Steve Lortz

Monday I begin a master's level summer school class in Christian Ethics, something of which there was not the slightest trace in TWI OR its offshoots! Love, Steve

The fundamental, biblical doctrine of the "Trinity" is that everything we receive from God the Father, we receive through Jesus Christ by the instrument of Holy Spirit, and that everything we direct to God the Father, we direct through Jesus Christ by the instrument of Holy Spirit. The idea that Jesus Christ is "God the Son" is NOT biblical, but it is only secondary. By focusing on "Jesus Christ, what he is not", Wierwille was able to take Jesus out of the picture entirely. Everything we receive from God the Father, we receive through our operation of the law of believing, which we learn about by endless exposure to Power For Abundant Living in all its forms. Everything we direct toward God the Father, we direct in the form of money through ABS to TWI. Wierwille explicitly taught that the written Word takes the place of the "absent" Christ, and Wierwille implicitly taught that his own interpretations were the only acceptable ones, therefore, Wierwille's interpretations took the place of the "absent" Christ. According to Wierwille, Jesus was seated at the right hand of God (probably smoking and drinking Drambuie) while we were running around doing all of God's work here on earth. The only time Jesus stood up, apparently, was when Stephen was being executed. There are three things I've learned from this class: 1. the phrase "ratiocinative explorations" which means "thinking about things" 2. that there is such a thing as "the economic doctrine of the Trinity", and 3. that I can teach ANYTHING about the relation between God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and people are willing to consider how biblical it is, and possibly accept it as accurate, as long as I say I am talking about the ECONOMIC Trinity, and not questioning the validity of the Ontological Trinity... ANYTHING! All through the early- and mid-90s, Lynn, Schoenheit and Graeser tried time after time to make connections with other Christian groups. Time after time, they were rebuffed because they led with "Jesus Christ is NOT God." Even Anthony Buzzard, who does a much more biblical job of arguing "Jesus Christ is NOT God" than the CES boys did, lost confidence in ties with CES. The only people who stuck around for any length of time were the prophecy and the Momentus boys, who wanted to take advantage of the CES following for their own ends, and who were NEVER willing to consider changing their thinking about the Trinity. I remember when Dale Sides, seeking denominational cover for his "parachurch ministry", revealed that the Holy Spirit had told him to change the definitions of all the words he was using, so that he could use Trinitarian language to disguise the Wierwillian aberration of doctrine (Exercising Spiritual Authority) Sides was teaching. I once met a young woman who was attending the School of Theology. She had never had any connections with TWI, but we had long talks about the things God had done for us in our lives. She was from Russia. Her mother had been a communist atheist, and her dad was a non-practicing Muslim. Her mom got a job playing the organ for a church, and she used to attend church with her mom. They both became Christians. God did a lot of things for them both, and I knew the girl I had discussions with knew how to listen to God. She told me about one incident, where she was asking the Lord about whether he was God or not, and how that could be. She told me that the only answer he would give her was "I am one of a kind." And I believe her. The Lord teaches people in terms that they will understand the things he has for them to know in order to do the work he has for them to do. For that Russian girl, "I am one of a kind" was sufficient. I think for me, he gave me this class to take... Thanks for your patience! Love, Steve

I left in 1987, so Athletes of the Spirit was the most of the Martindale idiocy I was exposed to... I wasn't around for his re-tooled version of PFAL. This is a fascinating thread! Love, Steve

I'm trying to figure out how to share this paper. My neuron pathways were set up in the days of manual typewriters, sliderules and rotary dial telephones. Here's a shot at attaching a file: Love, Steve quantum description.pdf

Jeremiah 17:5, RottieGrrrl, Jeremiah 17:5! Love, Steve

I finished writing "The Economic Trinity of 1 Corinthians 8:6 in Quantum Terms" (13 pages, 3248 words) late last night, and a brief reflection paper on the course this morning. I have yet to finish my annotated reading list tonight, and I will turn it all in tomorrow. I will see about posting some, if not all of it, here. Thank you all! Love, Steve

Randy Roark was the branch coordinator in St. Paul the last year I was a twig coordinator there before entering the Corps. As far as I know, he was the branch coordinator there during the post Passing of a Patriarch break up. Up until I read this article, I had no idea what had become of him or his family... They were good folk when I knew them... what a sorry, sorry, shameful pass things have come to for them... Love, Steve

Indeed! Love, Steve

I also have a bachelor's degree in Organizational Leadership, and I have used these same quotes from PO 3&2 in a variety of papers I wrote while pursuing the degree... People in business leadership ALSO have some strange ideas about military leadership. Love, Steve

