http://pastoralmeanderings.blogspot.com/2014/07/moralistic-therapeutic-deism-say-that.html
About Me
- Timothy C. Schenks
- I have lived in Poplar Bluff, Cape Girardeau, and (briefly) Altenburg, Missouri
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
Why Be Lutheran?
Reply posted by Pr. William Weedon on the ALPB Online Forum on the question of why be a Lutheran:
George,
Been rather occupied of late, but I didn't want the question to go unanswered from my LCMS perspective. First, the reason I'd want anyone and everyone to be Lutheran is because I believe that we hold the pure and true confession of the Christian faith. Second, the way I'd share that with anyone is rather simple. I'd use the old Patristic method that St. John Chrysostom espoused:
There comes a heathen and says, "I wish to become a Christian, but I know not whom to join: there is much fighting and faction among you, much confusion: which doctrine am I to choose?" How shall we answer him? "Each of you" (says he) "asserts, 'I speak the truth.'" No doubt: this is in our favor. For if we told you to be persuaded by arguments, you might well be perplexed: but if we bid you believe the Scriptures, and these are simple and true, the decision is easy for you. If any agree with the Scriptures, he is the Christian; if any fight against them, he is far from this rule. -- St. John Chrysostom, (Homily 33 in Acts of the Apostles [NPNF1,11:210-11; PG 60.243-44])
So I'd say: here's the Scripture. Here's our Confessions. If you find they say the same thing, you're a Lutheran! And when it comes to our Confessions, I'd really just stick to the Creeds, the AC, and the SC. That's the sum of the Confessions and everything else in them can be extrapolated from those documents. So it's not too hard, but it IS worthy of hard study, prayer, and thought.
If the person had any questions about why we taught X or Y, I'd certainly be more than ready to demonstrate why we do so from the Scriptures.
But that's how I'd approach it. I don't think the Scriptures are the least bit unclear (despite OUR cloudiness!) and I don't think there's a clearer exposition of the Scriptures to be found anywhere in the world than the Lutheran Symbols.
P.S.S. Let me also add (because I can hear the objection arising already), but EVERY Protestant sect claims that (as also, of course, do Rome and the East). But the great joy of the Lutheran Church is that it simply knows no other way to persuade a person and absolutely renounces every coercion of conscience. We say:
Here are the Scriptures.
and
Here is what our Church believes, teaches and confesses on the basis of those Scriptures.
You check it out and see.
There was a time when Orthodox polemics had almost persuaded me that private judgment was an evil, but then Krauth showed ever so clearly (and also St. Augustine!) that one arrives at any conviction (even the renunciation of private judgement!) only by its exercise!!! We cannot do better than what we saw the Christians do at Berea: to check what is taught against what is written.
George,
Been rather occupied of late, but I didn't want the question to go unanswered from my LCMS perspective. First, the reason I'd want anyone and everyone to be Lutheran is because I believe that we hold the pure and true confession of the Christian faith. Second, the way I'd share that with anyone is rather simple. I'd use the old Patristic method that St. John Chrysostom espoused:
There comes a heathen and says, "I wish to become a Christian, but I know not whom to join: there is much fighting and faction among you, much confusion: which doctrine am I to choose?" How shall we answer him? "Each of you" (says he) "asserts, 'I speak the truth.'" No doubt: this is in our favor. For if we told you to be persuaded by arguments, you might well be perplexed: but if we bid you believe the Scriptures, and these are simple and true, the decision is easy for you. If any agree with the Scriptures, he is the Christian; if any fight against them, he is far from this rule. -- St. John Chrysostom, (Homily 33 in Acts of the Apostles [NPNF1,11:210-11; PG 60.243-44])
So I'd say: here's the Scripture. Here's our Confessions. If you find they say the same thing, you're a Lutheran! And when it comes to our Confessions, I'd really just stick to the Creeds, the AC, and the SC. That's the sum of the Confessions and everything else in them can be extrapolated from those documents. So it's not too hard, but it IS worthy of hard study, prayer, and thought.
If the person had any questions about why we taught X or Y, I'd certainly be more than ready to demonstrate why we do so from the Scriptures.
But that's how I'd approach it. I don't think the Scriptures are the least bit unclear (despite OUR cloudiness!) and I don't think there's a clearer exposition of the Scriptures to be found anywhere in the world than the Lutheran Symbols.
P.S.S. Let me also add (because I can hear the objection arising already), but EVERY Protestant sect claims that (as also, of course, do Rome and the East). But the great joy of the Lutheran Church is that it simply knows no other way to persuade a person and absolutely renounces every coercion of conscience. We say:
Here are the Scriptures.
and
Here is what our Church believes, teaches and confesses on the basis of those Scriptures.
You check it out and see.
There was a time when Orthodox polemics had almost persuaded me that private judgment was an evil, but then Krauth showed ever so clearly (and also St. Augustine!) that one arrives at any conviction (even the renunciation of private judgement!) only by its exercise!!! We cannot do better than what we saw the Christians do at Berea: to check what is taught against what is written.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
I Do Not want My Grandfather’s Church Nor Captain Kirk, by Pastor Klemet Preus
Reposted from Aug. 12, 2008 article at http://steadfastlutherans.org
August 12th, 2008 by Pastor Klemet Preus
While
theology does not change, management style and theory do. And these days we are
experiencing a leadership style which is painfully similar to that of my
Grandfather’s church but without effectiveness.
The Baby Boom
took place from 1946-1964. Those born before the baby boom tend to have a top
down leadership theory and style. Those at the top make decisions which those
under them carry out. In this system, leaders, if they are to function at
maximum efficiency must have the authority to appoint subordinates, instruct
them, direct them, replace them if necessary and basically lead through giving
directions. The quintessential leader of this generation is Captain James T.
Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. He made decisions without really consulting too
many people. He rarely sought the council of his detractors and he was always
flying by the seat of his pants. He delegated as little as possible insisting
that he was really the one to carry out most of the crucial tasks. When McCoy is
complaining “Darnn it Jim. I’m a doctor, not a miracle worker,” you know that
too few people are doing the work.
This is
president Kieschnick’s style – kind of. He is top down in his approach. He was
the president who, in encouraging us to give our money to the synod wrote,
“You’ve got it. We need it. Let’s have it.” Is that top down? You bet. When the
Board of Communications Services called someone to be the assistant editor of
the Lutheran Witness, President Kieschnick nixed the choice because he did not
like the board’s appointee. In his fundraising visits President Kieschnick has
to make the direct appeals himself. This cannot be entrusted to others. And,
while President Kieschnick apparently does have his advisors, most seem to be
cut from his cloth. He even beseeched the convention in 2001 to elect men of his
ilk to other positions of leadership. Those vice presidents who served during
his first term were used sparingly if at all. In fact the 2004 convention was
the first convention in recent memory in which no vice president chaired the
assembly. His first vice president was consulted neither on the Benke matter nor
on other matters of crucial importance to the synod such as CCM appointments.
President Kieschnick would no more listen to guys like Daniel Preus or Todd
Wilken than James Kirk would heed the council of a Klingon.
The
difference between Kirk and Kieschnick is that Captain Kirk was actually willing
to endanger himself for the sake of his goals and his comrades. He fought the
Klingons hand to hand. He would never have hung a colleague out to dry. Are you
listening David Strand? He never intimidated by innuendo or through his minions.
