Messages

1

Your Turn / Re: Here's a Way to Control Guns

« on: Today at 11:07:53 AM »

The reason the discussion doesn’t go anywhere is that once people call it “gun violence” they’ve assumed their own conclusion.

2

Your Turn / Re: Artificial Intelligence Sermon Generator

« on: Yesterday at 10:06:28 AM »

From the NYT today
Guest essay on AI
By Yuval Harari. Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin
.  Imagine that as you are boarding an airplane, half the engineers who built it tell you there is a 10 percent chance the plane will crash, killing you and everyone else on it. Would you still board?
   In 2022, over 700 top academics and researchers behind the leading artificial intelligence companies were asked in a survey about future A.I. risk. Half of those surveyed stated that there was a 10 percent or greater chance of human extinction (or similarly permanent and severe disempowerment) from future A.I. systems. Technology companies building today’s large language models are caught in a race to put all of humanity on that plane.
   Drug companies cannot sell people new medicines without first subjecting their products to rigorous safety checks. Biotech labs cannot release new viruses into the public sphere in order to impress shareholders with their wizardry. Likewise, A.I. systems with the power of GPT-4 and beyond should not be entangled with the lives of billions of people at a pace faster than cultures can safely absorb them. A race to dominate the market should not set the speed of deploying humanity’s most consequential technology. We should move at whatever speed enables us to get this right.
   The specter of A.I. has haunted humanity since the mid-20th century, yet until recently it has remained a distant prospect, something that belongs in sci-fi more than in serious scientific and political debates. It is difficult for our human minds to grasp the new capabilities of GPT-4 and similar tools, and it is even harder to grasp the exponential speed at which these tools are developing more advanced and powerful capabilities. But most of the key skills boil down to one thing: the ability to manipulate and generate language, whether with words, sounds or images.
of human culture.
In the beginning was the word. Language is the operating system of human culture. From language emerges myth and law, gods and money, art and science, friendships and nations and computer code. A.I.’s new mastery of language means it can now hack and manipulate the operating system of civilization. By gaining mastery of language, A.I. is seizing the master key to civilization, from bank vaults to holy sepulchers.
   What would it mean for humans to live in a world where a large percentage of stories, melodies, images, laws, policies and tools are shaped by nonhuman intelligence, which knows how to exploit with superhuman efficiency the weaknesses, biases and addictions of the human mind — while knowing how to form intimate relationships with human beings? In games like chess, no human can hope to beat a computer. What happens when the same thing occurs in art, politics or religion?
   A.I. could rapidly eat the whole of human culture — everything we have produced over thousands of years — digest it and begin to gush out a flood of new cultural artifacts. Not just school essays but also political speeches, ideological manifestos, holy books for new cults. By 2028, the U.S. presidential race might no longer be run by humans.
   Humans often don’t have direct access to reality. We are cocooned by culture, experiencing reality through a cultural prism. Our political views are shaped by the reports of journalists and the anecdotes of friends. Our sexual preferences are tweaked by art and religion. That cultural cocoon has hitherto been woven by other humans. What will it be like to experience reality through a prism produced by nonhuman intelligence?
For thousands of years, we humans have lived inside the dreams of other humans. We have worshiped gods, pursued ideals of beauty and dedicated our lives to causes that originated in the imagination of some prophet, poet or politician. Soon we will also find ourselves living inside the hallucinations of nonhuman intelligence
   The “Terminator” franchise depicted robots running in the streets and shooting people. “The Matrix” assumed that to gain total control of human society, A.I. would have to first gain physical control of our brains and hook them directly to a computer network. However, simply by gaining mastery of language, A.I. would have all it needs to contain us in a Matrix-like world of illusions, without shooting anyone or implanting any chips in our brains. If any shooting is necessary, A.I. could make humans pull the trigger, just by telling us the right story.
   The specter of being trapped in a world of illusions has haunted humankind much longer than the specter of A.I. Soon we will finally come face to face with Descartes’s demon, with Plato’s cave, with the Buddhist Maya. A curtain of illusions could descend over the whole of humanity, and we might never again be able to tear that curtain away — or even realize it is there.
Social media was the first contact between A.I. and humanity, and humanity lost. First contact has given us the bitter taste of things to come. In social media, primitive A.I. was used not to create content but to curate user-generated content. The A.I. behind our news feeds is still choosing which words, sounds and images reach our retinas and eardrums, based on selecting those that will get the most virality, the most reaction and the most engagement.
   While very primitive, the A.I. behind social media was sufficient to create a curtain of illusions that increased societal polarization, undermined our mental health and unraveled democracy. Millions of people have confused these illusions with reality. The United States has the best information technology in history, yet U.S. citizens can no longer agree on who won elections. Though everyone is by now aware of the downside of social media, it hasn’t been addressed because too many of our social, economic and political institutions have become entangled with it.
Large language models are our second contact with A.I. We cannot afford to lose again. But on what basis should we believe humanity is capable of aligning these new forms of A.I. to our benefit? If we continue with business as usual, the new A.I. capacities will again be used to gain profit and power, even if it inadvertently destroys the foundations of our society.
   A.I. indeed has the potential to help us defeat cancer, discover lifesaving drugs and invent solutions for our climate and energy crises. There are innumerable other benefits we cannot begin to imagine. But it doesn’t matter how high the skyscraper of benefits A.I. assembles if the foundation collapses.
   The time to reckon with A.I. is before our politics, our economy and our daily life become dependent on it. Democracy is a conversation, conversation relies on language, and when language itself is hacked, the conversation breaks down, and democracy becomes untenable. If we wait for the chaos to ensue, it will be too late to remedy it.
But there’s a question that may linger in our minds: If we don’t go as fast as possible, won’t the West risk losing to China? No. The deployment and entanglement of uncontrolled A.I. into society, unleashing godlike powers decoupled from responsibility, could be the very reason the West loses to China.
   We can still choose which future we want with A.I. When godlike powers are matched with commensurate responsibility and control, we can realize the benefits that A.I. promises.
   We have summoned an alien intelligence. We don’t know much about it, except that it is extremely powerful and offers us bedazzling gifts but could also hack the foundations of our civilization. We call upon world leaders to respond to this moment at the level of challenge it presents. The first step is to buy time to upgrade our 19th-century institutions for an A.I. world and to learn to master A.I. before it masters us.
-0-

