29 March 2008

Options etc.

I take note that some in the Lutheran blogosphere are beginning to ask whether there needs to be an LC-MS. So let me put in a shameless plug for Fr. John Fenton's fine paper, "What options do the confessions give us?" published several years ago, as well as the presentations from the Lutheran/Orthodox colloquy, which can be found at Ancient Faith Radio. Fr. Fenton's analysis of the options confronting Lutherans remains unsurpassed.

Fr. Fenton's paper

Lutheran/Orthodox colloquy

3 comments:

Ezekiel said...

Father, Bless!

In that same line, the presentation by Deacon Gregory Roeber offers keen insight into the pathology, the "genetic difficulties" (my term) in Lutheranism.

Ezekiel

Dixie said...

The "Options" paper. If I were a Lutheran (and I was), I'd be careful reading it...it will shatter whatever illusions remain. At least it did for me. Great stuff and a nice collaborative effort with the corresponding appendices. But very sad. My paper copy is tear stained.

Deacon Gregory's work was quite a shock, as well. Of course by the time he presented that I was already Orthodox. I wonder how it would sound to Lutheran ears. What it did for me, however, was completely invalidate any expectation of homogeneity in Lutheranism. In a way it explains how the FL-GA district can be so different from Southern Illinois...there are more Baptists here.

Fr. Gregory Hogg said...

Ezekiel,
Dcn. Gregory's paper was amazing, and remains unanswered.

Dixie,
I'm forever in Fr. John's debt for his insistence on the existentiality (if I can coin a term) of the crisis. Once I realized I was in living communion fellowship with heterodox--once I realized that the trans-parish entity was simply a "unionistic fellowship," to use Pieper's phrase, the die was cast.

One must not confuse the movement of parts with the life of the whole. Galvani demonstrated that even severed legs can twitch when electricity is applied to muscles. (I wish I knew a more polite way to say these things.)

When one claims that any trans-parish reality is merely a human construction, an 'institution,' one is dealing with more-or-less skillfully designed machines, not with the divinely-given organism called the Church, the bride and body of Christ.