He did it face to face by the force of his own person. Would it have taken Kirk
five years to sit down and talk to NICL? No way. He would have initiated dialog
immediately and would have had the confidence to be the chief spokesmen in
dialog. Top down leadership must be courageous and competent.
Baby Boomers
tend to be drawn to a more synergistic style of leadership. They want a leader
who will invite the advice of detractors, who will surround himself with people
who are experts in many diverse subjects. Baby Boomers want a leader who will
say, “You’ve got it. We need it. How can you teach us to get it?” Baby Boomers
don’t necessarily need a leader who has all the answers when it comes to
administrative decisions. They want one who will listen to a multitude of
answers and sift through them. The quintessential leader for the Baby Boom
generation is Jean Luc Piccard of the Starship Enterprise. He was captian in
“Star-Trek: The Next Generation”. His style was to call a meeting of all his
senior staff. Here he would pose the problem, analyze it with his staff and
listen to possible solutions. And his staff was a thoroughly diverse group made
up of aliens, Klingons, Robots and – even some detractors. Piccard knew that you
can never solve problems without making room for all within the decision making
mechanism.
Of course
this style actually requires a bit of trust and respect. You can’t call your
detractors “speed-bumps.” You can’t
ignore them for years on end. You can’t refuse to consult anyone you think will
disagree. You can’t hoard power or grasp it. You don’t push, you – well – you
lead.
I’m a Boomer
and I enjoyed both Kirk and Piccard. Kirk was much more exciting than Piccard.
But Kirk got fat, raised horses and lived off the past. And while he had power
he endangered the ship recklessly. Piccard. Ah, Piccard. I wish we could find a
Piccard for the church. I sure am getting tired of my grandfather’s church.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Southeast MO State University Chapel Now LCMS RSO
http://blogs.lcms.org/2014/rso-update
Congratulations to the University Lutheran Chapel of Hope in Cape Girardeau, MO, on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University. Formerly a mission of the Missouri District, they've recently been accepted as an RSO of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod.
Congratulations to the University Lutheran Chapel of Hope in Cape Girardeau, MO, on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University. Formerly a mission of the Missouri District, they've recently been accepted as an RSO of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
"Oh, How They Loved One Another (How to destroy a church)" by MO District President
From June 2010 Voice of Missouri by District President Ray Mirly:
Oh, How They Loved One Another
How to destroy a church:
1. Teach false doctrine.
2. Find something that you do not like in your church, get others in the congregation to agree with you, but do not go to the pastor or other church leaders to tell them what it is you dislike and why.
3. Spread gossip, share rumors, participate in “parking lot” meetings or use e-mail to gripe and complain.
4. Demonize the pastor or other congregation workers or leaders.
5. Withhold your offerings because you are upset about something that happened in your congregation.
6. Expect others in the congregation, other than yourself, to change their negative behavior.
7. Fail to follow Matt. 18:15-18 when you feel like someone in the congregation has done something wrong toward you or someone else.
8. Expect the pastor, congregation leaders or fellow members to know that you are upset, what you are upset about, and to “fix the problem” without telling them what it is that upsets you.
9. When asked to serve on boards or committees, decline.
10. Be against every new idea without studying it, praying about it, discussing it, and joining all the members to make a decision about it.
One would think that only the teaching of false doctrine would be sufficient to destroy a congregation. Frankly, Missouri District congregations are not willing to put up with false doctrine. Members know what the Bible says, have put to memory Luther’s Small Catechism, many have studied Luther’s Large Catechism and a goodly number the Lutheran Confessions. Most everyone knows when a doctrine is being taught correctly.
Amazing as it might seem, the rest of the list above is not fictitious. Unfortunately, numbers two through 10 happen fairly regularly. The devil knows us well, doesn’t he? He can get us to do so much damage to one another’s reputation that our ability to proclaim the Gospel is severely compromised. He can get us to think that only our ideas are right and those that do not agree with us are wrong. He knows how to cause us to take our eyes off Jesus Christ.
Do you or I really believe that having the reputation as a fighting congregation, district or Synod enhances the proclamation of the Gospel? Do we believe that our attempts to destroy the reputation of fellow members, congregation leaders, the pastor, those leading the district or Synod is going to make our congregation or the LCMS stronger? The Old Adam in each of us loves the negative! He loves to hear someone tear down the good name of someone else. He wants us to destroy one another.
In the Holy Scriptures we read these simple words, “Oh, how they loved one another.” Jesus said, “Love one another even as I have loved you.” St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 what Christian love looks like.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus tells us to build one another up. The Holy Scriptures encourage us to pray for one another; encourage one another; defend one another; and forgive one another. Martin Luther in his explanation to the Eighth Commandment says that we should “put the best construction on everything” we say about our neighbor.
Your pastor and lay leaders cannot read your mind. I encourage you to speak with them first before you speak about them to anyone else. Jesus encourages us to be a “light unto the world.” That light is Jesus Christ! We do this when we speak the Gospel and also live out the Gospel in our lives.
God in Christ has reconciled us unto Himself. Even as Christ has reconciled us with our
heavenly Father, so through Him we become reconciled with one another. Imagine that it is said of all of us, “Oh, how they loved one another."
--
Oh, How They Loved One Another
How to destroy a church:
1. Teach false doctrine.
2. Find something that you do not like in your church, get others in the congregation to agree with you, but do not go to the pastor or other church leaders to tell them what it is you dislike and why.
3. Spread gossip, share rumors, participate in “parking lot” meetings or use e-mail to gripe and complain.
4. Demonize the pastor or other congregation workers or leaders.
5. Withhold your offerings because you are upset about something that happened in your congregation.
6. Expect others in the congregation, other than yourself, to change their negative behavior.
7. Fail to follow Matt. 18:15-18 when you feel like someone in the congregation has done something wrong toward you or someone else.
8. Expect the pastor, congregation leaders or fellow members to know that you are upset, what you are upset about, and to “fix the problem” without telling them what it is that upsets you.
9. When asked to serve on boards or committees, decline.
10. Be against every new idea without studying it, praying about it, discussing it, and joining all the members to make a decision about it.
One would think that only the teaching of false doctrine would be sufficient to destroy a congregation. Frankly, Missouri District congregations are not willing to put up with false doctrine. Members know what the Bible says, have put to memory Luther’s Small Catechism, many have studied Luther’s Large Catechism and a goodly number the Lutheran Confessions. Most everyone knows when a doctrine is being taught correctly.
Amazing as it might seem, the rest of the list above is not fictitious. Unfortunately, numbers two through 10 happen fairly regularly. The devil knows us well, doesn’t he? He can get us to do so much damage to one another’s reputation that our ability to proclaim the Gospel is severely compromised. He can get us to think that only our ideas are right and those that do not agree with us are wrong. He knows how to cause us to take our eyes off Jesus Christ.
Do you or I really believe that having the reputation as a fighting congregation, district or Synod enhances the proclamation of the Gospel? Do we believe that our attempts to destroy the reputation of fellow members, congregation leaders, the pastor, those leading the district or Synod is going to make our congregation or the LCMS stronger? The Old Adam in each of us loves the negative! He loves to hear someone tear down the good name of someone else. He wants us to destroy one another.
In the Holy Scriptures we read these simple words, “Oh, how they loved one another.” Jesus said, “Love one another even as I have loved you.” St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 what Christian love looks like.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus tells us to build one another up. The Holy Scriptures encourage us to pray for one another; encourage one another; defend one another; and forgive one another. Martin Luther in his explanation to the Eighth Commandment says that we should “put the best construction on everything” we say about our neighbor.
