Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. Welcome to the Q and A podcast. Pastor Brian Wolfmuller of St. Paul and Jesus Deaf Lutheran churches in Austin, Texas, joined by Pastor Andrew Packer, pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, I heard a rumor about you over the Christmas break that all you asked Santa Claus for was some beard dye, but you didn't get it.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Obviously I did not get it. Oh, my kids make fun of me. I told them it's their fault.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Maybe next year. Maybe next year.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Maybe next year.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: You got some questions for us? You want to try a lightning round?
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Well, we can.
That didn't go so well last time, but we could try again.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: All these questions over the break. Let's do it.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: That was an utter failure last time. This will be a compared to last time though, it could be a lightning round. Okay, first one is, are Lutherans Protestant? So the question is the LCMS church considered Protestant?
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Everyone thinks so. The word Protestant came from the second diet of Spire 1529, when the Eastern Edict of Worms was reinstituted. All right, here's A Short History. 1521. Edict of Worms. It's illegal to be Luther or to even like him.
15:26 first died Aspire when Charles V was over in Spain getting married, his brother was in charge and said, ah, you can be whatever you want. Sort of what happened? So they, they, they lifted the Edict of Worms. But then Charles comes back. 15:29 Inspire. At this little like restaurant that's right next to the thing I've had. I had Quechelmeyer and I had sausages at that restaurant where the diets of Speyer were. And they said, hey, you can't be Luther anymore. They put back in place the Edict of Worms and the princes all gathered around, they protested and walked out. And that's where Protestant came from. So the first protesters to the idea that it's illegal to be Lutheran were obviously Lutherans. And that became a general term for all of those who were fighting out from under the authority of the Pope. And insofar as that's the definition of the term, Lutherans are Protestants. But the problem is that means that you have these like two great divisions, the Lutherans and the Protestants, I'm sorry, the Catholics and the Protestants. And if you are dividing things like that, what we want to say is no, we're not Protestant. Because the mark of the protest, the anti Catholic is that they are anti sacramental, anti. Just like the mark of the Catholics is that they are anti word. In fact, in fact, this is the. This is my New Wolfmuller theorem of denominational differences is that the Catholics are anti. Anti word, which means they have sacraments with no benefit. At least they don't know that they're beneficial. And the Protestants are anti sacrament, which means they have words with no power. So, so the Lutherans are in the middle saying, hey, word and sacrament. And these are bound up together by the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus. And so we're of neither one of you. We're neither Catholic nor Protestant. We are the church of baptism and the Lord's Supper and the absolution and the powerful preaching of God's word.
So depends on how you ask the question.
What do you think about it?
[00:03:05] Speaker B: Sounds good to me. No, that's, uh, it's one of those terms you have to ask what, what do you mean by Protestant?
Right.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: It.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: It's interesting though. I did, I did a search and some of the summaries, like the AI summary for. I use Brave search engine and the AI summary from Brave was, was, yes, Lutherans are Protestant. Because I was interested to see what the, you know, online said. And if you go to Wikipedia, first line it says is Lutheranism is a branch of Protestantism. So it's really interesting because everybody, everything out there about us says that. And yet if you ask most Lutheran pastors, they're going to say no.
So, you know, which actually is one of the questions. We won't get to it today, but someone did ask us to go through the Wikipedia article on Lutheranism.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: And to, to basically respond to it.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: To like, that'd be a great exercise actually. We could put it up, dissect it.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Go through it and kind of dissect it. Anyway, layperson teaching online is the next question, can a layperson teaching. Can a layperson teach Theology on YouTube or a blog? Does it come as. Is it. I can reword their question. Is it usurping the office of Ministry to do that? So basically, can a layperson, again, probably depends on how you define teach there. Can they be posting videos on YouTube and posting blog posts, articles, whatever, online, I guess, telling you what they. They believe.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: What are your thoughts? This is a semi tricky question. I've thought about it quite a lot. We do have this history of laypeople teaching in the church, including, for example, Philip Melanchthon, who was not ordained, but he was a doctor. And so in the ancient church we had this distinction. So the doctor was the one who was in a public teaching office. So Melanchthon was a doctor even though he was not ordained in the office of holy ministry. But even the princes are those who present the Augsburg Confession. So the Augsburg Confession is. It says they teach because it's the princes who are presenting the doctrine that the faculty at Wittenberg was presenting. Now, we have a strong doctrine of ordination authorizing a man to teach and preach in the church. So we say in the Augsburg Confession, we don't permit a man to preach or teach or administer the sacraments unless he's been rightly called.
