If you haven't read my comments on the last post, I just wanted to let you know I got my argument wrong. Chemnitz didn't say anything close to what I thought he had said. I've spent the last couple of days reviewing the doctrine of the Call, and I blew it. In an ironic twist, however, I still think my conclusion holds. I just used bad assumptions to get there.

On that jolly note, I have even more jolly news: the link purge happened. If you were happily thinking I'd leave your link up there forever and you could ignore etiquette, you're wrong now. Linking back to someone who links to you is a simple matter of courtesy. I even went through the Lutheran Blog Directory and checked to see if anyone linked to me and I didn't link back. I now have a couple of blogs on my blogroll I didn't have before.

As to the doctrine of the call, I have an answer to a question that came up in Tabletalk. There are two types of calls in Scripture. These two types are the immediate call and the mediate call. The immediate call is a call that comes directly from God. For instance, burning bushes are signs of an immediate call. Moses, most of the prophets, and all the Apostles were given immediate calls. Miracles and other signs accompany immediate calls because the people need to know that the call came from God. Mediate calls, on the other hand, are calls given through ordinary means. The priesthood in the Old Testament, for instance, is an example of a mediate call. It was a call through the means of birthright, but it is a call. All our modern clergy are called by ordinary means.

Anyway, I'll get my logic together and represent my case that the "divine call" isn't really a call.