Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: A record on the. Yeah. Hey, Pastor Packer, welcome back to the Q and a podcast and all those theologians out there, thank you for joining us. I'm Pastor Brian Wolf Mueller of St. Paul and Jesus deaf Lutheran churches, joined by pastor Andrew Packer of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, I heard a rumor about you, and that is that you guys are there at Collinsville, are starting a church water skiing team. Is that true?
[00:00:24] Speaker B: Water ski on the Mississippi. I don't think I've seen anyone do it, but we could be the first to try.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Sounds like a good idea. So confirm that.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Yeah, let's go for it.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: We got some more questions today with after the month of. Oh, but so quick announcements. Number one is excited. At the end of the month, July 2627 28, you'll be down here in Austin for the Digital Catacombs conference, which is a conference on theology and technology and the intersection of the two, the dangers of, uh, technology, invasive technology to the christian and to the church and to the gospel, and also the advantages of technology, how we can get it out there. You are talking about what, Pastor Packer? I forgot already.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: I forgot to. No, um, I'm just gonna do it on the, like, uh, helping people navigate, uh, as christians, how kind of the use of these technologies. So I'm going to focus more on, um, how they kind of shape and change us and the things we need to be aware of. So when we do use them, we're kind of aware of the dangers that are inherent, even shaping our own thinking on things that we may not be realizing. How it's shaping everything from our desires to how we think about certain topics, how we become more prone to even like, conspiracy theories or various strange things that are out there, how we become more angry, um, less likely to treat people as, as humans, things like that. So we're going to look at those things, not, not to say that we can't use them, we're obviously using it right now, but just so that we're aware of how these things, that the dangers inherent so that we can better use them.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: That's great. I am, I'm going to do two presentations, one Friday or Saturday and one on Sunday morning, Sunday school class on new media and the gospel. And I've never presented on this. I've never talked about, like, why use new media to spread the gospel? What, how it works, what does it mean to be successful? I always am annoyed by this. This is a stupid pet peeve of mine, is that, well, I'll go to conferences and they'll have like a guy presenting on how to make YouTube videos for your church or whatever. And I just sit in the back kind of annoyed, and I, and I can't figure out what, how much of my annoyance is pride because I look at the guy's stats and I'm like, oh.
Or if it's, I don't know. Anyway. But I, and I always think, how come no one, but, so anyway, since we're having, I think Pastor Flaming said, well, okay, you can talk about it then. That'll be dumb, but that'll be fine. So this will be the first time I've actually ever talked about, like, how I think about making a YouTube video, for example, and what are the constraints? And how ought a christian to think about creating new media? Why, for example, there's a weird thing that the gospel really was good on the radio and really bad on tv and why that is and what new media has to do with it. So I'll talk about that a little bit, too. So if people want to join us, digital catacombs.com has the information for joining us for that conference. That'll be a lot of fun. Okay, now questions.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, forgot we're doing that. Okay, first question. This is a follow up. I'll just read the thing. It's a little bit longer, but I'll read the whole thing.
Hi, pastors Wolfman Packer, this is. This question and comment is a follow up to your conversation about bibleology on your May 22 podcast. Isn't it possible that evangelicals, having forsaken the truth about baptism and the supper, have instead falsely made a sacrament out of reading and studying the Bible? The holy scriptures would be the physical element substituting for water, bread, and wine. I previously knew many conservative Baptists, myself among them, who professed a love for the Bible that I would say exceeded their love for the person of Jesus Christ? For example, as a newbie Lutheran, I brought a dear christian friend of mine to a Good Friday service in the parking lot. Afterwards, she had one question for me. Was I in a Bible study at my new church? When I said no, she looked hurt and dismayed, and after that, I never heard from her again. I became a Lutheran after a crisis of faith that had me searching the scriptures, convinced that I had to be reading them wrong. There must be something that I didn't understand, but I had been marinated in so much false theology over a lifetime that I might as well have been a fish trying to understand how to breathe air.
I devoted countless hours to studying and memorizing the Bible yet due to not being able to discern long gospel, I still had a profound misunderstanding of basics like salvation, the forgiveness of sins and grace. And I never loved Jesus then like I love him now. I feel badly. But so many Christians suffer the same burdens today as a Jews in John 539 through 40. I really like to hear your thoughts about Bible study as a false sacrament and how it could be Bibleology. Thank you.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: That quote from John 520, that's where Jesus says to the Pharisees, you search the scriptures, thinking that in them you have life, and you don't realize that they testify of me.