All solid points, but I think there are some good defenses concerning the liberals arts and culture, which is that what we now have was created before AI came on the scene. Not just Beethoven's 9th and Hamlet, but old pop music, children's books, and everyday stuff. As long as we commit to being formed by the past rather than a vision of the future, AI will have limited power. But if we stop understanding old works we'll have no way making news ones better than AI and AI will gain near total power to shape the culture.

The advent of mainstream AI makes it more important than ever that we a) commit to teaching the classics so that people's understanding can be shaped by the best of human culture, so that AI can augment but never replace. Even more importantly, we must b) utterly reject "updating" of old works in deference to delicate modern sensibilities. For exmaple, new editions of Agatha Christie's novels are changing the text, mostly due to ethnic terms that have become offensive. 

   https://deadline.com/2023/03/agatha-christie-hercule-poirot-miss-marple-classic-mysteries-rewritten-modern-readers-1235310224/

Changing the old text is a massive mistake and makes the danger of AI much worse. It seems innocuous enough-- why not just make an offensive 20th description of people more palatable to modern audiences? But it is not innocuous at all, it is poisonous. Poirot and Miss Marple in the books, so to speak. Nothing AI can do about it. But AI can recommend helpful, slight modifications and improvements and take over from there. Far better to develop a thick enough skin to learn to appreciate old books and music on an as-is basis than to retroactively improve them. It is a bad idea anyway, but a terrible idea now that AI can help.

