Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. I forgot who I was talking to for a minute there.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Now I.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Don't worry, I remembered. I'm Pastor Wolfmuller. Pastor St. Paul and Jesus. Deaf Lutheran churches in Austin, Texas, joined. This is a theology Q and A. Pastor Packer's over there. Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, heard a rumor about you, that it is your 25th wedding anniversary.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: I can confirm. Hey, I got married the day before my birthday, so that I can't ever forget it.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's smart.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Congratulations. Well, happy birthday also. How old are you?
[00:00:34] Speaker B: 47.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Sheesh.
Kids. Just kids. Can you believe they let the kids on the YouTubes now?
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Well, you just had a birthday holder.
[00:00:42] Speaker A: You 49 now?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Almost. Hey, next year's a big one.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. I'm gonna celebrate by having. Oh, we had thought of this idea, which maybe we'll do it. We're gonna maybe once a month do a live stream Q A.
That'd be fun. So if you don't want to. You don't want to take the time to send in your questions at Wolfmother Co, you can just tune in live and ask your questions there. You got some questions for us, Pastor Packer?
[00:01:12] Speaker B: Yeah, but I notice you put two churches, one church. Could you put two churches, no school.
One church, One. One school.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: You got any questions for us? One church banker.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Yeah, this one's. This one's about animals, actually.
Hi, guys. I've greatly benefited from your ministry on what it means to be a Lutheran in the 21st century. I was wondering what your thoughts are on animals going to heaven. Are they saved? I'm greatly challenged by this because Christ did say he died for mankind, but not animals. I'm also studying to be a future vet tech, et cetera. So someone's looking at being a vet and curious what the Bible has to say about animals and heaven. Etc.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Here's my answer to this. My very sensitive pastoral care answer is, man, I sure hope there's not animals in heaven. Because imagine getting to heaven and there's like 700 cows lined up to ask how they tasted.
And I don't think anybody really wants the cows and the chickens that they ate to be in heaven. But it's more like the other animals, like the cats and the dogs and the very friendly lizards or whatever that people want to go there. But here's. Okay, so a couple of things. I think we can answer this in a.
We don't know a lot in the scripture, but here's the first thing is that there are very important differences between man and beast.
And the key difference is while life belongs to animals and also to plants as well, in a certain way.
And animals also have what we might recognize as a soul, that life that shows up in motion and reaction, so that animals can even think and feel that they do not have a spirit. That is a unique gift that God has given to man. And it is that spirit that is made alive by repentance. It's that spirit that is what puts man in the capacity to be created in the image of God, also to bear the image of death and the devil and to be recreated in the image of God. And so that spirit is what carries us through death into heaven and then the new resurrection, the new heaven and the new earth in the resurrection.
So that there's no way to understand biblically that there can be a continuity between the animals that are here and the animals in the new heaven and the new earth.
Now, that being said, we want to reflect on the fact that in the new heaven and the new earth, as far as we can see the little limited, beautiful glimpses that the scriptures give, it seems like it's an even fuller experience of this earth, including animals and all the other beautiful things that the Lord created for us to experience.
So that will there be animals? I think I'd say the question, will there be animals in the new heaven and the new earth? It seems like the answer to that is, as far as we can tell, absolutely. And in a more profound way than we experience animals now in this world.
It's also good to note that the Lord has given unique gifts to each of the animals, and we have a hard time seeing them. One of the things that Luther makes in his Genesis commentary is how the uniqueness of each of the creatures that God created would have been identifiable by Adam. And so Adam could understand the essence of the parrot and the essence of the monkey and the essence of the goldfish to give it its name.
We have lost that wisdom. And now the only thing we really can ask about the animals is, can I eat it, or is it going to eat me? I mean, everything is kind of reduced down to consumption.
But the point of the wisdom of Adam is there was this ability to recognize the beauty of what God has created. And it seems like that's part of the restoration of the new heaven and the new earth. The last thing is that we also then can recognize that the Lord has given some animals to help us work, some animals for, I suppose, for our amusement. Some animals also serve like There's a reason why it's dogs and cats that are living in the house. It's because God has uniquely created them for this. And it seems like they are real and true gifts of God and we should recognize them as such.
So that that friendship that a man has with his dog, that a boy has with his puppy, that the very strange ladies have with cats, who can love them, it's weird. But anyway, there's that, you know, that's a real thing and it should be honored as such. And so just because we don't confess that animals have eternal spirits doesn't mean that we deny their importance as gifts from God.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Yeah, Proverbs even talks about the wicked, right, Abuse animals, whereas the righteous take care of them. So it means even in the Bible that we're to treat them well.
One thing, you can also eat animals that can eat you, because I've had mountain lion and bear and shark for that matter. So you can eat animals that can eat you as well. If you want to, like, get back, you can go.
[00:06:55] Speaker A: You can go there first.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Exactly. So it's not limited. I think, as you were saying, that though it'll be interesting to see because I actually don't know if we've talked about this before, maybe you disagree on this, but if so, you're wrong. I'm just kidding.
