I wrote: "If someone says, 'I've got the Holy Spirit, nuts to everything else' you have got trouble."
Mr. Erdner replied:
When, and if, someone says that, I take that into consideration.
I muse:
And there is that persistent, troublesome, and dangerous "I" again. Simply substituting oneself for the one who claims ownership of the Holy Spirit is not how it works.
"I don't like what that one is saying, so he's a fraud" is a meaningless statement.
"I think that pastor or group of pastors has got it wrong, so I'm not recognizing them as pastors," is sectarian and arrogant.
"I know what the Bible says, so no Council of the Church, Synod, denomination, convention, assembly, confessional statement or theologian can contradict what I know," is not how Lutherans think theologically.
Anyone with a few years of direct experience in the church should see the danger that arrives when the individual, personalized "I's" prevail.