Tuesday, October 06, 2009

POTF Blog Of The Week: Pastoral Meanderings ”Who Is On The Defensive”

This week’s blog of the week (or month… or year even) comes from Pastor Peter’s blog PASTORAL MEANDERINGS in a post entitled “Who Is On The Defensive?” Pastor Peter writes:

When the objection is an exception to the established practice or teaching of the Church, then the innovators have to prove the point… not those who continue that established practice or teaching… Imagine if (reference the discussions below) we did not have to prove in every generation baptismal regeneration, the Eucharistic mystery, the efficacy of the Word, the wisdom of penance, the importance of faithfulness, the maintenance of the Truth (and not its adjustment) in times of question… whether Lutheran or Orthodox or Roman… ah… if that were the day… when those raising objections to or departing from historic and accepted teaching and practice had to prove not only the rightness of their point but the wrongness of the accepted tradition…

From my perspective, this is the genius of the Lutheran Confessions… they do not innovate but reach back to what was and claim it as what is… from Scripture and the fathers… No, not perfect at all, but a vast improvement upon the corruption that was average parish life in Luther’s day… and if only we Lutherans kept to it… what a dynamo it might mean for today…

Absolutely brilliant!

HT: Christopher Gillespie (no relation that I’m aware of) over at Outer Rim Territories

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