So, and for Lutheran, there's always been two views of the new Earth, whether it's a renewed earth or a brand new kind of earth. And I think the renewed earth makes the most sense because, like, I'm a new creation in Christ and I wasn't like obliterated, I was made. Right? I was renewed. And so I think that that pattern continues with, with the world too. So you would think that the animals we have would continue to exist in some way, like in a renewed Earth, like they. The types of animals we have. But you could also imagine where God could add more or maybe varieties that have, you know, ceased to exist or whatever, like, are brought back or who knows, like we, we just don't have a full picture of what that's going to be like. It could even be greater, but we won't have to worry about them, as you said, like eating us or coming after us, like it'll be a new way to delight in it. I was also thinking, as you were saying, that if people haven't seen the videos, the riot and the dance, they have several. It's kind of like, you know, the BBC stuff on Planet Earth, but it's from a Christian perspective. So they're delighting in God's creation as God's creation.
And so those videos are really great. So if you people haven't seen those, you can check those out. I think they're on Amazon, last I saw, but my family's enjoyed those, so that's cool. Yeah, they're really good.
Worth checking out, too. As you said, we don't often, I don't think, consider how amazing creation really is, especially because most of us are very cut off from it now. Right.
We don't get out there as much around the animals.
It's hard to get to some of these places where some of these amazing creatures are. And so shows like that, I think are helpful to open our eyes to God's creativity and the wonders that he's put in this world for us to delight in.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Something happened to me just recently, and my kids have now, like, put a pin in this as the mark of my old age, and that is that I've been interested in what birds are.
[00:09:07] Speaker B: That is a sign.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: Yes, that's a swift. This is out of season for it. I was walking down the street in May, and I'm like, why are the birds so loud? And I looked. It's like peak migration time. And I'm, like, tracking the birds that I see and everything, and. And my kids are, like, rolling their eyes.
It's part of the. It's part of the Dominion mandate, I think, to know what the birds are called.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: I actually, I do think it is part of wisdom, as you get older to, like, you are more interested in, like, what are these trees around me, these birds in the trees, like, you actually like and stuff that probably for a lot of our ancestors, they just would have known because they're all around those things more. Whereas we have to get older and wiser before, like, you know what? I should probably pay attention to this stuff. Like, yeah, it's all around me. God, put it here.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: I'm looking out the window. There's a tree there, and there's a tree there. And these are like, how in the world did they end up so different? You know, like, different kind of wood, different kind of everything. Did you hear, by the way, down here in Texas, there was a. Speaking of trees, there's a bunch of guys that were putting makeup on pecans.
It was pretty nuts.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: We have to move on. I don't know if we'll recover from that.
No one's going to watch a live stream now. They're going to be scared.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Okay,
[00:10:30] Speaker B: all right, this is the next question. Very different topic. Am I just being argumentatively right? This is their they have a quote they want us to consider. There was a recent post on social media that said if your theological convictions are not actively making you more gracious, humble and repentant, then your beliefs are not being shaped by Jesus. They're motivated by a desire to be argumentatively right. And that's from Wes huff on Facebook Aug 6, 2026 Is it possible to have the sinful desire without being able to see that you have it? How would we know? Can it actually be helpful to look at how gracious, humble and repentant we are? That seems shaky ground too. I'm trying to examine myself and figure out if I do this. The post caught me attention because it's difficult to disagree with a friend, but it's even more difficult when they say Lutherans just want to be right.
How often is this true? I really don't think that it's true for me, even though I do believe that Lutheranism is truly right. God be praised. But how would I be sure I'm not just relishing and being argumentatively right? I'd like to love my friend well,
[00:11:30] Speaker A: oh wow, what a phenomenal question.
And there's okay, so.
And I love it because one of the unique things about our Lutheran doctrine is it's not just interested in being right.
When you read through, for example, the Book of Concord, what you realize is that their goal is not truth, but the truth of the gospel that comforts terrified consciences. So there's a lot of true things out there that don't comfort the conscience. There's a specific truth that's the gospel truth that does comfort the conscience.
I think I would disagree. And here's how I want to approach this, to try to try to draw a careful line, to work towards some health here. Because there's a danger whenever you start exploring your own motivations and whenever you start examining yourself, you set yourself up.
It can be a trap really quickly, a trap. You wander into the woods and there's no way out, because the only choice that you give yourself is either you're doing good, which is prideful, or you're doing terrible, which is despair.
In other words, if you ask the wrong question, you can't get a healthy answer.
So to be able to ask the right question, I want to dispute the original tweet by saying that being right and being gracious are two distinct not separate, but two distinct things, so that it's not our theological convictions that lead us deeper towards the grace and compassion of God in Christ, but that the Holy Spirit is doing two things at once.
So St. Paul, for example, can talk about zeal without knowledge, for example, or he can say, maybe the best verse is that we speak the truth in love so that it's possible to speak the truth, not in love. It's also probably possible to speak falsehood in love.