Wierwille liked to tout how the Way Corps was supposed to be like military leadership training. I was a third class Petty Officer in the US Navy in the early '70s, and I qualified as an engineroom supervisor, which required the exercise of genuine leadership rather than formal leadership in order to perform. Here is a quote from the chapter on leadership from "Military Requirements for Petty Officer 3 & 2", the fundamental training document we used: "Just how do I go about being a good leader? "You can start by forgetting the expression 'Leaders are born, not made." Many men seem to be natural leaders because of their magnetic personality or their inherent ability to learn rapidly, but these men are the exception rather than the rule. If the Navy had only to wait around for the 'born' leaders to show themselves, it wouldn't need a training program; it could obtain its leaders by selection. But the number of men obtained in this manner would never be sufficient for the job the Navy must perform. The Navy, therefore, must see to it that men are trained as leaders. "Essentially, three elements constitute effective naval leadership: 1. Adherence to moral principles; 2. Good personal example; and 3. Administrative ability." The rest of the chapter expands on those three ideas, in that order. The PRIMARY element of effective leadership is adherence to moral principles. The SECONDARY element is good personal example, and administrative ability is only TERTIARY! Another statement early in the chapter is this: "...every man and woman in the Navy will themselves be examples of military ideals and ... personal attention and supervision will be given to subordinates." When I was in WC training, I always took these things for granted, because I had learned them in the Navy. But looking back on the experience, the WC training was GROSSLY deficient in genuine leadership training... Love, Steve

In my opinion, John is too naive himself to pull off a successful con like Wierwille or the folks at Hill Song. Watching him try to imitate Toccini's attitude of "repentence" at Momentus was just pathetic. John is transparent to every one except himself. He really believes what he's dishing out, and that's a shame... It's also why I stopped following him in '96. Love, Steve

Thanks for your well considered comments, Mark! The purpose of the class I'm taking is not for me to teach different understandings from those of conventional Christianity, but for me to understand the doctrine of the Trinity well enough to execute the duties and responsibilities of a master, that is of a teacher, in whatever setting I may find myself. And if those duties and responsibilities entail instruction in what exactly various people meant through the course of Church history by the doctrine of the Trinity, then I need to be able to do that. It's easy enough to shred the ontological Trinity. My professors and mentors agree that it is a matter of words that once meant something far different from the things we mean by them today, fossilized though the centuries by the forces of habit. The problem involved with simply shredding the doctrine of the Trinity rests in the dichotomy between the economic and the ontological Trinity. The economic Trinity expresses the exact same relation between God and Jesus Christ that we would draw from our readings of the Scripture, with the exception that we would not use the word "Trinity." The ontological Trinity is a mass of unscriptural speculation about things which are supposedly ineffable, that is, talking about things that we can't "effing" talk about! I listened to 24 hours' worth of lectures by Dr. Peter Toon on CDs. When he spoke about the economic Trinity, he spoke some of the most wonderful things I've ever heard about developing "personal friendship, personal union, personal knowing of the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit." And yet he believes firmly in the validity of the ontological Trinity, which requires a "differentiated consciousness" to appreciate. Toon's teaching was remarkable in part because he delineated the differences between the economic and the ontological doctrines of the Trinity, something I've never heard or read anyone else do (except for the prof I had for Constructive Theology, in a very sketchy way). Most people have no idea about the differences between the economic and the ontological doctrines of the Trinity. If I were to simply say "I don't believe in the Trinity," then they may well think I am saying I don't believe people can have a relation with God the Father through the Son by means of the Holy Spirit. I believe the Lord Jesus Christ has tolerated the doctrine of the Trinity for the past 1500 years or so for just this reason. There's only one time it seems to me that the Lord stepped in to change the course of the doctrine, and that was after the 2nd Council of Ephesus in 449, which declared that Jesus had only a single, divine nature. This would have meant that the Church would not have regarded Jesus as a real human being but as a sock-puppet of God. The Council of Chalcedon, only 2 years later in 451, overturned the decision of the 2nd Council of Ephesus, declaring that Jesus had two natures, one divine and one human, but the two natures cannot be mixed or confused, nor can they be divided or separated. I have needed to blow off this steam... Thanks! Love, Steve

I'm writing a an onerous paper on this topic, wherein I have to do some transcribing from a CD because scholars have taken some things so much for granted that I can't find direct written sources... But here's another nugget... Tertullian was biblically inaccurate when he invented the word "trinity," because he limited the fullness of the Deity to three parties, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit... but the New Testament itself extends the fullness of the Deity to the members of the Church as well... That's why we don't find the word "trinity" in the Bible! But you do what you can... Love, Steve

