Having watched all three of these talks now, I agree that a fourth is a great idea. Thank God for devout pastors and teachers like Wolfmueller and Schultz!
These discussions have been outstanding. Thank you for this, it's been great, and if you are pressured into doing a forth installment, I'm here for it. 😂
From a lifelong ELCA Lutheran. Thank you for this wonderful series! Have you read the book by Scott Allen Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice: An Urgent Appeal to Fellow Christians in a Time of Social Crisis?
Thank you, Dr. Schulz and Pastor Wolfmueller for bringing this to the light. This discussion has been shared with my sons, who are currently in training to be called workers. May God continue to bless your ministry.
This discussion has encouraged me to expose this subject to friends on Facebook and elsewhere. I have NOT made many friends by exposing this subject to others. There are MANY people who perceive the assignment of this attack on the Word of God to "Woke Marxism" as a political attack on liberals or Democrats (in general). I am not a political person. I care only that the Word of God is being malformed in the forge of this political initiative. But by referring to "Woke Marxism" as the source of the attack I am immediately attacked for "using the Bible as a political tool."
Social Justice is another tool of the Marxist movement. I left a church that had a Social Justice sermon series during COVID. Right in the middle of the George Floyd riots.
As a professor retired from a Christian college I would appreciate an opportunity to discuss academic freedom with Dr. Schulz off-line. Is there any way in which that can be arranged?
You have hit nail on head TH-cam Bridge to Babylon, Forgotten Bible verses, Tares in the Wheat, Lamp in the Dark. The Bible has been under attack for last 1000 years
I thank you both for this series of interviews. I have purchased Dr. Schulz's book and also Pastor Marquart's book on seminix and have signed up for Paul Arndt's course on the Formula of Concord. I have been away from the LCMS for decades so am playing catch-up with what has been happening. Your videos are very timely in that my LCMS congregation has it's Pastor retiring and has decided to call a seminarian. I've shared your video series with one of the Deacons who is also on the call committee. I am curious what Dr. Schulz's opinion is of Dr. Erik Ankerberg as the president of UCW and UCAA. Is he leading those Universities into Biblical truth and historical Lutheran confessions or is he more aligned...if so how much...with the woke theology/Marxism? I am 1000% in favor of more interviews with Dr. Schulz regarding all things Lutheran. Can we just rip the band-aid off and discuss what the hard core truth is????
Greetings pastor Bryan. I have sent a message through your website few days ago. Have you seen that? Expecting to hearing from you to my question. Thanks
I bought the book and currently reading it. Still not really clear what Woke Marxism is but hopefully you’ll make it clearer on the 4 out of 3 episode. And sine I got the book, I get an extra vote😅 2:52
It is evil to think your job as a professor is to make your students doubt everything they have been taught in their churches. That is an attack on someone's faith. What would be better is to teach how to ask questions and practice discernment.
On the topic of freedom of speech: Herbert Marcuse, Marxist university professor in the 1960's and successful book author, advocated abandoning civil discourse in favor of silencing opposition. In his way of thinking, discussion and debate take too long. Also, discussion and debate give the opposition opportunity to express its view. He advocated being tolerant of intolerance. If someone on the Left is pushing an agenda that you don't entirely agree with, you be tolerant of that. If someone on the Right pushes a conservative point of view, then you be intolerant towards that viewpoint (you do whatever to silence it).
It feels off to me that in an 80 minute interview about the search for truth according to the formula of concord, there would be so little mentioned about Jesus' death and resurrection.
The three row roman formation works a little different in Academia. The third line is adminstration. If they see a soldier being to successful figting woke they fire that person. The ones betraying the army is the third line because the third line knows which side of their bread is buttered.
What they did to him is sinful. As we see in this example the self righteous in lofty positions are in need of repentance and turning away from this unlawful and unChristlike behavior in our seminary (s).
