Steve Lortz

Don't forget... plenty of butter! Speaking of free association, sometimes I tell people I'm a Free-Range Baptist when they get a little too insistent on denominational "cover." Love, Steve

Gen-2, you are a polymath of the highest order! Love, Steve

How did we get from the idea of ecclesia to be gleaned from its uses in history and the Bible to what it means to "go to church" today? It isn't simple or easy to tease apart the strands. Right now, I'm reading Augustine's The City of God. I've got A.D. 381 by Charles Freeman and The Eusebians by David Gwynn in the queue. Hebrews 10:24&25 say, "And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more as ye see the day approaching." But what does "the assembling of ourselves together" mean? Does it meaning fighting desperately to stay awake while some speaker drones on endlessly, like an in-residence Corps lecture? Does it mean a whole bunch of people reading mindlessly repetitious lyrics off a projection screen, set to a mindlessly repetitious tune? I think not. There were no mass-marketing super-churches in the first century. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with a mass-marketing super-church. I go to one myself from time-to-time, because I like some of the small group activities associated with it. In my opinion, the "assembling of ourselves together" in the first century was more like what we might call a small pot-luck dinner. The value of assembling ourselves together comes from the personal interactions, not from being a fungible, card-carrying member of one particular subgroup of the body of Christ. Love, Steve

In the parable of the wheat and the tares, I believe Jesus indicated that the weeds will be allowed to live side by side with the wheat until the time of the harvest. I think there are good, honest, god-fearing people in every denomination, church and cult. I think there are also wolves in sheeps' clothing in every denomination, church and cult. When I was involved with the Way International, I taught what the "ministry" taught because I thought it was right. I didn't pay attention to what other churches taught, because I could see obvious errors in some of what they taught. After the Lord took His hand off from before my eyes, I could see that some of what I taught in the Way International was also error. I thought, "Yeah, those particular things were errors, but that doesn't change the truth of the things I taught that were right!" Then He pointed out to me that just because other denominations, churches and cults teach some error, that doesn't mean that there is NO truth for me to learn from them. Since then I've come to regard learning about God, Jesus and the Bible in terms of The Blind Men and the Elephant. Instead of becoming adamant that my understanding is the only true one, and people holding any other understanding just can't be Christians, I've learned to seek for those parts of their understanding that can extend my own understanding into a greater appreciation of God's integrity. I taught Humane Letters for five years in a small interdenominational Christian classical academy. It was founded by a bunch of home-schoolers who decided they could be more effective working as a group. It was the closest thing I've experienced to a free and open church. We had a set of primary doctrines upon which we all agreed. These were EXTREMELY simple and pretty much paralled the apostles' creed. All other doctrines were considered secondary, and instruction in those was reserved to the students' parents and religious leaders. We could teach about the secondary doctrines, but we couldn't promote one of them over against another interpretation. When my brother's 7th-graders brought up the topic of the Trinity in his class, he had each of his students write a brief report on what their parents and church teachers had to say about the subject. He then had each of the students read his or her paper in class. The students were exposed to a lot of different perspectives on the subject, but in a non-argumentative, non-proselytising way. As faculty members, we learned to discuss our differences in a respectful, probative, exploratory way. It was very informative and resulted in Christian solidarity, in spite of our differences. The Board hired a new Headmaster whose interpetaion of "interdenominational" included evangelical protestants only. The Board fired two of our best and most respected teachers because they were American Orthodox. The whole faculty resigned. I went out to lunch with one of the Board members, and spent some time getting back to a brother-in-Christ to brother-in-Christ frame of mind. He asked me, "If we can't call ourselves "evangelical protestants," what CAN we call ourselves?" I asked, "How about "Christians?" Again he asked me, "If we aren't under the authority of a denomination, whose authority are we under?" Again I repled with a question, "How about the Lord Jesus Christ?" The school died. All for now. Love, Steve

To what do you think they owed the success they DID have? Love, Steve

VERY few people inside TWI ever knew that the paper existed. I think it was done sometime around the reading of The Passing of A Patriarch. The Way Corps had been told that the Trustees were screwed up, but nothing specific had been brought up. Not even a breath about the adultery. Members of the Corps were just told to keep their mouths shut about anything and everything. This was at the time when NOBODY knew who was calling the shots at HQ, Martindale or Geer. Schoenheit had made a few copies and sent them to people he knew and thought he could trust, mostly from his Corps experience. When "leadership" found out about the paper, they ordered ALL copies to be sent to HQ unread, where they were destroyed. Anybody who had anything to do with the paper was fired, even if they didn't act on what was revealed in it. This was before the practice of "mark and avoid" had been developed, but the quickest way to get "possessed" was to read the paper or talk about it. It was only after Lynn and some of the other ex-leaders went on tours around the country exposing what had happened to them, that existence of the paper became widely known among ex-wafers. In short, leadership successfully suppressed the paper within TWI. Love, Steve

