Löhe on 1. Peter 2,11

»Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul« (1. Peter 2,11 ESV).

from http://kwaweber.org/2013/04/23/lohe-on-1-peter-211-2/

The Apostle encourages the Christians to live chaste and pure lives. This does not only relate to the 6^th commandment, but goes further than that. Even the fifth and seventh commandments are directed against sinful desires, which war against our souls. Anger, revenge, theft, corruption and many other sinful desires war against our souls. They destroy the joy and gladness in our hearts. They work like frost in a spring night – destroying the blossoming fruits of the season in no time.

The word “war against your soul” can be understood in more than one way, but all will agree that the happiness of our souls and the associated holy lives are severely damaged by these sinful desires. How is the pilgrim to make his way home steadily if these things preoccupy him and keep him from going about his real business. Where is the joy and courage to come from to reach out to heaven if these things are pulling him back and holding him down? That is why we should concentrate our energy, strength and capacities to abstain from sinful desires, to rid ourselves of sinful ways and to put off all that holds us back and makes us sluggish in our Christian pilgrimage.

O holy God, who will be perceived only by those with clean hearts, grant us your Holy Spirit, that he cleanse our hearts from all sin and sanctify us through and through. Work in us both the will to do and the doing of good works. Strengthen, empower, confirm and capacitate us that we will be found pure and without blame on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Whoever strives to accommodate himself to this world, will be put to shame. The sinful world does not hold its promises. It is not dependable.

Whoever depends on God and the world, will limp on both sides. His heart will remain divided and won’t find peace. It’ll have trouble and pain – no end.

On God alone – that’s how it should be – he is the true sanctuary. Who trusts in God, builds on him alone, is blessed here and saved eternally. (Julius Sturm, 1816-1896)

This is a rather free translation of Wilhelm Löhe’s devotion for Tuesday after the third Sunday after Easter: Jubilate. It is found on Pg. 182 in Lob sei Dir ewig, o Jesu!   (Eternal Praise to you o Jesus!) edited by A. Schuster and published in the Freimund Verlag, Neuendettelsau 1949.

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A thought on „The Bible“

One of my critiques of The History Channel’s recently concluded miniseries „The Bible“ is the fast pace it set in each episode. I am critical of this because in our 21st American society we cannot presume that someone knows the background of any particular Biblical story. There is a vast ignorance in our culture about the background and context of the Bible and the events recorded therein. As such, more time needs to be devoted when producing a film or series about the Bible.

Even with a thorough knowledge of the Bible, the miniseries was still too fast paced. Case in point, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the cornerstone of the Christian faith and the Church, was rushed. Important dialogue was left out that would have clarified the events. The Holy Gospels devote most of their pages to the Passion of Jesus. The Gospels slow down when they arrive at Holy Week and go into great detail about the events. The final episode crammed too much into a 2-hour block. It would have been better to make an additional episode so one could have been devoted solely to the crucifixion and resurrection and the last episode focus on Pentecost and the Book of Acts.

In spite of all this, „The Bible“’s ratings success has shown that there is a hunger for shows that tell a story, and this bodes well for the future of American TV which has way too much „reality“ TV that is void of any substance.

Easter Monday

That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them: „What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?“ And they stood still, looking sad. (Luke 24,13-17 ESV)

Yesterday’s gospel tells about Easter morning, today’s gospel talks about that evening. What a morning and what an evening – and all the difference made by Jesus Christ’s victorious resurrection from the dead. Two disciples are going to Emmaus mourning and crying. Asked by the stranger concerning their sorrow, they give an Easter answer, but without the joy of Easter. They are crying while spreading joyous seeds, which had not yet sprouted to their own rejoicing. In this way you can be rich without knowing about those boxes of treasures – hungry in spite of all your wealth. But this is to change quite dramatically. The stranger can call these sorrowing men out of their distress and bring them to the hopeful glory by his insight into matters. Their hearts start to burn. It was the fire of hope for an eternal life and the resurrection of the body, which even today still has the power to kill all sorrow, kindle comfort and awaken peace and in this way vitalize the soul with eternal joy.