Funny how I reject much of Lutheran catechized beliefs yet am able to discern the truth just from the Bible. My parents raised us in both LCMS and ELCA and I stopped attending the ELCA back in the 80s when the pastor did a service centered around the native American holy hoops of rivers around the world. Why? Bevause I read the Bible and believe what it says. When Lutherans stand with the word of God I stand with them. When Lutherans stand of purely Lutheran documents grounded in Luther's Catholic training, I say that's just a carry over from Catholicism and Middle Age government dictatorial religion.
If you do future episodes, maybe you could do some more word definitions and/or evaluate quotes by woke pastors or professors. There is always some measure of truth or at least a sense in which they might be partially true. But definitions change. When justice and mercy are involved, or justice is redefined to mean or include mercy or charity, isn't the Biblical concept of justification destroyed? If the oppressed are owed justice, but justice really means mercy; then if we see ourselves as one of the oppressed, then God owes us mercy? Why then does Jesus need to die? Many of the woke pastors downplay individual salvation. I don't think it's necessary at all for their worldview. What is a good, Biblical definition of justice? How does it relate to mercy/charity/grace? If justice and mercy meet at the cross they can’t be the same thing. I think Tim Keller really manipulated the idea of justice to work in his liberation theology. Biblical justice can also mean righteousness, but then Keller defines the righteous as "those who disadvantage themselves for the community". Instead of looking to the law of God for the definition of righteousness, it is defined in reference to community. Here are some examples if you want to weigh in and help untangle truth from error: "Therefore the Cross, when properly understood cannot possibly be used to encourage the oppressed to simply accept violence. When Jesus suffered for us he was honoring justice. But when Jesus suffered with us he was identifying with the oppressed of the world, not with their oppressors. All life-changing love entails an exchange, a reversal of places, but here is the Great Reversal. God, in the place of ultimate power, reverses places with the marginalized, the poor, and the oppressed. The prophets always sang songs about God as one who's has "brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the poor" (Luke 1:52) but they never could have imagined that God himself would come down off his ultimate throne and suffer with the oppressed so that they might be lifted up." The Reason for God, pg 196 "JoAnn Terrell wrote about how her mother was murdered by her mother's boyfriend. "I had to find a connection between my mom's story and my story and Jesus story," she said. She found it in understanding the Cross-namely, that Jesus did not only suffer for us but with us. He knew what it was like (literally) to be under the lash, and to refuse to be cowed by those in power, and to pay for it with his life. He voluntarily took his place beside those who were without power and suffering from injustice." The Reason for God, pg 195. "The world and our hearts are broken. Jesus life, death, and resurrection was an infinitely costly rescue operation to restore justice to the oppressed and marginalized, physical wholeness to the diseased and dying, community to the isolated and lonely, and spiritual joy and connection to those alienated from God. To be a Christian today is to become part of that same rescue operation.. " The Reason for God", pg. 224-225 "The story of the gospel makes sense of moral obligation and our belief in the reality of justice, so Christians do restorative and redistributive justice wherever they can." The Reason for God", pg. 225 The word "redistributive" in the Keller quote above is not a typo. He did not use the word retributive but redistributive. Maybe that is the crux of the issue. Is Biblical justice retributive or redistributive? If it's both, how? Can Biblical justice be redistributed by Christians? I need to read the chapter in your book on nature vs. identity. But maybe this would be a good topic to discuss in a podcast more. It is everywhere, even in popular works in Christian circles. Could you compare/contrast the concept of a human nature to the concept of a socially constructed self/identity? Maybe you could analyze this quote from Carl Trueman's popular book, "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self": "for all psychological man's inward turn, individual personal identity is not ultimately an internal monologue conducted in isolation by an individual self-consciousness. On the contrary, it is a dialogue between self-conscious beings. We each know ourselves as we know [i.e. learn about] other people. A simple example of why this is important to understand is provided by Descartes's famous idea that in the act of doubting my own existence, I have to acknowledge that I do exist on the grounds that there has to be an "|" that doubts. As plausible as that sounds, a key question that Descartes fails to ask is, What exactly is this "I" that is doing the doubting? Whatever the "I" might be, it is clearly something that has a facility with language, and language itself is something that typically involves interaction with other linguistic beings. I cannot therefore necessarily grant the "I" the privilege of self-consciousness prior to its engagement with others. The "I" is necessarily a social being. If our identities are shaped by our connection to and interaction with significant others, then identity also arises in the context of belonging. To have an identity means that I am being acknowledged by others. [...] Individual identity is thus truly a dialogue:" pg. 56-58 I get that a child needs to acquire language; but if a child was taught to read and stranded on an island with a Bible, would they have enough information to form an individual identity? Or is that entirely the wrong framing anyway? If we get drawn into a conversation about identity, should we reframe it as nature? Would that stranded person with a Bible have enough to know their own nature and God's nature and turn to Him in faith for the forgiveness of their sins because of Jesus death and resurrection by the power of the Holy Spirit? Thank you both so much for these discussions.
