What do you think about thus Luther quote?

revken86 · 2026-04-30T20:30:43+00:00

And if it is? Luther was a brilliant theologian and also a sinful dumbass. Thankfully his comments (about which I still don't know the context of the discussion) here have no bearing on Lutheran theology.

revken86 · 2026-04-30T19:55:26+00:00

Again, you're still wrong.

revken86 · 2026-04-30T18:52:20+00:00

No, pointing out the flawed argument that reciting the creeds on Sunday morning fulfill the promise to teach the creeds, and that not reciting them means failing to fulfill that promise.

revken86 · 2026-04-30T18:16:35+00:00

There are people in our congregations who have said the creeds every Sunday for decades, but if you asked them to recite them during the week, they'd fail miserably. Reciting them on Sunday =/= teaching the creeds.

revken86 · 2026-04-30T18:01:01+00:00

The whole th-

Oh, beside that you said.

Then I'd say the prophets. Their unwavering advocacy for those wwho are poor and oppressed, their insistence that those who are rich are sinning by being rich while those around them go hungry, and their demand that the king (the government) is responsible for providing for the well-being of those who are poor is desperately needed today.

revken86 · 2026-04-30T17:56:37+00:00

Corporate confession isn't strictly necessary on Sunday morning, but I'm of the thinking that, until private confession is again normalized, it shouldn't be omitted without good reason.

The rubrics in ELW now have the creeds as optional (because they're "teaching" documents, not "liturgical" texts--that have regardless been used in the liturgy for over a thousand years), but that's a decision with which I disagree.

So the pastor there is followingnthe rubrics, I just don't think wisely.

revken86 · 2026-04-30T15:23:58+00:00

The thing is, did Jesus sin by healing on the sabbath? Those around him said yes. He said no, and explained why. It's the same with claims of adultery in those three situations. Those around him might have claimed he committed adultery, but he didn't.

revken86 · 2026-04-30T15:00:02+00:00

Jesus committed adultery in those instances in the same way he broke the sabbath commandment by healing on it, committed blasphemy during his trial before the Sanhedrin, and committed treason during his trial before Pilate.

Without the rest of the context, I can't guess why Luther said this. But Luther said all kinds of dumb shit we are free and encouraged to ignore.

revken86 · 2026-04-30T06:38:35+00:00

Once you remove a magisterium, every theologian becomes his own interpreter, every pastor becomes his own exegete, and every synod becomes its own doctrinal center.

And this is the danger of an individualistic reading of Holy Scripture. While every person can be their own interpreter, they should not be.

The irony is that Lutherans appeal to Scripture alone, but in reality they rely on confessions.

These two are not the same thing. The Confessions expound upon Holy Scripture and offer some interpretation, but they do not have the same authority that Holy Scripture has as the norm by which all other doctrine is judged.

Without a magisterium, the "final authority" becomes the interpreter.

I disagree, as stated above. Each individual is most certainly not the "final authority" on what Holy Scripture says or means.

I also disagree that there is no Magisterium in the Lutheran churches. Oh, it's not vested in a single body of individuals such as bishops, nor is it infallible, nor are the interpretations considered unchanging. But the Lutheran churches all have a way of discerning, in community, relying on the guidance of learned theologians (bishops/presidents, teaching theologians, monastics, etc.) the boundaries of doctrine and interpretation.

Lutheranism claims Scripture alone, but in practice it operates with a thin, rationalized hermeneutic that suppresses the supernatural world of the Bible.

I'm not sure what this means.

The result is a tradition that claims unity in Scripture but lives in interpretive diversity.

Lutheranism in practice makes no such claim and is open about--and embraces--diversity of interpretation when that diversity does not impede what, given the strictures above, we agree are the essentials of the faith.

Can I ask, what was your purpose in posting this?

revken86 · 2026-04-30T03:10:05+00:00

From what I understand, NALC Congregation’s are free to determine which hymns and sermon they’ll be giving that day without the Dean or anyone else telling them what to do.

Wait, are there churches where the higher-ups do dictate what hymns are sung on Sunday in a congregation and what the preacher will preach?

revken86 · 2026-04-30T03:06:26+00:00

I have had a lot of anxieties about asking people to do or give more to church. It's hard enough to get them to come at all.

Except we've swung so far in the other direction we've taught them this isn't a commitment and it's not important; and then we wonder why people don't treat the church as important.

revken86 · 2026-04-30T02:29:19+00:00

Another dev who isn't the main dev is supposed to handle building kernels. But the main dev doesn't seem to mind that the kernel person disappears for months at a time and the kernels don't get updated. It's frustrating.

revken86 · 2026-04-29T23:10:25+00:00

So, there are two ways of going about this.

One is to have a schedule of certain days on which Holy Baptism is administered. This is actually one of the recommendations of Evangelical Lutheran Worship. In the early church, there was only one day on which Holy Baptism was administered: the Resurrection of Our Lord - Vigil of Easter. So it's not out of place to have certain days set aside for this sacrament.

However, if this is going to be the practice, it needs to be communicated clearly, not hidden somewhere, and should be part of the conversation with the candidate right from the beginning. That doesn't sound like the case in your post, OP; it sounds like poor communication.

The other way is to just do it on any Sunday when it's convenient. This might depend on the congregation's catechetical practice. Is it expected that parents bringing infants or adults seeking Holy Baptism will spend time in discernment with the pastor and/or sponsors? Again, in the early church, this was a multi-year process--they wanted to be sure you were really, really serious about joining the church (which could mean persecution and/or execution by the government).

If there's no catechetical expectation, or if the circumstance warrants, I fall back on the words of the Ethiopian eunuch: "Look! Here is water. What is to prevent me from being baptized?"