3

Your Turn / Re: Artificial Intelligence Sermon Generator

« on: March 25, 2023, 11:48:30 PM »

I’ve been experimenting with GPT-4 in the development of my sermons. A few weeks ago, I wanted to modernize the parable of the prodigal. I wanted to use a structure of telling the story followed by interruptions for exploration, explanation and law/gospel. I could have sat down and written out the story myself. Instead I had the AI write it from the perspective of two coworkers gossiping about family drama in the Suite.

What it came up with was useful. I then took that, rewrote different aspects of it, and then incorporated it into my sermon.

I’ve been closely following the AI development for the last nine months. I find all of this deeply fascinating.

"In the Suite"? I don't think I've ever heard that phrase. Maybe you're picking up on AI-speak with all your experimentation.

4

Your Turn / Re: Valpo President/Board Decide to Sell Art Masterpieces to Pay for Dorm Renovation

« on: March 23, 2023, 02:43:29 PM »

According to people who are obviously wrong, several false things are true. So what?

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Your Turn / Re: Artificial Intelligence Sermon Generator

« on: March 23, 2023, 02:41:01 PM »

But I think we overestimate the benefits of technology and underestimate the liabilities. Has social media made people happier? Whose life will be improved by AI composition capabilities? Can we honestly say we anticipate sermons being better ten years from now than they were before the invention of the internet?

I would hope so. The advent of TV and people seeing and hearing Walter Cronkite among other newscasters required preachers to get better. It was stated in my homiletics class that someone who received an A in years past would get a C in today's world. ("Today" was in the 1970s when I was in seminary.)

I would hope that with the advent of all the Bible helps available for computers and on the internet, preachers could quicker and more efficiently delve into the biblical passage they were preaching on.

Chesterton said that automobiles were fine as long as they remained exceptional, for a ride in the country or something, but were a disaster once life had to be designed around the assumption of their availability. He may or may not have been right about that overall. But it is certainly true that when cars were introduced, they were considered simply faster horse-drawn carriages. By the one-to-one comparison, there is no question that a car is more efficient and less maintenance than a horse and carriage. But the overall impact of the invention of cars on society goes way beyond that comparison in ways impossible to anticipate. So it doesn't really matter if Chesterton or Dan or you or I determine to use cars only in certain ways. We have to live in a world with cars used the way most people use them, and getting most people on the same page is hard. Even the Amish can get run over by cars. Someone using AI technology responsibly as a tool in his own life will still have to live in a world transformed by AI in ways impossible to anticipate fully. When we debate the merits of AI (or any new technology or potential new technology) we have to look both at the close comparison of applications for any individual and at the overall impact on society. 

And yet, there are thousands of people to day who get around their cities without owning an automobile. Neither of our 40-something sons own automobiles. They walk, use mass transit, or ride their electric bicycles.

Technology as a servant rather than a master has to serve the cause of human happiness. Technology is advancing rapidly. Is human happiness advancing rapidly?

From the "happiness" studies of countries, it wouldn't seem that technology has much to do with making the happiest people happy.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/21/top-10-happiest-countries-in-the-world-2023.html

Tough to measure, but I think fifty randomly selected sermon from fifty years ago would be just as good as fifty randomly selected sermons today, and that future sermons will be no better.

Yes, my point was that individuals can make do without cars, but they can't choose to live in cities not designed around cars. The societal acceptance, not the individual acceptance, makes the larger and often unforeseeable difference. And, like the Amish, they can get hit by cars whether they use cars or not.

And I agree, technological progress or what passes for social progress often (not always) fails the test of whether it really makes people happier.

6

Your Turn / Re: Artificial Intelligence Sermon Generator

« on: March 23, 2023, 01:59:52 PM »

But I think we overestimate the benefits of technology and underestimate the liabilities. Has social media made people happier? Whose life will be improved by AI composition capabilities? Can we honestly say we anticipate sermons being better ten years from now than they were before the invention of the internet?   