Your pastor and lay leaders cannot read your mind. I encourage you to speak with them first before you speak about them to anyone else. Jesus encourages us to be a “light unto the world.” That light is Jesus Christ! We do this when we speak the Gospel and also live out the Gospel in our lives.
God in Christ has reconciled us unto Himself. Even as Christ has reconciled us with our
heavenly Father, so through Him we become reconciled with one another. Imagine that it is said of all of us, “Oh, how they loved one another."
--
"President Mirly, 'Can't you help us get rid of our pastor?" by MO District President
It looks like the MO District deleted most of their archives when they rebuilt their website. I found a copy of "President Mirly, Can't You Help Us Get Rid of Our Pastor?" and typed it out.
From the president’s desk
President Mirly, “Can’t you help
us get rid of our pastor?”
Ray Mirly – Voice of Missouri March/April 2007
Yes, I have received phone calls, e-mails, letters and held office visits where this request has been presented to me. In turn, I have received e-mails, phone calls, letters and held office visits with pastors alleging that individuals in the congregations are guilty of slandering and libeling them or concerned that a small group of members are seeking to force them out of office. These situations are not unique to the Missouri District. All 35 district presidents of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod are dealing with similar situations. Pastors are not perfect! Congregations are not perfect! In fact parishioners and pastors are sinners. And yes, within the context of a congregation’s ministry, at times there are members who sin against the pastor. There are times when pastors sin against members.
Where should we begin with the issue of conflict between a congregation and its pastor, a congregation member with its pastor or a pastor with either of the two? What I find in many cases is that when either becomes upset with the other, they do not go to the pastor or the pastor to the congregation member in order to sit down and discuss their differences.
We Lutherans incorporate public confession of sins into our worship service. In that confession we all confess that we have sinned. There is not one of us who is perfect. In confession we take our sins to the cross of Jesus, lay our sins upon Him and through our faith in Him beg our heavenly Father’s forgiveness. There is nothing more important for us to hear than the words of absolution, is there?
What has happened to Matthew 18? There Jesus says that if our brother or sister has sinned against us, we are to go to him or her to show them their sin. In our relationships in the church today, it seems that we have forgotten this very first step in dealing with an offense, sin or hurt. We instead tell everyone but the person who has sinned against us the terrible things that that person has done to us. This includes parishioners toward their pastors and pastors toward parishioners.
When someone brings a complaint against their pastor or vice versa, the first question that I ask is, “Have you personally gone to the pastor . . . to the congregation member to discuss your concern?” The typical answer is, “They won’t listen to me!” Or, “It won’t do any good.” Then what often follows is a litany of other wrongs that have been committed.
Unresolved conflicts simply breed additional conflicts. Jesus knew that when He spoke the words of Matt. 18:15ff. Jesus also knew that when fellow Christians do not properly confront sin and sinners do not have deep sorrow for their sins that most often new sins will be added to the sins already committed. On the other hand, confessed sin that is brought to Christ’s cross and God’s forgiveness is announced to the sinner, the sin is washed away never to be charged to the credit of the one who had committed it.
Lay members . . . pastors are not the enemy. Pastors . . . lay members are not the enemy. The enemy is Satan, the world and our sinful old Adam. These three sinful allies have turned us Christians against each other. Instead of focusing our time and energy upon the mission that Jesus has given us to do, namely the Great Commission, we are far too focused upon personal wants, personal feelings and personal agendas. There is but one agenda that is appropriate for God’s people. That agenda is that we be in the Word, properly giving and receiving the Sacraments and using our time, talents and treasures as servants of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
When our hearts and souls are focused upon Jesus and our life as His disciples, Satan, the world and our sinful old Adam find it very difficult to divert our attention. When, on the other hand, they are focused upon ourselves or worldly matters, we have entered Satan’s playground.
If you are in conflict or bear anger toward a fellow Christian—whether pastor, parishioner, neighbor, friend or enemy—take your grievance to Him who bore all sins on the cross. If you are unable alone to bring about resolution with your brother or sister in Christ, then take a trusted fellow Christian with you in order to discuss the matters that weigh down your heart.
Remember Christ’s invitation, “Cast all your burdens (here He has our sins in mind) upon Me and I will take care of you.”
P.S. To elders and pastors . . . you have been placed into your office to restore the peace of God that comes through faith in Christ Jesus. Where there is conflict you are to bring the parties together, facilitate efforts at reconciliation and by God’s guidance and blessing see that the parties reconcile. This is one of the primary roles associated with your office. If there is no peace, then proper ministry cannot be carried out.
Epistles from Exile: LUTHERAN PURGATORY BOOK now available!
This short book covers subjects such as pastors improperly/unscripturally removed from their calls, and LCMS missionaries and chaplains returning to the country but unable to find work as a pastor.
Epistles from Exile: LUTHERAN PURGATORY BOOK now available!
More Quotes (Kindle "My Clippings")
The Right Stuff (Wolfe, Tom)
- Your Highlight on Page 29 | Location 565-566 | Added on Tuesday, February 18, 2014 4:57:35 PM
Khrushchev was right about one thing: when it came time to hang the capitalist West, an American businessman would sell him the rope.
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The Guardians of the Flame (Guardians of the Flame combo volumes) (Rosenberg, Joel)
- Your Highlight Location 5538-5540 | Added on Saturday, March 15, 2014 3:31:10 PM
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. —Thomas Paine
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The Guardians of the Flame (Guardians of the Flame combo volumes) (Rosenberg, Joel)
- Your Highlight Location 8586-8587 | Added on Sunday, March 16, 2014 5:51:00 PM
Shh. We're not required to be perfect. We're just required to do our damnedest.
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Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing (Duin, Julia)
- Your Highlight Location 353-354 | Added on Sunday, March 16, 2014 6:40:05 PM
People are not taught that it is possible to live up to Christianity’s high standards, and so they drift off out of shame or frustration.
NOTE: ^This was a very non-Lutheran book and much of it was from a "Church Growth Movement" and charismatic point of view. There is a lot wrong with the above claim. -Tim
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Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing (Duin, Julia)
- Your Highlight Location 476-477 | Added on Sunday, March 16, 2014 6:45:27 PM
“Eighty percent of the U.S. population is faith-based, but only 18 percent go to church. So where are they getting their faith content?
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The Guardians of the Flame (Guardians of the Flame combo volumes) (Rosenberg, Joel)
- Your Highlight Location 11229-11231 | Added on Monday, March 17, 2014 6:29:36 PM
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. —Mark Twain
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Guardians of the Flame: To Home and Ehvenor (Guardians of the Flame combo volumes) (Rosenberg, Joel)
- Your Highlight Location 6836-6837 | Added on Tuesday, March 25, 2014 10:23:00 AM
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. —Robert Frost
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A Summary of Christian Doctrine: A Popular Presentation of the Teachings of the Bible, 3rd Edition (Koehler, Edward W.A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6478-6481 | Added on Sunday, April 6, 2014 12:49:45 PM
Denial of or exclusion from church fellowship is not equivalent to excommunication. Although we do not tolerate the teaching and spreading of false doctrine, it is possible that a person errs in sincerity of heart without losing faith in Christ (2 Thessalonians 3:14–15; 1 Corinthians 3:11–15). We do not have fellowship with false teachers (Romans 16:17), yet we do not regard them as “heathen and tax collectors” (see Matthew 18:17).
