Steve Lortz

I seem to remember Wierwille saying something like this... "You tell me what you think about ____________, and I'll tell you how far you're going to go spiritually." Am I actually remembering something? If so, what was in the blank? Thanks! Love, Steve

If I turned in something like "Receiving The Holy Spirit Today" for one of my writing assignments, my prof would flunk me, not for the content, but for the lack of scholarly integrity. Love, Steve

I just started working on a master's of theological studies in order to gain accreditation to teach Greek at the high school level. I come in daily contact with a number of women and men who are bona fide Christians, who have actually done the work to earn their doctorates. Most of them prefer to be called by their first names in informal settings. There are some that I do call "Doctor Thus-and-Such" out of respect for the real effort they've put into pursuing excellence. I don't call any of them just plain "Doctor" or "the Doctor", or even "The Teacher" for that matter; maybe "the teacher" usually "the prof", but NEVER "The Teacher". I can no longer call Wierwille "Doctor". The quality of his scholarship would have been laughable, if it hadn't been so genuinely pathetic. For me to call Wierwille "Doctor" would be a dis-service to my sisters and brothers in Christ who have actually earned that distinction. Love, Steve

Corps (now S.O.W.E.R.S.) principle number one, "acquire an in depth spiritual perception and awareness." The Word says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is an attitude of humilty toward Him. When Wierwille taught us that to fear the Lord meant to respect Him, the way we might respect an elderly uncle we are no longer expected to obey, Wierwille was teaching us an attitude of arrogance toward the Word, God's people and God Himself. When Wierwille was teaching us that his private interpretation of the Word took the place of the "absent Christ", he was blinding us to the true source of in depth spiritual perception and awareness. Love, Steve

"Doctor" was not his name. His name was Victor Paul Wierwille. "Doctor" is a title that should be earned on one's own merit. The only title Wierwille earned on his own merit was "Predatory Pervert". Wierwille liked to think of himself as a general. The only military title Wierwille would have qualified for would have been "Martinet". Love, Steve

That has prety much been my experience since leaving TWI. Love, Steve

I'm sorry, Thomas, but I'm afraid I have too much respect for Doctor Who to confuse him with "doctor who?" :wacko: Love, Steve

The touchstone for the "truth" of a proposition in classical critical thinking is how well the proposition accords with objective reality. Essentially... what socks said! Love, Steve

I have a niece who works full time for a major hospital chain. She spends all her work time checking doctors' credentials to see if they are really what they say they are. It's astonishing, the lengths some people will go to to have the title "doctor" attached to their name, valid or not. When I started writing about my experiences in TWI, I realized that the only neutral way to refer to Wierwille was simply as "Wierwille." When scholars write, they don't refer to "Dr. This" or "Dr. That." They simply use the person's last name. For instance... Dr. James D.G. Dunn, one of my favorite current New Testament scholars. If I were referring in a paper to something he had written, I would simply call him "James Dunn" the first time, and "Dunn" thereafter. I understand the people on the campus where he teaches (taught? He may be retired now.) call him "Jimmy." Wierwille was a fraud, and calling himself "Doctor" was part of the fraud. I don't do it anymore. Love, Steve