Chesterton said that automobiles were fine as long as they remained exceptional, for a ride in the country or something, but were a disaster once life had to be designed around the assumption of their availability. He may or may not have been right about that overall. But it is certainly true that when cars were introduced, they were considered simply faster horse-drawn carriages. By the one-to-one comparison, there is no question that a car is more efficient and less maintenance than a horse and carriage. But the overall impact of the invention of cars on society goes way beyond that comparison in ways impossible to anticipate. So it doesn't really matter if Chesterton or Dan or you or I determine to use cars only in certain ways. We have to live in a world with cars used the way most people use them, and getting most people on the same page is hard. Even the Amish can get run over by cars. Someone using AI technology responsibly as a tool in his own life will still have to live in a world transformed by AI in ways impossible to anticipate fully. When we debate the merits of AI (or any new technology or potential new technology) we have to look both at the close comparison of applications for any individual and at the overall impact on society. 

Technology as a servant rather than a master has to serve the cause of human happiness. Technology is advancing rapidly. Is human happiness advancing rapidly? 

7

Your Turn / Re: Valpo President/Board Decide to Sell Art Masterpieces to Pay for Dorm Renovation

« on: March 23, 2023, 12:48:13 PM »

I was catechized by Valpo theology. Well, maybe catechized is a strong word because we didn't bother so much with the actual catechism. We used Paul Bretscher's Foolishness of God curriculum. There is some powerful stuff in there that is quite good. There are also some serious problems. But to say it was the same as the Lutheran theology of the 16th-19th centuries is simply wrong, as I came to realize later. It is distinguishable. Both its practitioners and and its detractors have something in mind when they say "Valpo theology" that gives the phrase meaning. It is closely related to "Gospel reductionist" or in a more positive term to the "radical Gospel" movement.

If we can agree that there is a disagreement between x and y, then we should be able to agree that simply saying "y should have no problem with x because x is obviously the correct position and is really the same as y" does not advance the discussion. To say that Elertian "Valpo theology" is synonymous with confessional Lutheranism is simply to state the conclusion as a premise as though there is no disagreement.

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Your Turn / Re: Valpo President/Board Decide to Sell Art Masterpieces to Pay for Dorm Renovation

« on: March 22, 2023, 04:14:47 PM »

Big deal. Google the same question for Jehovah's Witnesses and you get a very similar response. Non-trinitarian religions are not Christian. Islam is as Christian as Unitarianism.

So, there are folks who believe that UUs and JW and LDS are Christian groups, even if we do not. Among those who claim to be Christian, there are much larger differences between conservatives and liberals than within Lutheranism.


The fact that we consider them non-Christian shows that we are all "conservative." That is, we seek to "conserve" the traditional doctrines of Christianity, such as the Trinity.

More important than the liberal-conservative spectrum is the coherent-incoherent spectrum.

9

Your Turn / Re: Greta Thunberg receives honorary doctorate in THEOLOGY

« on: March 22, 2023, 03:28:52 PM »

I am now on the other side of the Ph.D, meaning I successfully defended my dissertation last May and now have my diploma. It was a great program to be a part of and an opportunity that I felt I couldn’t pass up for various reasons.

Something that I have encountered consistently is that there is confusion about what the “Dr” in “Rev Dr” means. Many don’t know that different doctorates involve different levels of work, study, and time. For me, as a Ph.D that’s pretty frustrating at times. I try not to let my ego get involved, but sometimes it's hard not to after all the stress, sweat, and tears involved in a Ph.D. For me (and many), the dissertation was an arduous process that took about two years (if not more), plus a few years of coursework. It’s just not the same as those other degrees. I even had a couple of conversations where those with a D.Min talked as if our degrees were the same.

That said, I go by “pastor” where I serve; expecting them to call me “doctor” seems icky to me. No doubt I am proud of my Ph.D, (just like I am proud of completing the NYC marathon, for example) but I don’t feel any more intelligent. If anything, I feel less so after all is said and done. 