Paul says a similar thing in one corinthians when he talks about how the veil is over the face of the Jews when they read the scriptures and the veil is taken off in Christ. Our lutheran confessions, by the way, just as a little aside, they interpret that to mean the profound depth of the law, of the requirements of the law. That's what's taken off by Christ. So when Jesus says, you've heard it said, you shall not murder, but I say, if you call your brother a fool, you've murdered him. That's the veil being taken off. And it's to show the wrath of God in our sins, which then is met with the kindness of God in Christ. But the point of, I think both of those two texts is that you can study the scripture and miss the gospel. You can study the scripture and miss the point.
You can spend hours and hours reading the Bible and not receive the gift of the forgiveness of sins because you're reading it.
Whatever, you're asking the wrong question of the text.
So I think there's three texts. There's three questions that we bring to the text that are, we should bring all of them. But here's the problem. If I. If I bring to the text, what ought I to do today? What are the instructions here? What. What are. I need basic instructions before leaving earth or whatever, I ask that law question, I get the law answer. And so the Bible is to me an instruction book.
There is also the chance that I go to the Bible and I say, what does this teach me about God? And I read it, and I learn about God, and it becomes a theology book, which is fine, a doctrine book. But there is a third question, which is, I don't know. You can ask it in a number of different ways, but how does God think of me? Or is there comfort? Or can I find life? And there, when I read the Bible, I find that the Lord loves and forgives and saves me. These things are written so that you may believe in Jesus Christ and believing, have life in his name, so that the purpose of the scriptures is to create and sustain faith in the saving, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. So it is possible to read the Bible and to miss that, although it's missing the whole point of the Bible. And I think those three questions we ought and need to ask all three of them, but we can become kind of obsessed with one or the other or the other and exclude the other ones.
The problem with talking about the Bible as sacrament, and I see the idea here, and that is that there's a reverence either for the physical book or for the idea of Bible study that becomes pervasive in the evangelical mind.
The problem is that the evangelical doctrine lacks the ability to say that the words save the Bible is for the evangelical only information that must be reacted to. And my reaction to the scripture determines its power.
So I think it would be, rather than thinking of the Bible as a sacrament, it becomes almost, it's kind of a fixation to the words rather than to the gifts which the words give to us. It's like somehow you try to abstract the words from the lips that speak them and from the heart from which they flow, which is the heart of God.
That's dangerous. But the scriptures just don't. If you're doing that, you're not getting the scriptures as you're supposed to have them.
So I don't know. I think when we answered this question last time, our inclination was to say, like you, there's a danger of being too obsessed with the Bible. It's what we'll just, like, try it. Like, it's not actually that dangerous. You know, it's like, you know, I just exercise too much. I mean, well, that's probably not my problem. But you can see that some people do have that, that it becomes an obsession, just probably not for the two of us. But so I. So I think there, you know, that we want to be care. There is a danger that we become obsessed with the words and miss the. Missed the point, the big picture. But we could probably have both. We could probably have the big picture and an extreme love for the words that come from the mouth of God. This is what Jesus says. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word, each word that marches out of the mouth of God. And that is really our life. These things are written so that we would believe. So we cling to them as that which gives us faith and takes us to life eternal. Your thoughts on that?
[00:09:58] Speaker B: I think my concern with the way the question is worded is there seems to be an underlying assumption that now that I'm Lutheran, Bible study is not important.
