Likewise, homosexuality was only the surface-level reason for the NALC's formation. Factions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), founded in 1988, had long lamented the loss of confessional commitment amidst the raft of ill-conceived ecumenical agreements the ELCA promptly established with other mainline Protestants in the 1990s. Some didn't like that the ELCA had downgraded its Lutheranism. Others felt the ecumenical direction wasn't serious enough about reunion with Rome.
Read moreThat is not the way a biblical scholar thinks. Translations given at much later dates don't determine the meaning of terms at much earlier dates. The author is right that the word does not mean "homosexuals" (RSV, 1st ed.; or, for that matter, "sodomites"; "Sodom" is not part of the stem of this noun).
Read moreProtestants do not find the primacy-of-Peter in the Bible, neither do we recognize a centralized authority with permission to mix biblical and unbiblical teachings (magisterium) to instruct Christians about what to believe.
Read moreRoman Catholics believe that the sacraments (ex opere operato) automatically and always effect what they signify - that the bread and wine of Communion is the actual, corporeal body and blood of Christ whether it is received by a faithful penitent or accidentally by a mouse under the communion table nibbling the crumbs. And everyone who is baptized, newborn or adult, is automatically born again.
Read moreThere is no alternative for the helpless sinner than to cast himself wholly upon the supreme help of God. Nothing avails for the individual who discovers that they are lost beyond recovery apart from an uncaused intervention from above. Human desire, strength and righteousness are of no account whatsoever in the matter of divine deliverance and transformation, which is exclusively and solely a work of omnipotent grace.
Read moreScientists, theologians, and bishops from around the globe are being invited by the Anglican Communion's Secretary General, Dr Josiah Idowu-Fearon, to serve as Commissioners. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has asked Anglican Communion Primates to nominate a Bishop from their Church to serve as provincial representatives at conferences of the Commission.
Read moreHe taught that Adam's sin affected Adam only and that men and women are free to sin or to not sin. Pelagius opposed the idea of original sin: that, after the Fall, we are not able to not sin - until such time as God brings us from death to life and gives us the Holy Spirit and a "right willing." Pelagians then and today have a high anthropology (an omni-confident view of "free will") which always results in a low christology (we don't need a Savior, we need a coach to cheer us on).
Read moreWe say in our creed that we believe "in the resurrection of the body," not just the spirit. We believe that God is going to do for the whole physical creation what he did for Jesus at Easter. In the meantime, all creation groans for release for its true and ultimate created purposes (Rom 8:19). We see glimpses of this when the prophets of old talk about a time in the future when the mountains will sing and the trees will clap their hands.
Read moreIn 1534 Henry VIII broke with the Church of Rome to declare himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Everyone knows his selfish reasons. But the neurotic desire for a male heir to the throne, God used as the occasion for the Protestant Reformation in England. In the years that followed the Church of England fully embraced Protestant theology.
Read moreAnd with esteem for my revivalist, pietistic evangelical friends, sanctification is not about more obedience to the latest and greatest set of spiritual disciplines that are guaranteed on the book cover to bring us incremental righteousness. No! It's growing in appreciation for God's imputed perfect righteousness - his promise to never leave us nor forsake us, and to love us with an everlasting love that not even death can touch.
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