the other thing they won't tell you is that literally none of the thousands and thousands of textual variants affects a single point of doctrine.[6]

We have thousands and thousands of manuscript copies of the New Testament going back to the first generation of the Christian Church. They all say the same things. All of them. This wasn't some cosmic game of telephone where God told one guy something, and that guy whispered it to someone else and wasn't allowed to repeat the message, causing errors to creep in, until the final message bore no resemblance to the original one.[7] No, they copied the autographs. Then they checked the copies. Then they copied the copies. Then they checked those copies against the earliest copies they had. And they continued doing this for two millennia. Even today, when someone faithfully translates the Bible into modern language, they go back to the earliest sources available to make sure they are getting it right.

That’s not even considering the Old Testament, and how its text was faithfully preserved.

So, as far as Christian doctrine is concerned, scripture must be the source of it. Francis Pieper, another “Biblicist” who repristinates “dead orthodoxy” put it like this:

“It is impossible to separate these two functions of Scripture: to be the source of the Christian doctrine and to be its norm. The Holy Scriptures are the norm of the Christian doctrine only because they are its only source” (Pieper, 1950).[8]

We read what Scripture says about creation and mankind, how we were created perfect by a gracious God, and how we rejected that perfection by disobedience to His Law. We learn from Scripture the depth of our corruption by sin; that it is complete; so complete, in fact, that while we might realize that something isn't right with us, we can't recognize the problem in its entirety, let alone solve it. We must be taught that we are sinful creatures, lost and condemned. And, to set things right, God took on human flesh, was born of a woman, lived a sinless life and died as the vicarious atonement for the sins of the world.

It is through the working of the Holy Spirit through the means of God’s word, that He creates faith in Christ in us, giving us the gifts of His forgiveness, life, and salvation.

Pieper, again, says it better than I could:

Every theologian should be able to see that we are here confronted with an [sic] aut-aut. Either we accept Scripture as God's own Word and, emphasizing it as the sole source and norm of theology, teach doctrinam divinam, or we deny that Scripture is God's infallible Word, distinguish in it between truth and error, and teach, in God's Church, the “visions of our own heart,” the doctrina humana of our Ego. The divine authority which we take away from Scripture we necessarily assign to our own human mind. We are adrift on the sea of subjectivism. Human opinion occupies the rostrum in the Church. Theology is no longer theocentric, but has become anthropocentric” (Pieper, 1950).[9]

And, if we were to do that, we would be doing the devil’s will. ###

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End Notes

[1] Kramer, Joel P. 2020. “Where God Came Down: The Archaeological Evidence.” Introduction, p. 8. Brigham City: Expedition Bible (an imprint of Sourceflix Inc.).

[2] Borger, Julian. “Jesus Was Walking on Thin Ice, Claim Scientists.” the Guardian, February 22, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/apr/06/religion.news.

[3] Koukl, Greg. “‘Misquoting’ Jesus? Answering Bart Ehrman,” n.d. https://www.str.org/w/-misquoting-jesus-answering-bart-ehrman.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Barnett, Tim. “Textual Variants: It’s the Nature, Not the Number, That Matters,” n.d. https://www.str.org/w/textual-variants-it-s-the-nature-not-the-number-that-matters.

[6]Koukl, Greg. “‘Misquoting’ Jesus? Answering Bart Ehrman,” n.d. https://www.str.org/w/-misquoting-jesus-answering-bart-ehrman.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Pieper, Francis. 1950. “Christian Dogmatics,” vol. 1. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

[9] Ibid.

The Great Apostasy

Friday after Trinity 13

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer (1 Timothy 4:1-5).

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) recently held their convention. The convention was broadcast on the internet and, for the orthodox Christian who is unfamiliar with the liberal (and very political) Christianity of main-line Protestantism, the proceedings were quite shocking. Pastors preaching sermons, disguised as virtue-signaling prayers, on how white people can atone for America’s original sin of racism, which is inextricably imbedded in the machinery of both church and state. Groups of people on stage confessing their racial sins to people of color, and not receiving an absolution, but rather a prescription for how to make things right; a kind of modern day, social justice penance. And, in the most shocking moments, a flat-out denial of Jesus Christ. When a layman stood up to speak to a resolution asserting the validity of all religions, pointing out that Christ Himself denies this when He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me,” (John 14:6), he was derided and ridiculed openly on the convention floor by the clergy. The pastors scrambled to apologize to their “inter-faith guests” for the ignorant layman’s shocking, rude, and culturally insensitive comments.