The damaging thing wasn't the body of the paper. The eye-openers were in the appendices where Schoenheit took a dozen-or-so excuses for practicing adultery and shot them full of holes. Those excuses weren't something Schoenheit pulled out of thin air. They were excuses that Way leaders had used on the people they were abusing. We got to read the tripe that was coming out of Wierwille's and others' mouths when they thought nobody would ever find out. Love, Steve

It's not hard for me to watch John S. teach because it makes me angry. It's hard because it makes me sad. I had some interactions with John in the early-'80s when I was working on a track game designed to help people learn the books of the Bible. I experienced a very enlightening moment with him when I realized I didn't know what the purpose of the Old Testament was. When I asked Schoenheit about that, he told me that God had the Old Testament written so that Jesus would NOT have to learn by trial and error. The only person who ever really needed to understand the whole Old Testament was Jesus Christ. In my opinion, Schoenheit was one of the most able researchers to come out of TWI, and definitely the bravest. It was John who wrote the research paper exposing adultery as a biblical sin back in the dawn of the fog years. In the early-'90s, he was instrumental in CES re-examing a lot of things we had been taught in TWI, but CES has two flaws: First, once they publish a position, they will never re-examine it, even in the light of further learning. Second, they believe that if they can rationalize what they teach, it has to be right, even if it contradicts what's expressly written in the Word. They magnify their logic above the Word. Sad. Love, Steve

It's hard for me to watch John S. teach. He's so upbeat and peppy! ...even when the things he's teaching are contradictory. CES touts the "integrity" of God's Word, yet they constantly violate that integrity in their teachings, as did Wierwille. "Integrity" means "the state of being whole or entire". In the poem of The Blind Men and the Elephant, the elephant itself had integrity, though none of the blind men were interested in finding out exactly what that integrity was, by listening to each other or by feeling around for themselves. The greatest Biblical expression of the integrity of the scripture is II Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine,for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" This verse is a single sentence with one subject, "all scripture". The sentence is compound, though, in that it has two verbs, "is given" and "is profitable." The second verb tells what all scripture is profitable for: for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. If we tease apart the complexity of this sentence, we see that the second part of it can be restated accurately as "all scripture is profitable for doctrine, all scripture is profitable for reproof, all scripture is profitable for correction, all scripture is profitable for instruction in righteousness." This verse says that ALL scripture is profitable for ALL FOUR of these things. Yet the dispensational imperative to "rightly divide" slices and dices the Word of God like a veg-o-matic in a television infomercial. Principle #15.c. of CES' 22 Principles reads "The Church Epistles are written from the perspective of doctrine (right belief and practice), reproof (where not believing or practicing rightly) and correction (where teaching error). Romans (faith), Ephesians (love) and Thessalonians (hope) are doctrinal epistles. 1&2 Corinthians and Philippians are reproof epistles. Galatians and Colossians are correction epistles." Now, I'm not bringing this up just because Principle #15.c. is an error. There's error in all of us. I'm bringing it up because it demonstrates that CES is blind to its own contradictions, and blind to its own circular reasoning, and that's why I had to stop following them over ten years ago. I pointed out this contradiction to John L., Mark G. and John S. individually at the time, in excruciating detail, and their response was pretty much "so what?" Once they've published a doctrine, they aren't willing even to consider that it might be erroneous. Not only in this matter of Principle #15.c., but especially in their most bedrock doctrine, the Administration of the Sacred Secret. All the miseries of CES/STFI, they've brought upon themselves, because they are not willing to submit their theology, much less the thoughts and intents of their hearts, to the critique of the words of God's Word. Love, Steve P.S. - Even though Principle #15.c. states that Romans is a doctinal epistle, we can't trust it for right belief and practice because when Paul wrote it, he had not yet been broken of his Jewish mindset.