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A Summary of Christian Doctrine: A Popular Presentation of the Teachings of the Bible, 3rd Edition (Koehler, Edward W.A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6451-6454 | Added on Sunday, April 6, 2014 6:15:20 AM
Such action on the part of the congregation and pastor should be unanimous. This is a matter that concerns all members and should be done with the consent of all. If there are some who are not convinced of the person’s impenitence or who believe that he can still be won, then they should be encouraged to deal with the erring brother until they have either won him or are convinced of his impenitence.
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A Summary of Christian Doctrine: A Popular Presentation of the Teachings of the Bible, 3rd Edition (Koehler, Edward W.A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6460-6464 | Added on Sunday, April 6, 2014 6:16:18 AM
It sometimes happens that a person refuses to deal with his congregation. By word or deed (by joining a church of another denomination, for example), an individual declares his withdrawal from that congregation. Consequently, this congregation cannot really excommunicate him because he is no longer a member. Although it is sinful to act in such a manner, we have no right to declare such a person manifestly impenitent because we have not had the opportunity to establish this fact. In such a case we can only say that he severed his connection with the congregation in a way that is not God-pleasing. We judge and condemn this person’s act, but we do not judge and condemn this person’s heart.
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Tough-Minded Christianity: Legacy of John Warwick Montgomery (Dembski, William;Schirrmacher, Thomas)
- Your Highlight on Unnumbered Page | Location 274-276 | Added on Monday, April 7, 2014 3:01:18 AM
But Montgomery decided early in his career that Dale Carnegie's approach to winning friends and influencing people was inadequate for handling the theological disarray of his time. Stronger medicine was required.
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Tough-Minded Christianity: Legacy of John Warwick Montgomery (Dembski, William;Schirrmacher, Thomas)
- Your Highlight on Page 4 | Location 577-580 | Added on Monday, April 7, 2014 3:12:38 AM
We know, or at least we should know, that fallen human nature on its own is incapable of choosing a path that leads to real happiness; all paths that sinful humans, left to themselves, actually choose lead to disillusionment, more or less. We know that when people are encouraged to be egocentric, and to live their own lives and do their own thing in their own way, the result is a compound of pride and misery and cosmic resentment that may well find expression in antisocial behavior.
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6619-6621 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:18:58 AM
Since then the church has again and again witnessed the phenomenon of laymen keeping the ship of the church on even keel by their protest against the intrusion of a foreign “gospel” into its ranks.
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6707-6713 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:27:40 AM
“We will neither privately nor publicly speak or write anything contrary to it, but, by the help of God’s grace, intend to abide thereby; therefore, after mature deliberation, we have, in God’s fear and with the invocation of His name, attached our signatures with our own hands” (FC XII, 40). This is an oft repeated pledge, made not only by pastors who bind themselves with quia subscription to the Confessions at the time of their ordination or call into office—that is, subscribing them without equivocation because they are a true exposition of Scriptural teaching—but also by many laymen, articulate and learned in the Confessions as well, who wish to indicate their agreement in every way with the stated position of the Confessions.
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6726-6731 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:30:38 AM
The papalist authorities were in error when they excluded the people, especially the leaders among them, from the process of choosing qualified pastors and leaders in the church. Especially the leading laymen, Chemnitz acknowledges, are by their background, education, and experience able to exercise salutary judgment and discretion in this matter of procuring qualified pastors for the local churches.8 But implicit in this choice is the will of the people, and it should always be understood as a matter of expediency and wisdom when the magistrates act as representatives of the people or congregation at large.9
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6733-6733 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:30:56 AM
mobocracy
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6749-6750 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:32:15 AM
We do not intend, says Gerhard, to “make shepherds of the sheep,” but by the same token, “we do not want them to be brute sheep, which neither can nor should distinguish between shepherds and wolves.”14
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6781-6784 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:36:40 AM
“The only purpose of voting in matters of doctrine is to see whether all now understand the teaching of the divine Word and agree to it” and “not to decide the correctness of a doctrine by majority vote or even by unanimous vote.”22 This is frequently misunderstood. But for peace, unity, and concord there is need for all, laity and clergy, to bow before the Word of God, drive down personal views or private opinions, and assent freely and believingly to God’s truth.
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6791-6792 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:37:55 AM
Augustine’s dictum still obtains: In ecclesia non valet: hoc ego dico, hoc tu dicis, hoc ille dicit, sed: Haec dicit Dominus, “that which prevails in the church is not, this I say, this you say, this that man says, but, thus saith the Lord.”
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6821-6822 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:40:06 AM
St. Paul, states Luther, “delegates to Christians the power to judge and condemn even an angel of heaven, if he should preach another gospel.”33
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The Book of Concord - Concordia Triglotta Edition (Dau, W.H.T.;Bente, F.)
- Your Highlight Location 10280-10281 | Added on Monday, April 28, 2014 5:24:23 PM
godless Christians [Christians only in name].
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The Book of Concord - Concordia Triglotta Edition (Dau, W.H.T.;Bente, F.)
- Your Highlight Location 6422-6423 | Added on Sunday, June 8, 2014 11:08:35 AM
However, for the common people we are satisfied with the three parts,
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Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, Second Edition (Pocket Edition) (McCain, Paul Timothy)
- Your Highlight Location 12770-12771 | Added on Monday, June 9, 2014 1:09:05 AM
[70] Whoever would be saved should not trouble or torment himself with thoughts || about God’s secret counsel, about whether he also is elected and ordained to eternal life. Miserable Satan usually attacks with these thoughts and afflicts godly hearts.
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Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, Second Edition (Pocket Edition) (McCain, Paul Timothy)
- Your Highlight Location 12774-12776 | Added on Monday, June 9, 2014 1:09:48 AM
[71] According to Christ’s teaching they should abstain from their sins, repent, believe His promise, and entirely trust in Him. Since we cannot do this by ourselves, by our own powers, the Holy Spirit desires to work these things’repentance and faith’in us through the Word and Sacraments.
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Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible (NASB) (The Lockman Foundation)
- Your Highlight Location 45160-45162 | Added on Monday, June 9, 2014 1:12:57 AM
11Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? 12Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? 13If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
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Altar Guild Manual LSB Edition (Maxwell, Lee A.)
