Madre's Missives

Pr. Alms writes: "Come on, now,. Pr. Petersen was not advocating for women's ordination. Lets be careful with the stones we throw and the implications of our words. He was simply using women's ordination as an example where the "Gospel" is used to justify an evil, an instance where the Gospel is used and perverted to mean permission to do what whatever we want."

Indeed, I would have been VERY surprised had Pr. Petersen been advocating for women's ordination. And I didn't say he was. What I couldn't figure out is why he would caricature the Gospel in the way that he did. From the proposition set forth, the "gospel" results in freewheeling antinomianism.  This "gospel" responds, "Sure, you can!" to every question set before it, and needs to be hedged in on the other side by more Law, to prevent that antinomian outcome. This is not the true Gospel. I'm glad we agree.

So why use this poor excuse for a gospel to justify, even in argument, women's ordination (as though this is what his imagined opponents promote by doing things "in the way of the Gospel") when it is the true Gospel and Gospel answers that explode feminism and all arguments for women's ordination?

There is all sorts of Law that can be applied to the issue of women's ordination. Sinners, like us, are also very adept in these postmodern days of minimizing the Law, even ignoring it altogether. More Law is not the answer to women's ordination. Law applied more emphatically is not the answer either. On the matter of women's ordination, most proponents have never really heard the Gospel, don't know what it means that Christ is crucified for her, or how that affects her as a woman specifically. Telling her what she may and may not do often encourages either despair or rebellion, and still doesn't deliver the Gospel for her so that she may receive her vocations as the gifts God for which God set her aside and made her holy in Christ. 

Yes there is a simple, unitary Gospel answer to the sin of things like women's ordination. It is the very same simple, unitary answer to theft, murder, disrespect, idolatry, covetousness, adultery, and even (gasp) homosexuality. It is Jesus Christ dead on the Cross to forgive every single sin that every human has ever committed, omitted or imagined.

It is the Law that can never provide a simple unitary answer to sin. As long as things are approached in the way of the Law, there is never a limit to our sinfulness. The answer to sin is not more Law, stated more emphatically, more accusation. God's answer to sin is the Cross, Christ and Him crucified. It is only for the unrepentant that the Gospel is withheld, sins are retained, and the Law is liberally applied. And even that is for the purpose of bringing the unrepentant to repentance so that they may faithfully receive the forgiveness Christ won for them.

God's gifts of vocations for us are not Law either, they are not given to accuse us. They themselves do not even accuse us. It is only when, in living them out, we reject our vocations and look at ourselves, seeing how we measure up, examining just how we're doing that we are accused and condemned. Our vocations are the arena, the relationships through which we live our lives and put our faith to practice. Faith needs no Law to produce good works, it is faith and obeys God's Law without command, without compulsion, without effort - often in spite of our own measly and sinful insistence on being "obedient". 

God sets us apart, placing us in relationships with one another, gifting us with opportunities for faith to overflow to others in good works (sometimes even without our awareness of it!), called vocations, proclaiming forgiveness in Christ for all in word and deed. What a Gospel gift from our Father because He loves us in Christ!

I am reading Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Release Date: May, 2004

Alms writes:

Vocations are not Gospel. Yes they provide a positive function they show where we ought to do good works commanded by the Law but they are Law nonetheless.

Vocations are Law and they do accuse us. God's Law was nor to meant in its original intent to accuse us, no, but since we are sinners we experience vocations as Law. When I deal with my wife God accuses me through her he shows me my shortcomings ( I have many just ask her!)

Vocations are not Gospel. Yes they provide a positive function they show where we ought to do good works commanded by the Law but they are Law nonetheless.

Now here is an interesting idea. I'm tracking with you, Pr. Alms, but could we put it this way? God gives me the vocation husband, father, and pastor. They are Law to me, because my vocation tells me what to do and not to do (see, e.g., the Table of Duties). My in my vocation, God is at work serving my neighbor, feeding them, clothing them, even (in the case of the pastoral office) forgiving sins. So could we say that vocation is Law to the one in the vocation but Gospel to the one who receives it?

How despairing! Where is the comfort in this?

In one sense you say that God "gives" you vocation, then in the next you say that this gift which you have "given" is suddenly law because you have to "do" something.

I don't know about you, Stan, but I don't find comfort in my shortcomings. I fail constantly in my vocation as a daughter. I don't fulfill my role perfectly. There is no comfort in that. The comfort comes in hearing that, when I fail in my vocation as in everything else, I am *forgiven.*

Alms writes:

Vocations are not Gospel. Yes they provide a positive function they show where we ought to do good works commanded by the Law but they are Law nonetheless.