And Luther lays down the gauntlet on this, especially at the beginning of his Galatians commentary, when he says, even if I can go save people by correcting the false doctrines, but I don't have a call to do it, I shouldn't go. So we have to have the call to engage in public teaching. And yet writing has been understood, I think, in the history of the church as something different than preaching and teaching. Now, there's different examples in different places, but like the Augsburg Confession would be one, it's a kind of a written work. We also see, for example, in the history of the Lutheran Church and in the history of the church in general, that there was a place for even for women to write, especially poetry, devotional works, hymns, things like this. And they were never excluded from that kind of work. In fact, there's one of the ladies who has a hymn in the very first Lutheran hymnal that was published. Is it Elizabeth Krushinger who got married eventually to Luther's son? That would have been.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it's actually him. Of the day for the wedding at CANA. Tim402.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: And so there's always this tradition of kind of even women writing in this sort of devotional setting. And that would we say that they don't have the office, but they're writing. And I think that means that we should understand. Let's just take this category of writing. It's a different category. It's not like preaching from the pulpit where it's brought with the authority, thus says the Lord, but rather it's sort of an auxiliary office of education and support that comes along in the church. And this is, I think, really important because I can. I can insist that the People of St. Paul Lutheran Church come to church on Sunday and listen to the preaching of God's word. I cannot insist that they listen to our podcast because something different is going on. So that when you're offering stuff in writing and on an article on the Internet or putting something up on YouTube or hosting a podcast or something like this, this is something that I believe is in the realm of helpfulness and not in the realm of authority.
And we who are doing media online have to be very aware of that difference. So it's one of the, I think, helpful distinctions that I was trying to make at the beginning of engaging in new online media is that it's a different place. So I come along as a helper, as an ebenezer, to try to help people see what God is saying in the Lord's Word. I always want to do that, but it has a different kind of. It's a different office and a different calling. And I think if we understand it that way, then we say yes. In fact, not only can, but it's good for lay people who are thoughtful and reflective and studying the Scriptures to engage in this way. And we have a number of great examples of that, including, I think, the one that comes first of all to mind is Jean Edward Veith, who has been a very, very helpful voice in the Lutheran Church over the last 40 years and isn't ordained, I think, was John Warwick Montgomery. Was he ever ordained?
I don't think that he was. Same with Adam Francisco, who's a helpful voice, but was never ordained into the office. And so I think there are places of. I think there's wonderful places for lay people to engage in theology online, in writing and things like this. And it doesn't usurp the office. My, My thoughts.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Do you think maybe a helpful way to discuss is oftentimes what they're doing in those spaces is confessing the faith, which is the duty of every Christian. Right. Like, I, I don't think I've ever watched something on YouTube and thought that person has authority over me. You know what I mean? Like. Like they have. They're sharing their opinions or thoughts or whatever. Even if, even if it's a pastor. Like, I don't watch a pastor on YouTube and think that pastor has authority. I'm submitting myself to his authority by listening to this.
It seems like anyone in this kind of, this kind of space, because it's not the church, it's. It's on the online realm that it's.
It is a matter of you're confessing what you believe, but no one's, like you said, no one's bound to, to follow or obey. They're not submitting themselves to your authority in any real way outside of. They're choosing to listen to you, but they can shut you off partway through, you know, and move on with their day.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:04] Speaker B: And that's bound to these things.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: And that's a good work. Turning us off is a good work. Everyone should do it in their Christian.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Freedom right now, right this minute.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Okay, but don't start watching like SNL shorts instead. That's not a good work. Okay, Maybe one other quick distinction, too, because sometimes people. So there are a few who present themselves as teachers in the church, as lay people who were in the office and then removed from the office. And I think that's a different category.
That's like the difference between when someone says they're single. Well, there's a difference in that I've never been married or versus I'm divorced. And so it's true that both the person that, you know, the young person's never been married, chaste and waiting for marriage, they're single, and the person who's been divorced, they're also single, but they're in a different way. They have a different relationship to marriage. And so someone who's been in the office and then removed from the office, I think that it actually is given to them by the church to not engage in public teaching because the office has been, in that way, taken from them. And so I do think that we can't. We got to be careful what you say. Well, because a person's a layperson because they were never ordained, that's one thing. A person's a layperson because they were ordained, and then that ordination was taken from them, they were defrocked. That's a different category. So just as a little caveat there.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's helpful.
Next one is on triune baptism.
The question is, can you help me understand why baptism is to be done in the name of the Father and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, and is not valid if done in the name of Jesus, as the apostles did in the book of Acts?