Peace,
Scott+

Scott, the same is true of M.Div or BA. Lots of people have an M.Div degree that involved a lot less than our LCMS seminaries demand. Get a bachelor's degree in,a a rigorous field from a rigorous institution and you still have the same degree as someone who did online or correspondence courses from some rubber stamp school. A lot of people with Ph.D's did a lot less than you did to get one, and probably some did a lot more.

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Your Turn / Re: Valpo President/Board Decide to Sell Art Masterpieces to Pay for Dorm Renovation

« on: March 22, 2023, 03:20:34 PM »

It's all relative. I believe that within the whole spectrum of Christian ideologies, the ELCA is perhaps in the middle. We are not at the liberal end, e.g., U.U. As I posted elsewhere about our confession of faith. It is the traditional Christian doctrines: the Trinity, Jesus Christ, human and divine; the savior; the Bible is the Word of God.

You consider the UU to be on the "spectrum of Christian ideologies"? Seriously?

They do. The fact that Lutherans are likely to consider them outside the spectrum of Christian ideologies shows that none of us are all that liberal.

Every once in a while, I wonder if you have any idea what you are talking about. Then there are times when I know you don't know what you're talking about. This is one of the latter.

Massachusetts has more UU churches (139) than any other state in the country. Over half of those churches are in the Boston area. I'm extremely familiar with UU churches and pastors.

Unitarians do not consider themselves to be Christian. Most Unitarian were Christian at one time (Congregationalist) or broke away from a Congregationalist church. Within five mile of my church there are several UCC churches built right across the street from the UCC congregation that they broke away from.

The UU pastor here in Dedham made it clear to me that they are not Christian and do not consider themselves to be. King's Chapel in Boston considers itself to be a "Unitarian Congregation of the Christian tradition." The pastor of the congregation made it clear that does not mean that they believe Jesus was in any way divine, nor did he rise from the dead. But they admire him, believe he is a great teacher, and really like the Golden Rule.

Now if you had said the UCC, then you might have an argument. But UUs? No. They do not consider themselves to be Christian.

Before I responded, I asked Google, "Are Unitarian Universalists Christian?" The first response was: "Unitarianism is a form of Christianity that denies the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1961, the consolidation of the Unitarian and Universalist denominations brought together two distinct traditions to form a creedless movement that acts today as an umbrella organization for religious liberals all over the world.?

Repeatedly on the UUA site the word "Christian" is used, e.g., "Most Unitarian Universalist Christians believe in God, but not the traditional God-as-Trinity that most Christian churches promote. The UU Christian God is all-loving, as our Universalist forbears taught, and a unity, as our Unitarian forebears taught. This God is too big to be contained in one person, one book, one tradition, or one time in history. To UU Christians, Jesus is an inspiration and his teachings are profound—he possesses a divine spark that is born in all of us, and can be cultivated our whole lives long."

I have had many UCC friends. I frequently had one preach for me. They are liberal Christians. However, there are also some more conservative congregations that came out of the E & R tradition. At least one in Worland, WY had "Lutheran" in its congregational name which made it a bit difficult for the ELCA and LCMS pastors in town to tell people that Zion Lutheran was not really Lutheran. (They have since separated from the UCC and are now independent.)

Big deal. Google the same question for Jehovah's Witnesses and you get a very similar response. Non-trinitarian religions are not Christian. Islam is as Christian as Unitarianism.

11

Your Turn / Re: Greta Thunberg receives honorary doctorate in THEOLOGY

« on: March 22, 2023, 12:25:53 PM »

BTW, for those without earned doctorates there is still a whole area of teaching available to pastors, especially those who have done some graduate work. Besides the seminary I also taught briefly for Concordia University - St. Paul, as an adjunct, or as they call them "Contract Faculty of Practice".  Many institutions have gone to supplementing their full-time faculty with part-time adjuncts, especially those who can work remotely.  I simply do not have the time required to juggle more than one course with my other responsibilities with the fire department and the district.  But the need and opportunities are there and sometimes schools like CUW even advertise for them.