I don't have a lot of time right now, but here's a thought that's been influencing my thinking for some time now... If the truth about the relation between Jesus Christ and the Father was lost some where between the time of Tertullian (late-2nd/early-3rd century) and the Council of Chalcedon (mid-5th century), and was not recovered until Wierwille in the mid-20th century (ignoring Sozzini in the late-16th century), then Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, left his body in total ignorance for fifteen to eighteen hundred years. That does not seem reasonable to me. It does not square with my experience of the Lord who taught me how to change the things that were in my heart, in terms of steam engines and nuclear reactions. He can teach anything he wants to teach, to anyone who is willing to learn, at any time he wants to, in terms that they will understand. There is much more to the doctrine of the Trinity than Wierwille recognized and taught... in terms both of its accuracy AND its inaccuracy... We will consider some of those things as time permits... Love, Steve

Me too... Love, Steve

Once when I was a twig coordinator, one of my old grads was chewing me out because he had some kind of hare up his... behind. He wanted me to snap back at him, and I wasn't, so he started baiting me, "Where's all your knowledge of the Word? Where's all your spiritual wisdom now?" I simply responded, "The heart of the righteous studieth to answer..." That stopped him cold... It's Proverbs 15:28... What a trip this thread has been! What memories have been evoked! What cans of worms have been opened up by explaining what "stringing chairs" meant! Thank you, all! Love, Steve

Wierwille preached a lot of things about God and the Bible that were true, while at the very same time he taught things that contradicted exactly the truth he was preaching. All of us who became involved with TWI were suckered in by Wierwille's deception... Love, Steve

I've spent the past few hours processing this, as I went about my chores. I have to say my response is mild grief. Not just for the lymphoma, but for the fact that John drank Wierwille's kool-aid, both doctrinally and organizationally, and has never spit it up... Many people left TWI when Toto drew the curtain back, but not John. He didn't leave on his own, he was fired, and he still believes that Power For Abundant Living was the revealed Word and Will of God for this our day and time. He rejected a few of Wierwille's teachings, such as the law of believing, but he is still committed to Wierwille's definition of the mystery first revealed to Paul as an "age of grace" when Christian's CANNOT sin against God. As a person, I like John very much. I attended his home fellowship regularly for a number of years, and he gave me permission to teach his fellowship when he was on the road. I did not part ways with him until it became obvious that he was totally dismissive of the damage his leadership had done by getting his followers involved with Momentus. He's not deliberately malicious. He still thinks he has the greatest "package" of truth around, and he cannot recognize his own arrogance. I just feel sorry for him... Love, Steve

In Luke 6:46 Jesus said, "And why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" The force of this saying came home to me during the Momentus debacle. Leaders (one of whom has already been named on this thread) were treating people in some of the vilest ways possible, all in the name of the "Lord." They said it was okay if five percent of the people were harmed (my estimate was more like 20%) because it did so very much good for everybody else. Yet Jesus said the good shepherd goes out of his way to find the ONE sheep who has strayed from the other 99. Jesus said "What you do to the least of these, you do to me." People who put their selves into leadership positions are taking on responsibility. That means they have to RESPOND for what they've done... I have tried to rid myself of as much TWI leadership baggage as I can. There will be that much less to be "tried as by fire" when the time comes. Love, Steve

Jeremiah 17:5 says, "...Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD." In a nutshell, that was my experience of the Way Corps training. And Wierwille's "man of God" doctrine was definitely an exercise in turning one's heart to the MOG and away from the Lord! Love, Steve

Prior to meetings, the Corps were required to make sure that all the chairs were perfectly aligned. EVERY meeting! This was accomplished with lengths of string, and some wooden blocks, if I remember correctly. A person's "spiritual maturity" could be judged by how perfectly the chairs were aligned... and if the leadership had it in for you, the chairs could NEVER be aligned perfectly enough. It was an everlasting part of the everlasting make-work to which Corps were subjected, and a feature of life that was common to everyone who was Corps. I hope this helps, RottieGrrrl! Love, Steve