It may be interesting to note that the term "splinter" group also aligns with the analogy of TWI being structured like a tree, twigs, "I am a leaf on a mighty tree", etc., etc., etc. Love, Steve

Figuring out "how to flip a quantum field... in a cloud of plasma"!?! I KNOW I'm too old of a dog to do something like THAT! Shoot, I use a can of spray paint to paint my toy soldiers now :-( I'm glad you're here, Gen-2, and I look forward to reading your findings when they're published. Not that I will particularly understand your formulas... but I have enough math to savor elegance! Love, Steve

You started a good thread, Gen-2! As far as debt to love goes, Jesus put us all into debt to Him by hanging on the cross and dying for us. No greater love has any man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend. There was a time in my life when I felt sorry for myself because I'd been dumped by my fiancee. And I don't mean superficial feeling sorry. I mean deep depression bordering on madness and suicide. I kept repeating over and over to myself, "There's no love in my life." Jesus showed me that if I were loving somebody else with His love, then there would be love in my life, whether or not anybody else ever loved me back. That's when I realized I didn't actually know HOW to love, and I asked Him to teach me. The love of God is poured out in our hearts through the holy Spirit He has given to us. Out of the overflow of our hearts, we speak and act. By allowing Jesus' attitudes to be the attitudes of our thoughts and hearts, then His love can flow out, as much as we want it to flow. We can't run out. He just keeps pumping more in. What the Wizard of Oz said to the Tin Man was dead wrong. Love, Steve

I am going to do as you asked, geisha. I know it will take me a few days, so if you don't see me around the forums for a few days, it's not because I'm taking a vacation. I know I'm gonna hafta shut up for awhile if I'm gonna do this right. I will probably start a different thread when I come back, so this one can resume its course. with love and a holy kiss Steve

It wasn't the first thing to go for me, but it seems the most ironic, looking back. All the hours and hours picking up litter around the root locations, based on the idea that devil spirits like to hang out around trash. HQ always looked immaculate, yet it seems there were more devil spirits hanging out there than anywhere else! That is, assuming what they taught about devil spirits was true. Which it wasn't. Love, Steve

Thanks for your response, geisha, and you don't need to be shy about using the T word... at least with me. I never was a trinitarian, before, during or after my stint with the Way, but I'm not Trinity-phobic the way Wierwille was. When I was involved with the Way, I could and did proof-text duel with trinitarians for hours on end, but since then, I haven't found that activity to be particularly fruitful. I've been involved in a number of interdenominational activities in the past fifteen years or so, and I've been able to do so without ever broaching my views about the trinity. I think the doctrine of the Trinity is close enough in practical terms to the scriptural relationship between God and Jesus Christ set forth in I Corinthians 8:6 that the Lord can work equally well with anybody who genuinely looks to Him, regardless of what they think about homoousios. Some of the saints who have had the most powerful affect on my walk with the Lord have been trinitarians. On the other hand, some have not been trinitarians. I think the doctrine of the Trinity is an over-simplification put forward by gentile Christians who didn't understand the significance of the shema or Paul's explanation in I Corinthians 8:6. But I don't think it's EEEEEEVIL IDOLATRY. It's just the way some people have been taught to think about God and Jesus, and it works for those people, AND for God, AND for Jesus. Praise God! He IS glorified in the Son! The Churches' teachings about Holy Spirit are less clear. Roman Catholicism departed from Orthodoxy over the question of how the Holy Spirit proceeds from God. The whole question can be cleared up by diagramming I Corinthians 8:6. God bless you, geisha! with love and a holy kiss Steve

Geisha - How do you understand Ephesians 1:12-14? "12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. "13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, "14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory." What does it mean for the holy Spirit of promise to be the earnest of our inheritance? And what does it mean to be "sealed" with it? These are probative, not argumentative questions. Love, Steve

I've been reading Augustine for awhile. I got interested while I was reading The Ruin of the Roman Empire, The Emperor Who Brought It Down, The Barbarians Who Could Have Saved It by James J. O'Donnell (2008). He also wrote a book called Augustine, A New Biography. I got hold of a copy, and that fired me up to find out what Augustine actually wrote. So I read Confessions (I cheated a book report on Confessions forty-three years ago, passing the report with an informed/lucky guess rather than by reading), and now I'm working on City of God. Synchronistically, I got to Book VIII, chapter 6 earlier today. Here are some quotes, "The Platonic philosophers, then, so deservedly considered superior to all the others in reputation and achievement, well understood that no body could be God and, therefore, in order to find Him, they rose beyond all material things. Convinced that no mutable reality could be the Most High, they transcended every soul and spirit subject to change in their search for God. They perceived that no determining form by which any mutable being is what it is---whatever be the reality, mode or nature of that form---could have any existence apart from Him who truly exists because His existence is immutable." "The Platonists have understood that God, by reason of His immutability and simplicity, could not have been produced from any existing thing, but that He Himself made all those things that are. They argued that whatever exists is either matter or life; that life is superior to matter; that the appearance of a body is sensible, whereas the form of life is intelligible. Hence, they preferred intelligible form to sensible appearance. We call things sensible which can be perceived by sight and bodily touch." These quotes are from pages 152 and 153 of the Image Books edition of The City of God (1958), edited by Vernon J. Bourke, ISBN 0385029101 The Platonists posited the existence of two parallel cosmoi, the kosmos aisthetos or cosmos accessible to the senses, and the kosmos noetos or cosmos accessible only to the mind. Everything accessible to the senses changes, therefore the kosmos aisthetos is inferior to the kosmos noetos. God never changes (His immutibility), so He Himself, though He does not belong to the kosmos noetos, can be approached only through the insensible realm. Neo-Platonists confused ideas about spirit with ideas about the insensible realm and came up with the "spirit realm versus the natural realm" dichotomy. The Platonists, along with all the other Greeks, continued to subscribe to the idea that a material, mortal body is inhabited by an immaterial, immortal soul. It would appear that Augustine preferred his Christianity mottled with Platonic dialectic. Love, Steve (edited to correct Greek terminology)

