Aha, but see the contrary historical accounts in James White's book Yeah, Right, As If Calvin Himself Would Ever Espouse So Romish An Error As Paedobaptism (Eerdmans, 1993), pp 847-972, and Dave Armstrong in Forty Pages of Quotations to Show that Luther (a) Was A Wicked and Totally Depraved Man and (b) Agreed With Us Catholics on Mariology And Birth Control (Paulist Press, 2007), pp 1-41.

Free will or no free will, it is foreordained that Chris Jones is going to write a lengthy and uncompromising post in reply to this one.

David, you seem to be a de facto Presbyterian on most of Calvin's beliefs -- eucharist, predestination, and even baptism? Or am I misrepresenting you?
Tom R | 08.23.05 - 9:29 pm | #

Tom R, I have one thing to say:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!.

That was freakin' hilarious.
Josh S | 08.24.05 - 6:49 pm | #

Uh, yeah, two days have now gone by yet no five-article refutation from Christos Ioannou. So much for my belief in foreordination.
Tom R | 08.25.05 - 8:59 pm | #

Five days now, without Chris posting anything to tell David "You have so grievously misrepresented Lutheranism that I am going to report you to the Calvinist Patriarch at Geneva so that he'll deny you chrismation next All Saints' Day, so there".

Chris?

Hello?

Okay, backup then... Karl Thiennes? Have the Cylons de-activated TrackBack or something?
Tom R | 08.29.05 - 12:49 am | #

Okay, I am a false prophet. So stone me.

BTW, David, note spelling -- Melanchthon not Melancthon -- cognate with "chthonic" and "autochthonous". A Scots or German "kh", not an English "k" sound.
Tom R | 08.31.05 - 8:16 pm | #

Tom,

Sorry I'm late. I haven't checked in on David's weblog in a while.

Actually, David is fairly accurate in this post about what happened at Marburg and the differences among Luther, Melanchthon, and the later teachings of the Lutheran Church. He is, of course, entirely wrong about which is orthodox and which is heterodox.

My biggest quibble with what David has written is his claim that The Lutherans claim they are faithful to Martin Luther in all aspects. The dogmatic standard of the evangelical Lutheran Church is the Lutheran Confessions, not the writings of Luther as such. Luther himself wrote only a few of the documents in the Lutheran Confessions. The Augsburg Confession, perhaps the most important of the Lutheran Confessions, is as David noted the work of Melanchthon, not of Luther.

The writings of Luther are very useful for understanding the context of the Lutheran Confessions, and as an elaboration of some of the ideas expressed in the Confessions. But they are not, of themselves, of dogmatic force for Lutherans. Our pastors and congregations subscribe to the Lutheran Confessions only, as a true exposition of the teachings of Holy Scripture.
Chris Jones | 09.09.05 - 1:03 pm | #

... and of course, the Lutheran Confessions teach baptismal regeneration and the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, as the Church has always believed and taught. And, whatever Luther's personal views may have been (I am not well-read enough in Luther to form an opinion on what they were), the Confessions do not teach the Reformed version of predestination. The Confessions are appropriately monergistic with respect to justification; the fact that God works faith in us through the Church's ministry of Word and Sacrament does not make it any less His work rather than ours. And the Confessions are appropriately synergistic with respect to sanctification (see the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, II.65-66). The Lutheran view on these issues, as expressed in the Confessions, is entirely orthodox, and the Reformed view is heterodox.

Is that lengthy and uncompromising enough for you, Tom?
Chris Jones | 09.09.05 - 1:28 pm | #

Heddle apparently takes the well-known position that if it weren't for the Real Presence, the Reformed and Lutheran movements would have been having slumber parties together. This is of course blatantly false. Zwingli was a certified lunatic whose schizophrenic christology would have made Nestorius himself call him a heretic. The Lord's Supper is where a church's doctrine of the Incarnation is put into action; the fact is the reason Zwingli denied the Real Presence was his heretical doctrine of the Incarnation, not because it is taught in Scripture (you know, because it isn't). Marburg was about the Incarnation and how the Church is to go about its ministry, not just a quibble over metaphysics.

The evidence that the Lutheran Church proclaims

We do? Can you cite the theological journal this is discussed in, because I've never heard this.

Lutheran View: Regeneration precedes faith, but that regeneration is resistible

No, wrong again. Since our first confession, we've always taught that justification is regeneration (Apology), not that regeneration is some ontologically different event that changes some metaphysical quality of your soul, enabling you to exercise faith and claim justification yourself (hmmm...that sounds synergistic!). We have no dogmatic ordo salutis. You would also do well to note that the Smaller Catechism is a confessional document for us. The later writings of Philip Melanchthon or not. The problem is that you think double predestination and monergism are the same thing.
Josh S | 09.10.05 - 9:01 am | #

A bit more lengthy, please, Chris, and try not to be quite so compromising...
Tom R | 09.11.05 - 7:00 pm | #