- Your Highlight Location 823-829 | Added on Monday, June 9, 2014 1:21:52 AM
Paul H. D. Lang states: “The crucifix emphasizes the incarnation of Christ and His atoning sacrifice. A plain or empty cross lacks this emphasis. Some say that the plain cross stands for the Resurrection. Be that as it may, it can also represent a devaluation of the Incarnation and a spiritualizing of Christ. The Lutheran Church, however, believes that ‘apart from this man there is not God’” (What an Altar Guild Should Know [St. Louis: Concordia, 1964], 52). Lang cites the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, VIII 81, from Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959). As Lang goes on to point out, however, the use of the crucifix is not necessarily a confessional matter; if it is not, the altar guild should not make an issue of it.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 184 | Location 2988-2990 | Added on Monday, June 16, 2014 1:06:28 AM
The rebels wished to reform government, not so as to depose or fundamentally hobble kingship but to bring it within what they regarded as reasonable bounds. They wanted to force the king to govern peacefully and fairly within the law, yet they were doing so by breaking the law. It was a situation of deep complexity for both sides.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 186 | Location 3024-3024 | Added on Monday, June 16, 2014 1:10:09 AM
As a peace treaty—for this is what it was—the Magna Carta was an immediate failure.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 228 | Location 3729-3731 | Added on Monday, June 16, 2014 4:25:26 PM
In comparison with the staple tactical set pieces of siege and plunder, battles were wasteful, uncertain, and chaotic. So strenuously did medieval commanders avoid them that few, if any, of the knights on either side had ever fought in one.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 235 | Location 3840-3842 | Added on Tuesday, June 17, 2014 6:03:31 AM
There would be no reprieve for de Montfort himself. A twelve-man hit squad independent of Edward’s main army stalked the battlefield, their sole aim to find the earl and cut him down.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 450 | Location 7183-7185 | Added on Sunday, June 22, 2014 2:38:22 AM
Serfdom was dying out as an institution in the late fourteenth century, but it seemed to many of those who rebelled in 1381 that it was giving way to a new and equally oppressive system, by which lawyers and justices kept the rural poor in just as deep a misery as they had suffered when they were bonded to the land.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 471 | Location 7528-7528 | Added on Sunday, June 22, 2014 4:10:57 AM
palatinate (that is to say, quasi-royal
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 471 | Location 7536-7538 | Added on Sunday, June 22, 2014 4:12:12 AM
Whereas in the past English kings had been addressed as “my lord,” now titles such as “Your Highness” and “Your Majesty” were introduced for the first time, in mimicry of styles fashionable in France.
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Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible (NASB) (The Lockman Foundation)
- Your Highlight Location 48844-48849 | Added on Sunday, June 22, 2014 6:39:30 AM
9 I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; 10I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. 11But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one. 12For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? 13But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 502 | Location 7991-7993 | Added on Monday, June 23, 2014 1:24:16 AM
(Indeed, after Henry VII had legitimized his usurpation of the throne with a wealth of pageantry attempting to demonstrate his descent from Edward III, he and later his son Henry VIII set about murdering and destroying every surviving member of the English aristocracy with a trace of Plantagenet blood.)
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 183-184 | Added on Monday, June 23, 2014 3:05:45 PM
Replacing the chaotic system with a clean, efficient military one, he divided the empire into twelve neat dioceses, each governed by a vicar who reported directly to his emperor*
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 671-674 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:07:21 AM
The emperor, however, stubbornly refused to give up. If paganism wouldn’t recover, then Christianity must be crushed. Christ had prophesied that the Jewish temple wouldn’t be rebuilt until the end times, and in order to disprove this and cast Jesus as a false prophet, he ordered it to be rebuilt. Work started quickly enough, but an earthquake (and, according to Christian sources, “great balls of fire”) shattered the foundations, forcing the terrified overseers to abandon the project.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 750-754 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:24:57 AM
From the east came a new and terrifying power, wild Huns so barbaric that the frightened Germanic tribes ignored the decaying imperial forces guarding the frontiers and came flooding across. This time, however, they came as settlers, not invaders, and the prize they sought was land, not gold. The influx of new people, unwilling to assimilate, provoked an identity crisis within the Roman world and stretched the creaking empire to its breaking point. The pressure would redefine what it meant to be a Roman and nearly bring down the classical world.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 817-819 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:40:54 AM
spoke their own language, and maintained their own customs. They had no reason to blend in and so failed to become Romanized, remaining a semiautonomous group within the borders of the empire. Within a generation, they would completely dominate the government and push Europe toward the terrible chaos of the Dark Ages. Though
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 851-853 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:51:46 AM
Ambrose turned up the pressure by denying him communion or entrance to a church until he performed penance. After several months of endangering his soul without the sacrament, Theodosius caved in. Dressing in sackcloth and sprinkling ashes over his head, he publicly apologized and submitted to the bishop.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 860-861 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:52:22 AM
Christianity had triumphed, and the coup de grâce came in 391, when Theodosius made it the only religion of the Roman Empire.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 862-865 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:53:19 AM
By making Christianity the state religion, he had merely put the finishing touches on a movement that had begun at the Milvian Bridge. Christianity had become so entwined with the Roman way of life that for barbarians and Romans alike, to be a Christian and to be a Roman were essentially the same thing.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 867-870 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:53:58 AM
Even the ceremonies of the church and the court had begun to mirror each other. Priests and courtiers dressed in luxurious vestments, elaborate processionals and singing choirs heralded the beginning of services, and incense and candles were carried as a sign of honor. Where the court had its emperor, the church had its bishops, and both were accorded the same outward signs of respect.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 870-871 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:54:47 AM
There was a comforting sameness to it all, a familiarity that reassured each celebrant of the divine order.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 878-880 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:59:22 AM
There were, however, troubling signs on the horizon. Most of the money from taxes had been drawn from the nobility, and these families were exhausted. As more and more of them fled their burdens by joining the clergy or embracing the monastic life in the deserts of Egypt or Asia Minor, the government responded by leaning more heavily on the poor and working classes.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 880-882 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 8:00:28 AM
Successive governments would raise taxes and try to bind peasants to the land, arguing that this was necessary to keep society running smoothly, but the end result for many was grinding poverty.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 885-889 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 8:01:28 AM
*Although Gratian was the last emperor to use the title Pontifex Maximus, it didn’t disappear into the mists of history. In 590, Pope Gregory I adopted it in his role as “chief priest of Christianity.” and from it we get the title “pontiff.” Literally, it is translated as “bridge builder,” because the Pontifex Maximus bridged the gap between the world of the gods and the world of man. Constantine had kept the title because he saw himself as the “Bishop of Bishops”—a title that the pope also assumed.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 899-901 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 8:02:22 AM
Even the army was unrecognizable; the traditional Roman infantry had given way to barbarian cavalry, and the orderly legions were now a strange, heterogeneous mix with each group sporting different armor and speaking a different language.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 2095-2097 | Added on Saturday, June 28, 2014 9:23:22 AM
Every emperor from Augustus to Heraclius had been hailed as Imperator Caesar and Augustus, but after him they were known only as Basileus—the Greek word for king.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 2244-2247 | Added on Sunday, June 29, 2014 1:19:06 AM
†That war still splits the Islamic world today. An assassin loyal to the fearsome general Muawiyah assassinated the caliph Ali while he was praying in a mosque in central Iraq. Those who rejected Muawiyah and held that only a descendant of Ali could become caliph are known as Shiites, while those who accepted Muawiyah as caliph are called Sunni. Iraq remains largely a Shiite country to this day.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 2646-2654 | Added on Sunday, June 29, 2014 3:38:48 AM
The pope’s men had a head start, but they alienated the Slavs by insisting that all services be conducted in Latin, even though their new converts didn’t understand a word of it. Cyril and Methodius, by contrast, set to work immediately learning Slavic, and when they found it had no written alphabet, Cyril provided one.* Western bishops angrily complained that Hebrew, Greek, and Latin were the only tongues worthy of a sacred liturgy, but Cyril countered by saying that since God’s rain fell on all equally, then all tongues were fit to praise him.† The Bulgarian khan, impressed by the new freedoms promised by Photius (and in any case unwilling to subordinate himself to Rome), traveled to Constantinople to be baptized in the Hagia Sophia, and Bulgaria entered the Byzantine cultural orbit, in which it remains to this day. By allowing Byzantine culture to be separated from the Greek language, Photius had spread the empire’s influence far beyond its borders and immeasurably strengthened the bonds that held the diverse Byzantine world together. It would be more than six centuries before Latin was similarly dethroned in the West.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 2897-2898 | Added on Sunday, June 29, 2014 5:46:39 AM
†The normal custom would have been to name the boy after his grandfather,
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 3101-3103 | Added on Sunday, June 29, 2014 6:23:08 AM
*These were the descendants of Viking warriors who had as yet to be absorbed into their Slavic surroundings. Elsewhere in Europe, they had already ripped apart Charlemagne’s empire, and for centuries Western prayer books would include the plea “O Lord, spare us from the fury of the Northmen.”