But as Lutherans, we're all about the word and the sacraments, because the sacraments are the word plus these visible, earthly elements. So I think the danger there is often happens with people that come into Lutheranism, or even familiar Lutheranism a long time. And you're, you have an overreaction to things that go on in the Roman catholic church or the baptist church or whatever it is, especially if you came out of it. And for a while there, you're, you're kind of like, well, they did that, so I'm never going to do that thing. Right. Because they mentioned in the question that they don't attend a Bible study. Well, the Bible study wasn't the problem, right? Studying the Bible wasn't the issue. It was the issues you brought up. So Bible study is still a good and excellent, and it's worthy of our time and efforts. And as Lutherans, like, our whole history is based on people who studied the Bible intensely. I mean, Luther was first and foremost a biblical scholar and preacher of the word. Like, he loved the word of God and studied it and wrote tons and tons of things on, you know, what does the Bible mean? How do we apply it? His commentaries, his preaching, all of those things. So, uh, I guess my caution to them would be, don't, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Don't, don't throw out Bible study because you felt like you, you went through a lot of bad Bible studies. That doesn't mean all Bible studies are bad. And you, every Lutheran, I think, should be in some kind of Bible study with their pastor, and so they can learn more about the word of God and dive deeper into it in the correct and proper way that you've been discussing, rather than just throwing it out because they were into bad ones over the years. Like, I don't think that's the answer either. And, um. And I think because even, you know, we don't want to call Bible study a sacrament because it's not that. Because the way we define sacraments, but also, uh, staying the Bible is. Is a great blessing, and God blesses us through his word, and the gifts are there in the word. So why wouldn't we study it? Um, that, I think that's a better way maybe to approach it and to be, be wary of our own, our own backgrounds and experiences.
[00:12:05] Speaker A: That.
[00:12:06] Speaker B: That cause us to maybe miss out on the. A good thing, like Bible study just because we had a lot of bad experiences. It's kind of like, you know, people have been involved in churches that are heavily into, like, you know, evangelizing or something, and the way they did evangelism now that they're Lutheran makes them uncomfortable. But that doesn't mean we should throw out evangelizing, because we didn't. The way they did it before was kind of awkward or weird or maybe not in line with the scripture, the way they. They worded things or said things. That doesn't mean we stopped evangelizing because it was done inappropriately or maybe and not the best ways in our former churches. We still have to. We still evangelize. We just want to do it differently. We know, do it in accordance with God's word.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really helpful. I do remember the. It was hard to go to Sunday school when we first became Lutheran, because as we're studying the Bible, I would have the. All these thoughts and ideas, and then I would say, wait a minute, is that a lutheran idea or is that a baptist idea? Is that an evangelical idea or is that a right idea? And it was hard because I had learned so many things and I couldn't tell where they came from, and I didn't have the categories to kind of. You kind of got. And so I can understand growing out of that a sort of. I'm just. I'm going to listen to the preached word and I'm going to ignore this Bible study. But we can't do that. We got to. We got to sort of press that bad theology out of our mind and be able to have those theological distinctions. So. Yep, I concur. Very good.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Maybe. Maybe one more word of caution, I was thinking as you were talking, is that when it comes to all of these types of issues, then when we come out of coming out of a group, like, I need to be really careful. Like, a lot of Baptists really do love the word of God. Right? They really do love the word of God, and they've been taught it incorrectly, and they read it, so they read it incorrectly, but it's. The love of the word of God is not the issue. Right. Um, they're very sincere christians, and they really do love the word of God, and they're getting some of their theology wrong. But, uh, we got to be careful not to look back on those views to be a part of and kind of in a condescending way or look down upon them, but instead, uh, pray that they'd come to see the fullness of what you've been able to see now. Right. And. And share it in a loving and loving way so that they can come to see the fullness of it, rather than just think, oh, man, I can't believe they can't get it. Well, how many years does it take, you know, me to get it, you to get it, them to get it. Like, you know, if we've been there, we got to be more patient with people as they wrestle through these things.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
That's right. And the Lord is knowing that the Lord is patient with us. That's maybe the.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. He's patient with us. We need to be patient with others.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: All right. Uh, this one's related to the Bible as well, but kind of different, more of an apologetics type question. How do we know we can trust and know confidently that the Bible is the holy, inspired word of God? I keep running into people who ask me this and use it as a reason for why they do not study the word of God, or at least read it, interpret it in their own way. Some reasons I've heard people say they don't trust it. It was written by a bunch of men over time. So they keep what they want to know and keep out what they don't want to be carried on to the future generations.
And second, since the world is evil and the earth is the devil's domain since the fall of Adam, we are therefore sinful natured people. How do we trust that people, over the course of history, have not altered the Bible in some way to benefit themselves? What is the best way to talk with people with these opinions, thoughts, questions?
