If you are not in possession of this book, I urge you to get it and read it through. It is published by Fortress Press, Philadelphia, ISBN 0-8006-0825-9, Copyright1959.

Times of troubles, disintegration of doctrine, loss of faith, and persecution of the faithful are always with us. There was Noah and his vexation with the way the world was headed. There was Abram and his concern about his cousin Lot. There was Moses, who tried to provide justice for his brethren in Egypt, and who ended up in exile on the back side of the desert instead. And there was David, who had to confront the disobedience of King Saul. And there was Elijah, who had to confront the priests of Baal. And there was Josiah, rediscovering that there was a Book which told people what they must do. And Judas Maccabeus, not happy about his country being occupied. And Columba, sentenced to exile for copying out the book of Psalms. And a long list of other righteous persons who have suffered for believing God and remaining true to His Word. See Hebrews 11 for a partial list.

I want to focus on the significant turmoil in the church in the 16th century, which is comparable to the troubles of our time. Luther's excommunication is oddly similar to the unfrockings of the orthodox taking place in the United States recently. The attitude of the hierarchy of the Church in Luther's day was that questions were not permitted. When Luther wanted to go through the claims of Johan Tetzel concerning indulgences, time in purgatory, and release from purgatory, he was told to pipe down and stop writing questions. Take a look at the [i]95 Theses[/i]. The document is available from gutenberg.com, both in Latin and translated into English. Many of the questions are difficult for us to understand, as they are based on the poor level of contemporary theology, and also because the frame of reference is that of St Thomas Aquinas. The authority of the Pope was brought to bear, and when Luther would not shut up he was cast out. After all, Michaelangelo had to be paid and St Peter's Basilica had to be released from debt. All Tetzel wanted to do was help the Pope pay his bills.

Today the turmoil is concentrated on the General Convention of ECUSA in 2003 (GC 2003). Because of the internet any interested person can read the resolutions which were set forth for vote and the result of the voting. The resolutions to accept "+Robinson" are available there, as is resolution B001, in which GC2003 refused to confirm ECUSA's adherence to the 1979 Prayer Book, as well as the Scriptures and the early creeds. The authoritarian figure today is ++Griswold, acting much as the Pope did in 1519.

One of the values of the [u]Book of Concord[/u] is the listing of those doctrines which are considered acceptable and those doctrines which are considered erroneous (Affirmative Theses and Antitheses). For instance, the exact distinctions which arose between Martin Luther and John Calvin are laid out in detail. All of the historical heresies are laid forth: Arian, Nestorian, Manichean, Pelagian, Enthusiast, Gnostic, Anabaptist, Schwenkenfelder, etc., and reasons given for those views being described as heretical. At its root the questions Luther had were theological: the nature of grace, the grounds for salvation, the nature of justification, the meaning of the Gospel, and so on. The listing of good and bad doctrines was necessary, since the First Council of Trent did not deal with the questions which Luther and the other reformers raised, but rather simply confirmed the primacy of the hierarchy in establishing and controlling the church. Trent is written in solid Aristotelian logic, following Aquinas. Much of Trent sounds very strange today, as the canons deal with the four causes (medieval theology, now mostly forgotten). Anyone disputing Trent is simply anathematized.

The prevailing heresy in the church today revolves around not homosexuality but Antinomianism. This is an old heresy, dealing with whether or not the Law (Torah) applies to Christians. The "Third Use of the Law" (Epitome, VI, [i]Formula[/i]) is the doctrine that once a person had been converted, he/she was still obliged to discover the will of God by study of the Scriptures, to repent daily, to continue throughout this earthly life to work to discern the will of God. To say that the law no longer applied to a believer was termed Antinomian. Thus Rom. 8:1 is used to trump Rom. 13:9, as if Scripture can be used to overrule Scripture. We see the Antinomian opinion most forcefully expressed in the welcoming of sodomy, though other examples (too numerous to mention here) quickly come to mind. We are in a situation which evokes the little book of Jude: "For certain persons have crept in..." It is once again necessary to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.

