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The Virgin Birth and the ELCA

12/22/2016

3 Comments

 
​It’s almost Christmas and time for the regular attack from ELCA leaders on what Scripture tells us about Christ’s birth.
 
Emily Scott is an ELCA pastor at St. Lydia's, a Dinner Church in Brooklyn, NY and was a main speaker at the 2015 ELCA National Youth Gathering. In a recent blog, Pastor Scott encourages her readers to take a fresh look at the Mother of Jesus.
Here is some of what she wrote:
 
“We might also notice that the word often translated 'virgin' in the bible,
 
in fact only means, 'young girl.'
 
A maid. A girl who is not yet married.
 
In the next 2,000 years, the church will get really obsessed
 
with Mary’s vagina.
 
They will claim that not only was she a virgin when Jesus was conceived,
 
but that she remained a virgin the rest of her life.
 
Because how could the son of GOD be born
 
from something so ordinary
 
and unruly
 
and uncontrollable
 
as a woman’s vagina.
 
So in order to make this story make sense for the men who told it,
 
they sanitized away Mary’s sexuality.
 
They neutered her.” (see here)
 
Seriously? We are to take ELCA Pastor Scott's, and likely many mainline pastors, word for it when it goes against God’s Word and thousands of Christian scholars, teachers and translators? See what they say about Pastor Scott’s claims here and here.
 
Pastor Scott then goes on a craze-filled, inappropriate rant about Mary’s private parts while also attacking men and the church. That should tell you a little about her mindset. 
 
Then we have ELCA pastor Clint Schnekloth sharing his half-baked opinion about the Christmas account, which he states, as if it is fact, “I am reminded that there is a good deal of myth in the birth narratives of the Christ.” (see here)

Michael Rinehart is the bishop of the ELCA's Texas Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod. Just this week he cast doubt on the truth of the virgin birth in his blog, writing, "Of course the first person to doubt the virgin birth was Joseph himself. This is why he decided to divorce her, quietly. An angel visits him in a dream, and in the end he decides not to divorce Mary, and to adopt her child as his own.Whatever the world may think about a literal virgin birth, no one questions that Jesus was adopted, and Joseph was an adoptive parent." (see here)

Don’t forget that a few years ago the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in their official website, argued against the virgin birth. (see here)
 
See more ELCA attacks on the virgin birth here. (scroll down the page)

Our friend, Pastor Tom Brock wrote about the virgin birth problem within the ELCA in January of 2016 when he penned this, “I graduated from Luther Seminary back in 1979. I would guesstimate that back then only a few professors denied the Virgin Birth of Christ. Some years ago I asked a faculty member at Luther ‘Do you think half of the professors at Luther still believe in the Virgin Birth?’ The response: ‘Oh no, way less than half.’" (see here) 
 
ELCA members should ask their pastors what they believe about the virgin birth.
3 Comments
Didaskalos link
12/23/2016 07:44:03 am

Martin Luther again pronounces a Biblical rebuke on the pretend church that illegitimately claims his name:

". . .Therefore this is the chief article, which separates us from all the heathen, that you, O man, may not only learn that Christ, born of the virgin, is the Lord and Savior, but also accept the fact that he is your Lord and Savior, that you may be able to boast in your hear: I hear the Word that sounds from heaven and says: This child who is born of the virgin is not only his mother’s son. I have more than the mother’s estate; he is more mine than Mary’s, for he was born for me, for the angel said, “To you” is born the Savior. Then ought you to say, Amen, I thank thee, dear Lord.

" But then reason says: Who knows? I believe that Christ, born of the virgin, is the Lord and Savior and he may perhaps help Peter and Paul, but for me, a sinner, he was not born. But even if you believed that much, it would still not be enough, unless there were added to it the faith that he was born for you. For he was not born merely in order that I should honor the mother, that she should be praised because he was born of the virgin mother. This honor belongs to none except her and it is not to be despised, for the angel said, “Blessed are you among women!” [Luke 1:28]. But it must not be too highly esteemed lest one deny what is written here: “To you is born this day the Savior.” He was not merely concerned to be born of a virgin; it was infinitely more than that. It was this, as she herself sings in the Magnificat: “He has helped his servant Israel” [Luke 1:54]; not that he was born of me and my virginity but born for you and for your benefit, not only for my honor.

"Take yourself in hand, examine yourself and see whether you are a Christian! If you can sing: The Son, who is proclaimed to be a Lord and Savior, is my Savior; and if you can confirm the message of the angel and say yes to it and believe it in your heart, then your heart will be filled with such assurance and joy and confidence, and you will not worry much about even the costliest and best that this world has to offer."
--Martin Luther, Sermon on the Afternoon of Christmas Day--Luke 2:1-14, December 25, 1530

Theologian Al Mohler is on similarly Biblical ground when he declares: "No true Christian can deny the virgin birth."

". . .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.

“Everyone admits that the Bible represents Jesus as having been conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary. The only question is whether in making that representation the Bible is true or false.” So declared J. Gresham Machen in his great work, The Virgin Birth of Christ. As Machen went on to argue, “if the Bible is regarded as being wrong in what it says about the birth of Christ, then obviously the authority of the Bible in any high sense, is gone.”

"The authority of the Bible is almost completely gone where liberal theology holds its sway. The authority of the Bible is replaced with the secular worldview of the modern age and the postmodern denial of truth itself. The true church stands without apology upon the authority of the Bible and declares that Jesus was indeed “born of a virgin.” Though the denial of this doctrine is now tragically common, the historical truth of Christ’s birth remains inviolate. No true Christian can deny the virgin birth.”

Al Mohler, "Can a Christian Deny the Virgin Birth?" -- http://www.albertmohler.com/2006/12/25/can-a-christian-deny-the-virgin-birth-4/

Reply
Rev. Nicole A.M. Collins
12/23/2016 02:29:04 pm

What is considered intellectual progress in theology is corrupted by a hermenuetic of politics and culture. The focus on Biblical growth as a spiritual journey is entirely absent. Their continual deconstruction of pillars of faith is just contributing to building the Graceless wilderness their church is to become

Reply
The Reverend D. Mitchell Evans
9/25/2017 04:41:08 pm

This pastor needs to take Greek again. Her Hebrew is correct as far as Isaiah is concerned. Almah means young women. However in the New Testament which uses the Septuagint which is the Old Testament translated in Greek, the word is parthainos which means virgin.

Furthermore, this pastor's ability to interpret is poor considering that Mary states in the same text that she has known no man. This known no man states no sexual contact. This pastor would do well to take hermeneutics again as well.

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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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