"The ancients... who exactly?" First, Luke, the author of Acts 2:2, a physician, an educated Greco-Roman. Second, "Theopholus," probably the Roman magistrate assigned to review Paul's case for Nero, again an educated Greco-Roman. Can't get much more exact than that. "No doubt ideas have varied considerably over the pre-Christian millennia." Acts 2:2 wasn't written in the pre-Christian millennia. It was written in the mid-first-century, probably in the 60s. "What did Stone Age Man think?" Apart from Otzi the Ice Man, how many stone age men do we know? If we could know what Otzi thought, how would we know his thoughts would be representative of "Sone Age Man?" "(Never mind the thoughts of Greek philosophers over an extended period.)" Fortunately, we DO know what Greek philosophers thought over an extended period, because many of them wrote, and some of their works have survived. If you doubt me, I suggest you get hold of a copy of The Origins of Stoic Cosmology by David E. Hahm (1977). It goes into EXCRUCIATING detail regarding what the Stoics thought, and why. Stoicism became and remained the dominant philosophy for every educated Greco-Roman from about 300 BC to AD 200. It didn't lose its place until Pax Romana collapsed in the third-century. The mid-first-century was the hay day of Stoicism. Seneca, Rome's greatest intellectual at the time, contemporaneous with Paul and Luke, was a great promoter of Stoicism, and he was the tutor for young Nero. Yes... we need to mind the thoughts of specific philosophies that shaped the intellectual world at the time Luke was writing. "What did Egyptians at relevant times think? What did Assyrians think?" As far as Acts 2:2 is concerned, that the Egyptians and the Assyrians thought doesn't matter one whit. "Are there any common 'ancient' concepts?" Yes, at specific times and places there were. "'Locations' for heaven?" Again, yes. Go out on a clear night away from modern light pollution and look up. You can see heaven with your eyes. "Or is it simply a recognition of something 'much bigger' than us and our planet?" No! To the Stoics, the Void was much bigger than our planet, OR the heavens, OR even the Cosmos itself. "Is heaven a manmade concept?" Yes, as are ALL concepts. "Is, indeed, God, a manmade concept?" God, Whom I believe manifests His works objectively in Creation, has given you the freedom to answer that question for yourself, as well as to ask it. Love, Steve

God designed TWO... COUNT 'EM... TWO... communication systems into the body. One is the nervous system which sends signals by means of electrical discharges, the other is the hormonal system which sends signals by means of chemical messengers. Nervous system... thoughts. Hormonal system... feelings. They are NOT contrary. They depend on each other. Just mess around with your seratonin and you'll find out what I mean. The debate between Spock and McCoy is bogus. Logic (which should actually be "reason" since logic by itself can be very, very wrong if not based on sound judgment) is like the steering wheel, and feelings are like the gas pedal. If you stomp on the gas pedal without steering, you're gonna wind up in trouble, but you can turn that steering wheel all day long, if you don't touch the gas pedal, you ain't gonna go nowhere. The boys at CES seemed to attach great importance to the "logic" of their positions, but it was RATIONALIZATION that Wierwille taught them, and they never did figure out the difference. The Bible never tells us to be logical. It DOES exhort us to exercise juggment as a matter of habit (Philippians 1:9, Hebrews 5:11-14). Lynn, Schoenheit and Graeser got their judgment whacked (Psalm 36:1-4) because they believed that "the fear of the Lord" is like the respect we pay to an aged uncle, whom we are no longer expected to obey. Love, Steve

Wierwille substituted the written Word for the "absent" Christ. Then, since a person can never go any farther than they're taught, he substituted himself, as the man of God for this our day and time, for the written Word. Pretty much made a god of himself. And it all started with "the Bible doesn't contradict itself." And a significant number of offshoot leaders swallowed those bones along with the fish. Love, Steve