[00:15:38] Speaker A: I made the first thing. How do you know that the world was created by God and fallen? You know, so, like, how do you confirm that the world is full of evil men without the, you know, the Bible telling you all those sorts of things? But. So this is the attack on the scripture is precisely this attack, and that is that the writings of the scriptures are political propaganda. And that when you just kind of think about that, you realize what a. Like, what a horrible thing to say about Matthew, about David, about Isaiah, although, you know, you have to say in air quotes, Isaiah, that there was no Moses, there was just a pro Yahwist party and a priestly party and a Deutero party, and they were all fighting it out in the time of, I don't know, in the time of Saul the king, for who was going to have theological prominence and so they were writing these things, pretending to be these old guys trying to have authority to convince the dudes that lived at the time, the morons who didn't know the difference, that these were words from God, so that they would follow their own thing and they would.
The idea that the Bible is this collection of various pieces of theological propaganda, so it's not only wrong, but it's really, it's really ugly, and it's really kind of nihilistic. And I don't know people who think that about the Bible. I just say, how do you live? But this is part of the problem is that it's something of the projection here is that if everything is political, then also the Bible must be political. And that's the sort of era that we live in, is because we think of everything as propaganda.
And so now the Bible must be propaganda. It can't be the word of God. Okay, so how do we face that? How do we argue against it? You know, there's some classic arguments for the authority of the scriptures.
One of them is that I think is really quite phenomenal, is simply the argument of predictive prophecy. And we just see in the Old Testament, and everybody, the Lord has given us the gift that even the most kind of crazy atheist recognizes that the Old Testament was translated into Greek before the time of Jesus. So we have that kind of locked in. So we've got Old Testament promises all fulfilled one after another after another in Christ. I mean, we see Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in the Old Testament. We see all these prophecies of Jesus fulfilled in the New Testament. So we see God making promises and then keeping those promises to show that he can make promises, that he knows the future, that he controls the future, and all this sort of stuff. And so I think the evidence of predictive prophecy is really particularly strong. There's a lot of concurrent evidence where, and this is both historical as well as geographical, and all the people that are digging up all the antiquarian places or finding all of this evidence that what the things that the Bible spoke of as true. So all those places where the scriptures can be verified, it is verified. And so we have that also as a helpful thing.
It's also beautiful. The scriptures come to us with a profound insight, not only into creation, but especially into our own nature. And so it corroborates not only with the truth that we see out there, but also with the truth that we find in and of ourselves. So there's a lot of things that support the veracity of the scripture and there's a strong apologetic argument just about the kind of consistency of the manuscript evidence which kind of gets into the weeds. But that's available online. And all these kind of things, like the amount of copies of the scriptures that we have being so close to the originals outweighs any other sort of religious text that you could ever imagine. But I think the problem is that it's very, very rare that you find someone who's kind of ready to consider that sort of evidence one way or another. And so, I mean, my best advice is to, you just have to start reading the gospels. I mean, just read the Gospel of Mark, read the Gospel of John, read the Gospel of Matthew, and let the scriptures speak for themselves.
And it's in that hearing of the scripture that the Holy Spirit is working faith when and where it pleases him. Because, again, it's very, it's very rare that you find someone who is, who is willing, who is open to arguments for the clarity and authority of the scriptures. Most people have lined up a number of arguments against those things, and you realize that those are defense systems to protect the conscience from ever having to hear a word from God.
So we're probably not just dealing with a rational argument. We're dealing with something else.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Yeah, because to piggyback off what you just said, um, it's often attributed to spurgeon. But I actually, I've found that goes back as far as Augustine, as far as I can find, that, uh, um. Rather than arguing with them about how sharp your sword is, you stab them with it. Right? Like you said, like confront them with the word of God. Because what they really don't want to do is actually have to consider what God's word says. It's. It's like a diversionary tactic. Right? They want you arguing about why you can trust the Bible, when really what they need to do is be confronted with God's law so that it can do its work in them. Because the problem is their sin and arrogance is causing them to say ridiculous things that they've never studied. Let's be honest. They read something online and they've never actually looked at the evidence. They've never considered anything about it. And so you give them a brief summary like you just did, and I think that's fine, but I think getting caught up in that is really a distraction. And really what you want to do is give them the word of God. And then a lot of those questions once they're here, long gospel. And if they're repent of their sin and believe a lot of those questions will take care of themselves, and then they can be really taught.
