Disclaimers
Why infant baptism matters
Why the visible Church matters
Why pedantic accuracy on the trinity matters
Why the theology on sexuality matters
Why there must be a God
Why historical-critical scholarship requires great care
Why the Law/Gospel distinction is essential
Why medicine and Christianity do not contradict
Why science and Christianity do not contradict
Why abortion is incompatible with Christian morality
Why Protestants cannot support reactionary politics (explicitly political)
Everything in here, unless explicitly exempt from this disclaimer, is purely theological and moral, not political.
Finally, you will see a lot of inflammatory rhetoric towards Low Church traditions in this document. Understand that while I condemn Low Church traditions and their worst failures that result out of their nature, I have not a single ounce of contempt for individual believers. The truth is, if God wants something gone from the face of the earth, He can achieve that quite easily. Just think back at the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis. Every denomination within Nicene Christianity has its purpose to be, its own contribution to the truth. But due to being fallen creatures, unable to abstain from sin by virtue of our nature, having inherited Adam and Eve's infinitely grave sin that led to the fall, we are simply not wise enough to see, much less understand, His plan.
It is inevitable that Christ's prayer for His Church's unity will one day be fulfilled. This will require the Lord's support, careful discernment on our end, and a relentless pursuit of truth. But a natural part of said pursuit of truth is also necessarily that we stand steadfast in what we know is right and true, and defend that against transgressions.
Due to the fact that I am a Confessional Lutheran, thus also very High Church, this document will be written from that perspective. But I will also try to incorporate the views of other High Church traditions, such as Anglicans, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox wherever possible.
The intent of this document is to provide a resource for "lukewarm Christians", lapsed Christians, liberal Christians, and those who have been hurt by either the emptiness of fundamentalism or liberalism alike to discover the wonders of Confessional Christianity.
That being said, I hope you get some value out of the ideas presented here.
God bless you.
Ave Christus Rex.
Before grace (i.e. before baptism): non posse non peccare
After grace (i.e. after baptism): posse non peccare
In glory (i.e. after death, if not fallen from grace): non posse peccare
Baptism, being the principal ordinary means of grace, is what allows children to not reject God's grace in the first place. The unbaptized will is ordinarily enslaved to the flesh and its sin, and thus unable to freely choose God. Nothing is forced upon the children, as they are not making any promise. It's their parents and godparents that make a promise to raise the child into the faith, catechism is their responsibility.
Addendum: Credobaptism, and modern-day Evangelical "theology of choice" (Side note: Pelagianism was condemned as heresy at the Councils of Carthage and Ephesus in 418 and 431 AD) can, and often do, lead to a type of spiritual pride where "believers" consider themselves to be superior for having "chosen" Christ. Even though they did not choose. Humanity's fallen nature cannot, on its own merits, redeem itself. Scripture is very clear on that.
- Matthew 28:19
Evangelicals and many heretics alike deny the importance of the visible Church (although other heretics like the JWs and Mormons are very authoritarian, far beyond what could be considered "High Church"), pretending that Scripture actually means the invisible Church at all times when the Church is mentioned.
Only the visible Church can fulfill these functions correctly:All failures of evangelical movements follow naturally from failure to execute these functions of the Church correctly, due to disemphasizing the visible Church.
- Hebrews 10:24-25
For reference:
Athanasian Creed (English)
Athanasian Creed (German)
To summarize: God has ONE nature, in THREE persons. He is triune. The three persons of the trinity are all equally God and only differ in their relations to each other.
"The Father, Son and Spirit are three forms of God": Modalist heresy
"The Father, Son and Spirit are three parts of God": Partialist heresy
"The Father, Son and Spirit are three beings that work together": Tritheist heresy
"The Father, Son and Spirit are like the aggregate states of water": Modalist heresy
"The Father, Son and Spirit are like the sun casting light and warmth upon the Earth": Subordinatianist/Arian heresy
"The Father, Son and Spirit are like three leaves on a shamrock": Partialist heresy
"The Father is like an egg's shell, the Son is an egg yolk and the Spirit is like egg white": Partialist heresy...also how exactly does one come up with this?
By accepting any of these analogies or anything that contradicts the Athanasian Creed as correct, we worship a false God. There is only one God, namely the one described in excruciating detail in the Athanasian Creed.