The "denomination" I now associate with occassionally practices foot-washing. It isn't the people who wash the leaders' feet. It's the leaders who wash the people's feet. And it is meant to be a reminder of humility to the leaders. I really liked Victor and sympathized with him for the mental and emotional drubbing he took during Momentus. I pray for him, but I wouldn't follow him. Love, Steve

You and I seem to be talking past each other, geisha, like the blind men and the elephant. Wierwille taught what Jesus Christ is not, and that was a strong error. You have gone on from TWI and learned about the holiness of Jesus Christ. That is valid. I have gone on and learned about the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That is also valid. They are both aspects of what Jesus Christ IS. They don't contradict each other. They support each other. Wierwille disguised the Lordship of Jesus Christ by replicating an eisegetical dodge of smoke and mirrors that distracts people from what the integrity of the Word has to say about Jesus Christ. Wierwille's theology was a thought system of misdirections of attention and deceptive decoys. The goal toward which I write is to expose the dodges Wierwille used so that people can recognized the current, active Lordship of Jesus in their lives. One error Wierwille taught is that the Church is a "wholly new thing" rather than the believing remnant of Israel, under the New Testament promised in Jeremiah 31, with believing gentiles grafted in on the same basis as the remnant of Israel, by grace through faith. One of the ploys Darby invented to support a complete and total separation of the Church and Israel was a "pre-tribulation rapture" of the Church. Why? Because the great tribulation was promised to Israel. And the gathering together was also promised to Israel. The biblical phrase "gathering together" couldn't be used, so Darby, or one of his dispensationalist cohorts, substituted the non-biblical word "rapture." They taught that the "rapture" would be for the Church and would happen before the great tribulation, while the gathering together that is taught throughout the Bible as part of our hope will take place after the great tribulation. This "rapture" dodge has caused no end of confusion for people who try to reconcile it with the various passages of scripture that describe our gathering together unto him (II Thessalonians 2:1). If we're going to unravel this mess, we have to consider what the Bible says about resurrection... what exactly it is... and when exactly does it happen. Was Jesus resurrected by the Spirit of holiness? Ezekiel 37 says, "13 And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, "14 And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live..." If it was God's own Spirit that animated Jesus in His resurrection, I would have to say that is about as holy as a spirit can get. If the same Spirit of resurrection life is going to animate US, then I can't help but agree with you that we also are going to raised by holy Spirit, God's own Spirit. The Spirit of resurrection life that raised Jesus to life WAS the Spirit of holiness. The gift of holy Spirit that was first poured out on the day of Pentecost is not THE Spirit of resurrection life, it is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession (Ephesians 1:14). It hasn't made US holy yet, just as we will still die if the Lord tarries, but the earnest of our inheritance reminds us that we will be Christ's when He comes. That's when those of us who are already dead will be resurrected and those of us who are still alive will be changed. That's when we will no longer know only in part. Love, Steve

Earlier, in Luke 20:32-36 we saw that Jesus associated receiving the Spirit of resurrection life and becoming children of God with the age to come. In Luke 18:18-30 we saw that Jesus considered "inheriting eternal life (zoe aionios)", "receiving everlasting life (zoe aionios) in the age to come", "entering into the kingdom of God" and "to be saved" to be synonymous phrases, all meaning essentially the same thing. Matthew 13:36-43 contains another important passage in understanding our gathering and our resurrection, "36 Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares and the field. "37 He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; "38 The field is the world [kosmos 'order']; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; "39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world [aion 'age']; and the reapers are the angels. "40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world [aion 'age']. "41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather forth out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; "42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. "43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear." Here we see that the righteous shall shine forth in the kingdom of their Father after the end of this age. This agrees with what we saw in Luke 20, that those who are accounted worthy to obtain that age, after the end of this age, will be the children of God, being children of the resurrection. More later... Love, Steve