Paul writes to Timothy, explaining that in the latter days, some people will depart from the faith. Paul seems to be dealing with the legalism of keeping the Old Testament Law, and the man-made traditions of the elders, that he writes about in his other epistles. Departure from sound doctrine, however, is certainly not limited to just these types of things. If you ever needed any evidence that we are living in the latter days, certainly such shameful goings-on should suffice. People dressed as pastors, shepherds of congregations charged with feeding their flocks with God’s Word and administering to them His Sacraments, denying Christ before all the world. Even the Pharisees were better than this. At least they honored God with their lips, though their hearts were far from Him. 

No, these are false ministers of a false Christ; one who is concerned with calling members of the oppressor classes to repentance for their sins of racism, sexism, and class exploitation. These ministers are not concerned with the actual Gospel message of Christ crucified as the ransom for mankind’s sin, and raised to life again on the third day for man’s justification. They are interested only in fixing the injustices of this present world; they are interested only in assigning guilt to people for the crimes of their ancestors collectively, to achieve social justice. They deal only with people as groups, and not as individuals. They never see a man as someone who is a sinner, in need of Christ’s forgiveness. He is only a member of a class, a race, or a gender. If one happens to be a part of an oppressor group, the only forgiveness he can hope for is what he can earn through doing the penance that the oppressed prescribe, and then only if he is deemed worthy enough will he be absolved.

This is called Liberation Theology. It is politics masquerading as religion. It has infected all of the so-called main-line Protestant denominations, along with the higher critical method of Biblical interpretation. It is what happens when you reject the truth of the Bible. St. Paul explains:

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty (1 Corinthians 15:13-14).

Higher criticism is a man-centered approach to Biblical interpretation. This approach assumes that to understand the Bible, we must understand the mind of the authors, and their perceptions of God, at the time they wrote what they wrote. It is inherently materialistic; in the higher critical method of Biblical interpretation there is no room for miracles. Higher critics claim to believe the Bible, but they cannot accept anything supernatural. That means no six-day creation; no parting of the Red Sea; no Jonah receiving a prophetic word from the Lord and being swallowed, and vomited out alive again, by a giant fish. It means, in fact, no prophetic words from the Lord at all. If nothing supernatural happens then all of the prophecies recorded in the Bible aren’t really prophecies. All of the things that the prophets wrote are just clever pieces of literature, written hundreds of years after the events that they claim to foretell. It means no fall into sin, no promise of a savior, and no Christ, God in human flesh. Jesus was simply a man, if he even existed, a wise and good moral teacher who cared about equality and justice, and taught men to love their neighbors. That means no atonement for sins, and no resurrection from the dead. The result of all this is indeed empty preaching and an empty faith:

For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable (1 Corinthians 15:17-19).

What happens to a congregation, or an entire denomination, in the case of the ELCA, that gives up the guts of the faith? Well, just like when a person is eviscerated, they die. But, those people have to put their hope in something. Since there is no supernatural, no hope in a world to come, no hope in a Jesus in whom dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily, who died as the atonement for sin, who has promised to return in judgment and bring ultimate justice to mankind, they must focus on themselves, and on the here-and-now. All of a sudden, the purpose of the church isn’t to preach Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins, but to fight for justice in this world. Man’s problem is no longer being dead in trespasses and sins, but rather racism, political oppression, and crimes against the environment.

What’s wrong with justice? Nothing. God’s Word calls us to be just; we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. If, however, you reject what God says about the human condition, you will never understand why that is impossible, in this fallen creation, to achieve that goal. Moreover, achieving social justice, whether you believe the idea is right or wrong, does nothing to rescue us from sin and death.

We are fallen, sinful creatures living in a fallen, sinful world. We are, by nature, sinful and unclean. It is why Jesus tells us, in the Sermon on the Mount, to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. He’s showing us that we can’t do it. He is using the Law to show us our sin, to show us that we are lost, and that we need a savior from outside of ourselves. In the absence of the real Jesus, churches turn to Counterfeit Jesus. In America, that is oftentimes Comrade Jesus. Comrade Jesus teaches us that our real problems are systemic racism, sexism, and class oppression. Comrade Jesus teaches us to overcome these sins through socialism, communism, environmentalism, and whatever other political “ism” there is that gives man a work to do to atone for their sin. Not their real sin, mind you, but the things that those “isms” call sin; the things they use to control men, and keep them from fixing their eyes on the real Jesus, the author and perfecter of the real faith.