The Antinomian heresy goes back to the Garden ("and hath God said..."). All attempts to detach Jesus from the Scriptures come under this heading. Jesus claimed of Himself that He had not come to put away the Law, but to give the Law its full and complete meaning (Matt 5:17). Such statements of Jesus concerning the Law are now denied as being non-canonical and non-authoritative. Only those parts of Scripture which are [u]currently[/u] deemed acceptable are to be trusted. Revisionists get around His teaching by simply denying such passages as Matt 7:24-27, and refusing to admit that any of the New Testament was written by eyewitnesses. The wonderful archaeological discoveries of the 20th Century have been embarrassing to this school. The Gospel of John has been presented by the modern theologians as a writing dating from a time more than 100 years after the death of Jesus. Finding fragments of John used to stuff a crocodile late in the first Century probably indicates the document was written earlier, and probably by an eyewitness. Surely the greatest disappointment from [u]The Dead Sea Scrolls[/u] was that there were no variations in the Isaiah scroll. No changes in 1000 years. How can a scholar work intelligibly on textual changes when there are none? Many other examples can be produced, more than can conveniently be listed here.

According to our most learned scholars the books in the Bible were all compiled by [i]Redactor[/i]. How anyone had the time to collate J, E, D, P1, P2, and P3 into a consistent narrative, which would endure without alteration for more than two thousand five hundred years, is never explained. How such a document came to be authoritative is not explained. How a universal agreement among the most stubborn people on earth to accept what we call the Old Testament is never spelled out. Why there is no archaeological evidence to support the supposed ur-texts is not explained. Where are J, E, D, P1, P2, and P3? What library or museum houses them? How did they come to be destroyed thoroughly after the compilation took place? No identity, address, time, or place has ever been ascribed to the mythical [i]Redactor[/i]. Why no ancient prophet chose to spill the beans on the supposed vast fraud is never explained. According to the scholars, the Bible story is one vast myth, and why they bother with it at all is never explained.

My first exposure to this deconstructionist/reconstructionist notion was in college. I had an advisor, a theologian from New York, whose doctoral dissertation was on [i]Quelle[/i] (the text from which the Synoptic Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke were purportedly created). He admitted to me, rather shamefacedly, that he was unable to prove that [i]Quelle[/i] ever existed. His thesis probably got him exiled to the west coast, which is why he was at Pomona where I was enrolled, rather than at some Ivy League school in the east.

The principal symptom of modern Antinomianism is no-truth. From all that I have heard, in all of seminaries of all mainline denominations there is a total acceptance of modern philosophy. This is a global phenomenon. In literature, we have [i]Finnegan's Wake[/i], where one must master the biography of the author to make any sense at all of the work, and then master all of the languages which the author knew, in order to understand all of the ways in which he uses different words. In art we have splotches of paint thrown or dripped or otherwise applied to the canvas. In music we have John Cage, who could not recognize his own composition. In theater we have performance art. In sculpture we have junk sculpture.

The core modern philosophical tenet: it is impossible to know. Truth no longer exists. Everything is relative. No absolutes can be found, nor should they even be sought. Any expression of any sort by any person, living or dead, cannot be understood in the sense in which the author intended. Any such intention can no longer be discovered, even with regard to authors who are still alive. The work must first be deconstructed. All expressions must be interpreted through a modern-day prism. That is, the work must be reconstructed. Any part of any expression which does not fit the modern-day prism must be discarded. One must rewrite or reinterpret any item so that it fits the current paradigm.

The application to theology: flat-out denial of all Biblical texts. * Example 1: [b]Liberation Theology[/b]. Find (even if it is not there) an excuse to support communist dictatorship. Find (even if it is not there) an excuse to support radical socialism. Find (even if it is not there) a reason to overthrow the government, especially if it is popularly elected. Find (even if it is not there) a reason to oppose the orthodox in one's own church. Find (even if it is not there) a reason to advocate violence and assassination against one's enemies. * Example 2: [b]Feminist Theology[/b]. Find (even if it is not there) an excuse to support the radical feminization of Jesus. Find (even if it is not there) an excuse to support the obliteration of distinctions between male and female. Find (even if it is not there) an excuse to support unlimited abortion on demand. Find (even if it is not there) the doctrine that it is good to live alone, and that we were not created male and female. Find (even if it is not there) a reason to destroy marriage. * Example 3: [b]Pansexual Theology[/b]. Find (even if it is not there) an excuse to support homosexual unions. Find (even if it is not there) an excuse to destroy marriage between a man and a woman. Find (even if it is not there) a way to deny St Paul's comparison of marriage to the relation between Jesus and the Church. Find (even if it is not there) a level playing field in which all religions are equal.

