Monday, July 19, 2004

People are complaining about the funky-looking fonts I am using. Hopefully, this is the original font and size you are accustomed to.
 
Got a match?
John Huss
 
I shouldn't find this funny, but I do. If you don't get it, you need to reread your church history.
 
Speaking of Church History, I can tell you what most LCMS laymen know about church history.
 
Book of Acts
Paul beheaded by Nero (50/50 toss-up)
Luther nailing the 95 theses
Luther dies
Founding of the LCMS sometime in the 1800s (also 50/50 toss-up)
Me
 
So, we are producing a whole slew of laymen who have absolutely no grounding in the who, what, when, where, how, and why of the Church, the community of believers that we all belong to. And we wonder why people keep trying to reinvent the wheel. How do programs like Ablaze end up being adopted by the Church? Because we do not know where we came from! It seems like, since the Reformation, we have been fighting to become more Protestant, all the while forgetting that Luther claimed the we are the real catholics. Everybody gets these wild ideas that Luther was a radical reformer who changed the face of theology forever while, in fact, all he was trying to do was recover the Church. It was Rome that was the radical reformer. Luther was a conservative, in the classical sense of the word. To claim he was a radical, like many of the people within the LCMS want to do, is ridiculous once you remember that truth. The true radicalism is found in Rome, Geneva, and Zurich, not Wittenburg. Anyone who thinks Luther was a radical should really stop trying to just consider him in light of his time, but in light of the whole of Church History. It is there that you see what Luther was doing.

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