I did the same thing several times about twenty years ago for the Concordia extension in Green Bay. It was fun to teach the class, but way too frustrating to grade papers. The policy was that they had to be graded at a college level for both content and composition, but they admitted people into the program who could not come anywhere close to writing at that level. Plus, most of them were working for companies that paid their tuition as long as maintained at least a B average. So it was either put a good grade on a paper that would embarrass the school if an investigative reporter decided to make a story about what passed for college credit or else have a great few weeks of interesting class discussion followed by an angry mob of people who could prove that their papers had always gotten good grades before. I opted to let someone else deal with that problem and stopped teaching the courses. 

12

Your Turn / Re: Greta Thunberg receives honorary doctorate in THEOLOGY

« on: March 22, 2023, 09:26:43 AM »

The idea that a D.Min is for people who lack what it takes to get a Ph.D is just stupid. They aren't really parallel tracks to anything; it depends on why you want one and what you're going to do with it. A D.Min can simply be a more formal and organized structure of continuing education, which otherwise might be a haphazard hodgepodge, for pastors who are not seeking to become professors and do not want to invest the extra time and effort it would take to get the academic degree unless there is some reason they need to. In some cases congregations pay a higher salary if you have a D.Min, and I suppose if I were looking for a secular job and had to create a resume after all these years I would include my D.Min despite knowing that it doesn't really "count" for anything in the secular world the way a Ph.D would. 

But a Ph.D is a less and less impressive degree, too, as new supposed disciplines multiply. I believe the percentage of the population with a Ph.D today is six times what it was two generations ago. Many people, like Jill Biden (I'm sorry, "Dr." Jill Biden) just get them so they can feel impressive, and do so in disciplines in which it takes very little to get one apart from the time and money to invest.

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Your Turn / Re: Valpo President/Board Decide to Sell Art Masterpieces to Pay for Dorm Renovation

« on: March 21, 2023, 09:10:03 PM »

I looked at the website of the Department of Philosophy and Theology. Seven faculty, and in a well-run world one of them will perhaps be away on sabbatical, a grant, or parental leave in any given year. Dept. responsibilities include S. Asian religions and philosophy. Those folks are stretched! From the sound of some of the criticism I read here, even one course per year on the Formula of Concord would scarcely fulfill the expectations. How one can even fancifully talk of a "Valpo theology" seems preposterous to this onlooker. God bless you all!

As I remember, the Lilly Endowment funded a strong program for promoting personal life vocation at Valparaiso, and some faculty were hired because they were inclined that way (some theology profs are more abstractly inclined). Christ College, I think it was called--and may still be. That's not a bad focus concern for a Christian theology faculty, it seems to me--even a Lutheran one.

Peace,
Michael

Michael, it is called Valpo theology in several accounts of the Seminex controversy, not referring to the current faculty but to the fact that many of the St. Louis sem faculty had taught together at Valpo prior.

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Your Turn / Re: Valpo President/Board Decide to Sell Art Masterpieces to Pay for Dorm Renovation

« on: March 21, 2023, 08:02:18 PM »

It is specifically what is called liberal (or mainline) Protestantism that I disagree with and say is liberal and of which you are obviously a part.

I already know you use the words differently and in a strictly arcane academic sense. That's why I started the whole digression by pinpointing why you and Michael would be talking past each other; you're using the same word to mean different things.

Peter,
How then do you account for my published criticism of mainline, liberal Protestant theological positions, e.g., historicism, several forms of feminist theology, liberationist positions? How do you account for my public agreement with C. S. Lewis' defense of miracles? How do you account for my public defense of a salvation-historical approach to the Scriptures? For the biblical/confessional content of my preaching and teaching that I have done in Missouri Synod congregations for almost forty years? Is it possible that a conservative, confessional Lutheran, which is what I am, could be a member of the ELCA? Felicitous inconsistency? Perhaps.