The grounds for hiring and advancement in our Universities and Seminaries is the promulgation of some new prism. A proponent of an existing prism is not likely to be hired or promoted. What is advocated must be new, different, and distinct, preferably leading to the establishment of a new department: Multiculturalism, Feminist Theology, Liberation Theology, [i]etc[/i]..

In each "theology" any text which does not comply with the required paradigm is discarded. Any text which does not fit is thrown out, regarded as a later interpolation, and disregarded. Does St Paul counsel obedience to the governing authorities? Delete this text. Does Jesus describe God as his Father? Delete this text. Is marriage hallowed? Delete all such texts. Is Jesus described as male? Delete this text. Texts are regarded as blocks of rock are regarded by a sculptor, awaiting the removal of material to reveal the contents underneath. The real meaning is underneath the text, and can only be revealed by careful excavation. The original shape of the block is irrelevant.

The very small issue of why anything should be believed is left in the dust. I am biased. My training has been in looking for foundations, for checking reasoning, for considering the consistency of systems, and for communicating in a common language. The great debate on the five postulates of Euclid is a case in point. We mathematicians worried at that topic for close to 2000 years. The resolution of the independence of the parallel postulate led to a whole new field of endeavor. We try to be very careful about our sources, our consistency, and about our communication. How one feels about a particular theorem is irrelevant. If it is true, then it is true. At least our epistemology is sound, although it now appears we will never know everything.

The modern dependence on feelings for validation of belief systems would not work in math. Persons who feel that they have squared the circle are regarded as cranks. Persons who feel that the value of pi should be 3 are regarded as mere irritants. Feelings do not work. Reasoned arguments, with clearly specified starting points, are regarded as determinative. You would have to look very hard to find a mathematician who did not believe that certain things were true and others were false.

Now we come to ECUSA. The national church has been steadily declining in membership and contributions. To a modern student of organizational theory, the error is evident. The theology of the church is too restrictive, and persons are not joining because they feel excluded. The solution is obvious: remove the restrictions, stop making people feel bad, stop judging people on the basis of their actions, stop all the sin talk. Make ECUSA a peppy, happy, joyous, fun place. Provide room for all. No longer speak in terms of repentance from dead works. Find a new language: no longer shall it be "repent from dead works", but it shall now be "reconcile one to one's essential nature". No more death, no more sorrow, no more ashes and gloom. All shall be happiness and sweetness and light, and we will just learn to love each other as we are. We are doing something new, they say. A new thing is being brought to light. A saying from the 60's comes to mind: "The new morality looks more and more like the old immorality."

And besides, +Griswold must have a new Palace for his headquarters, in the same way that a grander Saint Peter's Basilica was needed. The current Palace is not sufficiently opulent. So, as was done 450 years ago: lie to older members of ECUSA, tell them nothing has changed. In secret, however, establish a system in which all of the old theology is discarded and ECUSA outdoes the Unitarians in the breadth of their welcome and the inclusiveness of their doctrine. Carefully use the old language, while secretly re-defining all of the words with new meanings, which one needs to attend seminary to apprehend. Guard the seminaries carefully, to make sure no "bible-pounding fundamentalist" is allowed in.

The current leading evangelist: Louis Crewe. He and [i]Via Media[/i] preach the gospel of homosexuality. A typical example of the long-term program: hand-pick leaders of New Hampshire diocese. Then rig the choice of Robinson. Lie to church leaders in London about your intentions. Ordain Robinson with much hoopla. Then naively stand back and claim you "had no choice". Of course not. You rigged it to start with. Pick Bishops who have no theological knowledge or training. Pick the hippest, most with-it guys and girls, and put fancy robes on them. Examples: +Chane, +Swing, +Spong, +Dixon, [i]etc[/i].