So we want to be able to think about these two things. We want to be able to speak the truth, and we want to speak the truth in love so that the goal of our conversation is always repentance and faith in Christ, so that when we come into a conversation, the goal is not to win the conversation or win the debate or to be right.
The goal is to deliver the comfort of the truth of the gospel.
So it's not like anybody wants to be wrong or that we want to make our goal being wrong, but we have to engage in these.
In these theological conversations in love for the neighbor.
So Peter gives us, I think, the best instructions for the way out of this, the way to sort of check where we are. He says, be ready. This is his apologetic text.
Be ready to give a defense for the hope that's in you.
How does he. What's the very next line? He says with honor and, oh, sheesh, now I got to look it up. How did I forget the main verse that I'm supposed to not forget, and it has to do with this question is, do I honor the person that I'm debating with?
Do I consider them according to the gifts of God?
Or is something else at work there? So first Peter 3:15 is the text I'm looking for here. It is, sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. Always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you the reason for the hope that's in you. With meekness and fear, having a good conscience and meekness and fear.
Am I making the argument gently, and am I doing it while honoring the person that I'm talking to, or am I doing it to dishonor them? And I think that would be the check now. Okay, so let me maybe pause there and let you jump in, Pastor Packer, to straighten up this tangle that I just put out there.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: No, I think there may have been. It's a Facebook post, so it's possible there was more that Wes Huff said.
He's a really good apologist overall, and I think he actually does this pretty well. He's very gracious and humble when he argues with people and debates with them. So I think he's a great example of actually what he's talking about.
But it's kind of like what James says, right? Faith without works is dead. So there can be someone who has all the theological answers, but maybe doesn't have faith.
And so they use those more as a hammer. Right. Or something to bludgeon people with because they just want to be right, even though. And they. They may have all the right answers, but they just want to bludgeon people with it and they don't actually love anyone. And maybe it's because there's a lack of faith. Right.
I think it's very similar to that.
There's a lack of love because there's a lack of faith, which is how the Bible usually ties those together. So like you said, you can have.
You can know the right answers and be a complete jerk about.
Doesn't mean everyone who's a jerk about it doesn't have faith because someone's going to say, you know, that's too harsh. And I agree. I'm not trying to say everyone who argues that way doesn't have faith, but I think there is an immaturity there often. Right. Where you want to just. You've got to win all the time, and that's your desires to win the debate and to be right.
But it doesn't mean what you're saying is wrong, because that's a sinful flesh problem.
It's not the theology's problem.
You could have someone who's 100% correct theologically and just be a complete jerk. And you can have someone who's got a lot of things wrong but is very humble and gracious.
And you want both. Right. It's not either or. I think that's my concern. Sometimes it gets painted as either or. Like, either you get your theology right, or you're humble and gracious. And I don't think Wes Huff's doing that, but I think a lot of people do that.
Like, all your learning. Right. Has driven you to be a jerk, to be mean.
So. So I don't want. I don't want to learn all those things because it just makes people mean.
That's. We don't want to put that kind of division between them. As you said, we want to keep them together, that they're distinct, but they are related. Like you should, if you're studying the Bible and learning the truth, it should, as you say, like, bring comfort to the conscience.
It should bring humility. It should bring about a gracious spirit. It should do those things.
But you can be Studying it and be immature, be shallow with it, be argumentative with it. There's a lot of ways I can go wrong because of our sinful flesh.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Amen. And this, like, this sort of hinting at despair that came at the end of the email question. Like, how do I know if I'm doing it just out of love for truth or out of.
It's.
There is always a danger at that question of motives.
So if I, if I try to go and figure out my motives, like, I, I'm just going to wander into a dark forest that there's no way out of. Like, and it doesn't matter. Like, if I, if I try to. So if I try to go search my motives for, like, why I'm preaching on Sunday, am I preaching out of a, of a love for God and His Word and for his people so that they would hear and the word of God and repent and be saved?
Or am I standing up there so that everyone will know how smart I am about all these things that I know and how hard I work to understand the scripture? Or am I standing up here because I can't get another job and I better do it because then people will be upset? Or in other words, what is the motivation that's there? And we are always this big mess of flesh versus spirit.
And so there's always going to be bad motivations to find. There's always going to be godly motivations to find.
The problem is that it's just a swamp, it's quicksand when we go start knocking around.
So it's best to fix our eyes on Jesus and say, Jesus has given me this neighbor to love and maybe this neighbor to love.
I can love by bringing to bear the truth of God's word against this dangerous error that they're holding onto. And I want to do that for their sake, not for mine, for their benefit, not for mine. I want to come as a servant to bless them.
And I think that's the only way out, in other words, to say my motivations are probably disastrous and surely need repentance.
But God has put me here and given me my neighbor and told me to love them. And the Lord is apparently, the Lord is apparently risk tolerant for my false motivations in giving me a vocation and a neighbor. And if he's willing to set me loose on beginning to love someone in spite of my bad motivations, then I'll just get at it.