Two disciples go with longing across the veld to Emmaus; their eyes are full of tears, theirs souls full of regrets and they’re sharing words of mourning, but Lord Jesus close already close by to dispel all misery.

Oh, so many hearts are caught up in despair, bewailing own pain and hurt while going forward heavily burdened – yet Jesus is already quite close by to dispel all misery.

If two souls are in discourse Jesus is the third. He knows all hurts, but has the cure too. He won’t fail us even as we are at a loss without hope, but does all to comfort and to heal.  (Johann Neunherz, 1653-1737)

This is a rather free translation of Wilhelm Löhe’s devotion for Monday, the 2^nd Holiday of Easter. It is found on Pg. 160 in Lob sei Dir ewig, o Jesu!   (Eternal Praise to you o Jesus!) edited by A. Schuster and published in the Freimund Verlag, Neuendettelsau 1949.

Irish-Scandinavian St. Patrick's Day

March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day and a national day of pride for the Irish. The day should also be celebrated as one of Scandinavian culture as well. Modern Ireland is a mix of Celtic and Scandinavian culture. Norwegian Vikings raided Scotland and Ireland; they eventually settled in those countries. Dublin was founded by Norwegians under their leader Turgeis as a Viking war base. The cities of Wexford, Limerick, Wicklow and Waterford are anglicized names of their Norwegian names. The Celtic and Norwegian cultures mixed to produce what we now know as Ireland.

Learning from Löhe: Reminiscere

15. "And therefore finally being heard. The intercessory mother had made the whole thing to her daughter and her faithful interchange pleases the Lord. We must pray in our time of need, which can be seen here, even praying in external hardships. These are holy, heavenly souls who live as they perceive as their own, and so strange woe (153) long outlive our own distress, as they perceive external hardships. External needs are no different in the hearts of the saints, intercession and petition are distinctions which  the petitioner should not perceive, but which sees the Lord as gracious and joyfully forgets this distinction when they come to pray. So it is here. This mother's healthy body is sick because her daughter is sick. They begged for help for themselves. Thus the Lord now heals together both mother and daughter, heals the mother lying near His feet, and in the distance the daughter - and His simple help, such as the thanks and honor is doubled by the compassionate love that was doubled in need" (Löhe 152-53; Matthew 15,21-28). 

Why Does God Allow Natural Disasters?

After seeing the images on TV, and perhaps experiencing the storm yourself, you wonder: “Why did this hurricane devastate the lives of so many people in New Jersey, New York City, and thousands of towns up and down the East Coast?” God’s people have asked such questions since the book of Genesis. We find Job pondering why bad things have happened to a righteous man. Others ask Jesus why some kinsmen were killed when a building fell upon them. 

Natural disasters are part and parcel of our fallen world. In a perfect world, there would be no floods, tornados or tsunamis. But we don’t live in a perfect world. Rather, we live in a world that has been contorted and knocked off kilter by sin − our sin. God cursed the ground on account of Adam. Thorns and thistles will now grow and make our stewardship of the earth much more difficult. Paul talks about creation groaning under the weight of God’s curse. 

So when we wonder why did God allow this hurricane to happen, we discover from Holy Scripture that natural disasters happen because we are sinful people who live in a world that has been cursed by God on account of our sins. 

Does this mean God is punishing us for some unrepented sin? Is He punishing our nation for national sins that we, as a nation, are guilty of? Only insofar as we live on a world whose nature has been cursed by God as a result of our sinfulness. Hurricanes are just one way, among many, that this cursed earth unleashes because of the curse placed upon it. 

Does this mean God is indifferent or uncaring? Certainly not! We should realize that God has protected us from any number of natural disasters throughout the years. When was the last time an asteroid slammed into the earth and extinguished 4 or 5 billion human beings? When was the last time the earth was soaked with flood waters so that only eight people survived? God watches over us and protects us many, many times. 