- 1 Peter 1:2
Something fundamentalists love to say is that sex only serves procreation. Biologically that is true, yes, but that's not the end of it. This framework breaks down when confronted with infertile couples, as an example. Neither Catholic Canon Law, nor the tradition of High Church Protestantism, nor Holy Tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy forbid infertile couples from having sex. And unlike Millenarians, I doubt that the Church has been in apostasy for two millennia.
Something progressives love to say is that sex only serves as an expression of love, and is fine in every circumstance if consensual. We can thank God that this framework doesn't break down when faced with pedophilia, as even they agree that children are not able to consent. Incest is a different story though. The "consent plus enthusiasm" framework is unable to explain why incest is wrong, if both parties consent. The fundamentalists can chip in on this, but their framework has different limits, as we have established. One of those notably being homosexual incest, as this one is permissible according to both the procreation-focused and the consent-focused framework.
We can't work with two imperfect rulesets and arbitrarily decide which to use, or "follow the heart". While the Law is written on our hearts, our heart is also the greatest deceiver ever made. Even baptized members of the Body of Christ are still under constant attack from Lucifer and his temptations, and their (and thus mine, especially mine) will needs to be corrected by the Word and Holy Spirit every single waking moment of their lives.
So what is the correct rule to follow? It's simple, really. Sex serves the purpose of consummating a marriage, of expressing the union of husband and wife into one flesh. Everything else follows naturally.
- Song of Solomon 8:6-7
I tried my best to distill these five arguments to the best of my ability, but they're very dense, so they might still be difficult to understand.
- Acts 17:24-25
Historical-critical scholarship rests on the idea that Scripture is fundamentally a human text, made by fallible humans, limited by their thoughts and experiences. It does not assume divine inspiration, and in its worst form, higher criticism, denies the possibility of divine inspiration altogether. Higher criticism is a radical form of historical-critical scholarship, that is mostly supported by atheists and subversive elements within the visible Church.
Thus historical-critical scholarship ends up denying the transcendence of the moral values and virtues portrayed in Scripture, thus also denying the timeless nature of Justice, Temperance, Prudence and Fortitude. For progressives this works well on issues like homosexuality, where through exploiting historical-criticism they are able to pretend that the Bible's teachings on sexuality are not actually clear. But since this sets a precedent, they end up arguing themselves into a corner when they have to explain why other sins, that even heretics agree are morally wrong, like murder, are sins to begin with.
But we do need to consider Scripture's age when applying its wisdom to today's world. So we arrive at a dilemma. Because the fundamentalist answer to higher criticism, literalism, has its own issues. Such as being unable to distinguish between Law and Gospel, between the conditions of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and unable to explain the threefold distinction of the Law. I could go on and on about how literalism contradicts itself and leads to nothing of value, it's no wonder that it's the "hermeneutical framework" (if you can even call it that) preferred by Low Church Christians.
The answer to these woes is historical-grammatical scholarship. It assumes divine inspiration but not full infallibility of every word in Scripture, allows for systematic theological analysis of Scripture, and allows to break down the literal words of Scripture into coherent rules that don't contradict each other, by considering intent, genre and available linguistic methods of conveying ideas. Currently, in my eyes, that is the best way we have to interpret Scripture, if applied consistently.
To give some examples (I will give both fundamentalist and progressive views as examples): Why is Old Earth Creationism wrong? Because that was not the intent of Genesis 1. The intent was to debunk Pagan creation myths, and show that God created the world ex nihilo. Why is sexual sin (incest, rape, adultery, homosexuality, etc.) morally wrong? Because it contradicts the framework on sexuality found in Moral Law. Why is marital rape wrong? Imago Dei and Moral Law.
Though this framework is obviously not invented by me, I barely know anything about theology, really. It is widely used for discernment in High Church traditions, especially in Confessional bodies, like ILC member churches.
- 2 Timothy 3:16
Without the Law, we don't need a savior. Because what would we need to be saved from? Without the Gospel, the Law's gravity would crush us. With both intact, the Law shows us why we need a savior, why we cannot measure up to God's glory as we are, and the Gospel relieves us by showing us that Christ has already achieved victory on our behalf, and made a promise to us, through which God himself will impude His glory onto us and sanctify us.