What is the remedy? In short, it is to repent, and believe the Gospel. That is the fix for those caught in the heresy of Higher Criticism and Liberation Theology. Christ’s blood is powerful enough to wash away the stain of our sin, no matter what it is. But we who are firmly ensconced in supposedly orthodox church bodies, like the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, are not immune from what has happened in the ELCA. If we go chasing after fads, and abandon Jesus so that we can try to make friends with the world to keep parishioners in our pews, the same thing will happen with the LCMS. If we bow to the pressure to be relevant to the culture, to be “woke”, to be what the world falsely calls tolerant and loving, if we abandon sound doctrine, we will end up on a stage competing with each other in displays of heresy, virtue-signaling how woke we are on whatever issue the culture is up-in-arms about that week. And we will be outside of God’s Kingdom along with the other social justice warriors who have replaced Christ with the idol of politics. God forbid! Lord, have mercy!

Crowded or Empty? Thoughts on a YouTube Video About Hell

This video from Word of Fire is interesting. Bishop Barron talks a lot about hell, but he never gets around to answering the question that is the title of his video: Is hell crowded or empty? To cut to the chase, he equivocates; he says that he doesn’t know. He doesn’t believe hell is a literal place (I suppose that would make it empty?), but rather a spiritual place where we, creatures having free will in spiritual matters, isolate ourselves from God by rejecting Him through our own free choice. He refers to hell as a metaphor for the deep loneliness and isolation one experiences after rejecting God. He does conclude that, “We may reasonably hope that all people are saved.”

There are some good things in the video, but how much arsenic do you want in your bottle of drinking water? The government sets limits for contaminants in drinking water based on the toxicity levels of various substances. The Environmental Protection Agency has set an arsenic maximum contaminant level for public water supplies at 0.010 mg/L (milligrams/Liter).[1] Sadly, we are unable to do the same with false teaching. Jesus wants us to teach all that He has commanded;[2] and just as a little leaven will work it’s way through the whole lump of dough,[3] a little heresy will work it’s way through the whole church, if we aren’t careful. I think Bishop Barron’s video about hell is a milligram too much arsenic in my doctrinal water bottle to swallow.

Bishop Barron summarizes several theologians, Roman and Evangelical, and their views on salvation. He summarizes Karl Barth as a Universalist using Barth’s quote, “All are saved in the cross of Christ.” I don’t know all there is to know about Karl Barth, or even agree with a lot of what I do know, but the statement, “All are saved in the cross of Christ," is true, even if it isn’t in the way Barth meant it. Jesus died for, and indeed saved, the whole world.[4] Some men resist and reject receiving that gift. It’s the old story of the million dollar check: Bill Gates can write you a $1 million check. The money is yours. You have $1 million. If, however, you refuse to cash the check when he offers it to you - or probably more accurately, you throw the envelope away when it comes in the mail - you don’t benefit from the gift that was freely given to you. Those who are saved are saved by God’s working alone; those who are not receive all the credit for their damnation themselves.

The Bishop agrees with Hans Urs von Balthasar, the final theologian he presents. Balthasar says that we can believe all people are saved, but we can’t know it for sure; the reason we can’t be certain, he explains, is because men have free will and can reject God. I wouldn’t say, as the Bishop explains, that human freedom can resist God’s act of love; rather, the Bible tells us that we have no freedom, as we are dead in trespasses and sins; we are, by nature, objects of wrath.[5] That’s why we resist, and we are able to reject. It is our natural inclination to pursue the desires of our flesh, sin, and to reject God. It is clear, however, that there is no free will in spiritual matters, in the common understanding of the term. We are either slaves to sin and enemies of God, or we are slaves to Christ and set free from sin.[6]

His position on hell seems to be that he believes it to be real, but not exactly a physical place, like Pocatello, Idaho, and God, being Love, doesn’t send people there. Billy Graham said things that sound similar. This shouldn’t be surprising, since Rome and American Evangelicalism often have a similar view of free will. Rev. Graham sometimes talked about hell being complete separation from God, rather than an actual physical place where fire burns you forever.

More important, the mature Graham steered away from hell in general, and when he did talk about it, all that he would affirm with certainty was that it meant separation from God... “The only thing I could say for sure is that hell means separation from God. We are separated from his light, from his fellowship. That is going to be hell. When it comes to a literal fire, I don’t preach it because I’m not sure about it.”[7]

Other evangelical teachers have said similar things. These evangelical teachers, however, were not necessarily denying the existence of a literal place called hell, wherein the actual physical people who were damned would be. It may be partly a case of trying to use words to describe the indescribable. I don’t know why Billy Graham would equivocate on hell, or why anyone who believes Scripture would say that it isn’t a literal place. Christ says,

“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched—where ‘Their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.’”[8]

Jesus goes on to teach that it isn’t our hand that causes us to sin, but our corrupt heart, so don’t go chopping off your hand. But we will indeed enter into a literal eternal life with a resurrected body; what in the text would cause us to read the second part of Jesus’ quote as figurative? Of course, American Evangelicalism also denies Jesus’ words their literal meaning when He says, “Take, eat; this is My body, given for you,”[9] but I digress...

