Steve Lortz

I called on God to help me in the name of Jesus Christ seven years BEFORE I ever heard of TWI and PFAL, and He started teaching me how to change the things that were in my heart. The first twig meeting I went to, the lady teaching was teaching on Philippians 4:6&7. It blew me away, because God had taught me the same thing experientially only a few months before. I decided to stick around and see what else I could learn. Wierwille preached a lot of things that were true, but what he taught and practiced was error. There were a lot of people at the twig level who were doing their best to love God and love His people, and God worked a lot through them. Ask God to show you what He was doing for you back then, and be thankful for it. He'll show you what He's doing for you now, too! He blessed us in allowing us to escape from the bad things. Love, Steve

Sometimes wishing what were true, JJ? Love, Steve

The idea that the whole New Testament was put together by Romans is foolish beyond words. Some of the simplest expressions in the NT are incredibly complex, and involve things that people raised outside of the Jewish traditions would find baffling. For instance, I've been working off and on for the past few weeks on Acts 2:1. It can be accurately translated, "And while the day Of Pentecost was bring fulfilled, they were all together for the same." What does it mean that the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled? In the OT, the Feast of Weeks was the celebration of the first fruits of the wheat harvest, where each was to give a thank offering back to God of that which God had given him. It was also the celebration of the institution of the Old Covenant from Mount Sinai. Was the day of Pentecost the anti-type, of which all the previous days of Pentecost were the types? Was the outpouring of Holy Spirit that day the beginning of the harvest of souls? When people were speaking in tongues that day, were they offering thanksgiving to God by way of the Spirit? Were they giving back to God of that which He had given to them? Was the New Covenant, written on peoples' hearts by the Spirit of God, being instituted on that day? What does Acts 2:1 mean, that they were all together for the same? The grammatical construction of the phrase translated "for the same" carries an implication of purpose. They were all together for the same purpose. What purpose could that be if not for the purpose of fulfilling the day of Pentecost? Isn't that what the verse says? And if they had come together to fulfill the day of Pentecost, why would they have come together at any place other than the temple? After all, Luke wrote in his gospel that they were in the temple through all, praising God (Luke 24:53). That's just one verse! There are too many layers of meaning for this to be a hoax! And we are NOT ignorant of Roman education and literature, though Atwill seems to be. Love, Steve

Nate, I am wondering if Dr. G. R. is your instructor for this class. If so, I think he meets the criteria you set in your sentence, "The best teachers in theology help the student learn rather than teaching them a certain dogma." I have also found this to be the case with many other instructors at the University. I remember writing my Theological Reflection paper, but I can't for the life of me remember what I wrote about. I'll have to recover the content of my crashed hard drive to pull it back up. I like your paper, and look forward to exploring some of these things with you over the next few years! Love, Steve

If the gospel was invented to take the combative edge off of 1st century Judaism, it was a miserable failure, as evidenced by the Jewish war in the 60s and the Bar Kokhba revolt in the 130s. Love, Steve

" Atwill maintains he can demonstrate that "the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is 'We invented Jesus Christ, and we're proud of it.'" A puzzle only Atwill can put together, "'How could this go unnoticed in the most scrutinised books of all time? "Many of the parallels are conceptual or poetic, so they aren't all immediately obvious. After all, the authors did not want the average believer to see what they were doing, but they did want the alert reader to see it. An educated Roman in the ruling class would probably have recognised the literary game being played.'" Atwill demonstrates an abysmal knowledge of education in antiquity as well as a very shallow understanding of both the Bible and Josephus. If you want to appreciate literary games of the period, read Lucian of Samosato. He's funny, but Atwill is ignorant, and playing on other people's ignorance to sell his book. Love, Steve

I've found that no matter how good things are, there is always something to be anxious about. And no matter how bad things are, there is always something to be thankful for. As much as you can, look at the things you have to be thankful for, and choose to think the thoughts that will help you make it through one more day... Love, Steve

Part of it depends on what you mean by "call out". TWI discouraged any kind of input whatsoever from the audiences at meetings. The leaders controlled the communication very tightly. The offshoots followed the same pattern. I DID call out John Lynn at a coongregational meeting of about sixty people, and he turned it into a shouting match, then left. CES had forums on their website, but they shut the forums down when people called their teachings into question. So, yes, in that sense we were trained to NOT call out false teachers. Love, Steve

Thanks, Mark! These are good, and I WILL be using them! Love, Steve

Raf, you sound like a good journalist! Just like my Pop did! Love, Steve

Hey, Nate! I don't know if you heard or not, but I spent the last week of August in the hospital because of an inadvertent massive overdose of potassium. I am still recovering from the damage it did me, so I'm not in school this semester. I don't yet have enough strength to walk up on campus, but I hope to within a week or so. Then we'll be able to get together and talk about some of these things face to face! Love, Steve

I left TWI in 1987, but as early as 1986 I was thinking that there were differences in the Bible that the principles of PFAL could NOT reconcile. Specifically, the two different accounts of how David came to the attention of Saul. It is impossible to construct a consistent timeline of the transitions of power from Samuel to Saul to David. And there are places where I believe the Bible is deliberately ambiguous, such as Acts 19. It says the certain disciples had believed and were baptized before Paul got there, but Paul baptized them in the name of the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit came on them. Were they or were they not "saved" before Paul got there? I believe I was "saved" when I was seven, but I never spoke in tongues until I was thirty. I believe there are a big percentage of Christians who have been "saved" who never have and never will speak in tongues. I think the ambiguity of Acts 19 makes allowances that the Pentecostal idea of "no tongues, no salvation" neglects. Love, Steve