I have seen it in addiction recovery, both behavioral and substance, where some people would subject themselves to suffering and fall into shame and relapse cycles due to self-condemnation. That is the harshness of the Law. It crushes you without the Gospel, because we can never even hope to measure up to it. In secular recovery circles, what I am about to propose is called the EasyPeasy method, but really it's just the Gospel applied to recovery: You ARE justified before God through Christ's victory against death and sin on the cross. You ARE free to choose righteousness through the covenant made between you and God. You miss out on NOTHING of value by staying on the righteous path, as sin goes against everything you were made for. Live that. That is the Gospel.
- Romans 3:20
Due to the prevalence of "anti-vax" ideology and similar beliefs among fundamentalists, I felt it to be right to go into detail about Christianity's relationship to medicine specifically. Such ideologies are dangerous to the welfare of all societies they touch.
Modern medicine was invented in Christian nations. Compare that to cultures where a gnostic religion was followed, like certain Hindu and Buddhist metaphysics. Or cultures where studying the physical body was seen as a distraction from the spiritual. These cultures did not arrive at modern medicine on their own. And why did we specifically do that? Because theology is the mother of all sciences. It is not without reason that science is often referred to as "thinking God's thoughts after Him". Imago Dei not only means that every human being has inherent dignity, but also that studying ourselves and the nature around us will bring us closer to God.
Today the Roman Catholic Church has various orders, such as the Teutonic Order and the Order of Malta, that were formerly military orders, but now operate various healthcare facilities, like nursing homes. Similarly in Germany many hospitals are owned and operated by either Protestant (Lutheran or United, depending on which territorial church has jurisdiction) or Catholic foundations, and our healthcare system could not function without them. Same goes for childcare facilities, which are usually attached to a parish.
- Luke 9:1-2
Aside from these practical examples, science and theology are not even attempting to answer the same questions. Science only tries to answer, and does so wonderfully, the questions of "what" and "how". Theology only tries to tackle the question of "why". Thus they can coexist and complement each other perfectly.
The Roman Catholic Church, being the most institution-focused denomination, operates its own scientific facilities, most notably the Vatican Observatory and Pontifical University.
In the USA a lot of universities, many of them now considered to be a part of the Ivy League, were founded by the mainline Protestant churches:
- Psalm 19:1-2
Life begins at conception. Thus abortion is murder. We can discuss from here.
Q: What about disabled fetuses? Wouldn't preventing their birth prevent suffering?
A: Eugenics. Dismissed. Incompatible with the concept of human dignity.
Q: What if the parents lack the resources to take care of the child?
A: Then society should help them. That is the principle of subsidiarity. The USA are an exception in the civilized world in their refusal to implement a proper welfare system, not the rule.
Q: What about braindead people though? Is turning off their life support murder too?
A: It is not. Christian anthropology defines a human being as a union of body and soul. A brain dead (i.e. death has already happened and has been determined via neurological factors) person is only alive insofar, as the body's tissues are being kept alive by the life support systems. Without further intervention a brain dead person will decompose, while a fetus will develop into a proper human being, if that process is not stopped artificially.
Q: But isn't a fetus basically like a parasite?
A: No. By definition a parasite must have a different species from the host, otherwise all mammalian fetuses would be parasites. Also, calling unborn children "parasites" is weird.
Q: But isn't it unjust that women are forced to carry the child for nine months?
A: By having consensual sex you agree to the obvious consequence of sex, which is pregnancy. An exception can and obviously should be made for cases of rape. Daisychaining of sin (rape contradicts Imago Dei, abortion contradicts Imago Dei) makes judgement difficult.
- Jeremiah 1:5
I disagree with the Reformed on many things, such as sacramentology and soteriology, but I also commend John Calvin on many things, such as his reforms in Geneva. Because truly, we ARE all made equally in the image of God. So how could you possibly justify an absolutist monarchy? We are all equally Saints and Sinners. Nobody is good enough to exalt themselves above the population.
Meanwhile the Constitutional Republic implements many ideas that even classical philosophers (who also influenced Christian philosophy) already had thought up. The modern Constitutional Republic in many ways resembles the Polity thought up by Aristotle. It, by design, attempts to prevent its own degeneration, through the division of powers and competences across many people, so that there is no one culprit that can ruin the state. Unfortunately it can (and did) degenerate into managerialism.
But you have to consider: The Constitutional Republic can be reformed. Like a Protestant Church. An absolutist monarchy? No chance. The only possibility would be revolution, which is very much undesirable, as revolutions ruin a society. Just look at what two revolutions in one century did to Russia.
- Galatians 3:28