The Bible teaches that hell, like heaven, is a place. On the Last Day the dead will be raised. We will all be gathered before Him. [10] The righteous will inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world; to the wicked He will say,

“Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”[11]

And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.[12] This is not a parable. This is not figurative language. Jesus tells us how the Judgment will be, and it includes a hell with fire, and Him sending people to it. Jesus, with His new, perfect resurrected body, is in heaven (also a place) right now, ruling over the universe; He is seated at the right hand of God the Father.[13]

When He is speaking to His Apostles, Jesus teaches them about the true fear of God. He says:

“Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”[14]

Who is it who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell? God. When Christ returns to judge the world on the Last Day we will see from which side the door of hell is locked.

Just because something is “dark” doesn’t mean it is false. I get the impression that Bishop Barron doesn’t like the idea of hell as a physical place where people actually go as a result of God’s judgment because it seems dark, scary, and mean. There are, however, a lot of dark things which are true.

Bishop Barron condemns Origen for being a Universalist at the beginning of the video, but the big reveal of his own position is... universalism! It’s an equivocating kind, but it is universalism nonetheless. He says we can have reasonable hope that all will be saved, but we can’t know it. That’s just plain rubbish. Scripture tells us that not everyone will be saved. The number of the saved will be a great multitude which no one can count,[15] but that doesn’t mean it will be everyone. Jesus uses the illustration of men in a field and women grinding at a mill to depict the Judgment. He says two men will be in the field, one will be taken, the other will be left, etc. He then connects this illustration to the clearest type of the Day of the Lord, Judgment Day, in the Bible - the Flood, wherein eight people are saved in the ark from the flood waters, out of all of mankind.[16] Ultimately, I want everyone to be saved, but that is God’s work, which He does through the means of His Word. And we simply don’t know, this side of heaven, what the individual results are. We only know what God reveals to us in His Word, and He has revealed to us that

narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.[17]

The bottom line is this: You may hope whatever you like, but that doesn’t change the fact that not all people will be saved. Bishop Barron isn’t simply saying here, “Gee, I hope everybody gets saved.” He’s trying to validate the heresy of universalism through the use of philosophy and reason. It’s the same old human story, different day. When he says we can hope all people are saved he is giving permission to believe this. What he doesn’t give is any proof from Holy Scripture. The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, teaches that the eternal death of hell is the consequence for mortal sin.[18] They also teach, rightly, that hell is the location of the damned.[19] The Roman Catholic Church and the Lutherans, regarding hell, agree as we confess in the Athanasian Creed together, “And those who have done good will enter into eternal life, and those who have done evil into eternal fire.”

God certainly is love; God certainly has the power to save everyone. He has indeed saved the whole world in the cross of Christ. Jesus, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, my Lord, has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature. He has purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil. He has purchased me, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. He has done this for all men. Many stiff-necked people, however, always resist the working of God’s Holy Spirit in the words of the gospel.[20] We can hope that all men are saved by God, in the sense that we would like for it to happen; we have no indication from Holy Scripture, however, that this is the case. Quite to the contrary: God demonstrates that He wishes to deal with us through the means of His Word, and not other special ways we don’t know about, even though He is quite capable of doing so.[21] God’s Word tells us that many will reject Jesus as the multitudes did in John chapter 6.[22] Families will be divided over faith in Christ.[23] The love of many will grow cold all through the time of the end, but he who endures to the end will be saved.[24] This implies that some men will not endure, and therefore not be saved. Those men will find themselves in a very real, physical place called hell. Since not all men will be saved, that means that hell is not/will not be empty.