Concern about Muslim armies: NONE. Concern about lack of faith: NONE. Concern about abuse of power: NONE. Concern about Catholic crisis concerning child molestation: none. Concern about the increasingly fractured Church Universal: none.

++Williams response to Beslan: "I almost lost my faith". Makes me puke. ++Williams (it is to be presumed, based on his remarks) regards the Bible to be an elaborate myth. Thus any of the descriptions of the horrors depicted there would be false to ++Williams. The massacre of the innocents in Bethlehem: false. Putting children through the fire to Moloch: false. The extermination of the Philistines by Saul: false. The deaths of the children who mocked Elijah: false. The various punishments meted out during the exodus: false. The deaths of everyone in the world during the flood: false. The end of Sodom and Gomorrah: false. All of these were simply stories which were invented to aggrandize power to the authorities of the time. And this guy is a NOTED theologian? What does he theologize about? His own breathing? Of course what was done in Beslan was horrible. It was also consistent with the [i]Holy Qu'ran[/i]. You could look it up.

World information service: "main-stream media". [i] New York Times[/i]. CBS News. ABC News. The major television networks. "Journalists" operating these news services are graduates of leading colleges and universities. These persons are well-trained in modern philosophy. To graduate, they had to prove that they were able to operate in the no-truth realm, and get in touch with their feelings. After all, to get onto the faculty of a leading college or university, acceptance of the no-truth gospel and faith in one's feelings is an absolute prerequisite. No-truth is dogma, and unbelievers need not apply. Thus it should be no surprise that no-truth runs education and information.

An obvious parallel between the 16th and 20th centuries is the introduction of new technology. In the 16th century the new technology was the printing press. There would have been no Reformation without movable type. Luther's [i]95 Theses[/i] were never debated (as he requested); instead, the document was quickly set in type and circulated widely, starting all kinds of questioning and crystallizing the opposition to the fund-raising being used to pay off the construction in Rome and to the dead weight of the vast monastic estates. In the 20th century the new technology is the internet. We can now communicate over national boundaries, in real time, substantially unaffected by censorship or inquisition. Our communication is as upsetting to today's hierarchy as the promulgation of the [i]95 Theses[/i] was to the Curia in 1517.

As to the Muslim religion. It was founded by Mohammed. He had a series of visions which he wrote into the [i]Qu'ran[/i]. There one finds explicit requirements for the followers to kill all who do not follow the teachings of the vision. The religion is intolerant to the extreme. They were to spread the faith by giving all a choice: convert, pay tribute, or die. The doctrine is [i]jihad[/i].

See Hindu web site for details: http://www.hinduunity.org/articles/islamexposed/islammain.html. According to the Hindus, Mohammed was a man whose habits would not be acceptable today in the United States. The tribe of Mohammed was apparently a group of bandits who preyed on travelers. Modern Muslims are not permitted to discuss his life-it is totally out of bounds. Salman Rushdie found this out the hard way. Early Muslim scholars apparently had different views on what parts of the [i]Qu'ran[/i] were authoritative. [u]The Satanic Verses[/u] is an early term for the disputed texts according to the first Imams. Muslims began to accumulate an empire immediately. They were successful, and steadily accumulated power and increased their control from 7th through 13th centuries. Muslims went both east and west. In the east, Muslims overran vast areas: for instance, the Maldives. Thor Heyerdahl has an excellent summary of Muslim activities there. All evidence of previous religions were demolished. Temples were obliterated. Buddhist, Hindu, other religions were exterminated. Heyerdahl could not even tell what religions used to be there.

See the new book: [u]A Concise History of the Crusades[/u], Thomas F. Madden, Human Events Book Service. During the Crusades the west fought back, and tried to reclaim those regions which had formerly been Christian. Fighting was very bitter; many lost their lives. The Crusades dwindled to an uncertain end. Suleiman the Magnificent became head of the Ottoman Empire. In 1529 Muslim armies were on the march. They were at the gates of Vienna. They nearly overran Europe.