“Our immune system has been compromised”. 10:50. This is true at all levels. Individually and at institutions. Words are being used like viruses. Viruses contain foreign DNA/RNA, foreign information. They package this foreign information in something that mimics a signal our cells recognize. The cells then allow the virus in because of this deception, then the foreign DNA/RNA hijack cellular machinery and program to make more virus instead of doing its normal cellular job. This is what is happening with the redefinition of words, like justice, diversity, equity and inclusion. New ideas are allowed in and take over thinking, smuggled in behind words that had different definitions previously . I don’t know if you’ve read any of my posts, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve written. I think I may have asked the wrong question. Or at least neglected an important second question. In addition to asking how Tim Keller’s and Carl Trueman’s quotes could be true, I should also ask how dangerous ideas could be smuggled in using their ideas too. How could liberation theology be smuggled in through Keller’s quotes? How could post-modern or communitarian/communist ideas be smuggled in through Trueman’s? Is the idea that we are social constructs Biblical? What do post-modern neo-Marxists mean by saying that “gender is a social construct”?
Shoot, I came to edit a comment I made under this post and it looked like it was deleted. I was going to edit how I described the philosophies of the above authors, and just ask if ideologies contrary to Scripture could be smuggled in with concepts found in the above quotes. Looks like my comment was deleted. Maybe that means it was offensive in how it was phrased. I think there was a good beginning in the fight against woke Marxism in the church several years ago with the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. I think part of the fracturing of the church’s response to the threat happened with the publication and wide acceptance of the framing of the book “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self”. Maybe a better way to respond would be to see if you would possibly read Hiram Diaz IIIs response to the book in an article called, “You Can’t Fight Hegel with Hegel” and his articles that follow dissecting the philosophy of the book, beginning with the one titled, “The Modern or Modernist Self”. Diaz is also a philosopher. His scholarly articles carry a lot more weight than my poorly worded concerns or questions. Since Dr. Shulz is a philosopher committed to fighting woke Marxism’s infiltration into Lutheran Colleges, he’d be a great resource to untangle the differing perspectives. Maybe this isn’t the place to post these concerns, though . . .
Yes! Yes! I would love a course in the Formula!
Even 5, 6, 10, out of 3 would be good! I always enjoy your discussions together. After the last time I bought two of Dr. Schultz's books. Thanks!!
Yes!
A fourth of three would be fantastic.
Once again, thanks for the conversation and may it be very fruitful.
Yes, teach on!
Excellent conversation. Thank you both.
Can confirm, 4/3 would be great!
4 of 3 would be great!
Having watched all three of these talks now, I agree that a fourth is a great idea. Thank God for devout pastors and teachers like Wolfmueller and Schultz!
These discussions have been outstanding. Thank you for this, it's been great, and if you are pressured into doing a forth installment, I'm here for it. 😂
From a lifelong ELCA Lutheran. Thank you for this wonderful series!
Have you read the book by Scott Allen
Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice: An Urgent Appeal to Fellow Christians in a Time of Social Crisis?