And I think that's the way to approach these questions. In other words, are your motivations Messed up probably.
So what? Do the good thing. Serve your neighbor, bless them and let the Holy Spirit use.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Seems like, and I would say from her email, the fact that she's struggling so much, I think shows that her motives are probably generally trending in the right direction. Right. Because she generally seems concerned about it. I found that those who don't really question their motives ever at all, like they don't have any guilt over it, are usually the ones who are using, like using it in the argumentative way, like they don't care. And if you question them on it, like, well, of course I'm right. Because I'm right. Like, of course I'm doing it this the right way. Of course it's not me.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: It's the truth hurts.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Right? Exactly. The truth is going to hurt, so you best suffer under it.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: I'm just telling the truth. You know, it was Dr. Kleining told me one time, he says the devil loves to use us being right so that we can be right.
And that becomes a form of self righteousness. I mean, the devil also loves to use us being wrong.
It's not like I should try to be wrong, we should try to be right.
But we should also recognize that the clarity and truth belongs to the Scriptures, not to our own mind. And so if I'm disagreeing with someone about the Scriptures, I have to be. I have to also listen because there's a chance that I've got it wrong and I don't want to be wrong. So that should lead to a humility.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: All right, next question.
Does the New Testament demean marriage?
So is sexual desire the only or primary reason to enter into marriage in the New Testament era?
It seems the Bible only speaks of this and it implies that if you do not experience lust and are able to control it, then you should remain alone and preserve your virginity. Does this not demean marriage as if it is a destiny for the weak?
So the New Testament teaching that marriage is just for the weak and the strong should not get married?
[00:23:19] Speaker A: No, the. So it's a great question.
So we have to honor these words from St. Paul in this section about marriage.
In Corinthians, he outlines his own doctrine and the Lord's doctrine. And he makes that distinction. Here's my opinion. But he does say, I wish all could remain like me. But then he'll go on to add his own opinion about it.
The distinction that Paul makes is, especially in this time of martyrdom and sort of evangelistic expansion, that the benefit of being single, which apparently Paul was at this Time was that he could wander off everywhere and also die and not have to worry about it.
To be married is to be bound man to his wife, wife to her husband, and those parents to their children, and to share in the concerns and the worries that belong to the domestic life.
And Paul sees this, at least in his own circumstances, as a hindrance. And therefore he says, I desire that everyone could be like me, able to wander around, preach the gospel, serve the Lord, die, etc. To not have those concerns, but the general. But he says, this is not given to everyone. It's a unique gift. And so do not try to force this life of chastity, something that Rome has done to disastrous effect. This forced this life of chastity. He said, it can't be forced if a person doesn't have this unique spiritual gift of being free from lust or sexual desire.
You should not even try this at all, but seek marriage where your, where your sexual desires can be expressed as a good work.
But in the whole picture of marriage in the Bible, top to bottom, the picture is good.
So the Lord instituted marriage with Adam and Eve.
The Lord expects for marriage to be the normal shape of life, that a man grows up and leaves his father and mother and is joined with his wife and the two become one flesh.
That marriage in fact is the norm and the blessed norm for humanity. That's the constant picture of the Scripture. And I don't think that Paul would be reversing that or in any way contradicting that assumption.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it doesn't seem like, I guess I've never gotten that impression from the New Testament. Like I understand where they're coming from because of these verses, but it seems like still the right we have marriage for a help meet, right for procreation. And then, yes, since the Fall, it is also useful against temptations that break the sixth commandment. Like it's a thing to help you with that. But it doesn't.
Just because it is, that also doesn't mean it removes those first two. That you have this partner, this help meet, and that you have, you bear children. Like those things aren't done away with.
Because if you're going, if you're going to do that, then it seems like the New Testament would have just done away with marriage then.
Like if, if that's all it is, then then why have it? Like, because it seems like there might be other options there. But as you said, Paul's dealing with very specific things. In First Corinthians, was that chapter 7 there? And not getting into not covering everything. I think there's a danger. This is. I think this is one of the problems sometimes we run into, right. Reading the Bible or reading parts of the New Testament. If you take one part to the exclusion of everything else that's set on a topic, you can end up with some ideas about things, whether it be marriage or other stuff.
We were talking about this via email not too long ago with that one essay I sent you that, right. Like, so the idea that people have today from some things supposedly Paul said about women and then. So now women are viewed as like, completely irrational oftentimes. And some people say that's the Christian view, when really that came out of the Enlightenment and goes back to like Greek pagan thought. And it's not the actual biblical view. It's just people have attached it to that, right, because they take one verse, read it out of context, and then import a bunch of stuff into it. And you can do that with like those passive. If that's all we had on marriage was what Paul said, you may wonder, well, marriage is only for this, but we have a whole lot. We have the whole Bible.
And that can be the danger too, sometimes with proof testing, like, we have an entire story.