I don't agree with the Brief Statement on a few points. I have published a detailed critique of "A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles." I have taken those positions precisely on the basis of the clear teaching of the evangelical-Lutheran confessions, as even Ralph Bohlmann had to acknowledge in a friendly discussion I once had with him regarding my disagreements with certain statements in "A Statement." I was removed from the LCMS clergy roster because of my public criticism of six-day creationism. But that criticism hardly makes me "a liberal, mainline Protestant theologian." Had I not been removed, I would still be a member of the LCMS.

Having studied at the U. of Chicago Divinity School from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, I think I know what constitutes the various forms of "liberal Protestant theology." I can assure you I do not share many of the presuppositions or positions of those forms of theology. Nevertheless, I realize you think you know my theological "camp" better than I do, and I'm sure there's nothing I could write here (or perhaps anywhere else) that would ever change your mind. Why don't you come over to Valpo sometime, and sit in on my course on the Lutheran Confessions? Or sit in on any of my courses, for that matter. Perhaps that way you might reconsider your judgments about my theological position.

Matt Becker

Again, you're missing the point. My point is that we're talking past each other because we use the words "liberal" differently. I have no doubt that you do not consider yourself a liberal Protestant and object to the ELCA being called a liberal Protestant church body. I object to your false characterization of the LCMS as Biblicist. I'm right and you're wrong, and in your world the opposite it true.

What you're not understanding is how it is that someone who is conservative in theology and agrees with the LCMS approach could feel alienated and generally without allies in the theology department at Valpo. A typical ELCA student and LCMS student would know about many visible, practical differences between the two. Even reading your own description of what goes on at Valpo, I can't believe you can escape the conclusion that the LCMS person would constantly feel challenged and the ELCA person would constantly feel affirmed and endorsed. Whether on practical matters like creationism, open communion, women clergy, gay marriage, etc. or on the deeper approach to Scripture and church life that leads to those positions, there is no escaping that Valpo is firmly on the side of Seminex and the ELCA against the LCMS. And anyone taking honest stock of the situation can see that Seminex and the ELCA, in the context of American Protestantism generally (as opposed to official, mainline denominations) or in the context of global, historic Christianity are entirely liberal, way, way to the left to the mainstream. To be in the ELCA and agree with its positions is to be a liberal by any definition except perhaps those that require deep academic knowledge of various 20th Century schools of thought.

My nephew is not by any means the only person I know educated at Valpo who felt obliged to take the approach that you keep your head down and don't rock the boat. There will be no genuine discussion of, say, female pastors or closed communion, that doesn't have a foregone conclusion. As Paul Simon sings, "Who am I to blow against the wind?". At Valpo, the ELCA is officially and unofficially correct in every one of its disagreements with the LCMS. That doesn't mean you can't get a good education there. I'm very grateful for the education I got at Christ College and I think my two daughters who are/were in the CC program have been well served. But let's not kid ourselves about what is being taught in the theology department. If I were to teach a freshman theology class for the first half of a semester, you would spend the second half of the semester with the students second-guessing everything I said. And I would do the same if you taught a Bible study at St. Paul's.   

15

Your Turn / Re: Greta Thunberg receives honorary doctorate in THEOLOGY

« on: March 21, 2023, 03:30:07 PM »

RJN kept his honorary doctorates stuffed between the wall and railing of the stairs to the basement. I don't think he ever went by "Doctor." But it remains true that honorary doctorates can be every bit as earned as "earned" doctorates. All you have to do in order to discover that fact is ask yourself which one you'd be capable of getting. I'll bet most of us in this discussion, if we don't have an earned doctorate, would be capable of getting one if we set out to do it. I'd wager fewer of us would ever get an honorary doctorate is that was our goal. It is harder because there is no catalog of courses, advisors, or any particular route.