Thank you, Dr. Schulz and Pastor Wolfmueller for bringing this to the light. This discussion has been shared with my sons, who are currently in training to be called workers. May God continue to bless your ministry.
Please meet regularly. 😊
Four or even five! Keep it coming and God bless you both!
This discussion has encouraged me to expose this subject to friends on Facebook and elsewhere. I have NOT made many friends by exposing this subject to others. There are MANY people who perceive the assignment of this attack on the Word of God to "Woke Marxism" as a political attack on liberals or Democrats (in general). I am not a political person. I care only that the Word of God is being malformed in the forge of this political initiative. But by referring to "Woke Marxism" as the source of the attack I am immediately attacked for "using the Bible as a political tool."
Social Justice is another tool of the Marxist movement. I left a church that had a Social Justice sermon series during COVID. Right in the middle of the George Floyd riots.
Thank you both for standing firm in the one true faith, with the one true God! Prayers for both of you
Dr. Schultz always has a way of developing a canvass of thought like none other. 😁. Absolutely 4. Thank you, brothers.
A fourth would be great!
As a professor retired from a Christian college I would appreciate an opportunity to discuss academic freedom with Dr. Schulz off-line. Is there any way in which that can be arranged?
It is DEFINITELY time for the third line to step forward!
Go for 4! Two great pastors.
Thank you for these valuable discussions. I cannot wait to read the book. It is a blessing to listen to two great teachers.
Looking forward to video 4 of 3😀
Sou do Brasil e estou sendo abençoado pelos vídeos. Obrigado.
Yes, four of three!
This series is a blessing and I hope it continues!
Yes, 3 of 4 or 5.
Thank you. [In disputation], "we are exercising our shared humanity, and we are exercising the divine gift of language." Thanks be to God.
Number 4 soon?
“It’s either the Word of God or it’s NOT! The simplicity of this statement is so True and accurate!
You have hit nail on head TH-cam Bridge to Babylon, Forgotten Bible verses, Tares in the Wheat, Lamp in the Dark. The Bible has been under attack for last 1000 years
I thank you both for this series of interviews. I have purchased Dr. Schulz's book and also Pastor Marquart's book on seminix and have signed up for Paul Arndt's course on the Formula of Concord. I have been away from the LCMS for decades so am playing catch-up with what has been happening. Your videos are very timely in that my LCMS congregation has it's Pastor retiring and has decided to call a seminarian. I've shared your video series with one of the Deacons who is also on the call committee. I am curious what Dr. Schulz's opinion is of Dr. Erik Ankerberg as the president of UCW and UCAA. Is he leading those Universities into Biblical truth and historical Lutheran confessions or is he more aligned...if so how much...with the woke theology/Marxism?
I am 1000% in favor of more interviews with Dr. Schulz regarding all things Lutheran. Can we just rip the band-aid off and discuss what the hard core truth is????
What a great thought at 52:30 mark. Thank you.
4 /3, or more ... and other theological topics would be great too!
Greetings pastor Bryan. I have sent a message through your website few days ago. Have you seen that? Expecting to hearing from you to my question. Thanks
I bought the book and currently reading it. Still not really clear what Woke Marxism is but hopefully you’ll make it clearer on the 4 out of 3 episode. And sine I got the book, I get an extra vote😅 2:52
You two are like a great meal to a starving audience!
Subscribed!
Yes to a fourth!!
It is evil to think your job as a professor is to make your students doubt everything they have been taught in their churches. That is an attack on someone's faith. What would be better is to teach how to ask questions and practice discernment.
On the topic of freedom of speech: Herbert Marcuse, Marxist university professor in the 1960's and successful book author, advocated abandoning civil discourse in favor of silencing opposition. In his way of thinking, discussion and debate take too long. Also, discussion and debate give the opposition opportunity to express its view. He advocated being tolerant of intolerance. If someone on the Left is pushing an agenda that you don't entirely agree with, you be tolerant of that. If someone on the Right pushes a conservative point of view, then you be intolerant towards that viewpoint (you do whatever to silence it).
