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Known Pagan goddess is Actually Holy Spirit Claims ELCA Seminary Professor

4/12/2013

7 Comments

 
People scoff when conservative Lutherans point to goddess worship happening in the ELCA.  The scoffers either do not believe it or think it is very isolated.  They are wrong. (see here)

Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney is Associate Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, an ELCA Seminary.  She is an ordained Episcopal priest who teaches the future leaders and pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. (see her school bio here)  In a Dr. Gafney blog dated February 11, 2013 the seminary professor compiled some questions she would like to ask the prophet Elijah.  She said:

“When you killed the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal but not the four hundred prophets of Asherah was it because you really didn’t mind a little goddess worship on the side?  Are we feminists right in saying that Asherah was just the Canaanite articulation of the Holy Spirit and not really another God?” (see here)

First, Dr. Gafney doesn't know if the prophets of Asherah were spared by Elijah that day or if they were even present at the referred to gathering.  We do know that 1 Kings 19:1 says Elijah “had killed all the prophets with the sword.”  So it seems more likely that they were killed with the prophets of Baal if they were there.

Secondly, and the reason for my blog, did you hear professor Gafney reveal that she believes: Asherah is the Holy Spirit, not another god?   This is completely false.  Yet that is what she publicly proclaims.  I can not believe the ELCA would allow a professor who thinks this way to teach their future leaders. 

The Bible says this about Asherah:

  • Judges 3:7 - So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.  They forgot the Lord their God, and served the Baals and Asherahs.

  • 2 Kings 21: 6, 7 – He (King Manasseh) did much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger.  He even set a carved image of Asherah that he had made, in the house of which the Lord had said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put My name forever;"

Here are just a few verses from God's Word speaking about Asherah poles (likely “a sacred tree or pole that stood near Canaanite religious locations to honor the Ugaritic mother-goddess Asherah.” (see here):

  • 1 Kings 14:15 - And the Lord will strike Israel, so that it will be like a reed swaying in the water.  He will uproot Israel from this good land that he gave to their ancestors and scatter them beyond the Euphrates River, because they aroused the Lord’s anger by making Asherah poles.

  • 2 Chronicles 19:3 - There is, however, some good in you, for you have rid the land of the Asherah poles and have set your heart on seeking God.

Clearly the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob wanted His people to have nothing to do with Asherah.  It is plain to see from these verses that Asherah is not the Holy Spirit, as this ELCA seminary professor is trying to get us to believe.  Worshiping Asherah is the worship of a false goddess.

So, if it's wrong (and it is) why isn't the ELCA leadership stopping it and why are they letting people who believe it be instructors in their seminaries?

7 Comments
Didaskalos link
4/13/2013 06:57:44 am

What do Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney, ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, and a host of ELCA bishops, pastors, college and seminary professors have in common?

They're all fervent pilgrims on the ELCA Path to Total Spiritual Impotence:

1. Recoil with horror at the mean things the world keeps saying about Bible-honoring Christians and denominations. Ask fellow ELCAnites if there's a way to escape that contemptuous disparagement.

2. Experience the Prince of Darkness-engendered epiphany that publicly depreciating the Bible might spur the world to send oodles of warm fuzzies your way.

3. Test the theory. Write a letter contending that Christians, Jews and Muslims all worship the same God. Introduce Dan Savage to your denomination's youth. Question and depreciate foundational tenets of the Christian faith. Amend the Bible at your national convention. Ordain homosexuals and lesbians as pastors. Cozy up to Marcus Borg and the Jesus Seminar. Intimidate pastors whose bound conscience doesn't align with your newly enlightened vision.

4. Discover to your great relief that the world is now your best buddy. Rejoice as LGBT groups praise you to the skies. Delight in invitations by the Democratic Party to be "advisors." Bask in the glow of media approbation. Enjoy your celebrity status in the faculty lounge. The world's your oyster. Who needs the praise of God, anyway?