Now here is an interesting idea. I'm tracking with you, Pr. Alms, but could we put it this way? God gives me the vocation husband, father, and pastor. They are Law to me, because my vocation tells me what to do and not to do (see, e.g., the Table of Duties). My in my vocation, God is at work serving my neighbor, feeding them, clothing them, even (in the case of the pastoral office) forgiving sins. So could we say that vocation is Law to the one in the vocation but Gospel to the one who receives it?

Peperkorn

Pr. Alms writes:

Vocations are Law and they do accuse us. God's Law was nor to meant in its original intent to accuse us, no, but since we are sinners we experience vocations as Law. When I deal with my wife God accuses me through her he shows me my shortcomings ( I have many just ask her!)

How despairing! Where is the comfort in this? You don't actually teach your catechumens this do you? Heaven forbid we compell the baptized to rejoice in grace live as baptized children of God! What does baptism even mean when it has been reduced to such a lowly state that you have divorced it from vocation?

If we are to daily drown our old man, remembering our Baptism so that the new man in Christ might be raised to life then how might this connect to vocation? Or, from what I gather here I shouldn't. In fact, baptismal remembrance is completely and totally unrelated to vocation. Now that's something I'll like to see shown from the Church of Antiquity.

If all vocation is law, Pr. Peperkorn, then is there any gift in the Christian's life? Kinda takes all the fun out of being baptized, doesn't it?

There have been many days I wished I wasn't baptized, that I wished I hadn't been given faith. Suffering specifically for that reason is very hard. Life would be much more fun and easier this side of death as almost anything BUT a Christian. As Jesus promised, our lives are full of suffering, perseverence, persecution, etc. But even these are gifts from God for our good because He loves us in Christ and our Father only gives us good gifts - not stones or snakes, but all the treasures of the Kingdom that Christ deserves. We are heirs, adopted as sons, we don't get second rate gifts, we don't get forgotten or skipped over. What is Christ's has been given to us.

It's not escapist to focus on the Gospel, it's just faith. When "I am baptized" is the only good thing you can think of that is going on in your life, when everything else has turned upside down and inside out and you barely know which was is up, that is the one thing that doesn't change that we can rely on. And when everything else around and in us is calling for us to take our eyes off Christ and deny our Baptisms and the promises that are now (even in the suffering!) ours, the Spirit in us keeps us faithful unto life everlasting. As Job said, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." (13:15)

The Christian life, in a sense, IS all rejoicing. But joyfulness is not necessarily being chipper or happy-go-lucky all the time. We have been given the Kingdom, the suffering we endure in this life is very real, but it is not the end of the story. Somehow, even in our suffering, we know that God is working for our good even when we don't see it, He HAS to be because we are baptized and that's what he promised to do. The days when we suffer are also days that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in them (sometimes even through tears and gritted teeth).

Yes I think that is good. Vocations are avenues which God uses to "gift" the world, to use a word I am hearing alot around here(smile).

The only reason vocation is accusatory or "law" in the condemning sense is because of our Old Adam. If we were not still sinners on this side of the grave then vocation would be all gift. And indeed our new Adam does indeed rejoice freely and cheerfully in serving his neighbor. But the Old Adam is stil lthere and we cannot neatly dissect our experience. We are Old Adam and new Adam all mixed up in one big soup.

Of course we rejoice in our daily lives They are gifts from God! My wife is a gift from Go as are my children, my TV, my computer games, flowers, hamburgers, all of it. I am a created child of God living in his world.

But, Stan, I live in it as sinner. So i cannot look to my experience or to my vocation for my salvation. That is called works righteousness, no? Or on alesser degree pietism.

Stan, there is depair in being a Christian. And it is slautary and necessary. If there wer nto despair no condemnation we might get thi crazy notion that our service to other snad and our jopy adn opur own life was teh basis of our relationship with God. Being baptized does not exit you from your cross. Baptism crucifies you and your lusts and sinful nature. And if this baptism is living it does this to you everyday. And everyday you respond well to say I am baptized! Sin you hav eno callim on me devil i am free from you but the struggle is ongoing.

Your vocation is your baptismal remembrance. Everyday being crucified everyday despairin gof yoru own abilities, everyday living as a free new man serving the neighbor freely clean and pure before God.