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The ELCA is No Longer a Christian Denomination

1/1/2013

8 Comments

 
Once again an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America leader publically denies Jesus’ virgin birth and Scripture’s nativity accounts, and ELCA leadership allows it. Because of this, I sadly tell you that the ELCA is no longer a Christian denomination. 

David Lose, a professor and the director of the Center for Biblical Preaching at Luther Seminary (ELCA) recently authored an article titled, “Is the Christmas Story trustworthy?”  In the article, Professor Lose writes, “I would argue that . . . the gospel writers undoubtedly play fast and loose with the various stories, sayings, and incidents they inherited. . .” (see here)  
Lose goes on to say how the gospel writers “craft” their stories and should be viewed “more as artists than as historians.”  Lose wants us to believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John made up their gospel accounts, that the gospel writers lied in order to share some “bigger” spiritual truth.

Prof. Lose isn’t the first ELCA leader to recently say this.  Just a few weeks ago Exposing the ELCA reported on Rev. Dr. Don Carlson, an Assistant to the Bishop of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod, who stated, “I think that the stories are made up. (I’m retiring at the end of May anyway so don’t waste time with the heresy accusations.) They are myth” and later he advises, “tell the old mythic story in a way that that it is heard anew.”

Highly controversial scholar Marcus Borg, who has made a nice living speaking at ELCA events and writing for ELCA publications, audaciously says, “The stories of Jesus' birth are myths”. (see here)


The ELCA’s official website even encouraged debate and questioned the truth of Christ’s Virgin Birth.  (see here) 

The ELCA has the power to stop this heretical teaching in its churches and in its seminaries.  Yet they do not.  There is a “crime” being committed against our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and the ELCA is driving the get-away car.  They are an accomplice; allowing this teaching is an endorsement of the teaching.

What are we to think of all this?  Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of Southern Seminary had this to say regarding the Virgin Birth, “Can a Christian, once aware of the Bible’s teaching, reject the Virgin Birth? The answer must be no . . . We cannot claim to believe that the Bible is the Word of God and then turn around and cast suspicion on its teaching.

Millard Erickson states this well: ‘If we do not hold to the  virgin birth despite the fact that the Bible asserts it, then we have compromised the authority of the Bible and there is in principle no reason why we should hold to its other teachings. Thus, rejecting the virgin birth has implications reaching far beyond the doctrine itself.’

Implications, indeed.  If Jesus was not born of a virgin, who was His father? There is no answer that will leave the Gospel intact. The Virgin Birth explains how Christ could be both God and man, how He was without sin, and that the entire work of salvation is God’s gracious act. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, He had a human father. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, the Bible teaches a lie.” 

“This much we know: All those who find salvation will be saved by the atoning work of Jesus the Christ — the virgin-born Savior. Anything less than this is just not Christianity, whatever it may call itself. A true Christian will not deny the Virgin Birth.” (read here)


Dr. Mohler, in a different article says, “The presence of theologians and pastors who deny the virgin birth in the theological seminaries and pulpits of the land is evidence of the sweeping tide of unbelief that marks so many 
institutions and churches in our time. . .Anyone who claims that the virgin birth can be discarded even as the deity of Christ is affirmed is either intellectually dishonest or theological(ly) incompetent.”

“Christians must face the fact that a denial of the virgin birth is a denial of Jesus as the Christ. The Savior who died for our sins was none other than the baby who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and born of a virgin. The virgin birth does not stand alone as a biblical doctrine, it is an irreducible part of the biblical revelation about the person and work of Jesus Christ.  With it, the Gospel stands or falls.”

“No true Christian can deny the virgin birth.”  (read here)  


So with that said, where does that leave a denomination that teaches and/or is accepting of the teaching that the Christmas story and the Virgin Birth are not actually true? 
If what Dr. Mohler said is true for an individual, it is also true for an institution.  

The ELCA is no longer Christian.

8 Comments
Kathy S
1/2/2013 02:07:46 am

Well, whether the ELCA is Christian or not may soon not even be relevant. According to its own publication, it may not be around much longer. The Shrinking Church: http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article.cfm?article_id=11186

Nearly 30 percent of ELCA churches reported an average worship attendance of fewer than 50 people in 2010. From 2003 to 2011, average weekly worship attendance dropped 26 percent. And from 2009 to 2010, ELCA membership decreased 5.9 percent, the sharpest rate of decline among mainline denominations, according to theNational Council of Churches.

"Since the inception of the ELCA, we've seen decline every year, and it has accelerated over the last five years," said Elizabeth Eaton, bishop of the Northeastern Ohio Synod. "It doesn't matter where a congregation is situated, we have congregational decline in every demographic, every geography."