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The Fall of the Roman Empire (Heather, Peter)
- Your Highlight Location 187-191 | Added on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 3:33:47 AM
The legionaries constructed these themselves, according to a standard pattern: ditch, mound, rampart and defensive towers on the outside, barrack blocks within. The length of the walls was dictated by an ancient formula: two hundred times the square root of the number of cohorts to be accommodated. Subdued tribes in the immediate neighbourhood were responsible for supplying the troops through the winter, until the grass grew again to support the pack animals, and campaigning could begin anew.
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The Fall of the Roman Empire (Heather, Peter)
- Your Highlight Location 217-218 | Added on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 3:36:32 AM
veni vidi vici – ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’
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The Fall of the Roman Empire (Heather, Peter)
- Your Highlight Location 535-535 | Added on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 7:59:24 AM
imperator (commander of the army)
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The Fall of the Roman Empire (Heather, Peter)
- Your Highlight Location 537-540 | Added on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 7:59:56 AM
For one thing, all pretence of republicanism had vanished. Augustus had worked hard at pretending that the power structures he had created around himself did not represent the overthrow of the old Republic, and that, in a mixed constitution, the Senate continued to have important functions. But even in his lifetime the veneer had looked pretty thin, and by the fourth century no one thought of the emperor as anything other than an autocratic monarch.
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The Fall of the Roman Empire (Heather, Peter)
- Your Highlight Location 542-545 | Added on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 8:00:56 AM
The first among equals became a sacred ruler, communing with the Divinity, and ordinary human beings had to act with due deference. By the fourth century, standard protocols included proskynesis – throwing yourself down on the ground when introduced into the sacred imperial presence – and, for the privileged few, being allowed to kiss the hem of the emperor’s robe.
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- Your Highlight on Page 29 | Location 565-566 | Added on Tuesday, February 18, 2014 4:57:35 PM
Khrushchev was right about one thing: when it came time to hang the capitalist West, an American businessman would sell him the rope.
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The Guardians of the Flame (Guardians of the Flame combo volumes) (Rosenberg, Joel)
- Your Highlight Location 5538-5540 | Added on Saturday, March 15, 2014 3:31:10 PM
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. —Thomas Paine
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The Guardians of the Flame (Guardians of the Flame combo volumes) (Rosenberg, Joel)
- Your Highlight Location 8586-8587 | Added on Sunday, March 16, 2014 5:51:00 PM
Shh. We're not required to be perfect. We're just required to do our damnedest.
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Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing (Duin, Julia)
- Your Highlight Location 353-354 | Added on Sunday, March 16, 2014 6:40:05 PM
People are not taught that it is possible to live up to Christianity’s high standards, and so they drift off out of shame or frustration.
NOTE: ^This was a very non-Lutheran book and much of it was from a "Church Growth Movement" and charismatic point of view. There is a lot wrong with the above claim. -Tim
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Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing (Duin, Julia)
- Your Highlight Location 476-477 | Added on Sunday, March 16, 2014 6:45:27 PM
“Eighty percent of the U.S. population is faith-based, but only 18 percent go to church. So where are they getting their faith content?
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The Guardians of the Flame (Guardians of the Flame combo volumes) (Rosenberg, Joel)
- Your Highlight Location 11229-11231 | Added on Monday, March 17, 2014 6:29:36 PM
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. —Mark Twain
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Guardians of the Flame: To Home and Ehvenor (Guardians of the Flame combo volumes) (Rosenberg, Joel)
- Your Highlight Location 6836-6837 | Added on Tuesday, March 25, 2014 10:23:00 AM
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. —Robert Frost
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A Summary of Christian Doctrine: A Popular Presentation of the Teachings of the Bible, 3rd Edition (Koehler, Edward W.A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6478-6481 | Added on Sunday, April 6, 2014 12:49:45 PM
Denial of or exclusion from church fellowship is not equivalent to excommunication. Although we do not tolerate the teaching and spreading of false doctrine, it is possible that a person errs in sincerity of heart without losing faith in Christ (2 Thessalonians 3:14–15; 1 Corinthians 3:11–15). We do not have fellowship with false teachers (Romans 16:17), yet we do not regard them as “heathen and tax collectors” (see Matthew 18:17).
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A Summary of Christian Doctrine: A Popular Presentation of the Teachings of the Bible, 3rd Edition (Koehler, Edward W.A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6451-6454 | Added on Sunday, April 6, 2014 6:15:20 AM
Such action on the part of the congregation and pastor should be unanimous. This is a matter that concerns all members and should be done with the consent of all. If there are some who are not convinced of the person’s impenitence or who believe that he can still be won, then they should be encouraged to deal with the erring brother until they have either won him or are convinced of his impenitence.
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A Summary of Christian Doctrine: A Popular Presentation of the Teachings of the Bible, 3rd Edition (Koehler, Edward W.A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6460-6464 | Added on Sunday, April 6, 2014 6:16:18 AM
It sometimes happens that a person refuses to deal with his congregation. By word or deed (by joining a church of another denomination, for example), an individual declares his withdrawal from that congregation. Consequently, this congregation cannot really excommunicate him because he is no longer a member. Although it is sinful to act in such a manner, we have no right to declare such a person manifestly impenitent because we have not had the opportunity to establish this fact. In such a case we can only say that he severed his connection with the congregation in a way that is not God-pleasing. We judge and condemn this person’s act, but we do not judge and condemn this person’s heart.
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Tough-Minded Christianity: Legacy of John Warwick Montgomery (Dembski, William;Schirrmacher, Thomas)
- Your Highlight on Unnumbered Page | Location 274-276 | Added on Monday, April 7, 2014 3:01:18 AM
But Montgomery decided early in his career that Dale Carnegie's approach to winning friends and influencing people was inadequate for handling the theological disarray of his time. Stronger medicine was required.
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Tough-Minded Christianity: Legacy of John Warwick Montgomery (Dembski, William;Schirrmacher, Thomas)
- Your Highlight on Page 4 | Location 577-580 | Added on Monday, April 7, 2014 3:12:38 AM
We know, or at least we should know, that fallen human nature on its own is incapable of choosing a path that leads to real happiness; all paths that sinful humans, left to themselves, actually choose lead to disillusionment, more or less. We know that when people are encouraged to be egocentric, and to live their own lives and do their own thing in their own way, the result is a compound of pride and misery and cosmic resentment that may well find expression in antisocial behavior.
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6619-6621 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:18:58 AM
Since then the church has again and again witnessed the phenomenon of laymen keeping the ship of the church on even keel by their protest against the intrusion of a foreign “gospel” into its ranks.