The most fundamental confession of Christianity, "Jesus is Lord", is a contradiction. Jesus, a limited man, is Lord, a function of unlimited Divinity. (I've decided I'm going to capitalize "Divinity" in this context.) This confession is the essential truth about the relation between God and Jesus. There are lots of different ways people (including God) have elaborated on this basic truth, but ALL of the analogies and descriptions are necessarily incomplete and to one degree or another, accidental. I can demonstrate from I Corinthians 8:6 how Paul viewed the contradiction inherent in "Jesus is Lord", but first I want to make it clear that, in my opinion, the venom Wierwille spewed against the doctrine of the Trinity was wrong. There was a spectrum of understandings about what the confession "Jesus is Lord" meant in earliest Christianity. On one end, Paul put his emphasis on the unlimited Divinity part of the contradiction. On the other end, James put his emphasis on the limited man part. Peter was in the middle. But NONE of the people who recognized each other as Christians resolved the "apparent" contradiction by eliminating either of the options. Those who said Jesus was never a limited man, and always functioned as unlimited Divinity, were called Gnostics, and were not recognized as Christians. On the other end, those who said Jesus was always a limited man, and never functioned as unlimited Divinity were called Ebionites, and they too were not recognized as Christians. By the fourth century people had forgotten how Paul viewed the contradiction in "Jesus is Lord". In fact they had for the most part forgotten how people in the first century viewed some contradictions as being useful, profitable, productive, beneficial, explanatory and true. That's why they forgot Paul's explanation. They changed the confession from "Jesus (a limited man) is Lord (a function of unlimited Divinity)" to "Jesus (a limited man) is God (unlimited Divinity)". They did this through the doctrine of "consubstantiality" at the Council of Nicea. Now Wierwille would have had us to believe that the Nicean understanding of the relationship between Jesus the man and unlimited Divinity is idolatry, and we would be sinning if we confessed it ourselves, and we should fight it tooth and nail. But Wierwille was wrong. The doctrine of the Trinity falls well within the bounds of explanations considered acceptible by Jesus and by unlimited Divinity. I don't think Paul would have agreed with the doctrine of consubstantiality, that Jesus and God are one in essence, but I do think Paul conceived of Jesus and God as being one in function. If we want to see the fullness of God's communication of Himself, we have to look at Jesus Christ. Everything that comes to us from out of God comes to us through Jesus Christ. Everything we direct toward God reaches Him through Jesus Christ. For all practical intents and purposes, Jesus IS God. While Wierwille gave lip service to "Jesus is Lord", he "resolved the apparent contradiction" by eliminating the function of unlimited Divinity. Wierwille's confession became "Jesus is the absent Christ". Soooo....... while in my next post, I will be discussing how Paul understood the contradiction inherent in "Jesus is Lord", that discussion is not going to be a Wierwillian attack on the doctrine of the Trinity! (insert releaved happy face here!) Love, Steve

What do you find so comical, John? Look in a dictionary. One definition of integrity is "the quality or state of being undivided: COMPLETENESS." In short, integrity means "wholeness." If a person takes one section of the Word and magnifies it over another section of the Word so as to negate the effect of the Word as a WHOLE, as Wierwille did with his "administrations," then that person has attempted to do violence to the integrity of God's Word. The dispensationalist obsession with "rightly dividing the word of truth," which Wierwille parroted so often, was an effrontery to the integrity of the Word. What do you find so funny about that, John? Love, Steve

When Wierwille taught that Eve was wrong in considering what the serpent said, he was doing violence to the integrity of God's Word as expressed in Proverbs 18:13, "He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him." Love, Steve

"The integrity of the Word is always at stake!" How would I judge that statement, given my pre-supposition that the Word (not the literal words on the page, but the totality of the meanings behind those words) has the same kind of integrity as God and objective reality. I would have to judge it as false, or at least incomplete. The wholeness of God and objective reality is NEVER at stake. We can't change a dang thing about either one of them. If I remember correctly, Wierwille brought it up in connection with the subject of how Eve was deceived by the serpent, how she added words, left words out, and changed words. But she didn't change the integrity of the Word. She simply expressed her lack of appreciation for the integrity of the Word. If Wierwille had said "My appreciation for the wholeness of the Word is always at stake!" then I could agree with that as a plausible statement (I'm starting to sound like Mythbusters). Wierwille said that Eve's first step on the slippery slope was to consider what the serpent said. For Wierwille, the statement "The integrity of the Word is always at stake!" meant "NEVER stop and consider whether the things I am saying are true or not!" Love, Steve

Integrity means "wholeness." I think God, objective reality and the Word of God (not the words of the Bible, but the meanings behind the words) have wholeness. For all his preaching about the "integrity of the Word," Wierwille was certainly willing to slice and dice it like a Japanese chef when it suited his purposes. Love, Steve