The Moors were being driven out of Spain, the ascendancy of the Ottoman Empire was waning, and control was slipping away. England and France had worn each other out with the Hundred Years' War, the Roman Church was still trying to recover from having three Popes at once and losing all the northern Princes to Lutheranism or Calvinism or the Anabaptists, and the Renaissance was stirring. Following the Council of Trent the Counter-Reformation got started and Catholic troops began to lay waste on the western side of Protestant Europe. There had been a steady accretion of lands to monasteries. There was a continual loss of revenue due to the non-taxed lands. See A. Conan Doyle for his description of the control exercised by the religious orders.

The northern Princes were quarreling about doctrine, because after the death of Luther they were all being pulled in different directions. Religious doctrine needed to be stabilized to avoid internecine strife so that the invading Muslim armies and Catholic armies could be dealt with. This [i]Formula[/i], signed by the leading Princes of all of the provinces of northern Europe, attempted to do just that. It was work together or be picked off one at a time, like ripe fruit.

Today the Christians of the world are faced with a fanatical Wahabi Muslim movement which holds the view that the only good Christian is a dead Christian. Five times a day the good Wahabi prays that all of the infidels will die, hopefully at his or her hand. Every Friday the good Wahabi attends his mosque (men only, naturally, as women are to stay at home), where the Imam directs jihad against the infidels, in order to move the domination of the world forward. Death due to natural causes is to be avoided. Death as a holy martyr is glorified. Every holy martyr is to be provided with incalculable blessings in the life hereafter. Please see any of the excellent articles on the Wahabi Imams now preaching in the Mosques in France and England.

Muhammad ibn-Abd-al-Wahab was an 18th Century reformer, dedicated to returning to the glory days of the ascendancy of the Muslim faith. He was a radical purifier, and set forth to strip away all of the accretions which (in his view) had been added to the pure teachings of Mohammed. His followers want to expunge not only all other faiths, but also all other varieties of Muslim faith. The Wahabis have, for instance, implemented a plan to raze all monuments and cemeteries wherever they can, in order to purify the worship of Allah. The maintenance of any monument or tombstone is idolatry. Wahab believed that his evangelism was best done at the point of a sword. Unfortunately for us, the Saudi royal family owes its ascendancy to Wahabi imams, and thus billions of Saudi petrodollars have gone to fund Wahabi schools and mosques throughout the world. Especially in the United States, Wahabi petrodollars fund mosques, pay for prison chaplains, and fund Muslim schools. Their goal is not true mastery, as it is my understanding that their students memorize the [i]Qu'ran[/i] without even learning Arabic. How oddly similar to the Tridentine Latin Mass!

The Wahabis are devoted and dedicated, they are quite prepared to die for their cause, and they really [b]seriously[/b] mean to rule the world for Allah. It has gotten to the point that an Iranian diplomat, when questioned about the spy photographs being taken in New York City, admitted that their goal was the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization (as quoted in [i]The Wall Street Journal[/i]). Let us look at the record: Afghanistan, Iraq, World Trade Center 9/11/2001, school in Beslan, multiple suicide bombers in Israel, train bombing in Spain, WTC 1991, USS Cole, Kobar Towers, Marine Barracks in Lebanon, Israeli athletes in Munich, African US Embassies, [i]etc[/i]. The list becomes longer every day.

Meanwhile the Anglican Communion has come unglued. Even the 1979 [u]Book of Common Prayer[/u] has been deactivated. See the 2003 GC, resolution B001. There is no united front, there is just mystical/mythical obfuscation in the place of solid teaching. Nothing is set forth for which one would wish to die, and in fact nothing is set forth for which one would hope to live. The Gospel continues to be what it always was, powerful unto salvation for all who call on the name of the Lord, but you would not know that if you were to listen to the revisionists of the U.S. and Canada. And as for ++Williams, I do not know what he is saying. I hold out no hope for the Eames Commission. Whatever the Commission recommends will be regarded with the same fervor with which the Lambeth decisions have been received. As for sound doctrine, the ECUSA web site is suspiciously silent on the content and basis of ECUSA faith.

NOW COMES THE BLOGSPHERE. Thanks to the internet, spreading of ideas and information is not limited to the Estates, just as spreading information was no longer limited to the Church and the Princes in the 16th Century. A new information transmission device is available. Then it was words printed on paper using movable type. Now it is words electronically recorded and electronically transmitted, at half the speed of light.