And the more parts of that story you fit into the. Your picture of any topic or doctrine or whatever, like, the more of that story you include the fuller picture you're going to get so that you don't fall into various traps or ditches or whatever, so that you don't end up thinking, man, I'm getting married. That must mean I'm weak because I can't handle myself. It's like Jesus basically says, you know, it's a special gift.
Celibacy is a special gift from God that the majority of us don't have. And Luther picks up on this, like, hey, most of us don't have this gift, and that's okay. We instead get the gift of marriage.
And so I don't think we need to put the gifts against each other. Just acknowledge that, hey, most of us should get married, and that's a good thing. But nowadays it seems like everyone's delaying marriage or not getting married or whatever. And we see all the disastrous problems it's creating for society, for everything, for the church, for all kinds of things.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: Yeah, why don't you talk about AOC freezing her eggs for a little bit? That'd be fun.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: I would prefer not to.
I mean, it is weird, right? If you were her boyfriend, how'd that make you feel?
[00:29:14] Speaker A: I thought they broke up.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: Did they Add well, maybe they did after that.
I don't know. It just seems. Yeah, that whole thing is, like, just odd, even the way she made a big show of it. Like, it's. It's just super weird. But this is what we do. And now the next thing related to that, though, is now all the rich people are gonna want these designer babies. There's been a lot written on that in the last week. The technology's pretty far along now, and it's gonna get weird really fast.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: So here's comes back to this question about, like, okay, what if someone has the gift of chastity? Like, they don't like what Paul says. They're not burning.
Is it okay for them to get married, or is it better to be single? And here we just have to say that the Lord is able to.
The Lord doesn't set these things against each other.
In other words, the one who's single serves the Lord in his church. The one who's married serves the Lord in his church and his wife or her husband and their family.
It's not like,
[00:30:20] Speaker B: isn't that Lutheran?
[00:30:22] Speaker A: They're both good.
They're both good.
The same thing for. I mean, like, in the church. Like, say someone has a theological inclination.
Is it better for them to be a pastor, or is it better for them to be a layperson? They're both good.
Praise the Lord. It's not like there's some sort of ideal life and then something that falls short of it. I mean, all these gifts are under the dominion of the Lord Jesus, and we really are free in this way to receive his gifts.
Just because one thing is good doesn't mean the other thing is bad.
That the Lord holds out all these good. It's like the Garden of Eden. It's not like you can eat from this. There's one tree you can't eat from, but this one, and this one, and this one and this one.
It's just gifts that the Lord gives. So this idea. And we get trapped in this thing, especially when young people are trying to say, well, what's the Lord's will for my life? Like, there's some sort of ideal life that's out there, and I got to take one step in front of another to get to that ideal life.
It should. It's a. It's. We're like the calves leaping from the stall. We're just stomping all over the pasture, and there's this great freedom that the Lord has given to us, and it's all good.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: Well, Luther was not Necessarily really interested in getting married. Right. Like, they kind of, like, pushed him to. I mean, contrary to Roman Catholic opinion that, like, he was sobering with lust, he had to get married. Like, they. It took a while for them to convince him, hey, you should. You should marry her. Like, this is a good thing for you. And it was a good example, et cetera. Like, he wasn't necessarily. He was one who seemed like may, perhaps he could have stayed single, but chose. Chose marriage because.
And it worked out wonderfully for him. Right. And his household and the example they set and all those kind of things. Like, it ended up being a beautiful thing for everybody.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: Can you imagine? Here's Rome says Luther started the Reformation because he was full of lust and wanted to get married. Oh, well, yeah. Is that. Are you guys sure you want to argue, Go down that route? You know, like, what else.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it seems like there would have been easier things to do besides start Reformation just for that. Right? Yeah.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: And also, is that the argument that you priests want to make, that. That Luther was sort of sexually deviant? And that's what a sexually deviant person does, is gets married. And that just does not seem to be a successful apologetic track for the. For the Roman Catholic apologists. Anyways.
[00:32:58] Speaker B: All right, this is like a. I just thought this one was fun, so we're including it.
Do you have any favorite theologians or Church fathers from before the Reformation?
[00:33:11] Speaker A: No. It's a huge problem I've got.
I mean, I love them all equally, like, all my children, but, you know, I.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: They're dead. They can't hear you. Tell. Tell which one's their favorite.
[00:33:22] Speaker A: Luther is like a. I was trying to figure out why, you know, my guy here, Christopher Wordsworth, you got, you know, the Christopher Wordsworth commentary stuff. Do you have this?
[00:33:33] Speaker B: I got him. Right? Yeah, I've got him over here.
[00:33:36] Speaker A: And he just quotes a bajillion Church fathers. Like, how come he knows the Church Father so good? And I realize, oh, he's Anglican. He doesn't have Luther blocking his view. It's like being a Lutheran and trying to watch the Is and trying to read the Church Fathers is like going to the movie and sitting behind Andre the Giant, like, get out of the way, Luther. I can't see any of these guys because he cast such a huge, big shadow. But it's good to go and try to dig into him. So, I mean, I've been trying to think about Ignatius letters, which are so full of beauty and comfort, especially as he's going to die.