The Bible records things that happened from a number of different perspectives. The most obvious example is the fact that there are four different gospels relating Jesus' activities between the time of his birth and the time of his resurrection. These four different accounts enable us to form an in depth understanding of what Jesus was doing. By "harmonizing" the gospels, the depth perception is lost. It's interesting to note Ephesians 3:18 "[that ye] May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;" There are 4 -- count 'em -- 4 dimensions in the Bible! Love, Steve

When I was a teacher (2003-2008) I taught humane letters at a classical academy. The students had to write and defend a thesis as part of their senior year. We never told the students this, but one of our objectives of the thesis project was that each student should find her or his voice... that is she or he should be able to confidently participate the Great Conversation. Everything in TWI was geared toward suppressing voice among the followers. Every one was to thoughtlessly parrot PFAL and the dictates of Wierwille in every circumstance. Love, Steve

Questioning inerrancy may not stir up much ruckus in the ex-wayfer community, but it certainly still does in the broader evangelical community (and can get you fired from a lot of positions). Love, Steve

I read Wallace's essay. It seems reasonable, but I'd have to do a lot more studying before I would venture to either confirm or deny it. One thing I find frustratingly non-sensical about the inerrancy position is that if we can't make literal sense of ANY TINY LITTLE DETAIL, then the WHOLE BIBLE falls to pieces. People are taught that as little kids, and when they grow up and find out the Bible is not as simplistic as they were taught, too often they throw the whole thing out and become athiests... Love, Steve

On page 201 of JCOPS goes into a several page song and dance about Luke 2:2. The upshot is that Wierwille posits two separate taxings, one in 3 BC and on in AD 6-7. Wierwille goes on to write that Quirinius was in charge of both, even though he didn't become governor until AD 6. Wierwille concludes that Luke 2:2 should be translated "This first registration took place when Quirinius was on special assignment in Syria." He placed special emphasis on the word "first," which I haven't checked in the Greek, but I might. I know one of the things I would look at would be the tenses of the verbs. I may do that later this evening. Love, Steve

"Inerrancy" of the Bible was never an issue until the 1800s. The idea of inerrancy was a reaction to the "higher criticism" (source criticism, textual criticism, etc.) that was spreading from German to English to American seminaries from 1810 onwards, and to advances in geological knowledge. The higher criticism began with Schleiermacher at the founding of the University of Berlin. He wanted a theology department but the government didn't. In order to get a theology department, he had to promise that it would be "scientific." Now source criticism, textual criticism, etc. are legitimate forms for analyzing ANY literature, and they are also legitimate for analyzing the Bible. Schleiermacher's problem was that the science of the 1800s held ALL supernatural activity to be impossible, Therefore, what became known as liberal theology had to deny that ANY supernatural activity recorded in the Bible was possible, and had to be explained in natural terms, principles recognized by classical Newtonian mechanics. The Fundamentalists reacted with inerrancy, which totally missed the issue. but what else could they do? It wasn't until about 1925 that Niels Bohr developed quantum mechanics, which supercedes the Newtonian system and DOES allow for the reality of the "supernatural." The idea of inerrancy is as relevant today as buggy whips. Love, Steve

There are two legitimate reasons for the discrepancies between the gospels. First, the Jesus tradition was handed down orally for a considerable period of time before it was finally written down, and due to the nature of oral transmission, details may vary in different locations while the main punchline of a pericope is preserved. Second, the writers of the gospels were addressing different situations with appropriately different nuances of theology. Christianity was much more heterogeneous in its beginnings than it is now. Is this vigorously antagonistic enough? Love, Syeve

The issue of inerrancy is one of "the Fundamentals" that gave fundamentalism its name. It was a reaction against the claims for a geological time scale and the higher criticism that disallowed any possibility of the supernatural. "Inerrancy" is a false way of looking at truth for a number of reasons. In terms of communication theory, there are four elements and three possible sources of error. There is encoding by the sender, the message itself, the channel, and decoding by the receiver. The possible errors are in encoding by the receiver, noise from the channel in the transmission, and errors in decoding by the receiver. If the original autographs WERE perfect as written, transmission errors in the form of countless clerical errors have destroyed the perfect form, and a multitude of decoding errors have resulted in today's plethora of denominations. Seeking an illusory "inerrancy" prevents people from recognizing the real, metaphoric truths of the Bible. Love, Steve

In between his mention of John 19:13 on page 202 and Mark 15 on page 208, Wierwille quotes many of the verses that describe the soldiers brutalizing and mocking Jesus, so Wierwille doesn't just skip from noon to 9 am. Many of those verses are from Matthew and Luke. Since noon is mentioned in John and 9 am is mentioned in Mark, the length of that span of time wasn't really of particular interest to any of the gospel writers. Only Wierwille got interested when he tried to harmonize everything. Love, Steve

Wierwille taught that Jesus was arrested on what we would call Monday evening, and on pages 203-208 of JCOP, Wierwille (or whoever actually did the writing) taught that the particular appearance before Pilate referenced in John 19:13 occurred about noon on Tuesday. He went on to say that the soldiers mocked and rough-housed him until it was time to go on Wednesday morning. I no longer believe that it's necessary or even possible to literally harmonize everything in the gospels (though I believe their intent coheres), but this treatment seems plausible to me... Hope this helps! Love, Steve

And Luke's definition of salvation doesn't work without the anthropology set forth in Genesis 2:7, man is a soul composed of dust and animated by his respiration. Love, Steve

You're certainly welcome, excie! Thank God and Jesus Christ. If it weren't for them, I'd have been crazy AND dead a long time ago! Love, Steve

The other day, I came across the journal I kept while I was in the Corps. I don't miss all the idiocy of the program, but I sure do miss some of the people! Love, Steve