I'm just wondering what will replace it, if anything. I'm going to guess that in a few years, the ELCA will morph into the Emergent Church and disappear.

Reply
Gene Henderson
1/2/2013 01:19:03 pm

How do they count the members who have just walked away and either don't go back or go elsewhere, many not even dropping their membership. I know many in my area who have just decided to worship elsewhere. Meanwhile, the ELCA is still counting them as members. What hope is there when faith is gone.

Reply
James Young link
1/2/2013 01:30:51 pm

The most amazing thing is that these folks abandon biblical teaching, and then express surprise over this outcome.

Reply
Didaskalos link
1/2/2013 10:47:12 pm

The ELCA has become the Jesus Seminar writ large.

Jesus Seminarian Marcus Borg is lionized in ELCA leadership circles, albeit often with weaselly evasions along the lines of: "While we don't endorse everything Marcus Borg says, there is still much we can learn from him." Yeah, sure. If the ELCA had been around in the fourth century, it would have been saying, "While we don't endorse everything Arius says, there is still much we can learn from him."

Where the ELCA and the Jesus Seminar most resemble each other is in both groups' avidity to sit in judgment on the Bible and alter God's Word to suit their sin-spurred whimsies. The Jesus Seminarians capriciously voted that Jesus really said only 18 percent of the words attributed to Him in the New Testament. The ELCA capriciously voted -- after years of "study" commission "findings" that chipped away at the foundation -- that the Bible really doesn't mean what it plainly says about the sinfulness of homosexual sex.

The Jesus Seminar and the ELCA have another similarity: both enfeebled groups are fading rapidly into well-deserved marginalization. Kathy S. has noted some statistics about the declining ELCA. Another statistic that isn't in her citation from The Lutheran magazine: Factoring for inflation, at the end of 2010 [one year after the convention vote] the ELCA churchwide organization and synods were working with 46% of the funds they had when the ELCA was formed. That percentage surely declined again in 2011 and 2012.

Mark Tooley writes about the enervated Jesus Seminar:

"The Jesus Seminar, founded in 1985 to adjudicate over which Scriptures were historically accurate, and which always excluded any talk about miracles, once gained widespread attention for its routine objections to traditional Christian belief. “Christ’s Body Actually Eaten by Wild Dogs!” was a typical headline from a Jesus Seminar gathering, where liberal scholars would vote with colored marbles over which biblical verses were valid.

"Eventually these self-selected academics ran out of incendiary claims, and the media mostly stopped heeding their pronouncements after founder Robert Funk died in 2005, if not well before. Co-founder and former Roman Catholic priest John Dominic Crossan, now about 76 years old, still soldiers on. He and other kindred academics routinely speak around the nation, gathering usually small audiences of gray-headed, mostly retired clergy. . . ."

Heresy's losses are the Bible-confessing churches' gains. Tooley writes:

"Liberal revisionism was always mainly the project of upper middle class, white Mainline Protestants, with advanced degrees and a certain disdain for the ostensibly superstitious masses who heed a more literal version of Christianity. The evangelical mega-churches of today’s America, not to mention the surging faith of Global South Christianity, especially in Africa, usually befuddle and irritate this audience . . . These “intellectual tyrants” were long ascendant in liberal Protestant academia for over a century. Despite their decades of turgid exertions, the fully resurrected Jesus remains as captivating as ever. . . ." [ https://curiouspresbyterian.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/mark-tooley-on-the-fading-fortunes-of-the-hyper-liberals-of-the-jesus-seminar/ ]

Reply
Pastor Jamie Strickler
1/2/2013 11:55:37 pm

I had Lose as a seminary professor. i would like to tell you that these allegations are false but denying the virgin birth is small thing in relation to his other heretical teachings. David is the "cool guy." He is hip he is trendy but he is dead wrong.

Reply
Betty
1/19/2014 10:56:24 am

Ez. 34:2-5 Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the crippled you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd. vs19 Must my sheep eat what you have trodden under foot and drink what you have fouled with your feet?

Reply
Bob
5/5/2014 12:38:04 pm

Please read Romans 1, referring to indecent acts of sexual relationships, especially 24 to 27, and then 32. They stay in an immoral lifestyle and justify their behavior by finding a religious system that permits immorality, and they have found many. Ultimately, their passion and the systems that share it will destroy them. Those who obey the Law will be declared righteous. Those who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.

Reply
Scáth Beorh link
11/24/2014 01:03:54 am

Interesting that his name is Lose.

Reply

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