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6707-6713 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:27:40 AM
“We will neither privately nor publicly speak or write anything contrary to it, but, by the help of God’s grace, intend to abide thereby; therefore, after mature deliberation, we have, in God’s fear and with the invocation of His name, attached our signatures with our own hands” (FC XII, 40). This is an oft repeated pledge, made not only by pastors who bind themselves with quia subscription to the Confessions at the time of their ordination or call into office—that is, subscribing them without equivocation because they are a true exposition of Scriptural teaching—but also by many laymen, articulate and learned in the Confessions as well, who wish to indicate their agreement in every way with the stated position of the Confessions.
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6726-6731 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:30:38 AM
The papalist authorities were in error when they excluded the people, especially the leaders among them, from the process of choosing qualified pastors and leaders in the church. Especially the leading laymen, Chemnitz acknowledges, are by their background, education, and experience able to exercise salutary judgment and discretion in this matter of procuring qualified pastors for the local churches.8 But implicit in this choice is the will of the people, and it should always be understood as a matter of expediency and wisdom when the magistrates act as representatives of the people or congregation at large.9
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6733-6733 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:30:56 AM
mobocracy
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6749-6750 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:32:15 AM
We do not intend, says Gerhard, to “make shepherds of the sheep,” but by the same token, “we do not want them to be brute sheep, which neither can nor should distinguish between shepherds and wolves.”14
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6781-6784 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:36:40 AM
“The only purpose of voting in matters of doctrine is to see whether all now understand the teaching of the divine Word and agree to it” and “not to decide the correctness of a doctrine by majority vote or even by unanimous vote.”22 This is frequently misunderstood. But for peace, unity, and concord there is need for all, laity and clergy, to bow before the Word of God, drive down personal views or private opinions, and assent freely and believingly to God’s truth.
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6791-6792 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:37:55 AM
Augustine’s dictum still obtains: In ecclesia non valet: hoc ego dico, hoc tu dicis, hoc ille dicit, sed: Haec dicit Dominus, “that which prevails in the church is not, this I say, this you say, this that man says, but, thus saith the Lord.”
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Church and Ministry: The Role of Church, Pastor and People from Luther to Walther (Concordia Scholarship Today) (Klug, Eugene F. A.)
- Your Highlight Location 6821-6822 | Added on Sunday, April 13, 2014 3:40:06 AM
St. Paul, states Luther, “delegates to Christians the power to judge and condemn even an angel of heaven, if he should preach another gospel.”33
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The Book of Concord - Concordia Triglotta Edition (Dau, W.H.T.;Bente, F.)
- Your Highlight Location 10280-10281 | Added on Monday, April 28, 2014 5:24:23 PM
godless Christians [Christians only in name].
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The Book of Concord - Concordia Triglotta Edition (Dau, W.H.T.;Bente, F.)
- Your Highlight Location 6422-6423 | Added on Sunday, June 8, 2014 11:08:35 AM
However, for the common people we are satisfied with the three parts,
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Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, Second Edition (Pocket Edition) (McCain, Paul Timothy)
- Your Highlight Location 12770-12771 | Added on Monday, June 9, 2014 1:09:05 AM
[70] Whoever would be saved should not trouble or torment himself with thoughts || about God’s secret counsel, about whether he also is elected and ordained to eternal life. Miserable Satan usually attacks with these thoughts and afflicts godly hearts.
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Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions, Second Edition (Pocket Edition) (McCain, Paul Timothy)
- Your Highlight Location 12774-12776 | Added on Monday, June 9, 2014 1:09:48 AM
[71] According to Christ’s teaching they should abstain from their sins, repent, believe His promise, and entirely trust in Him. Since we cannot do this by ourselves, by our own powers, the Holy Spirit desires to work these things’repentance and faith’in us through the Word and Sacraments.
==========
Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible (NASB) (The Lockman Foundation)
- Your Highlight Location 45160-45162 | Added on Monday, June 9, 2014 1:12:57 AM
11Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? 12Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? 13If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
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Altar Guild Manual LSB Edition (Maxwell, Lee A.)
- Your Highlight Location 823-829 | Added on Monday, June 9, 2014 1:21:52 AM
Paul H. D. Lang states: “The crucifix emphasizes the incarnation of Christ and His atoning sacrifice. A plain or empty cross lacks this emphasis. Some say that the plain cross stands for the Resurrection. Be that as it may, it can also represent a devaluation of the Incarnation and a spiritualizing of Christ. The Lutheran Church, however, believes that ‘apart from this man there is not God’” (What an Altar Guild Should Know [St. Louis: Concordia, 1964], 52). Lang cites the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, VIII 81, from Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959). As Lang goes on to point out, however, the use of the crucifix is not necessarily a confessional matter; if it is not, the altar guild should not make an issue of it.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 184 | Location 2988-2990 | Added on Monday, June 16, 2014 1:06:28 AM
The rebels wished to reform government, not so as to depose or fundamentally hobble kingship but to bring it within what they regarded as reasonable bounds. They wanted to force the king to govern peacefully and fairly within the law, yet they were doing so by breaking the law. It was a situation of deep complexity for both sides.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 186 | Location 3024-3024 | Added on Monday, June 16, 2014 1:10:09 AM
As a peace treaty—for this is what it was—the Magna Carta was an immediate failure.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 228 | Location 3729-3731 | Added on Monday, June 16, 2014 4:25:26 PM
In comparison with the staple tactical set pieces of siege and plunder, battles were wasteful, uncertain, and chaotic. So strenuously did medieval commanders avoid them that few, if any, of the knights on either side had ever fought in one.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 235 | Location 3840-3842 | Added on Tuesday, June 17, 2014 6:03:31 AM
There would be no reprieve for de Montfort himself. A twelve-man hit squad independent of Edward’s main army stalked the battlefield, their sole aim to find the earl and cut him down.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 450 | Location 7183-7185 | Added on Sunday, June 22, 2014 2:38:22 AM
Serfdom was dying out as an institution in the late fourteenth century, but it seemed to many of those who rebelled in 1381 that it was giving way to a new and equally oppressive system, by which lawyers and justices kept the rural poor in just as deep a misery as they had suffered when they were bonded to the land.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 471 | Location 7528-7528 | Added on Sunday, June 22, 2014 4:10:57 AM
palatinate (that is to say, quasi-royal
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 471 | Location 7536-7538 | Added on Sunday, June 22, 2014 4:12:12 AM
Whereas in the past English kings had been addressed as “my lord,” now titles such as “Your Highness” and “Your Majesty” were introduced for the first time, in mimicry of styles fashionable in France.
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Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible (NASB) (The Lockman Foundation)
- Your Highlight Location 48844-48849 | Added on Sunday, June 22, 2014 6:39:30 AM
9 I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; 10I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. 11But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one. 12For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? 13But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.
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The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England (Jones, Dan)
- Your Highlight on Page 502 | Location 7991-7993 | Added on Monday, June 23, 2014 1:24:16 AM
(Indeed, after Henry VII had legitimized his usurpation of the throne with a wealth of pageantry attempting to demonstrate his descent from Edward III, he and later his son Henry VIII set about murdering and destroying every surviving member of the English aristocracy with a trace of Plantagenet blood.)