For instance, in politics: the blogsphere has arisen as a significant counterweight to the mainstream media (MSM). MSM can no longer have the only say about what is happening in the world. Technology really began to change the world in the USSR in 1990. The citizens of the USSR discovered fax machines. A secret service can censor phone calls. How do you censor a fax? So the revolutionaries could make plans without being spied on. The secret service of the USSR had pretty much controlled the [i]samizdat[/i], and were able to monitor and censor telephone calls. But they could not control the wild faxes. Worst of all, faxes kept leaking to the west. So not only did they have a revolution, but we were able to learn about it as it happened.

Now individuals post their own opinions in a blog. Others can freely read these opinions. If the blog opinions question the MSM, or find that what the MSM claims is false, the MSM has no recourse to shut them down. [note: the Kerry campaign sued to prevent the free distribution of [u]Winter Soldier[/u] and to prevent the showing of [u]Stolen Honor[/u]]. Note: China has started scanning e-mails for certain bad words (democracy, freedom, [i]Falan Gong[/i]). What's next? Will the Chinese discover encryption?

In theology: we give you Fr. David Virtue. Pre-eminent Anglican blogger, Virtue has sources throughout the Anglican world. 6,000,000 hits cannot be all bad. Virtue posts not only his vigorous editorial opinions, but also letters, comments, and essays by many others. News is no longer restricted. ++Griswold is particularly upset because his is not the only view which is to be heard. Einstein's 2% applies here: gain access to 2% of the population and you can change the path of the culture.

The House of Bishops has a major problem. They have lost control of the flow of information. Episcopalians no longer look to their Bishop for authoritative word on what is so and what is not so. Looking to many Bishops is futile anyway, because information cannot come from no-truth. What one gets when one tries to glean information from no-truth is a headache. One reads a sermon by ++Griswold or ++Williams and is not enlightened thereby.

[b]NOTE[/b]: Many of the issues which are important are not open to sound bites. One cannot intelligibly discuss justification by faith in 100 words or less. One cannot describe passing from death to life in a 15-second television quotation. A lifetime of grace does not boil down at all. The sort of life lived by Brother Lawrence or Saint Francis or Saint Benedict simply does not fit on a TV screen. But the blogsphere can arbitrarily expand. There is lots of room. The current limits are far beyond what is needed. We may even return to the time when an educated class of people could listen to an entire Emerson essay and make sense of it.

It is time for Dr Radner and all of his believing theological fellow-scholars throughout the world to begin to assemble a new [u]Book[/u], this time consistent with the Scriptures, the 39 articles, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the ancient creeds of the church. The [u]Book of Concord[/u] is a good place to look for a model, as an example of a clear exposition of what is correct and what is incorrect as far as faith is concerned, and as an example of how a previous time of gross heresy and error was overcome. This is not intended to imply that all of the Formula is correct; rather, the exposition of the [u]Book of Concord[/u] is a model for clearly distinguishing truth and error. The goal must be a clear exposition of what the Gospel is, how we come to need a Savior in the first place, and how we know who Jesus is. A start has been made with [u]True Union in the Body[/u], [u]Great Commission Church[/u], and other such publications as have already been issued.

The document should be of such a form that it would be agreed upon by the Provinces of the Southern Cone, of Africa, of Asia, of all the organizations standing for the one true faith in the U.S. and Canada, and any remaining believers in England.

As Benjamin Franklin said, "we must hang together or we will all hang separately". These words are as true today as they were in 1777. I think that we have been here before (drowning in heresy) and that we are drowning again. "United we stand, divided we fall" was the rallying cry of the American revolution. Such a cry must be heard again.

Dr. Tom Johnson did his undergraduate studies at Pomona College. He graduated at the University of Md., with a Ph.D. He was a Lutheran from 1956 when he became an Episcopalian in 1984. He has been a private and public school secondary math teacher, 1973-2005. According to paleojudaica.blogspot.com, the strict Iconoclasts have been systematically destroying the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. So much for respect for other religions.

END