But I think it's dangerous to try to think we. We're going to answer all of those, and that they're going to be like, oh, yeah, well, now I can rely on it, because even if you show them all the evidence, if their issue really is sin, then they're going to be like, uh, okay, but I don't really care. I don't like what it says. Right. It's not. It's not merely an issue of, like you said, just. Just an irrational argument. There's an element of they're trying to reject God's word because it is God's word.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: That's.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: That's the underlying issue. And so, um, I think the other analogy used with that is, you know, you don't argue if the lion in the cage is real. You just let the lion out of its cage, and then they'll know it's real. Uh, same kind of thing. Let them hear God's word. Let it do its work. Yeah. Those kind of apologetics can be really helpful, and you can point them to books and articles and things like that. In my experience, the people making those arguments don't usually want to read those things. Like, I could give them the best book on the subject and be like, this book, uh, you know, and this is a summary of the arguments. This book is, like, 200 pages. You should read this if you really want to know how we believe they're reliable. And then be like, eh, I don't. I don't really want to do that. You know?
[00:23:03] Speaker A: So you remind me of the. So, uh, this Greg Koko book called tactics. And he talks about the. Tell me more. These questions and what it might be, even to have a specific tactic in this instance is to say, well, show me what passage you're talking about.
It was written by. Corrupted by men. It's like, do you have an example?
And either they do have an example, which actually lets them take you to the scripture, which you, as a Christian, love, and say, oh, how beautiful. This section in Isaiah talking about the return of Christ in glory.
Look at the. In the context of the world falling apart and the Assyrians destroying the. And here the Isaiah speaks, or whatever, you know, whatever the passage is, that you can extol it as life giving. And so. So that he brings you to the scripture, or he doesn't have an example, and then you realize that it's just, you know, hot air. Like, oh, you don't know what you're talking about, well, you so say, well, why don't you go find a couple of examples and we could talk about the specifics. And I think that there's something to that to always go to the specific. This is also true. I found this to be the case when people, you know, they'll speak in these rate abstractions like, oh, there's so many different denominations, or there's all these different men's opinions, or all these different, say, well, do you have an example? And that now when you're, when you're actually down to an example, you can actually have a real conversation. It's not just these sort of smoke screens, you know, you can press through the smoke screen.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: I want to commend that book you recommended. I mentioned. Tactics is a fantastic book for people. He's got a lot of helpful advice on, especially learning how to ask good questions and get people thinking. Uh, so get them to start down the path of thinking through what they actually believe and why they believe it, because a lot of people have not done that. And then as you do that, what often happens is they'll start asking you questions because sometimes it's out of frustration, right? They're like, well, I'm not really sure. Well, why, why do you think this? And then you get to have to actually share why you believe what you believe. And I less, a less confrontational way because they've now asked you to actually explain it because they've, they just spent some time explaining their position.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: It's great.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: All right. Uh, this one's on Zwingli's fast spreading doctrine.
All right. Good morning. I have a question about the influence of Zwingli's theology and modern evangelicalism. One of the things that brought me to Lutheranism was the inconsistency of evangelicalism and its own historical understanding of doctrines. For example, when I was involved in the wesleyan church, Nazarene free Methodist, the unquestioned view of the sacraments was that they were merely symbolic, no different than the general baptist view. However, upon reading some of John Wesley's writings, I learned that Wesley himself, while not a Lutheran, did not hold to a merely symbolic view of the sacraments. And when I questioned Wesleyans about it, many of them seemed to be very ignorant of their founders theology.
This brings me to my question. How and why did Wingley's mere symbolism spread so quickly through the church when the historical record clearly shows that this is a novel and scripturally unsupported doctrine? Why is it that so much of the modern church has ditched the biblical, and, to be frank, far more comforting understanding of baptism in the Lord's supper.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: You know, our friend Pastor Katchelmeyer has found, this is very interesting, that Zwingli came to his doctrine of a symbolic view of the Lord's supper through a vision that he had.
And he talked about how he had a vision, I think it was an angel or a dream or something, where it was revealed to him that it wasn't the true body and blood, but rather was a symbol of the body and the blood, which is an amazing thing to think about.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: I mean, what, you're saying it was demons?
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So why did it spread so fast? I don't. So it's interesting that it, our evangelicals look like the descendants of the Anabaptists, but I do not think it's nearly as straight a line that we have there.