Thank you for posting that, Mark! Love, Steve

I'm not really intending to go much of anywhere on this thread, unless people want me to. I am just gobsmacked at how ignorant Wierwille was, and how ignorant he trained me to be, and how ignorant many of the leaders of the offshoots still are... needlessly so... all they have to do is take a course or two in real theology. As a project in Advanced Greek, I did a sense translation of I Corinthians 8:6 and demonstrated how Paul co-opted the Stoic definition of the Soul-of-the-Cosmos to show that God the Father is vastly superior to any of the things called gods in I Corinthians 8:5. The other day, I went in to see the professor over-seeing my work in the Doctrine of the Trinity class and asked him if I could go off of the syllabus and write a quantum description of the economic Trinity based on the schema Paul presented in I Corinthians 8:6. I showed him all the material I've already generated, and asked him if my theology was as kookie as my looks. He said "no" to my question about kookiness, saying that it all looked very logical, and gave me permission to go off of the syllabus. So that's what I'll be doing with some of my time over the next few weeks. If you guys want me to post updates, I'd be glad to do it. Love, Steve

I have decided to capitalize Holy Spirit... because I believe it is the "life-force" (spirit) of God combined with the "human nature" of Jesus Christ. There are places where Paul calls it the spirit of Christ and in II Corinthians 3:16 he wrote "Now the Lord is that Spirit..." What I question now is whether the whole thing should be called "the Gift of the Holy Spirit," and I am not the first person to wonder that. In the early days, there were theologians who wondered if the names of the persons of the Trinity should be "Father", "Son" and "Gift"! When you say "First time I've heard of two trinities", Twinky, you are treading very close to DANGEROUS heresy! There can't be TWO trinities! That would make SIX! Theologians say there are two ASPECTS to Trinitarian doctrine. ASPECTS, mind you! We have to be very careful how we talk about things of which we cannot speak! Tertullian (active around the year 200 AD) was the theologian who came up with the word "Trinity" and the concept that God and Jesus Christ were "of the same substance". He explained how God extended Himself toward His creation by means of Platonic emanations. But if he went with pure Platonism, it would violate the unity of God the Father and Jesus Christ... so he solved the problem by saying that even though Jesus was an emanation of the Father, they were both of the same substance, homoousias. The Greek word ousia can be very well translated simply as "thing". Homo means "same", therefore homoousias means "same thing". However,in those early days, theologians also used the word hupostasis synonymously with homoousias. Hupostasis literally means "under standing" in the sense of "substrate". But later, the word homoousias became associated with the "one ousia" of the Trinity and the word hupostasis became associated with each of the three persons of the Trinity. Perfectly sensible if you understand Platonic emanations! But nobody has thought that way in a VERY long time. The words are fossils now. Incidentally, Tertullian himself was a Montanist... a group judged to be heretical at the time, and later on, the things Tertullian wrote about the Trinity, beyond the use of the words "Trinity" and "same substance", were themselves judged to be heretical because he didn't include the Holy Spirit as being of the same substance with God and Jesus. More later... Love, Steve

I am currently taking a graduate level course on the doctrine of the Trinity. One of the first things we learned is that there are two different aspects to the doctrine of the Trinity. One aspect is called "the economic doctrine of the Trinity." The word "economic" comes from the Greek word oikonomia. The economic doctrine talks about "God-as-He-toward-us." It is essentially what has been written in the Bible. The gist of the economic Trinity is that everything we receive from God the Father, we receive through Jesus Christ by means of the Holy Spirit, and everything we direct to God the Father we direct through Jesus Christ by means of the Holy Spirit. The other aspect is called the ontological or immanent doctrine of the Trinity, and deals with "God-as-He-is-in-Himself." The first thing any theologian says about "God-as-He-is-in-Himself"is that it is "ineffable," which literally means that it can't be spoken about. The next thing most theologians have done is to begin speculating about that which cannot be spoken of. Since there is no objective standard to judge the correctness of that which cannot be spoken, many different speculations arise and they often contradict each other. The need for unity of belief led to councils and creeds that dictate how to think and talk about that which cannot be spoken. The words that became fossilized in the 4th and 5th centuries, such as homoousias and hypostasis had very reasonable meanings in the culture of the time, but those meanings have been lost down through the following centuries. Consequently, the ontological doctrine of the Trinity no longer makes sense to people who have not familiarized themselves with the thought worlds of late antiquity and the middle ages. There are long and convoluted rules about what we can think and say about that which cannot be spoken. When Wierwille rejected the ontological doctrine of the Trinity, unfortunately, he also rejected the economic understanding of the relations between God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and the gift of Holy Spirit, which is accurate according to the Bible. I'm not really that interested anymore in what Wierwille taught. He is long gone and dead. What does exercise me is how John Lynn markets his material as correction for Trinitarian "insanity." People hear him say stuff like that and think he's talking about the economic Trinity!!!!! He has no awareness of how ignorant he sounds... Love, Steve