Reply
Dave from Minnesota
4/14/2013 12:58:42 pm

Different subject, but....I was in Western Wisconsin this weekend and picked up Saturday's Eau Claire paper. They had an article on Grace Lutheran (see posts on this blog).

Lastest......District synod said they could not be part of LCMC, and kicked out the 2 pastors. The church said the NW Wisc synod could not do that, so retained the pastors.

Now, ELCA has said that anyone who voted to affialiate with the LCMC cannot be a voting member of Grace Lutheran, so therefore, the chuch council members are no longer full members of Grace Lutheran, and therefore cannot be on the council. Nor can any members of Grace Lutheran be voting members if they support affiliation with LCMC.

We have a word for the ELCA in situations like this, but I will respect the owner and members of this blog and not refer to ELCA leadership as total......

Reply
H. Murdock
4/14/2013 01:01:17 pm

Asherah was a fertility goddess, the wife or mother of Baal. How any Christian could draw a parallel between Asherah and the Holy Spirit is beyond me. I'm reminded of a remark by C. S. Lewis: "God can safely represent Himself to us as Father and Husband because only a lunatic would think that He is physically our sire or that His marraige with the Church is other than mystical" [THE FOUR LOVES (San Diego: Harvest-Harcourt Brace, 1960), ch. 3, pp. 87-88]. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of lunatics in the ELCA seminaries these days.

Reply
Didaskalos
4/15/2013 06:34:16 am

The interpretive key is in this question by Dr. Gafney: "Are we feminists right in saying that Asherah was just the Canaanite articulation of the Holy Spirit and not really another God?"

ELCAspeak translation: "Feminism is our first allegiance, our Holy Writ. The Bible ranks somewhere around 33rd place in life-directing authoritative importance to us, behind CNN, the New York Times, Planned Parenthood press releases, etc., etc."

Has Gafney ever wondered why the Lord told Gideon, "Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height."

Reply
Pattie Brown
4/15/2013 04:34:48 am

This is outrageous!!!!

The Bible is quite clear about this!!!

Mark 3:22-30 "22 And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, 'He is possessed by Beelzebul,' and 'by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.' 23 And he called them to him and said to them in parables, 'How can Satan cast out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. 26 And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. 27 But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house
28 "Truly, I say to you, al sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin' - 30 for they were saying, 'He has an unclean spirit.'"

False teachers are everywhere!!! Beware in these evil days!!! And always stand for truth!!!!!!!

Reply
Josh Hamilton
4/15/2013 07:48:55 am

"What unites us [Lutheran CORE and the ELCA] is the Common Confession, the authority of Scripture in its plain reading, the Name(s) of our Triune God, and our concerned agreement on other things" ("Still Alive and Caught Up Together," CORE CONNECTION, April 2013, p. 1).

Although there is not one paragraph in this article that has any definite ascertainable meaning, the general drift of the article is, "Many of us in Lutheran CORE have not left the ELCA, and there's really no reason for you to do so either."

The point of my blog is that the ELCA usually manages to infiltrate the opposition.

Reply
Fr. James Rosselli link
3/12/2015 01:08:19 pm

I am a Russian Orthodox Priest (ROCOR, Western Rite) who used to be a Lutheran minister (eleven years in The AALC). During that
time I saw the ELCA fester and metastasize into what it is now.

Why in the world is anyone surprised at this professor's position?
She's an Episcopal "priest" teaching in an ELCA seminary, for
pete's sake.

What astounds me is that anyone outside the Liberal Antichurch
community would still refer to ELCA as "Lutheran," or as a "church,"
or why anyone who actually believes in God and in the authority of
the Bible would remain in it.

What fellowship has light with darkness? How can you call an organized, militant apostasy that seeks to corrupt souls, "Christian?"

God calls us to many things: Love, forgiveness, patience--but not
to tolerance, acceptance or blindness in the face of evil.

in Christ,

Fr. James +

provably unworthy priest

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    Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.  
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    Dan Skogen

    Former ELCA seminary student and former ELCA member who is fed up with the ELCA's consistent mockery of God's Word.


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