It feels off to me that in an 80 minute interview about the search for truth according to the formula of concord, there would be so little mentioned about Jesus' death and resurrection.
The whole conversation started with the means of grace
The three row roman formation works a little different in Academia. The third line is adminstration. If they see a soldier being to successful figting woke they fire that person. The ones betraying the army is the third line because the third line knows which side of their bread is buttered.
What they did to him is sinful. As we see in this example the self righteous in lofty positions are in need of repentance and turning away from this unlawful and unChristlike behavior in our seminary (s).
Funny how I reject much of Lutheran catechized beliefs yet am able to discern the truth just from the Bible. My parents raised us in both LCMS and ELCA and I stopped attending the ELCA back in the 80s when the pastor did a service centered around the native American holy hoops of rivers around the world. Why? Bevause I read the Bible and believe what it says. When Lutherans stand with the word of God I stand with them. When Lutherans stand of purely Lutheran documents grounded in Luther's Catholic training, I say that's just a carry over from Catholicism and Middle Age government dictatorial religion.
If you do future episodes, maybe you could do some more word definitions and/or evaluate quotes by woke pastors or professors. There is always some measure of truth or at least a sense in which they might be partially true. But definitions change. When justice and mercy are involved, or justice is redefined to mean or include mercy or charity, isn't the Biblical concept of justification destroyed? If the oppressed are owed justice, but justice really means mercy; then if we see ourselves as one of the oppressed, then God owes us mercy? Why then does Jesus need to die? Many of the woke pastors downplay individual salvation. I don't think it's necessary at all for their worldview.
What is a good, Biblical definition of justice? How does it relate to mercy/charity/grace? If justice and mercy meet at the cross they can’t be the same thing.
I think Tim Keller really manipulated the idea of justice to work in his liberation theology.
Biblical justice can also mean righteousness, but then Keller defines the righteous as "those who disadvantage themselves for the community". Instead of looking to the law of God for the definition of righteousness, it is defined in reference to community.
Here are some examples if you want to weigh in and help untangle truth from error:
"Therefore the Cross, when properly understood cannot possibly be used to encourage the oppressed to simply accept violence. When Jesus suffered for us he was honoring justice. But when Jesus suffered with us he was identifying with the oppressed of the world, not with their oppressors. All life-changing love entails an exchange, a reversal of places, but here is the Great Reversal. God, in the place of ultimate power, reverses places with the marginalized, the poor, and the oppressed.
The prophets always sang songs about God as one who's has "brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the poor" (Luke 1:52) but they never could have imagined that God himself would come down off his ultimate throne and suffer with the oppressed so that they might be lifted up." The Reason for God, pg 196
"JoAnn Terrell wrote about how her mother was murdered by her mother's boyfriend. "I had to find a connection between my mom's story and my story and Jesus story," she said. She found it in understanding the Cross-namely, that Jesus did not only suffer for us but with us. He knew what it was like (literally) to be under the lash, and to refuse to be cowed by those in power, and to pay for it with his life. He voluntarily took his place beside those who were without power and suffering from injustice." The Reason for God, pg 195.
"The world and our hearts are broken. Jesus life, death, and resurrection was an infinitely costly rescue operation to restore justice to the oppressed and marginalized, physical wholeness to the diseased and dying, community to the isolated and lonely, and spiritual joy and connection to those alienated from God. To be a Christian today is to become part of that same rescue operation.. " The Reason for God", pg.
224-225
"The story of the gospel makes sense of moral obligation and our belief in the reality of justice, so Christians do restorative and redistributive justice wherever they can." The Reason for God", pg. 225
The word "redistributive" in the Keller quote above is not a typo. He did not use the word retributive but redistributive. Maybe that is the crux of the issue. Is Biblical justice retributive or redistributive? If it's both, how? Can Biblical justice be redistributed by Christians?