A couple of considerations that liberated me from Wierwillian groupthink about the Bible was learning that most parts of the Bible were transmitted orally for long periods of time before they were committed to writing, and that the standards of consistency are different for oral cultures than they are for written cultures. A short set of verses in the Bible that express one coherent thought is called a "pericope" (pronounced per-ICK-uh-pee, NOT like "periscope"). Most pericopes were in circulation orally long before before they were collected and written down. According to oral aesthetics, the information in a pericope is of two types, the "essential" and the "accidental". The essential information is the one coherent thought that holds the pericope together. It is the punchline. An example of this is the pericope of Lazarus and the rich man that Luke included in chapter 16:19-31 of his gospel. The essential information is "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead" (verse 31). All the rest of the information was "accidental", that is, while it served mnemonic and rhetorical purposes for the speaker, it was not intended to be taken as seriously as the essential information. There are many, many clear verses in the Bible that declare there is no consciousness in death. The pericope of Lazarus and the rich man contradicts those verses. It is a REAL contradiction. It is IN the Bible. It cannot be "resolved" using Wierwillian methods. But oral cultures did not consider the accidental material of a pericope to be controlling. Pericopes expressing the same essential truth often existed in forms where the accidental information varied, or even contradicted each other. They were still considered to be the same pericope, expressing the same truth. Another example is the pericope of Jesus being crucified with the criminals. In one version (Matthew 27:44), both criminals "cast the same" in Jesus teeth; in the other (Luke 23:39-43) one of the criminals declared Jesus to be innocent. The essential information in both versions of this pericope is that Jesus, an innocent man, suffered the humiliation of being crucified among the guilty. In the version Luke chose to present, one of the criminals states the essential truth explicitly. Whether both criminals took the same attitude toward Jesus as every one else (which seems more likely to me), or whether one criminal explicitly explained the pericope, this was considered to be part of the ACCIDENTAL information! If Luke had known of the version Matthew used, Luke WOULD NOT HAVE CARED that the two versions contradict each other. Just as Luke DID NOT CARE that the two versions of Saul's conversion he presented in Acts contradict each other. Accidental information CAN contradict without effecting the essential truth. The problem then becomes, NOT to deny that real contradictions exist in the Bible, NOT to "resolve" contradictions that are only apparent, but to distinguish the essential from the accidental. Next time I will explain why I DON'T CARE whether Geisha's explanation of "Jesus is Lord" is different from mine. No matter how we explain it, the essential truith is that we both have the same Lord. Love, Steve

I looked up Acts 9:3-7 and Acts 22:7-9 in Ricker-Berry's Interlinear Greek-English New Testament, and there was no evidence of textual variations that could "resolve" the contradiction between the two passages by appeal to scribal error. On page 294 of James D. G. Dunn's The Acts of the Apostles, Dunn had this to say, "22.9 This is the most glaring inconsistency between the first two accounts of Paul's conversion: in 9.7 those with him 'heard the voice but saw no one'; here 'they saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one speaking with me'. The inconsistency can be resolved (they heard the voice but could not make out the words). But it is more worthy of note that the same author could dictate both versions without any sense that such inconsistency was of any significance." Love, Steve

There's another example from objective reality of God contradicting Himself in written material for His own purposes... DNA. I believe the information encoded in DNA was originally organized by our Creator God. DNA contains the instructions necessary for every operation of every cell in our bodies, written in the genetic code that controls the production of chemical compounds. Every cell of an individual's body contains essentially identical genetic material. HUGE steps have been taken during the last few decades in decyphering the human genome. The stretches of DNA that are active at any given time or cellular location in the body is relatively small. There are vast stretches that are redundant or contradictory. There are parts where the code controls obviously important functions. There are other parts that can be only be described as "playing around". One example of contradictory sections of DNA are the parts that control the coagulation of blood. When there's a "hull breach," a section of DNA tells certain cells to start generating the chemicals that make blood coagulate. If this didn't happen, then an organism would most likely die of hemopilia. BUT... as soon as the breach is sealed, that section is shut down, and a contradictory section is brought into operation that tells certain cells to resume generating the chemicals that keep blood fluid. Otherwise, the organism's entire circulatory system would sieze up in a solid block. These contradictory sections of DNA are in EVERY cell of a person's body, even those that have NO ROLE in the coagulation of blood. During the ovarian cycle, contradictory stretches of DNA are alternately switched on and off to control the production of estrogen and progesterone. During cellular differentiation, contradictory stretches of DNA are selected for each cell so that it can perform the function it needs to perform in the individual organism's body. Likewise, I believe the Holy Spirit can "switch on" or "switch off" contradictory sections of the objective Bible for each Christian, so that each one of us can perform the functions we are called upon to perform as members in particular of the Body of Christ. Love, Steve