It’s just this more recent incident when God seems to have taken a break from rescuing His creation. Or has He? Consider what God is doing in the aftermath of this hurricane. He is working through individuals, organizations and State governments to send help, money and supplies. God’s people are praying for the lives and rescue of those unaccounted. 

God is working through men and women to help ease the awful suffering. God is showing His love for the world by working through the actions of the world to offer assistance. 

You see, God can be found where there’s trouble. God is there with the nurse giving help to one injured in the hurricane. God is with the pilot who flies a cargo plane with needed supplies. God is with those who search for the unaccounted. 

God is found in the midst of our greatest heartache and despair. Rather than seeing a hurricane as the angry and contorted face of God, we should instead look at the true God revealed in Christ. For when we see Christ contorted and suffering on the cross, we see God’s friendly heart, a heart so enamored with His people and His creation that He is willing to give up His only Son to redeem us from all our sins. And Paul tells us that God’s redemption in Christ will one day remove the curse imposed upon creation. 

Christ our Lord intervened in a disaster hundreds of times worse than the recent Hurricane Sandy. Our Savior went to the cross, suffered and gave up His own life to save us from our sins. The Christ hanging on the cross reveals the heart of God and the great love He has for us. And when we realize how much God loves us and that Christ is where our greatest need is that needs fixing, then we realize that our Christian faith points the way to where Christ needs to be now: in boroughs and with people who have suffered greatly. And where Christ is, there we will be. Perhaps merely in spirit and prayers. Or in the sending of support. Or offering other help. Each time you give an encouraging word to your neighbors, bring them a cup of coffee, offer them some respite from the sufferings of the hurricane’s aftermath, the hands and words of Jesus are working and speaking through you. These are Divine words of love and support. God has given us an opportunity to do acts of charity and mercy for our neighbors, and for each other in the household of God. And reminding people that God loves us through Christ and that not even a hurricane can alter God’s good disposition upon us through Christ our Lord and Savior.

Gnostic Christianity

Who exactly were the Gnostic Christians, and what did they believe? You would be hard pressed to go into your local bookstore, iBooks or Kindle and find books on Gnostic Christianity. There just is not a raving passion for studying it. Only a handful of scholars keep the dream alive of Gnostic Christianity.

There is some discussion among scholars as to the position of Gnostic Christians in the early Church. Some, like Profs. Karen King and Elaine Pagels of Harvard and Princeton, respectively, put the Gnostics squarely in the Christian fold. Others, like Prof. James Voelz of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, postulate that they should not even rightly be called Christians. It is true that Gnostic philosophy had infiltrated some corners of the Church throughout the mid-1st and early 2nd centuries (the Apostles Paul and John deal with this Gnostic influence in some of their New Testament writings), but these Gnostic groups were never part of the mainstream Church in terms of numbers, leadership or influence. This may be in part because the apostles  effectively checked their influence with their authority and teaching. 

Gnosticism comes from the Greek word γνωσις (knowledge), and it is a philosophy that held two key ideals: 1. matter is evil and the spirit is good, and 2. God is infinitely divorced from the world. Gnosticism, therefore, fit easily within the framework of Greek philosophy and thought in the first and second centuries. These ideals, however, are both unbiblical. 

Prof. James Voelz of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis believes Gnosticism is a merging of Platonism, Persian, Judaism and Christianity ideas. He also sees similarities between Gnosticism’s secret-saving knowledge and its modern offshoots in Masonic Lodges and Mormonism. He rightly identifies Gnosticism not as a Christian heresy but as an completely different religion. 

