If they were honest, they'd call themselves the ***A
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Al Mohler is someone I sometimes agree with, and sometimes not.
But I sadly must agree with Mohler- and by implication, at least, with Lutheran theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg- that only one letter in the initials "ELCA" is accurate.
It is in no sense "evangelical," the "gospel" it talks about so much is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, but a buzz word completely without content which serves only as something to appeal to over and against the text of Scripture.
Given the post-modernism (to say nothing of the universalism and near-universalism, errors on the very article by which Lutheranism historically has maintained the Church "stands or falls") which infests its seminaries and clergy roster, it's hard to see how the ELCA can be called Lutheran. After all, to be Lutheran, don't you have to... well, subscribe in some sense to Lutheranism? Hard to do if, as the ELCA clergy at a meeting I attended shortly before leaving that church body agreed, there is no such thing as truth.
Same with adherence to the One Who claimed to be the Truth, as well as the Way and the Life. Falling as it does on the article by which the Church stands or falls, and rejecting the clear and consistent teaching of Scripture on homosexuality and marriage (among other things), it's hard to see how the ELCA can be said to be any part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church whose Faith it rejects in so many ways.
But it is in America. I'll give it that.
HT: Real Clear Religion
But I sadly must agree with Mohler- and by implication, at least, with Lutheran theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg- that only one letter in the initials "ELCA" is accurate.
It is in no sense "evangelical," the "gospel" it talks about so much is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, but a buzz word completely without content which serves only as something to appeal to over and against the text of Scripture.
Given the post-modernism (to say nothing of the universalism and near-universalism, errors on the very article by which Lutheranism historically has maintained the Church "stands or falls") which infests its seminaries and clergy roster, it's hard to see how the ELCA can be called Lutheran. After all, to be Lutheran, don't you have to... well, subscribe in some sense to Lutheranism? Hard to do if, as the ELCA clergy at a meeting I attended shortly before leaving that church body agreed, there is no such thing as truth.
Same with adherence to the One Who claimed to be the Truth, as well as the Way and the Life. Falling as it does on the article by which the Church stands or falls, and rejecting the clear and consistent teaching of Scripture on homosexuality and marriage (among other things), it's hard to see how the ELCA can be said to be any part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church whose Faith it rejects in so many ways.
But it is in America. I'll give it that.
HT: Real Clear Religion
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