Gregory Schulz on the LCMS: Anatomy of an Implosion

Hey everyone, welcome once again to the conversations that matter podcast. I'm your host John Harris a little under the weather this morning

Thank you for those who are praying for me I know I announced that on the truth script podcast on Tuesday, and I'm getting a little better, but it is slow so I don't know if I picked up something on the airplane or or what but But anyway,

I am excited today to have our guests He's gonna do most of the thinking so I don't have to you know in my mentally sick brain here we have

We have actually someone who's been on the podcast before Dr. Schultz who was if you recall at Concordia University, and I think dr.

Schultz. Are you still at Concordia University? Technically, yeah, thanks first John. I just wanted to say it's it's a real privilege and blessing to be talking with you again and your listeners, so yes,

I'm Technically still on the faculty have been in Exile I suppose for a little over two years now prohibited to teach and even go on campus actually well

We'll talk about that, but dr. Gregory Schultz has a new book.

That's out That's one of the reasons the main reason actually that he's on today, and I want to show you all that That's his website if you want to find out more about his writings

Lutheran philosopher calm But you can get his book you go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble Anatomy of an implosion which is a very

You know with the the new sort of masculine movement in Christianity You definitely have a cover that fits that with the

Roman soldier right there, so Check that out, and we're gonna be talking about it, but let's start here dr.

Schultz How are you doing? I mean you just mentioned you can't even go on the campus you teach at but you're technically on the faculty

How does that work? Oh? Thanks, John. I'm well in the Lord if You know if it is an exile, it's a pretty well populated island of Patmos or however you want to do that so Got a lot of friends.

I I certainly do miss teaching my students and I think not breaking any rules here to say that if as you and your listeners take a look at some of the reporting online at the

Federalist about things or I've included texts of those in the book too, so everybody can read it there.

You'll see that actually, it just does not look like they want me back and Lawyers have been commenting that things should be brought to some sort of conclusion here, so without without saying much more

I'm Regrettably realizing that there's just no place for me there under the circumstances at my university

And we did a podcast now, I want to say what a year and a half ago, maybe yeah almost two years

I think almost two years ago Wow Wow how time goes and you were opposing some of the critical race theory teachings essentially that we're going on and not just classes, but coming down from the administration and and that really has given you the the scarlet letter so to speak and I know you're not the only one, but you're someone who's been bold enough to actually be vocal about this and And we're very appreciative of that.

I mean, that's we need more people like you. Are you are you doing ministry anywhere?

at like a local church or Yes, well Yeah, right so I do get get involved for guest preaching and and assisting with liturgy and so forth

But I'm at the moment. I've been going kind of far Perhaps with some open doors from the

Lord I've have done some teaching and lecturing in South Africa last summer was there for about a month and this year

I've been invited to we have a Lutheran seminary in Kenya If if you or your viewers are familiar with that movie out of Africa or perhaps

Dinesen's book by the same title I understand that it's it's gonna be my first time there.

It's just over The hills from where she had her coffee farm in Africa So some seminary teaching there.

I'm so I've got some some work to do Wow, okay, so you're you're an international

You're Indiana Jones in it a little bit across the world with your teaching there. So that's that's great

I'm glad that that you have found places or people have found you to use the gifts that you have

This new book maybe that's what we need to do now is just switch gears unless there was something else I mean that you wanted to share with people

We could just talk about your book and you know what people can glean from it why you wrote it and that kind of thing

Sure, let's do that. Okay. So the the first question you're always supposed to ask any author is why'd you write it?

So why'd you write this book and what do you hope to accomplish? Yeah, so The why write it

Has has to do with the same reason that after doing my best to talk to administrators and board members and so forth at my university why

I knew I had to publish my doctrinal and philosophical concerns about woke

Marxism at my Concordia University so that the reason for writing it could probably be boiled down to Confession so I think we've got very similar vocabulary on this but in the

Lutheran discussion we sometimes Pile up extra words to be sure that we're defining ourselves.

Well, and we generally don't talk about ourselves in my church body as just Lutheran but we talk about ourselves as being confessional

Lutherans and then as you know, and as I Write about at some length in the book to confess means to speak in line in the first place with God's authoritative word, so There was a call for repentance to my university administration and Board of Regents By our church body president about a year ago

But there has been no repentance There's been I think kind of an effort to suggest that there's just a reset going on and nothing to be seen here

I know that's not the case. So the thesis of the book is a confessional one and it has to do then with My conviction as I hope a thoughtful person that it's the conditions at the university

Not just the announcement the very public announcement for the better part of two years that they wanted a woke president

But it's the conditions that would have allowed that sort of thing to happen and it turns out that That's a pretty profound institutional culture problem

Interestingly enough that my university among other things is not adhering to our

Lutheran confessions Though claiming to be a confessional institution now, what about the outcome?

You mentioned in passing that Roman soldier on the that centurion on the cover of the book

I've got a longer story about that if we've got time to get to it, but My conviction is this

John I think that the people in the front lines the those who take upon themselves the title of leadership

Are are simply falling down on the job and I think it's pretty close to if it isn't actually a surrender the our

Christian colleges Should at a bare minimum Be a high -fidelity alternative to the public or government schools in our country and We are falling down on that rather terribly.