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 183-184 | Added on Monday, June 23, 2014 3:05:45 PM
Replacing the chaotic system with a clean, efficient military one, he divided the empire into twelve neat dioceses, each governed by a vicar who reported directly to his emperor*
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 671-674 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:07:21 AM
The emperor, however, stubbornly refused to give up. If paganism wouldn’t recover, then Christianity must be crushed. Christ had prophesied that the Jewish temple wouldn’t be rebuilt until the end times, and in order to disprove this and cast Jesus as a false prophet, he ordered it to be rebuilt. Work started quickly enough, but an earthquake (and, according to Christian sources, “great balls of fire”) shattered the foundations, forcing the terrified overseers to abandon the project.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 750-754 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:24:57 AM
From the east came a new and terrifying power, wild Huns so barbaric that the frightened Germanic tribes ignored the decaying imperial forces guarding the frontiers and came flooding across. This time, however, they came as settlers, not invaders, and the prize they sought was land, not gold. The influx of new people, unwilling to assimilate, provoked an identity crisis within the Roman world and stretched the creaking empire to its breaking point. The pressure would redefine what it meant to be a Roman and nearly bring down the classical world.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 817-819 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:40:54 AM
spoke their own language, and maintained their own customs. They had no reason to blend in and so failed to become Romanized, remaining a semiautonomous group within the borders of the empire. Within a generation, they would completely dominate the government and push Europe toward the terrible chaos of the Dark Ages. Though
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 851-853 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:51:46 AM
Ambrose turned up the pressure by denying him communion or entrance to a church until he performed penance. After several months of endangering his soul without the sacrament, Theodosius caved in. Dressing in sackcloth and sprinkling ashes over his head, he publicly apologized and submitted to the bishop.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 860-861 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:52:22 AM
Christianity had triumphed, and the coup de grâce came in 391, when Theodosius made it the only religion of the Roman Empire.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 862-865 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:53:19 AM
By making Christianity the state religion, he had merely put the finishing touches on a movement that had begun at the Milvian Bridge. Christianity had become so entwined with the Roman way of life that for barbarians and Romans alike, to be a Christian and to be a Roman were essentially the same thing.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 867-870 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:53:58 AM
Even the ceremonies of the church and the court had begun to mirror each other. Priests and courtiers dressed in luxurious vestments, elaborate processionals and singing choirs heralded the beginning of services, and incense and candles were carried as a sign of honor. Where the court had its emperor, the church had its bishops, and both were accorded the same outward signs of respect.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 870-871 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:54:47 AM
There was a comforting sameness to it all, a familiarity that reassured each celebrant of the divine order.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 878-880 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 7:59:22 AM
There were, however, troubling signs on the horizon. Most of the money from taxes had been drawn from the nobility, and these families were exhausted. As more and more of them fled their burdens by joining the clergy or embracing the monastic life in the deserts of Egypt or Asia Minor, the government responded by leaning more heavily on the poor and working classes.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 880-882 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 8:00:28 AM
Successive governments would raise taxes and try to bind peasants to the land, arguing that this was necessary to keep society running smoothly, but the end result for many was grinding poverty.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 885-889 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 8:01:28 AM
*Although Gratian was the last emperor to use the title Pontifex Maximus, it didn’t disappear into the mists of history. In 590, Pope Gregory I adopted it in his role as “chief priest of Christianity.” and from it we get the title “pontiff.” Literally, it is translated as “bridge builder,” because the Pontifex Maximus bridged the gap between the world of the gods and the world of man. Constantine had kept the title because he saw himself as the “Bishop of Bishops”—a title that the pope also assumed.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 899-901 | Added on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 8:02:22 AM
Even the army was unrecognizable; the traditional Roman infantry had given way to barbarian cavalry, and the orderly legions were now a strange, heterogeneous mix with each group sporting different armor and speaking a different language.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 2095-2097 | Added on Saturday, June 28, 2014 9:23:22 AM
Every emperor from Augustus to Heraclius had been hailed as Imperator Caesar and Augustus, but after him they were known only as Basileus—the Greek word for king.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 2244-2247 | Added on Sunday, June 29, 2014 1:19:06 AM
†That war still splits the Islamic world today. An assassin loyal to the fearsome general Muawiyah assassinated the caliph Ali while he was praying in a mosque in central Iraq. Those who rejected Muawiyah and held that only a descendant of Ali could become caliph are known as Shiites, while those who accepted Muawiyah as caliph are called Sunni. Iraq remains largely a Shiite country to this day.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 2646-2654 | Added on Sunday, June 29, 2014 3:38:48 AM
The pope’s men had a head start, but they alienated the Slavs by insisting that all services be conducted in Latin, even though their new converts didn’t understand a word of it. Cyril and Methodius, by contrast, set to work immediately learning Slavic, and when they found it had no written alphabet, Cyril provided one.* Western bishops angrily complained that Hebrew, Greek, and Latin were the only tongues worthy of a sacred liturgy, but Cyril countered by saying that since God’s rain fell on all equally, then all tongues were fit to praise him.† The Bulgarian khan, impressed by the new freedoms promised by Photius (and in any case unwilling to subordinate himself to Rome), traveled to Constantinople to be baptized in the Hagia Sophia, and Bulgaria entered the Byzantine cultural orbit, in which it remains to this day. By allowing Byzantine culture to be separated from the Greek language, Photius had spread the empire’s influence far beyond its borders and immeasurably strengthened the bonds that held the diverse Byzantine world together. It would be more than six centuries before Latin was similarly dethroned in the West.
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 2897-2898 | Added on Sunday, June 29, 2014 5:46:39 AM
†The normal custom would have been to name the boy after his grandfather,
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Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization (Brownworth, Lars)
- Your Highlight Location 3101-3103 | Added on Sunday, June 29, 2014 6:23:08 AM
*These were the descendants of Viking warriors who had as yet to be absorbed into their Slavic surroundings. Elsewhere in Europe, they had already ripped apart Charlemagne’s empire, and for centuries Western prayer books would include the plea “O Lord, spare us from the fury of the Northmen.”
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The Fall of the Roman Empire (Heather, Peter)
- Your Highlight Location 187-191 | Added on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 3:33:47 AM
The legionaries constructed these themselves, according to a standard pattern: ditch, mound, rampart and defensive towers on the outside, barrack blocks within. The length of the walls was dictated by an ancient formula: two hundred times the square root of the number of cohorts to be accommodated. Subdued tribes in the immediate neighbourhood were responsible for supplying the troops through the winter, until the grass grew again to support the pack animals, and campaigning could begin anew.
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The Fall of the Roman Empire (Heather, Peter)
- Your Highlight Location 217-218 | Added on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 3:36:32 AM
veni vidi vici – ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’
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The Fall of the Roman Empire (Heather, Peter)
- Your Highlight Location 535-535 | Added on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 7:59:24 AM
imperator (commander of the army)
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The Fall of the Roman Empire (Heather, Peter)
- Your Highlight Location 537-540 | Added on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 7:59:56 AM
For one thing, all pretence of republicanism had vanished. Augustus had worked hard at pretending that the power structures he had created around himself did not represent the overthrow of the old Republic, and that, in a mixed constitution, the Senate continued to have important functions. But even in his lifetime the veneer had looked pretty thin, and by the fourth century no one thought of the emperor as anything other than an autocratic monarch.
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The Fall of the Roman Empire (Heather, Peter)
- Your Highlight Location 542-545 | Added on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 8:00:56 AM
The first among equals became a sacred ruler, communing with the Divinity, and ordinary human beings had to act with due deference. By the fourth century, standard protocols included proskynesis – throwing yourself down on the ground when introduced into the sacred imperial presence – and, for the privileged few, being allowed to kiss the hem of the emperor’s robe.
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