A Fifty Year Battle vs Intellectual Laziness and Snobbery

A FIFTY YEAR BATTLE VS INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS AND SNOBBERY
Christian News, Vol. 49, No. 8, February 21, 2011

“A Fifty Year Battle vs. Intellectual Laziness” is the subtitle of Bonhoeffer and King – Their Life and Theology Documented in Christian News 1963-2011.” The 320 page book was just published by Lutheran News Inc. It is available from Christian News for $11.95 plus $4.00 s/h.

The book begins with 10 pages of more than a 100 quotes from articles in the book. Some show that Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King rejected the Resurrection of Christ and said that the Bible contains myth and fiction.

Who Really Wrote the Bible?
The editor says in the preface to this book:
The great LCMS Bonhoeffer and King praising scholars should be telling their students to read Who Really Wrote the Bible? And Why It Should Be Taken Seriously Again by Eyal Rav-Noy and Gil Weinreich.

Eyal Rav-Noy, a native of Israel, is director of the Jewish Learning Academy, where he specializes in textual analysis and biblical criticism. He shows that skeptics like Bonhoeffer who rejected the Mosaic authorship of the first five books of the Bible are guilty of “intellectual laziness.”

How dare a mere country pastor like the editor of Christian News challenge the great scholars in all of the major denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Church, who accept the prevailing view about Bonhoeffer and King? Jewish scholars Eyal Rav-Noy and Gil Weinreich write in Who Really Wrote The Bible?:

“We argue that most contemporary biblical criticism is a fraud, an exercise in futility, and a model of lemming-like conformity. On balance, the academic study of the Bible has not contributed to a better understanding of the text. Rather, the field seems to be devoted to the circular task of proving itself correct” (27).

“Despite this rather pompous dismissal of any dissent, it is the academic critics of the single authorship of the Bible who are short on objective evidence, and it is the documentary hypothesis that is unscholarly and cannot withstand logical scrutiny” (24).

This book maintains that the best evidence clearly shows that both Bonhoeffer and King repudiated the resurrection of Christ and the historic Christian faith regardless of the prevailing opinion among the great scholars. One chapter in Who Really wrote the Bible? is titled “Intellectual Laziness” and another “Creation, Plagues and a Talking Donkey: The Bible Critics Make Asses of Themselves.” The same could be said about the great Bonhoeffer and King champions who refuse to read the kind of evidence arrayed in this book. The book exposes the intellectual laziness of the Bonhoeffer and King defenders in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod who refuse to read Christian News even though it was sent to their church. The subtitle of the book is “A Fifty Year Battle vs. Intellectual Laziness.”

LCMS professors are members of LCMS congregations receiving CN. There is no excuse for any real scholar in the LCMS to say that he never saw any evidence that Bonhoeffer and King rejected the historic Christian faith. Articles in CN referring to Bonhoeffer and King cover almost 50 years. This explains frequent use of various quotations. Some of what CN has published about King and Bonhoeffer was repeated several times.

This book on Bonhoeffer and King not only shows that their theology is not Christian but also exposes the lack of true scholarship of professors, church bureaucrats, and others who insist that the theology of Bonhoeffer and King was Christian and that Bonhoeffer was the greatest Lutheran since Martin Luther.

Intellectual Snobbishness
Bonhoeffer and King could also be subtitled: “A Fifty Year Battle vs Intellectual Snobbishness.”

One of the first articles in the book in the section on King is “Religious Socialism” by Kurt Marquart. It appeared in the January 11, 1965 Lutheran News (now Christian News). Marquart wrote that “for intellectual snobs of course facts contained in books they dislike simply don’t exist; Orwells’ memory Holy you know!” (p. 151). Part I of the speech the CN editor prepared to be presented at Concordia University Wisconsin, after quoting Marquart, has a section on “intellectual snobs.” CN noted that the “intellectual snobs”:

1. Refused to read articles by Marquart and others in Christian News which took issue with their liberal and social gospel views.
2. Refused to examine the evidence William Beck presented exposing the errors of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible and showing that the AAT was far more reliable and in better modern English.
3. Refused to consider the mass of evidence CN has presented exposing the errors of the ESV which is 91% RSV.
4. Refused to allow Christian News to be distributed to seminarians.
5. Refused to consider evidence that theological liberalism is defended and promoted in their denomination.
6. Refused to consider the evidence that Jesus First Leader Charles Mueller supported the anti-scriptural theological position of Seminex and wants the LCMS to be open for those who promoted evolution and the ordination of women.
7. Refused to consider the evidence that there is no scientific evidence to support the kind of recovered memory therapy practiced by Concordia Seminary, St. Louis Professor Joseph Barbour which led him to get the daughter of a member of the seminary staff to believe her father raped her and sacrificed babies to the devil.
8. Refuse to debate in any arena those who insist there is no evidence that the Germans during WWII exterminated six million Jews, most of them in gas chambers.
9. Ignore the evidence that Bonhoeffer and King rejected such basic Christian doctrines as the virgin birth and resurrection of Christ.
The record shows that Christian News has a long history of battling intellectual laziness and snobbery. The index in the last volume of each of the 48 volumes of Christian News and the index in the Christian News Encyclopedia and each of most of the books CN has published have thousands of citations.

During their student days, Herman Otten and Kurt Marquart, attempted to show their professors how far such theologians as Barth, Emil Brunner, Soren Kierkegaard, Nyrgen, Aulen, Reinhold, and Richard Niebuhr, and others had departed from historic Christianity. Most professors refused to read such books as the Neo-Modernism by Cornelius Van Til, Thy Word is Truth by Edward Young, The Word Shall Stand by Olav Valen Sendstad, The Five Books of Moses and the Unity of Isaiah by Oswald T. Allis, Christianity and Liberalism, the Origins of Paul’s Religion and the Virgin Birth of Christ by J. Gresham Machen.

Most did not read the vast array of scholarly journals in the seminary library, which William Beck, translator of An American Translation of the Bible, devoured in his efforts to find the best text. When CN challenged the liberals on the faculty to answer Robert Dick Wilson’s questions in Is the Higher Criticism Scholarly, they remained silent.

Most of the members of the LCMS bureaucracy refuse to read the mass of evidence the CN editor compiled in the 1961 and 1962 State of the Church Book of Documentation which documented the anti-scriptural theology of such LCMS theologians considered “shining stars” as Martin Marty and Jaroslav Pelikan.

During its early years, CN published many articles showing the harmful effects of smoking at a time which a large percentage of pastors and professors were smoking and refused to read what CN was publishing about smoking. In recent years, CN has said very little about smoking and a good fitness program since numerous other publications now oppose smoking and promote a healthy lifestyle. When CN first began battling against abortion and homosexuality, many critics who refused to read what CN was actually saying, maintained that CN was once again just stirring up controversy.

When CN insisted that a good response to declining church growth would be for churches to return to what the Bible, Martin Luther and most denominations until the 1930s taught about birth control and family life, the intellectual snobs ignored what CN was publishing.

When CN showed that C.F.W. Walther’s defense of the rights of laymen and congregationalism was scriptural, the hyper-euro intellectual snobs refused to read CN’s mass of evidence showing that Walther’s position was scriptural and debate CN on the matter.

When CN showed that Israel First Millennialism and Christian Zionism is contrary to Scripture, many Fundamentalists ignored CN and refused to consider what CN was publishing.

When CN showed 50 years ago that evolution is an anti-scriptural, anti-scientific myth, the intellectual snobs refused to read what CN published.

When CN published 160 pages of the Talmud to show that this book, which orthodox Jews consider the very Word of God and their highest authority, says Jesus is a bastard and Mary is a whore and that the Romans killed billions of Jews in one day at a time when there were only a few million Jews in the world, the intellectual snobs considered CN anti-Semitic.

When Christian News exposed the rank liberalism, syncretism, and universalism prevailing within both modern Protestantism and Roman Catholicism the intellectual snobs paid little attention.

When CN noted that a high percentage of Roman Catholic churchmen, including Pope Paul VI were homosexuals, CN was ignored.

When CN told the truth about the mass murders committed by Stalin and Mao, the intellectual snobs called CN a “McCarthyite.” When CN pleaded that churches observe Captive Nations Sunday most of them at first ignored CN.

CN plans to continue its long battle vs. intellectual laziness and snobbery regardless of the organized tunnel vision conservatives who want CN to close and let the LCMS bureaucracy handle matters. Bonhoeffer and King is one more book in CN’s 50 year battle for free speech and against intellectual laziness and snobbery. Read it and then ask CPH, both LCMS seminaries and the LCMS bureaucracy why they praise Bonhoeffer and King who denied the resurrection of Christ.