I've been Trying to pay attention to Irenaeus. In fact, I've been working on a little project to try to help open up Irenaeus to apply to our modern gnostic condition. And he has so many helpful things to say there.
Of course St. Augustine is a mountain peak amongst the Fathers and is so helpful in so many ways.
I mean, so I don't know, I suppose that who I end up reading most actually is Eusebius, which is kind of weird, but it's just because I'm trying to get the ancient perspective on the history.
But I don't know, those are some of my most referenced and probably we should do a little bit more on this because you know, our Lutheran Fathers were always making the claim, hey, we stand in continuity with the Fathers, we're not starting a new church.
We are the inheritors of the spiritual wisdom passed down to us.
But anyway, that's my thinking.
[00:35:20] Speaker B: In addition to the ones you said, I like reading Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom also maybe. I mean there's a lot of other really well known ones obviously, but maybe one that's not as well known, which is right there. Hey, put my finger right under it. Okay. Saint Ephrem the Syrian, I really love his stuff just because he has a lot of poetry, a lot of really beautiful stuff if people aren't familiar with him.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who Luther loved, has a lot of beautiful sermons like his Advent sermons, his Christmas sermons are really fantastic if people aren't familiar with those.
So those are two maybe that are not cited as often as some of the other church fathers that I really enjoy and try to read.
Like I said, Saint Ephrem the Syrian, his poetry stuff is just fantastic. And then of course Bernard of Clairvaux, his sermons are just wonderful. So those are two I enjoy in addition to the, the ones you mentioned and maybe the other more popular ones that are out there that people think of when they, when they hear this question.
What about after, what about after Luther? Who are your favorite after Luther? It's not part of the question.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: This is. I'm working on this with Flammy too to try to publish some readers editions of some of those works of the Fathers that are referenced in the Book of Concord. In other words, like here's our canon. So Augustine on, on nature and the Spirit, Augustine on the letter in the Spirit, Augustine on nature and Grace. These are like referenced works that should be familiar to us and some of the others, Ambrose especially gets quoted all the time, so that's great. And my buddy, Pastor Ketchermeyer is convinced that Luther based his Isaiah commentary on Cyril of Alexandria. His commentary that they match up really close. So that's interesting.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: So, yeah, Cyril's got a lot of great commentaries.
His one on Luke is also really fantastic.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: Post Reformation, you know, the two authors that oddly, I go to constantly. I mentioned Wordsworth already. Christopher Wordsworth, the nephew of William Wordsworth, who did all these beautiful commentaries, which I love, and Alfred Edersheim. So both.
Both anglicans writing in 1890 that are my kind of go to kind of classical stuff.
I mean, in the Lutheran tradition, of course, Chemnitz is a champion and I think we need to know him a lot better. We're publishing this Rome exam and this kind of summary of the Chemnitz stuff so everybody can get a hold of Chemnitz. And the pinnacle of Lutheran orthodoxy was Johann Gerhard, that came up this morning in Worldwide Bible class, His Sacred Meditations. But his stuff is.
I mean, you know, his dogmatics is just so helpful. I mean, he ended the argument with Rome.
And if there's arguments with Rome now, it's just because we've got. We've forgotten Gerhard.
So that's my, I suppose, Post Reformation list.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Yeah, Gerhard's probably my favorite. I love Chemnitz too, but I just like the combination of the. I mean, I have. I think I've only read like one sermon of Chemnitz, maybe maybe two that we have in English. Whereas Gerard, you know, we've got a ton of his sermons. We've got devotional material, we've got the deep theological works. So you get a lot from him. And I'm just always impressed by how he handles everything and delight to read him especially like that. He starts all of his sermons with like Old Testament typology, which I really appreciate. So I love the way he reads the Bible.
So, yeah, so from post Reformation, there's some modern people I enjoy now, but from that period, he's probably the top of my list.
All right, let's go to the next
[00:39:15] Speaker A: one, by the way, for this because I think people need to be building their theological library. So we're republishing a bunch of like Luther's works and post Reformation works and all this sort of stuff. So if you go to Wolfmuller Co and there's books, free downloads and I don't know, I think we've got about 60 different books you can download for free.
So tons of stuff there and you can buy a bunch of it on Lulu also.
I think it should be an objective of Every Christian to be building that theological library and to have that good stuff that's available and actually to have it on the shelf and to be engaged in these texts. So CS Lewis talks about this, reading old theological books. Where is that?
[00:40:00] Speaker B: That's in his preface to on the Incarnation.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: Athanasius on the Incarnation. And he and his kind of beautiful. It talks about how we can't just read the new stuff, we got to read the old stuff. So. So you gotta. You gotta listen to the theology q and a YouTube podcast, and then you gotta go listen to Athanasius, his YouTube channel. So you can't just do the new theologians on YouTube. You gotta.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: Lewis is warning.