American Christianity is probably a twice baked over Methodism, and it has these kind of layers of fighting on top of it. And it's sort of created this american theology that pervades our own country. And one of the marks of it is this slightly gnostic idea that if it's physical, it's law, it's not gospel. And so because the Lord's supper is external, it can't save. And so it's not a real sophisticated theological argument. It's just sort of a knee jerk reaction.
Baptism can save. Look, you do something. Lord suppers can't save. Look, you do something. That's just that kind of thing. So when you talk with people about baptism and the Lord's supper, their doctrine is not.
They don't talk about the Lord's supper. They say, look, we're saved by grace through faith. Obviously, that tells us about the Lord's supper. Well, okay, what about the text about the Lord's supper? What do they say? Never mind. No, we can't. It can't save because we know we're saved by grace through faith, as if the forgiveness of sins being brought to us in the Lord's supper is contradictory, by being saved by grace through faith.
So I don't know if it's a fast growing thing or if it's just the sort of condition of American Christianity, which is evangelicalism, which is spread all over the world, because I do not know, I do not know any Baptist or any evangelicals that would say, I have a zwinglian view of the Lord's supper.
Right.
I don't think that that's the historical sort of thing. Now we can look back and see, that it was Zwingli who was the character in the reformation who argued most strongly for a symbolic view of the meal. And that, I guess, caught on.
Yeah, but, so, but I don't know. I think it's less of a theological argument as it is a theological reaction. So I don't know your thoughts on that, Pastor Packer. I keep running very quickly up to my ignorance on all these questions.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: So I don't know if I know enough of the history of it. I know, for example, in reformed presbyterian circles in America, what happened was Calvin's view of the Lord's supper was seen as kind of too complicated. And so they went to Zwingli through, through men like Robert Louis Dabney, who was a pretty brilliant thinker. But on this, he's very wrong. But he basically said Zwingli makes more sense than Calvin. And so even in the Presbyterians, conservative Presbyterians in our country, Zwingli found a foothold from the civil war on through. It was through Zwingli's teaching. Now, with Baptists in our country, I mean, it probably, it all probably has its roots in there. But even going back to that, a lot of it was, like you were saying, even then, it was a reaction. The Roman Catholics do this, therefore we won't do this. They baptize infants, therefore, baptizing infants is wrong, like a lot of it. Even then, if you look at the history of, it seems to be a, an overreaction to what was being taught and said. And like you said, most people today, that that's their initial instinct, is because they see baptism in the Lord suppress our works and not God's works for us. Their immediate response is, well, of course you can't baptize an infant because if you can't do anything right, they can't do this work, therefore we can't have it. The Lord's Supper can't be anything for, I think mainly for two reasons in their minds. One, it's something they're doing to remember Jesus, so it can't be something Jesus is doing for them. And then second, their christology, their view of Christ, that he's kind of trapped at the right hand of the father, right, and can't really be present with his body and blood.
So those two things combined in some ways, I mean, I've grown out of Zwingli, but it seems like you said, it's less to do with Swingley and more of a reaction to, to what they hear, and especially if they think it sounds Roman Catholic, because let's be honest, one of the things they hate to be, they don't want to be concerned Roman Catholic in any way. That's like the worst thing in the world. Although I've pointed out to many evangelicals over the years that while they've thrown out baptism in the Lord's Supper, a lot of their teaching is very similar to Roman Catholicism. Right. It's often faith plus love in some way. Like, wasn't it Rick Warren, even a few years ago, was on, like, the Today show or Good Morning America, one of those shows, whatever. And he said that we're saved by faith working through love, which is kind of the historic Roman Catholic answer, right? In a nutshell. And he was representing one of the biggest evangelical churches in the country at the time.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: So I think all of those things are problematic. And does it start with Zwingli? Maybe. I mean, how many of them today could trace it back? Probably like a few. But I think, like you said, a lot of it's just overreactions. But that started even back was the time was wingly. There were a lot of, like, overreactions. I mean, Luther had to deal with that, right? The. The iconic class were going around destroying images, and he had to say, hey, uh, it's not the image's fault that you worship it. It's your heart's fault. So, I mean, we had overreactions going back to the time of the reformation, and some of those just took hold. And people still think in that reactionary way, it's less about what does the Bible really say about this and more about, I can't believe this because they do it or they're so confused on what is their work versus what's God's work that they can't get straightened out.