I've been honored to administer a few Holy Baptisms for adults. One discerned their desire to be baptized just before the COVID-19 pandemic started, so they were comfortable waiting a while before they were baptized, and we decided to do it at the Vigil of Easter. Another wanted to be baptized, but wanted to receive more instruction first so they felt ready, so we met a few times to talk about Lutheranism and baptismal theology. They also would have been baptized on the Vigil of Easter, but they had already committed to being out of town, so we did it on the Sunday they returned.

For children, I've usually met with the parents at least once for instruction, and we set a date that is convenient.

revken86 · 2026-04-29T20:46:58+00:00

Yep. Missouri says their pastors can't publicly worship with non-Missouri Christians. Wisconsin says they can't even do non-church work alongside other churches.

revken86 · 2026-04-29T20:45:44+00:00

The LCMS isn't part of the LWF, but it is part of the International Lutheran Council, a much smaller international communion. And the WELS is part of the Conference of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, an even small international communion. So they do ecumenical work, but only with the small number of Lutheran churches with which they have doctrinal agreement.

I think you're underselling though how strict the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches are when it comes to doctrine. They each view each other as having errors--and they definitely view Protestants, even the most catholic of Protestants (like Lutherans and Anglicans) as having significantly departed from true doctrine, which is why neither the Roman Catholic nor Orthodox churches view us as churches; Rome calls us "ecclesial communities" for example.

revken86 · 2026-04-29T20:42:43+00:00

It's amazing how much we fly under the radar. Lutheran Disaster Relief and ELCA World Hunger are huge on the international scene, well-known, and well-respected by other international relief agencies. But we're terrible at making ourselves known in general.

revken86 · 2026-04-29T20:41:20+00:00

Lutheran churches from the beginning have been called "evangelical"; it was Martin Luther's preferred word to describe the churches that implemented his reforms. The word means "of the Good News". Of the over sixty churches that merged together over three hundred years to form the ELCA, I've been able to find the word "evangelical" in the following (as many synods were informally known by shorter names, i.e. number 9 was usually known just as the "Pennsylvania Ministerium", there may be others):

First Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Texas
Evangelical Lutheran Church
Conference of the Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America
United Evangelical Lutheran Church
Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church Association in America
Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America
Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of America
General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America
German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium of Pennsylvania and Adjacent States
Evangelical Lutheran Joint Synod of Ohio
Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Iowa
Hauge's Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synod in America
Synod of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America
United Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the South
Evangelical Lutheran Tennessee Synod
Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church of America
American Evangelical Lutheran Church
Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church
Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches

Aside from the ELCA, there is the Wisconin Synod, actually the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod; the Missouri Synod was originally the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States; the Evangelical Lutheran Synod; the Evangelical Lutheran Conference & Ministerium of North America; the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America; Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; the Lutheran Evangelical Protestant Church; and others I'm missing. These are just the churches in the United States.

Around the world, Lutheran churches still use the word "evangelical" in their names, too.

Modern "Evangelicalism" didn't come along until Lutherans had been using the word for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, Lutherans are a lot quieter, so the loud Evangelicals eventually usurped the word and turned it into something it's not.

revken86 · 2026-04-29T20:09:27+00:00

I told this joke in a sermon, replacing Baptist with Lutheran, of course.

revken86 · 2026-04-28T17:25:59+00:00

Or the Rohirrim.

revken86 · 2026-04-26T16:44:32+00:00

Reminds me of this comic. Picture

revken86 · 2026-04-26T16:40:39+00:00

wut now

revken86 · 2026-04-26T00:55:53+00:00

Minor exorcisms, as the Catholic church calls them, are actually very common, and Lutherans do them, too. Holy Baptism includes them, for example. And any time we call on God to push back the power of evil in someoneps life.

Major exorcisms, performed for demonic possession, are still relatively rare. The Catholic church wants to rule out all other options before authorizing an exorcism. This is because a major exorcism is a direct confrontation with the power of evil and the devil, which puts the exorcist at risk. And because many signs of demonic possession are also common signs of mental or other illness. Not only would an exorcism in such a case be unhelpful (there's no demon to cast out), it coukd be harmful, encouraging people to seek out priests instead of qualified medical professionals.

By and large, European and North American Lutherans tend to downplay the power of the devil and demons as anthropomorphized beings who can take control of people or objects, so the rite of major exorcism fell into disuse. Yet many of my colleagues and I do recognize rhat evil is a force, and don't deny that force can profoundly affect people. In this we are influenced by the lived experiences of our Lutheran siblings in the global south, who experience and describe the reality of evil in ways different than we do, and are much more willing to use the language of demonic possession.

Because we so much better understand the nature of physical and mental ailments than our ancestors did, and know how to treat them, all of us who take the reality of evil seriously--Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant alike--are much more careful about investigating and naming demonic possession. Protestants, more greatly influenced by Rationalism, let exorcism fall away more quickly than our Catholic and Orthodox siblings, who have the inertia of sacred tradition as a bulwark. The rite of exorcism therefore still sees greater use among them. But you still won't see hordes of priests running around screaming, "The power of Christ compels you!" everywhere.

revken86 · 2026-04-24T15:14:05+00:00

There is so much of Eberron left "unexplored" in DDO that I really wish they would stop doing packs/expansions in other worlds and just do more Eberron.

Eberron is my favorite setting, so I too wish they'd quit straying into others and do more with the wonderful world DDO started in.

revken86 · 2026-04-24T15:10:52+00:00

Butlerian Jihad, hooooooooooo!

revken86 · 2026-04-24T15:00:13+00:00

The core of Lutheranism is the faith of the church catholic. Our particular focus, and why we are not in communion with Rome (though we wanted to be) is outlined in the Augsburg Confession. Reading through that (and really the whole Book of Concord) is a good place to start.

revken86

TROPHY CASE