[00:11:46] Speaker A: I think the mention of baptism in the Book of Acts will say they were baptized in the name of Jesus, but that's not given to us as instruction. The mandate comes in Matthew 28, when Jesus institutes baptism and says to the disciples, go and baptize. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And from that mandate, from those words of institution, we have the formula, the words, the name that is used in baptism of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And so it's those words that give us instruction. If someone is baptizing in the name of Jesus, we have to ask the question, why? And normally it's because they've rejected the Triune mandate because they're a oneness Pentecostal or something like this. Now I suppose someone could just kind of lazily be baptizing without having read Matthew and only read, read the book of Acts. And so you get that you, you mistake the Acts texts instead of being descriptive, you understand it as prescriptive. And, and there's an ignorance there. And, and I don't think that that is good. But it's not. It's probably not salvation destroying if it's done in that kind of ignorance. But if someone has that kind of ignorance, they probably shouldn't be baptizing.
But the history of the church brings us the priority of the words from Matthew for the gift of baptism. So we stick with it and it takes away any questions because the validity of baptism is established by the Lord in his instituting words. Does this thing that baptism itself is doing and that is takes away questions and wonderings and doubts and brings to us the joy of our salvation.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: I've always taken that in Acts as a shorthand for being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It's not. Thank you. So it's descriptive. This is a shorthand way of saying we did what Jesus said to do in Matthew 28. It's not trying to give you something different or some other baptismal formula. It's just saying we did what Jesus said to do in Matthew 28, which is baptized the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It's just shorthand. Right? Everything I've looked at and studied on that seems to indicate that that's all it was. Because we don't ever have anywhere else in the New Testament where we say baptize them just in the name of Jesus. It's only in Acts where you have it as a descriptor a few times. And it always seems to be just Shorthand for Matthew 28.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: All right, last one for our lightning round.
This one's a little bit longer, so I'll try to carefully read through this.
I have a question about spiritual warfare and privacy. I recently encountered a video talking about how Christians should not overshare things about their lives and the in this day and age of social media, but should keep many things such as dreams, family matters, finances and extraordinary spiritual experiences to themselves generally once the time is right, lest you invite a spiritual attack.
It is cited how Mary Elizabeth both kept very private lives when they discovered God's plan for their newly conceived sons. How Jesus repeatedly told people to not tell anyone of what he had done for them. It was not until later in his ministry that he performed his miracles in the open. Before I ask for your take on this, I want to know, can the enemy read one's thoughts? I've been told that they can't, but I can't find it in the Bible a definitive answer. Also, can the enemy hear everything you say all the time, or are there times God protects our privacy, such as in conversation with a trusted Christian friend, for example. Now I'm getting paranoid. I tend to be an oversharer. So I guess there's kind of two parts. One, do we need to keep things private lest we invite a spiritual attack? And then two, what all does the devil know? Can you read our thoughts, et cetera?
[00:15:31] Speaker A: The devil cannot read our thoughts, but I think the devil seems adept at understanding human. He's been a student of humanity for all these thousands of years, and so I think he can probably get a pretty good idea. He can pick up on moods and subtleties, at least that's it. Seems like we indicated that, but that is no reason. For example, I've heard people say we ought to pray in secret, not speak our prayers so that the devil doesn't know what we're praying about. Who cares if the devil knows everything about us? Because Jesus knows everything about us and loves us. And the devil is not going to hate you more because he knows about. He hates you with the same ferocity that Jesus loves you. And there should be no fear of the devil learning what's in our thoughts. What is the devil going to do? I mean, say you have a sinful thought and we confess that sinful thought to the Lord in our prayers, out loud. And now the devil. Oh, now I know, so I can get you on something. Well, what is he going to do? Is remind you of the sin that has already been forgiven by Jesus. I mean, the devil knowing these things cannot harm you. This is the point. The devil has no authority over you.
The Lord Jesus has set you free from the fear of death. And by doing that, he sets you free from the power of him who has the fear of death. And even the idea that I have to keep some things quiet because the devil might find out about it is itself probably an act of fearing the devil rather than fearing God. You Christians and I and you, Andrew, and everyone listening, you are not authorized to fear the devil.
And so whatever the devil tries to do to tempt you to be afraid of him, we have to not do that thing so that if we think that the devil is going to have some authority over us because we're over sharing in our prayers or our conversations with Christian friends, then in some ways we have to do it all. You have to go tonight and pray all the things that you're afraid of the devil knowing and just because. Okay, talk to your pastor first before you take that advice. But this is, the point is the devil cannot harm you. You're baptized, you belong to Jesus. What's the worst thing he can do? Kill you. That's the best thing. The worst thing is the best thing, remember, I mean, this is to live as Christ. To die is gain. We count it all. Joy when they're suffering. So if the devil somehow like needs more material on us than any and he brings it to us, like, hey, you're guilty for this kind of sin. This is how Luther teaches us. Thank you, Mr. Devil, for reminding me of the sins that my Lord Jesus has died for.