[00:32:29] Speaker A: There was, um, the Marburg colloquy.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: That's a great book, too, that you can get through. Concordia publishing house.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: Oh, on the Marburg colloquy or it's just called the Marburg?
[00:32:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Lutheranism versus Calvinism.
I've got it somewhere around here. It's a really big book. It's a great read, though.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: There was 18 articles, I believe. I was just looking up to make sure it was 18. There was 18 articles that were. No, 1515 articles on the Marburg.
[00:32:57] Speaker B: Um, actually, I. I'm thinking of a completely different colloquy. I'm sorry, go ahead.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: So the articles of Schwabach is what they were called, uh, or Marburg. Uh, articles of Schwabach based on the Marburg, 15 of them. They re. They agreed on 14 and a half. And then they could not agree on the 15th and the last part of the 15th. Here. Here's the 15th article. Regarding the last supper of our dear Lord Jesus Christ. We believe and hold that one should practice use of both species, as Christ himself did. So bread and wine, that the sacrament at the altar is a sacrament of the true body and blood of Christ. That's.
Zwingli agreed with that, actually, if I remember right, and that spiritual enjoyment of this very embodying blood is proper and necessary for every Christian. Furthermore, the practice of the sacrament is given and ordered by God the Almighty, like the word, so that our weak conscience may be moved through faith, through the Holy Spirit. And although we have not been able to agree at this time whether the true body and blood of Christ are corporally present in the bread and wine of communion, each party should display toward the other christian love as far as each respective conscience allows. And both should persistently ask God the Almighty for guidance so that through his spirit, he might bring us to a proper understanding. And they wouldn't sign it. Zwingli wouldn't, but especially Luther, he wouldn't sign it because they have not agreed on the corporal presence of the body of Christ. So Zwingli could even get there to the spiritual presence like the Calvinists. I think he kind of veered off of that a little bit later, but he could get that close this point. But he couldn't. So there was this Marlborough colloquy where they were trying to get the Zwinglians and the Lutherans together, because they always wanted, the politicians always wanted them to agree on the theology so they could have this kind of united political front, especially against the pope. And the Lutherans just wouldn't go for it.
So that was the way they went.
And Zwingli would argue against Luther that he hasn't gone far enough. And that's always the argument against the Lutherans. Right? Luther made a good start, but he didn't go far enough. He couldn't purge all of the catholic stuff that whatever.
And Luther would write about it later. He says, the arguments are going to come, that I couldn't go far enough, especially on the Lord's supper. And when he writes about that, he says, look, I've turned over every leaf. So he saw the scriptures as like a tree, and every word was a leaf on the tree. And he says, I've turned over every leaf, and this is my doctrine. I'm sticking with it. It's the true body and blood of Jesus. It's not that I haven't gone far enough. This is what the Bible says. That was the lutheran argument. And the reader and the questioner asks, why don't other people believe this? Because it's so clear and comforting and biblical. And I. I just have to say amen. That's. That's what we're doing here, you know, trying to put this clear doctrine of the Lord's supper out there for the rest of the church to rejoice in. Here's the true body and blood of Jesus given unto the bread and wine for christians to eat and drink for the forgiveness of sins. What a tremendous gift.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: I mean, I think all I can say that is amen.
[00:36:02] Speaker A: Amen. Well, hey, thanks for these. Thanks for the questions. If you have questions for us, uh, Wolfmiller co contact. While you're there, sign up for the singles cruise. Well, if you're single, we have the singles cruise coming in August. Uh, a hundred. How about this? Pastor Packer? 140 people signed up for the cruise.
[00:36:20] Speaker B: That's awesome.
[00:36:21] Speaker A: Can you imagine that? I just ordered the bracelets. Here. I sail. We're gonna.
It'll be great. If you're a Lutheran, single, 21 to 41. Uh, you can find info if it's before August 1. Sign up for that if it's after August 1. See if you can tell if it was a success. If you're watching this on YouTube and it's like, I don't know, sometime winter 2025 or something, uh, you'll be able to know if the singles cruise was a success if we're doing it again next summer. So you could check on that. Maybe we'll do it, keep doing it. But, uh, uh, join us there. Join us for digital catacombs. Send us some more questions. Look forward to doing this again next week. Uh, thank you, gods. Peace be with.