The boundary between that which is objective and that which is subjective is the human mind. That which is subjective depends on the mind of the subject. That which is objective exists independently of the subject's mind, and can be observed by any dispassionate observer. In classical thinking, the touchstone of the truth of a proposition is how well it accords with criteria that are objective. That is why science is as powerful as it is. Some people, like Plato, Hindus, Buddhists and Ralph Waldo Emerson, hold that what is objective is an illusion, and what is subjective is true. I don't agree with that, and I don't think the writers of the Bible would either. I believe that what is objective is real because it has the same integrity as its Creator, that is to say, that objective reality is whole and persistent, while my subjective experience of it is limited to the range of my senses, and is discontinuous. Deuteronomy 19:15b, Matthew 18:16b and II Corinthians 13:1b all say essentially the same thing in slightly different wording appropriate to the immediate context: in the mouth (singular) of two or three witnesses (plural) shall a matter be established. Where several witness agree, that is where we are to find the truth. I believe the Bible, the written Word of God, is an objective witness to the truth God wants us to know. But... I also believe that the leading of the Holy Spirit is a subjective witness to the truth God wants us to know. It's not where the Bible agrees with itself that we find the truth. That could simply be a tautology. It's where the objective witness of the Bible AND the subjective witness of the Holy Spirit AGREE that we find truth. If we focus on the Written Word and ignore the leading of the Holy Spirit, we fall into Pharisaic legalism, as did TWI. If we magnify the Spirit and ignore the Written Word, we fall into emotionalistic spiritualism, as did CES. For the last couple of thousand years "official" Christianity has minimized the leading of the Holy Spirit and maximized our reliance on the Written Word alone, in order to solidify its control over us. That's why we have such objectively rediculous traditions as "the Bible contains no contraditions." All for now. The latest episode of The Closer is coming on! Love, Steve

When I originally took History and Literature of the Old Testament forty some odd years ago, Dr. Strong, bless her memory, taught source criticism, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. How could an editor make sense of "J","E", "P" and "D"? Whoever he was, it struck me that he must have been insane. Since then, I had the opportunity to study a number of traditions as they made the transition from oral to written: the Trojan war material to Homer and Hesiod, the Sigurd and Gudrun material to the Nibelungenlied, Danish history into Beowulf, and Celtic tradition including the real life exploits of Eleanor of Aquitaine and William Marshal into L'Morte d'Arthur. When I took History and Literature of the Old Testament this time around, I was already grounded in the differences between oral and written presentation, and the resulting differences in their expectations of consistency. When the author of our textbook, Encountering Ancient Voices by Corrine Carvalho, expounded on the Doomed History of the Deuteronomist, I, at my advanced age and with my jaded experience, was blown away again by the supernatural providence exhibited in the Bible, contradictions and all! All the contradictions of "J", "E", "P" and "D" fell into context in a greater theme, mightier than any theme expressed in human literature, because people wrote it with their LIVES, as they were obedient or otherwise to the will of our powerful and loving Creator God. To limit the living Word of God to dead ink, on dead paper, in dead languages, and to limit God's freedom to our peculiar, limited, LIMITING notions of perfection, is to do a great dis-service to people who seek to build an individual, personal relationship with the Father God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by way of the Holy Spirit! All for now. Love, Steve