So we need to, we especially we Lutherans, need to be more engaged in spiritual warfare, more spiritually minded. But it should not result in a trepidation or fear or worry or suspicious life. A more closed up life, a more private life. No, the more we are aware of spiritual realities, the more it opens us up, the more free we are. You are absolutely free in Christ.
Now, all that being said, there's a difference between sharing things with your Christian friends or sharing things in confession or sharing things in your prayers and sharing things on social media.
So. So I don't think the devil is there, like checking our Facebook feeds, but who knows? Maybe. I don't actually. Probably he's there in the algorithms, right? This is. Don't. Haven't we figured out that the algorithms are all run by demons? Is that so? So who knows? Yeah, so. But on social media, the thing that governs us is not concern for spiritual warfare, but concern for basic wisdom and Christian wisdom and concern for the Gospel. So we want to engage in our public lives out of love for our neighbor. And oversharing, there can be a.
Well, it's a difficult problem because. Because the temptation always online is to try to present to ourselves this kind of curated life. And you cannot, you cannot escape the pride of it. I mean, even if you just like, you're just, you know, you're showing pictures of your family vacation and then people are like, oh, this is, you know, look at that perfect life that they have, you know, or whatever, but then you say, okay, I'm going to show the real vulnerable side and you take a picture of yourself like before you take a shower and now you're. You're pridefully humble. You just can't escape the pride of the whole idea of curating, you know, your own whatever life online. So. So it's a. It's a different sort of spiritual challenge. But the concern should not be that the devil's going to find out. That's. That's my thoughts on that.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: I think that's exactly right. If we. I don't know how you would function if you're worried about the devil. Like, I don't want to share this because the devil might like that. I think that'd be a horrible way to live. You'd just be constantly worried about what you said, who you said it to. It would be. It is living in a paranoia about, especially in overthinking maybe the power the devil has in your life. Like, if Jesus is Lord, then I don't have to worry about the devil spying on me. Like, it's. It's not. I don't. I don't think that needs to cross our minds at all. Like, rejoice in who you are in Christ and live faithfully. And as you said, it's. We don't have to be afraid of those things being found out, because Jesus already knows all those things. So, yeah, leave in his hands and go on with your day.
[00:21:21] Speaker A: Yeah, all your sins are forgiven. It doesn't matter if the whole world hates you. Jesus loves you. That's our confidence. And this, this confidence is confidence not only before the world, but before the devil. So what can the world do to me? What can man do to me? What can the devil do to me? I mean, there's nothing. This is the same. I was thinking about this. I think I might do a little video on, like, how the Christians should think about conspiracy theories. It's the same sort of thing. Like, what does it matter? Like, what does it matter if Bill Gates has, like, implanted everybody with tracking things through the COVID vaccine? It's like, well, okay, so what? Like, I mean, maybe that's ridiculous and annoying, but does it. Jesus is apparently on the throne, and he apparently thinks that letting this happen will be even the best thing for the church. And eventually I'll die and be in heaven with him, and nothing can stop that.
So all these conspiracy theories could be true, but it doesn't change the way I think about the world or about the life and death and suffering and eternal life. I mean, maybe I want people to sin less. And so in my vocation, I'm trying to help People do that. But otherwise it doesn't like to live this kind of fearful, paranoid.
I don't know, it's the same thing. I remember when I got this cell phone and someone said oh well you know the government's going to be listening to all your conversations. And I said, well at least someone listens. I mean like what am I flammy? Had to write this essay on the, on the biblical basis of the right of privacy. And I believe what he said, it's fine. But this is the point is that even if I'm, if I have nothing private, for example, I mean say I'm thrown in prison like the martyrs were thrown in prison where nothing is private.
I still belong to Jesus. I'm still free. I still have a good conscience.
Take they our life, goods, fame, child, wife, let these all be gone. They yet have nothing won. It's like the. There's a great picture where Luther talks about the devil is like a thief who breaks into an empty house because everything that I have of value is already at the throne of God. It's an empty house. So the devil's going to break in and find out my secrets. They all belong to Jesus anyways, so there's nothing to plunder.
So anyway, a few thoughts on that. Great questions.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: This episode has been sponsored by Bill Gates.
That's what someone's going to put in the comments.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: He knows where you are. Oh yeah, that's right.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: It's coming.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: This is part of the conspiracy that paid me off.
[00:23:54] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:23:55] Speaker A: To make people not worried about the implanted.
Oh, I didn't even think about that. You are so conspiracy theory minded that it came right to.
Thanks for the questions. This. God be praised for this. Wolfmeel co contact if you want to send in more questions. Although Pastor Packer tells me that we are overwhelmed with questions.
A lot, a lot, a lot of questions. So wait for two weeks and then send in some more questions. Thanks for being part of the fun. God's peace be with.