Lewis's warning is, I think, important though, right? Because he says the reason is because you and I have blinders on that we don't realize we have because of the. The time we live in. So when you read older stuff, you oftener can find where your blind spots are. And oh, how did I miss this? This is what everyone's been saying for 2000 years in the church. And we. Why don't we talk this way anymore? Whatever it is, right? You can look back and see your blind spots because they have their blind spots too, that they didn't see, but you have a different perspective on it looking back. And so Lewis was very concerned that we would get past our own time frame, our time where we're living, so that we could learn better from those who went before it. And I think his recommendation, is it 2 to 1 or 3 to 1, something like that. Three old books for every new book? Yeah, something like that.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: He has a ratio.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's three to one. We'll say it's three to one. Someone can fact check us.
[00:41:26] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:41:27] Speaker B: All right, the next one is on moral and ethical questions in the Lutheran Church.
How can we Lutherans potentially deal with moral issues such as contraception, AI, IVF, etc. If everything is so fragmented among us and we cannot add anything on top of the Book of Concord?
Many people simply brush off these important ethical issues as if the Bible and church history has no definitive position on them. The Catholics, the Roman Catholics, for their part, have a rigorous and well developed moral teaching. Yes, many still don't follow it, but at least they have an official position on something like contraception.
Don't you think that these ethical issues are fundamental in the context of the third use of the law in the Christian life? That is, this is not something separate from the mission of the church. So how are we to respond to them?
So Are we Lutherans bad at.
I can't even read what that says. Oh, I'm stuck in 350 AD Nice.
Are we Lutherans bad at responding to these issues?
What is it? Are we bad? I guess would be the first question. There's an assumption that we're bad at this.
So I guess the first question would be, are we bad at this, as the question seems to imply, and if we are bad at it, how could we be better if we're not bad at it, what would you give us evidence for that?
[00:42:45] Speaker A: We're probably bad at it, but the Catholic Church is worse. I mean, for heaven's sakes.
But it's not. Here's the. Let me just take apart this particular assumption, and that is that we're bound by the Book of Concord, and that is just not true. Our constraints are the Scriptures, so we can say everything that the Bible says, and we cannot say more than that.
So the Bible talks about a lot more than the Book of Concord talks about. So the Book of Concord is the application of the truths of the Scriptures to the particular fights. I mean, in the early church, we got the creeds, but especially at the time of the Reformation. But it's not like we can't say anything more. I remember I was at a winkle, you know, pastors got together, and one of the guys says, well, the. The Book of Concord doesn't say anything about women pastors. I was like, yeah, but the Bible does. And we believe the Bible. I mean, what's. What. What is the deal here?
So when it comes to whatever ethical issues that we're facing, what were the examples? Contraception and AI.
You're muted. Sorry.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: Contraception, AI and IVF were the three main ones.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Yeah, contraception, AI and ivf. We. We have the wisdom of the Scriptures. We don't have anything more.
Here's why the Pope is so bad.
Well, here's one of the many reasons why the Pope is so bad is that, first of all, he assumes that the Bible doesn't have anything to say about these things, but that the Church does. It's this weird assumption, because remember, the assumption of Rome is that we will give you more than the Bible, otherwise you wouldn't need us.
And so we have to give you more than the Bible. And so we believe at the same time that we are the ancient church that never changes, and also that we are always changing things.
And you have to believe that weird thing, or else you can't, I don't know, get to heaven, be saved. I got to submit to the Pope.
So the Pope is always declaring things about this stuff as if he's bringing about new wisdom.
The result is that things that should be free become what should be. Adiaphora becomes mandatum. And that's the essence of.
Part of the essence of the Roman era is that they require things that the Bible does not require. And that's why our key question to Rome is, what do you require of me that the prophets and the apostles do not?
And there we have it.
So that they're always making mandata. Mandata. Different rules and requirements that the Scriptures do not. Now, can we have wisdom from the Scriptures on contraception? Absolutely. Can we have wisdom from the Scriptures on AI? I sure hope so. And the same for ivf?
Absolutely. But we don't want to.
We don't want to say more than the Scripture does. And that's going to hopefully keep us in the wisdom of the Spirit rather than the wisdom that proceeds from Rome.
[00:46:03] Speaker B: I think part of our current problem probably is the way we're structured.
Unlike Rome, we don't have any one person speaking for us. Right. Like. Like we gather in convention and we have a committee write up a report on whatever one of these topics, and then that report can be accepted or right by the convention or whatever. But it's not actually.
It's not necessarily binding in the same way that. That the way Rome does things. So I think part of the reason maybe it comes across that way is because we're such a different setup that we don't have. We don't have a Pope that just speaks for all of us and says, this is, okay, guys, this is it.
These are our thoughts on AI. End of discussion.
So that does make it. It's messier, I guess you could say. It doesn't mean we're not speaking to those things.