The Gnostic Christians believed Christians could and should receive a special knowledge to advance up the ladder of spirituality and salvation. This knowledge was something other and different from what was written in the books of the New Testament.  This belief separated them from the rank and file Christians. In this sense, the Gnostic Christians were a type of Christian Masonic Lodge where one moved up the ladder by obtaining the secret knowledge known to those in the community who had received it directly from Jesus or by someone higher up than they in the community. It is easy to see why the early Church and her theologians fought against these Gnostic Christians, for they added to the accepted Scriptures. This is the history of all the sects and heresies: they add documents to the Bible that are put on par with, or above, Holy Scripture. As such, the Gnostic Christians had separated themselves from all the other churches by adding to the accepted canon of Scripture. In part, this is why the early Church began to put together an authoritative list of what books were Holy Scripture, and which were not. In 397, the Council of Carthage established the authorized canonical list to be the 27 books in what we currently have in the New Testament. Earlier theologians and bishops had lists (as early as 170), all of which basically agreed with the accepted list compiled in 397. None of their individual lists included any sort of Gnostic Christian writings. By the way, these canonical lists were based on the witness to the antiquity and apostolicity of the various canonical books, rather than decreeing that the canon contained certain books. Furthermore, the Gnostic Gospels were merely a collection of Jesus' sayings, wisdom and knowledge. They rarely mention or quote the Old Testament. There are no miracles in them, and they did not focus on Jesus' death and resurrection for the salvation of the world. Prof. King's papyrus fragment seems to fall into this type of literature. The Gnostic Christian texts were never seriously entertained by many Christians as legitimate representations of the faith. Although some, like Pagels and King believe and teach otherwise. 

The Gnostics tried to merge their philosophy with Christianity. Where Judaism and Christianity emphasize the role of faith alone in salvation and the salvation of both body and soul, Gnostics taught that the soul’s salvation depended on the individual possessing quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulas. Gnosticism fundamentally rejected the Old Testament, its theology about the goodness of creation and especially the idea that all the nations would be blessed through Abraham and his faith. We see the beginnings of this clash between Judeo-Christian theology and classic Greek philosophy already in the Apostle Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians. In chapter 15 where he discusses the resurrection, Paul is dealing with the Gnostic aversion that the body would be resurrected and reunited with the soul. The Greeks only believed in an eternal soul that sheds off the body at death. They didn’t care about a resurrection, because being rid of the corrupt body freed the pure soul. In Greek thought, a resurrection would be a step back, for the body imprisoned the soul and death released the soul. Paul teaches in this letter that Christianity is anchored in Christ’s resurrection, and our own. Gnostic Christians found this, the central teaching of the Christian faith, to be distasteful. 

There is no strong evidence to suggest that the Gnostic Christians vied with the orthodox from the beginning. The earliest discovered Gnostic Christian document is the Gospel of Thomas which appears about 130. This is well after the New Testament books were already recognized as authoritative and widely circulated, read and accepted as Scripture. 

The Gospel of Thomas draws on most of these New Testament documents and adds some new ideas about Jesus and faith. All other major Gnostic Christian texts—like the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of Mary, and so on—are clearly written in the second and third centuries. This is well after the Christian Scriptures are collected and accepted as a canon of texts. These canonical lists were used to evaluate other Christian writings in light of those that were apostolic. Among the second-century lists of authoritative Scriptures, the Gnostic texts are never listed—not even by the unorthodox, Gnostic-leaning Marcion in 140. There was never a time when a wide selection of books, including Gnostic ones, were widely deemed acceptable in the Church. 

In light of the fact that Gnosticism clashed with several important aspects of the Old and New Testaments, Gnostic „Christians“ don’t deserve to even be regarded as a legitimate development of the Christian faith, and therefore don’t fall into the category of Christian sects, but as a completely new religion that is antithetical to Christianity. And yet, Profs. King and Pagels argue that they are a viable and important part in the life of the early Church. Prof. King even shies away from labeling the Gnostic Christians as heretics or even Gnostic. While studying Gnostic "Christianity" might be beneficial for learning about life in general in the 2nd and 3rd centuries in the Middle East, we are not going to learn anything about the early Church since the Gnostics were not a recognized part of the believers. No amount of essays, books and presentations by Profs. King and Pagels is going to change the course of history. It is not about the victors writing the history, but about Gnostic Christianity being a dog that simply won't hunt. The Church rejected the Gnostics. They survived for a few centuries as eccentrics here and there, but in the end their ideals and philosophy simply did not carry and win the debate or the day.