This discussion reminds me of a conversation Jesus had with His disciples about tragedy, and people who suffer it.[25]

There were present at that season some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to them, “Do you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans, because they suffered such things? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners than all other men who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”[26]

We spill all this ink, and spend all this time, talking about hell. Why? We are afraid of it. We’re looking for an out. We can rest a little easier if we can see that either those who end up in hell deserved it more than we do, or no one will ultimately go there at all. This is what the disciples thought about the Galileans in the passage above. They must’ve been worse sinners, for something so terrible to happen to them. Jesus says no. We all deserve punishment for our sin. Jesus says we shouldn’t focus on trying to figure out how some tragedy is the punishment for the sin of those who experienced it. We should repent. Tragic events we see and experience should cause us to reflect on our sinful state, repent, and be forgiven by Jesus. It is the same with hell. Rather than using philosophy and reason to think all the damned out of hell, or reason why we ourselves don’t deserve it in the first place, the descriptions Jesus gives us of hell should terrify us. It should cause us to think about our sinfulness and repent of our sin. Hearing this Word, we should reflect on the wondrous love of Christ, who would suffer physical pain and death, and the pains of hell itself, to pay the ransom for those who are His enemies.  We should hear God’s Word and believe what it says. We should trust in Our Lord Jesus, who promised that He went away to prepare a place for us with Him.[27] If we are worried about the eternal state of those around us, we should do as we are called to do, and scatter the seed of God’s Word as the sower in Jesus’ parable.[28]

 

The Last Judgment polyptych by Rogier van der Weyden.

Bibliography

Interdicasterial Commission for the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Cathechism of the Catholic Church. New Hope, KY: Urbi et Orbi Communications, 1994.

Luther, Martin. "The Smalcald Articles." The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Lutheran Church. Edited by F. Bente. bookofconcord.org.

Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. "Arsenic in Well Water." Michigan.gov. https://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-wd-gws-wcu-arsenicwellwater_270592_7.pdf (accessed July 16, 2019).

Wacker, Grant. America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2014.

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[1] “Arsenic in Well Water,” Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, Google, accessed July 16, 2019, https://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-wd-gws-wcu-arsenicwellwater_270592_7.pdf.

[2] Matthew 28:17-20

[3] Galatians 5:7-15

[4] John 1:29-34; 3:16

[5] Ephesians 2:1-10

[6] Romans 8:1-2

[7]  Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2014), 50, https://books.google.com/books?id=LzwiBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA50&lpg=PA50&dq=The+only+thing+I+could+say+for+sure+is+that+hell+means+separation+from+God.&source=bl&ots=OZ_o6nKLB4&sig=ACfU3U1K-0UGiGICJWBGztPBxdzH2Ab0mw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi5g5uF2rnjAhVLOs0KHX4kAdwQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=The%20only%20thing%20I%20could%20say%20for%20sure%20is%20that%20hell%20means%20separation%20from%20God.&f=false.

[8] Mark 9:43-44

[9] Matthew 26:26

[10] Matthew 25:31-46

[11] Matthew 25:41

[12] Matthew 25:46

[13] Luke 24:51; Acts 1:9-11; Psalm 110:1; Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:20-23

[14] Matthew 10:27-28

[15] Revelation 7:9

[16] Matthew 24:36-44

[17] Matthew 7:13, emphasis added

[18] Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Catechism of the Catholic Church, (New Hope: Urbi Et Orbi Communications, 1994), 456.

[19] Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Catechism of the Catholic Church, (New Hope: Urbi Et Orbi Communications, 1994), 164-165.

[20] Acts 7:51

[21] Martin Luther, “Smalcald Articles,” accessed July 16, 2019, http://bookofconcord.org/smalcald.php#confession. “In a word, enthusiasm inheres in Adam and his children from the beginning [from the first fall] to the end of the world, [its poison] having been implanted and infused into them by the old dragon, and is the origin, power [life], and strength of all heresy, especially of that of the Papacy and Mahomet. Therefore we ought and must constantly maintain this point, that God does not wish to deal with us otherwise than through the spoken Word and the Sacraments. It is the devil himself whatsoever is extolled as Spirit without the Word and Sacraments. For God wished to appear even to Moses through the burning bush and spoken Word; and no prophet neither Elijah nor Elisha, received the Spirit without the Ten Commandments [or spoken Word]. Neither was John the Baptist conceived without the preceding word of Gabriel, nor did he leap in his mother's womb without the voice of Mary. And Peter says, 2 Pet. 1:21: The prophecy came not by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Without the outward Word, however, they were not holy, much less would the Holy Ghost have moved them to speak when they still were unholy [or profane]; for they were holy, says he, since the Holy Ghost spake through them (SA III, 9-13).

[22] John 6:60-71

[23] Matthew 10:34-36

[24] Matthew 24:12-14

[25] Luke 13:1-5

[26] ibid.

[27] John 14:3

[28] Matthew 13:1-9