I would guess most pastors have probably at least touched on these topics or taught on these topics, or if they were asked about them, would give answers on them based on what they believe the Bible says. But so it doesn't mean we're not talking about them just because we don't have like one Lutheran speaking for all of us and giving their opinion or saying, this is what the Bible teaches and you must teach this.
Which is what I think they see in Rome. Right? They see this.
I think that's why a lot of people are drawn to Rome right now, is because they see this monolithic structure, which I don't think is as monolithic as they think it is.
I mean, they even mention it in here. Right.
Many still don't follow it. Well, not only that, but even many of the priests reject what is passed down as, like, this is what you're supposed to teach and preach. So they may have some official teachings, but it's not like everyone's necessarily following them or even listening to them.
Whereas we would say, well, we may not have those, but we have, like you said, we have the Bible. And so as a pastor, I can. Someone can ask me about these things and I can look into the Bible and I can form a.
What I think is the wisest answer based on what Scripture says, which may mean maybe down the road someone comes along and says, like, hey, you're wrong about this. Like, I wrote a post a few weeks ago on, on how I use AI, and I, I put at the beginning it. I may down the road determine that, that these are not always. I should be using AI. Right. I could be wrong because the Bible doesn't clearly say, hey, this is how you should think about AI, because it wasn't there.
So take the scripture, apply it wisely, and then be willing to admit, hey, maybe I got this thing wrong that the Bible wasn't clear on.
So I think that's me where the struggle is coming for, for them. We don't have this.
We don't have someone. And if President Harrison did come out and say, this is what all Lutherans believe about AI, you'd get everyone saying, no, it's not. You don't speak for us. So, I mean, even if we did it, like, it would, it would last like five minutes because that's. And he can't do it because that's not the structure we have. But even if he did, you'd get a lot of guys saying, well, I disagree with this. And so I think the Bible says this and I think it's okay. We just have to be okay with it being messier.
And I think that's okay.
[00:49:04] Speaker A: Well, and, and so it's part of our confession of the sufficiency of the Scripture that we say that the Lord gave us. When the Lord gave us the writings of the prophets and apostles, that's what he wanted us to have. And he's. And he's okay with that. And we have to be okay with it as well. Like, we.
It's this, it's the prophetic temptation. Remember when the people of Israel were always tempted, like, to go down to Egypt and the Lord says to Isaiah, trust in me, you don't eat Egypt. And they're like, but the Assyrians are coming. We need Egypt. Right? I mean, this is the problem. Always the temptation. Like, the Lord says, I've given you my prophets and apostles. And we're like, but we need a Magisterium because it's not enough.
We don't think that we're safe.
And so we're always tempted to kind of. What does Isaiah call Egypt? Egypt is a broken reed. But we're always tempted to go and trust in princes. And Rome says, hey, I'm a prince. You can trust in me. I'll help you navigate this AI stuff. Well, it's true. When you get under his authority, like, everyone's like, wink, wink, wink. And they're reading the AI stuff, and they're like, yeah, this is not, you know, I mean, he. He treats AI like a technical revolution. Like the, like the Pope's encyclical on AI treats AI like the technical revolution, Industrial revolution and the danger that it had to, like, farm workers and stuff like this. And it's a completely different.
It's a. It's technology that's hitting a completely different place. It's. It's not a.
But anyway, I, you know, am I able to say that and critique that if I'm underneath them? And how does that whole work and all the.
I mean, it's a. Again, it's a denial of the sufficiency of Scripture. And we say, hey, we have the Bible and we want to constrain ourselves to that. We want to say as much as the Bible says, but not more. And that's going to shape our ethical determinations about birth control and about IVF and about the.
And about AI also.
[00:51:12] Speaker B: All right, we are done for the day with all the questions.
[00:51:15] Speaker A: What?
[00:51:16] Speaker B: We did five. We're done.
[00:51:18] Speaker A: All right, how many are left?
[00:51:20] Speaker B: Oh, just a few.
540.
[00:51:29] Speaker A: That's a lot. All right, well, thanks, everyone, for sending in your questions.
It's like Atlas, you know, we roll. We push the answers up the hill and. And just when we get to the
[00:51:40] Speaker B: top, they come back and crush us. We'll.
[00:51:43] Speaker A: We'll keep doing it as long as you keep sending them in. We'll. We'll do a live one of these things. Maybe next week we'll try. We'll. That'll be fun. We'll experiment and see how it works. But keep sending in your questions. Wolfmuller Co Contact Wednesday Whatnot is the free weekly newsletter I have now.
Well, not an official. An unofficial vow. I'm going to try to actually do those now on Wednesday. So got one out today.
There you go. Including on the Wednesday whatnot. An advertisement for pastor or a link for information about Pastor Packer's trip to Israel coming up this summer. That'll be bonus points if you go to. If you fly. If you go to Israel with Pastor Packer and then fly to Iceland with Pastor Flammy, double it up, double the adventure. That'd be really great. Anyway, keep in touch that way. And thanks for the questions. Thanks, Pastor Packer, for all that you do. God's peace be with you.