I need to read the chapter in your book on nature vs. identity. But maybe this would be a good topic to discuss in a podcast more. It is everywhere, even in popular works in Christian circles.
Could you compare/contrast the concept of a human nature to the concept of a socially constructed self/identity?
Maybe you could analyze this quote from Carl Trueman's popular book, "The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self":
"for all psychological man's inward turn, individual personal identity is not ultimately an internal monologue conducted in isolation by an individual self-consciousness. On the contrary, it is a dialogue between self-conscious beings.
We each know ourselves as we know [i.e. learn about] other people. A simple example of why this is important to understand is provided by Descartes's famous idea that in the act of doubting my own existence, I have to acknowledge that I do exist on the grounds that there has to be an "|" that doubts. As plausible as that sounds, a key question that Descartes fails to ask is, What exactly is this "I" that is doing the doubting?
Whatever the "I" might be, it is clearly something that has a facility with language, and language itself is something that typically involves interaction with other linguistic beings. I cannot therefore necessarily grant the "I" the privilege of self-consciousness prior to its engagement with others. The "I" is necessarily a social being.
If our identities are shaped by our connection to and interaction with significant others, then identity also arises in the context of belonging. To have an identity means that I am being acknowledged by others.
[...]
Individual identity is thus truly a dialogue:" pg. 56-58
I get that a child needs to acquire language; but if a child was taught to read and stranded on an island with a Bible, would they have enough information to form an individual identity? Or is that entirely the wrong framing anyway? If we get drawn into a conversation about identity, should we reframe it as nature? Would that stranded person with a Bible have enough to know their own nature and God's nature and turn to Him in faith for the forgiveness of their sins because of Jesus death and
resurrection by the power of the Holy Spirit?
Thank you both so much for these discussions.
“Our immune system has been compromised”. 10:50.
This is true at all levels. Individually and at institutions. Words are being used like viruses. Viruses contain foreign DNA/RNA, foreign information. They package this foreign information in something that mimics a signal our cells recognize. The cells then allow the virus in because of this deception, then the foreign DNA/RNA hijack cellular machinery and program to make more virus instead of doing its normal cellular job. This is what is happening with the redefinition of words, like justice, diversity, equity and inclusion. New ideas are allowed in and take over thinking, smuggled in behind words that had different definitions previously .
I don’t know if you’ve read any of my posts, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve written. I think I may have asked the wrong question. Or at least neglected an important second question. In addition to asking how Tim Keller’s and Carl Trueman’s quotes could be true, I should also ask how dangerous ideas could be smuggled in using their ideas too. How could liberation theology be smuggled in through Keller’s quotes? How could post-modern or communitarian/communist ideas be smuggled in through Trueman’s? Is the idea that we are social constructs Biblical? What do post-modern neo-Marxists mean by saying that “gender is a social construct”?
Shoot, I came to edit a comment I made under this post and it looked like it was deleted. I was going to edit how I described the philosophies of the above authors, and just ask if ideologies contrary to Scripture could be smuggled in with concepts found in the above quotes. Looks like my comment was deleted. Maybe that means it was offensive in how it was phrased.
I think there was a good beginning in the fight against woke Marxism in the church several years ago with the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel. I think part of the fracturing of the church’s response to the threat happened with the publication and wide acceptance of the framing of the book “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self”. Maybe a better way to respond would be to see if you would possibly read Hiram Diaz IIIs response to the book in an article called, “You Can’t Fight Hegel with Hegel” and his articles that follow dissecting the philosophy of the book, beginning with the one titled, “The Modern or Modernist Self”. Diaz is also a philosopher. His scholarly articles carry a lot more weight than my poorly worded concerns or questions. Since Dr. Shulz is a philosopher committed to fighting woke Marxism’s infiltration into Lutheran Colleges, he’d be a great resource to untangle the differing perspectives. Maybe this isn’t the place to post these concerns, though . . .