"A living cell is a temporary repository of order purchased at the cost of a constant flow of energy." So wrote Sylvia S. Mader in Inquiry into Life (12th ed., p. 103), the textbook we used when I took BIO1000 last year. This is a concise, scientific statement about life, but it is every bit as poetic as Genesis 2:7, "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." If we substituted the word "soul" for "cell" in the quote from Mader, the two passages would be saying the same thing, except Genesis properly attributes the origin of life to the Lord God. Mader stays silent about life's origin, because science can only speak about things that can be measured, and thus, cannot speak about God. The "constant flow of energy" for a living cell is provided by the burning of sugar: C6H12O6 + 6O2 => 6CO2 + 6H2O + energy. This process is called "cellular respiration," since it requires that the gas O2 be delivered to the cell, and that the gas CO2 be removed from it. The primary purpose of "the breath of life" is to deliver O2 to a living soul, and to remove CO2 from it. The word "respiration" comes from the same Latin root as the word "spirit". This Latin word is roughly equivalent to the Greek pneuma and the Hebrew ruach. When God formed man of the dust of the ground, He arranged the molecules that make up man into a fearful and wonderful order. When He breathed into man's nostril's the breath of life, He set in motion the constant flow of energy that is required to maintain the order of a living soul. So it was in Genesis 2:7. So it was prophesied in Ezekiel 37. So it was when God raised Jesus from the dead. So it will be with those who are Christ's at His coming! Love, Steve

Second Temple Judaism wasn't monolithic and neither were the Christian communities that sprang from it. Hellenism made itself felt throughout the eastern Mediterranean world and east as far as western India in the inter-testimental period. In the first half of the first century, the Jewish writer Philo was generating an hermaneutic by combining Jewish exegesis and Greek allegoric interpretation. Some people claim Philo was the true creator of Christianity! There were a mix of philosophical schools between 300 BC and 200 AD, with Stoic, Epicurian and Cynic being common and Stoicism being dominant. So a lot of Paul's Gentile converts were coming to Christianity with various philosphical predispositions already formed. Many took what Paul wrote and ran with it, without making careful distinctions between what they were learning from Judaism and what they already believed from philosophy. That's not very definitive, Pen, but I hope it helps! Love, Steve

The book where I read about the possibilities of a scriptorium in Solomon's court was Scribal Culture and the making of the Hebrew Bible by K. van der Toorn, 2007. His main considerations were the relatively expensive support that a professional scriptorium required, and the wealth of Solomon's court, rather than any hard archaeological evidence. I went up to the University library to consult the copy I had read, but I couldn't find it on the shelf. The students are finishing up their papers and their finals, and the library is a mess. I worked at Waldenbooks off-and-on for seventeen years, and I'm well familiar with the problems of mis-shelving. Otherwise, I'd give you some page numbers. I didn't mean anything deep by using the word "upgrading." I was just thinking about the possibility that the books of Moses may have been originally written in proto-Sinaitic. Purely speculation. Love, Steve

The Blind Men and the Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe It was six men of Indostan To learning much inclined, Who went to see the Elephant (Though all of them were blind), That each by observation Might satisfy his mind. The First approached the Elephant, And happening to fall Against his broad and sturdy side, At once began to bawl: "God bless me! But the elephant Is very like a wall!" The Second, feeling of the tusk, Cried, "Ho! What have we here So very round and smooth and sharp? To me 'tis mighty clear This wonder of an Elephant Is very like a spear!" The Third approached the animal, And happening to take The squirming trunk within his hands, Thus boldly up and spake: "I see," quothe he, "the Elephant Is very like a snake!" The fourth reached out an eager hand, And felt about the knee. "What most this wondrous beast is like Is mighty plain," quothe he; "Tis clear enough the elephant Is very like a tree!" The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, Said: "E'en the blindest man Can tell what this resembles most; Deny the fact who can This marvel of an Elephant Is very like a fan!" The Sixth no sooner had begun About the beast to grope, Than, seizing on the swinging tail That fell within his scope, "I see," quothe he, "the Elephant Is very like a rope!" And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was party in the right, And all were in the wrong!" Moral: So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen!

Tertulian... a third century Wierwillle prototype. Love, Steve