So there I was, sitting in one of the early sessions of History and Literature of the Old Testament, being taught by a REAL doctor, with a REAL doctorate in REAL Old Testament studies. The class was composed mostly of freshmen and sophomores straight out of Sunday school from a broad range of denominational backgrounds, including some students who had been raised to believe in verbal inerrancy. The professor was running the class in a sort of Socratic dialogue, not a full dialogue, because that would be impossible to do with thirty students in fifty minutes. The professor was choosing which questions he would address, partially on the basis of whether the question might be addressed in future class material, and I realized partially because there were topics he could not address without abandoning his position as an interdenominational instructor (and we DID have at least one neo-pagan in the class). Then I also realized, that I, as a student, and not as the professor, COULD address some of those questions. One thing of value that I told the students was that it wasn't wrong to have the questions they had. I had taken the same class nearly forty years ago, and had some of the same questions. I am still wrestling with with some of those questions, but that has not destroyed my faith in God and the Bible. I testified to them, "I do not believe Jesus loves me because the Bible tells me so, I trust the Bible because the Lord who loves me led me to it." During the course of the semester, I introduced other things, like the communication theory I was taught in Organizational Communications, and how that might apply to how we received the Bible. Even if the Bible was perfectly encoded by its sender (verbal inerrancy), that would not eliminate errors arising from noise in the channel (the subject of textual criticism) or errors in decoding by the receiver, something NONE of us can avoid completely due to the limited nature of our humanity. One time, I pointed out that there are words printed on pages, but the real intent is communicated by the meanings behind the the Words. The prof slapped his forehead. He had been working on a knotty problem in canonization (studying doesn't end with the degree), and when I said that, he realized that the Christian canon doesn't really depend on the words on the page, but on the meanings behind the words. The idea that we canonize ideas, and not just words, gave him fresh insight to the problem he was working on. And I did not take the credit for my insights. The only reason I know these things is because the Lord Jesus Christ taught them to me by way of the Holy Spirit, so I would be able to do the job He has called me to do. ALWAYS give credit where credit is due. That is the true meaning of "thanksgiving" and "worship." ...yet more to come...

I had the privilege to teach humane letters for five years at an interdenominational Christian classical academy (K-12). One of our express purposes was to teach the kids to think critically without treading on any denominational toes. We divided beliefs into primary and secondary beliefs. Primary beliefs were things about God and the Bible we could all agree on. Everything else was considered to be a secondary belief. We deferred instruction on secondary beliefs to the children's parents and religious leaders. For instance, the doctrine of the Trinity came up in my brother's seventh grade class, and we considered that doctrine to be secondary, not primary. So he had each of the students (there were twelve at the time) go home consult with their folks, and write a brief report about what their denominational position on the Trinity was. Then in class, each person read his or her report. Discussion in the form of probative questions and answers was allowed, but arguing one position versus another was not permitted. The kids learned some the multitudinous understandings of the Trinity without Magister Lortz or the school taking a position on any of them, and without fostering the idea that everybody has to believe exactly the same way about everything. We considered the idea that the Scriptures are God-breathed to be primary, but the subject of contradictions in the Bible secondary. We never tried to "resolve" the real contradictions students brought up, we would just say "I don't understand that one myself, though I believe the Bible makes sense when taken all together," which was the truth. I did teach the concept of "integrity," but in the context of objective reality as a standard for truth. So... I have some experience teaching interdenominational classes. In December of 2008, when I decided to return to college and finish a degree I started in 1967, by some strange twist of Fate, sappy plot device, quirk of synchronicity, ...what have you... I was (and am) living two blocks from the school where I started that degee, Anderson University, though it was only a college back then. By another strange twist of Fate, Anderson University is an interdenominational school founded and supported by a "denomination," The Church of God Reformation Movement, Anderson, Indiana. D.S. Warner, who founded the Church of God Reformation Movement in the 1880s had the epiphany that denominations and their man-made creeds are not Biblical. While it became apparent that leaders in the movement had "to see eye to eye" on certain features to be recognized as leaders, there has never been a list of creedal dogmas a person needs to subscribe to in order to be considered a Christian. The only thing a person needs to do is to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and people of the Reformation Movement are not too restrictive about what that means. They know it doesn't lead to a lifestyle of unrepentant sin. I received my bachelor's degree in May of 2011. I was originally slated to graduate in 1971, so I literally spent forty years wandering in the wilderness. I finished the degree requirements last December, but didn't graduate till May, so I took 12 hours of courses just for funzies. Two of the classes were from the history department, but the other two were History and Literature of the Old Testament and History and Literature of the New Testament. ...more shortly...

Thanks, Jerry. I'll see if I can "get aholt" of a copy! Love, Steve