Comments on: Plenty of Fluff, Little Substance

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:48:08 +0000

Sounds like a pretty interesting book, thanks for taking the time to break that down for me…

your bro, D

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 06:16:04 +0000

Yes Daniel, the author’s point is that people shouldn’t have to leave Protestantism to find substance. He certainly isn’t defending the Roman Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox faiths. Roman Catholicism often slips into moralism, while Eastern Orthodoxy is heavily entrenched in mysticism – both simply being ways that we strive for God. The author is making the point that Protestantism originally focused entirely on how God reaches for us, not vice versa. The author makes it clear that this doesn’t seem to be happening anymore and argues for a return to the way of the “first evangelicals,” the original followers of the Protestant movement. These followers broke away from the molds and desired to simply follow Christ and focus everything on Him, not on anything else. While the book is distinctly Lutheran (Luther essentially began the Protestant reformation), the content is written towards grasping Christian “spirituality,” not religion. It is written by a “layperson” (I despise the term but it serves my point), not a pastor or theologian. I really resonate with the Lutheran beliefs/doctrine, I’m just not so keen on how they practice their faith. If you read a lot of the early literature of the Protestant movement, it really is very similar to how many organic church advocates think today. Unfortunately much of modern Lutheranism (as well as most Christendom) has moved away from many of these ideals.

By: Dick Rockenbach

Dick Rockenbach — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:46:00 +0000

This is also a quality read.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/galatians.toc.html

I have read Vieths books several times. It is a good read.

This is another one.
http://www.lutherantheology.com/uploads/works/walther/LG/

As I look at the Church Culture it is wanting microwave matuiruty/ fixes not Spiritual disciplines for life.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:32:47 +0000

We’ve definitely witnessed lots of people embark on that kind of “content-free, theologically-vacuous quest for transcendent experiences for their own sake”, and we’ve certainly encountered a fair share of “pop-Christianity” as well! There does definitely seem to be a sort of cause/effect type of thing going on there, whereby many people who gag on the superficiality of consumeristic Christianity, wind up turning to things like Jewish mysticism or something else that seems more ancient and “deep-rooted”, when compared to the types of faith-expression that are mainly centered around entertainment…

I was a little confused by the quote though, as I wasn’t sure exactly what point he is making there. Is the author saying that the “huge exodus is taking place from Protestantism into the Roman Catholic Church and, perhaps even more significantly, into Eastern Orthodoxy” is an example of people actually finding genuine spirituality, or just chasing after another type of vacuous, transcendant type of experience?

From our perspective, we’ve found the “stability” of Catholic liturgy or ancient Orthodox ritual to be more or less just as empty as pop-culture Christianity. Kind of like they’re on the two opposite, extreme ends on the spectrum.

The living, resurrected Jesus is all the substance we need! Amen?