So I think the thing is to turn to the rank -and -file to turn to the pastors in the congregations the members of the congregations the laity and To give them as much information as much

I'll go ahead and say biblical analysis as possible Yeah, we know

I was at a Lutheran event. I don't know a year ago something like that and It was like a

I think they called it a colloquy and yeah, I presented it was some Lutheran pastors they're a vision for it says something similar to I think what you just articulated that the way orthodoxy is going to be preserved and the best way is

Through local pastors local congregations, it seems like the institutions are far gone at this point

Which for different denominations that's met differently. I mean Baptists I think have a little easier time with that just because they're so independent anyway, but it struck me that the

Lutherans are more hierarchical and that that was a difficult thing to Embrace from from I guess my perspective just Reading the temperature of the room and and giving similar messages in other places

I Mean, do you think so the book that you've written it is for Christians more broadly?

But you know, I know you're writing from a Lutheran context. Is this something that Lutherans?

You think will embrace or are they gonna still keep giving their finances to Concordia and maybe some of these other places

Even though they know that they're compromised Yeah, I think um, we can talk a little bit about some evidence that things are are imploding as I say in the book

Financially also, but I think what I'd like to do John is a respect your notion about being more hierarchical

That makes sense to me, but I'd prefer to say being more corporate so If I need any forgiveness for this

I think people understand I really don't think that you can trust people who have the label of president in front of their job title

Right now And I I'm gonna go ahead and say I feel very skeptical about this in my own church body

One of the reasons is that when a person is doing this president stuff.

He has a presumptive allegiance to maintain the institution that he's president over And a fundamental question to ask is first of all is the corporate model at all acceptable in the church

I believe we're seeing right now why it never should have been but just to put it in a turn of phrase that You know as Bible believing folks, we would all recognize

These church institutions should not identify as corporations I'm not commenting on the legal ins and outs of it

But they shouldn't identify as corporations in the way they think and operate They should be thinking about themselves not as corporations, but as corpus meum as Jesus would say if he was speaking in Latin, you know my body

And that that's a fundamental problem so I Don't know

And maybe I'm not competent to comment on how the church body is going So I'm going to say

I'm maintaining as best I can a pretty narrow concern and focus with Lutheran higher education and I would guess though.

I don't know for sure John that in evangelical circles I really think that our educational work is comparable to world missionary work for us

This is this is the thing that we really bring You know everything from kindergarten on up through through our seminaries and post grad work.

We come from Wittenberg University Right, so we're though we often forget it

We've got you know, some major obligations in the area of education. That's where we came from a

Lutheran University and that I think we are are failing at So as we're talking here, we're in the week right after Ash Wednesday on Ash Wednesday There was an announcement that came out from my university

Concordia University, Wisconsin They have a second campus that has been under their wing for a number of years in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the new president at Concordia, Wisconsin announced that they were cutting back severely on the campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan for financial reasons

That the language, you know is usually pretty guarded and about as optimistic as a person can make it

But reading just a little bit between the lines it looks like that Campus to the great regret of the students, especially but also my faculty colleagues there is going to be cut back severely

So part of the part of the response here Is that I don't exactly know about the church's reaction

All by itself as much as the financial entanglements and the consequences of that, you know for our universities

I would imagine it's much the same for you, though. I don't know very few of us are like Hillsdale where the mission has been to stay free of Government entanglement for the sake of preserving the doctrine and teaching you need to do as a

Christian school of higher learning Right, right this entanglement with with the federal government, which is just you know on a tear against Christianity and every other good

And decent thing right now This is just wreaking great harm not to mention the accreditation stuff which sort of cements that Just a reminder to everyone who's listening right now if you have questions for dr.

Scholl's You can go to YouTube or Facebook where we are streaming and you can post a comment and dr

Scholl's I will relay the message and we will see if we can get an answer. So Dr.

Scholl's you say in your your book. I just had it pulled up page 152 Woke ism is afflicting the consciences of students faculty and supporters of Concordia therefore programmatic systemic woke ism merits

Reconsideration it also merits personal and institutional repentance. Now the thing

I find interesting about this Is this is exactly right right the language you're using But the language that the woke

Movement uses right is is similar like they will say That probably

Concordia would need to repent of its systemic Racism right as an institution.

They need to do institutional repentance. You're flipping that and you're saying actually they need to Repent of their woke ism

Was that on purpose that you use that language? Sure, it was who wants to give up our perfectly solid wonderful and biblical terminology to these angry

Marxist people who want to overthrow everything so Of course,

I mean it and then it also is the case that You know in that quote you you

Cited I mentioned it's both for the institution and for the individuals involved.

So Though the US Supreme Court, I understand considers corporations to be persons for all intents and purposes we know that's not the case that's kind of a misplaced a fallacy of misplaced concreteness the the

Concern is for the individuals in leadership. And as I've been saying most importantly for the faculty who do the real work at the

University after all and the students who are you know supposed to be the soul of of our work at the universities and That interestingly enough in the in the rush to Silence me by any means necessary There's there's been no addressing in print or in public about the harm being done to my faculty colleagues

Many I would say maybe even most who are confessional in the sense

I talked about before very concerned with adherence to the Bible word for word and the students we have pre -seminary students and we have students who are headed into the

Lutheran teaching ministry and You know, there's just a great deal of harm to people's

Consciousness and then we would recognize that in church conversation as our conscience which is you know, we're particularly concerned about our relationship to God and And you know that that we are in a passage

I've been using a lot that we are at rest in Christ You know as Augustine says you've made us for yourself

Lord and our hearts are not at rest Until we find our rest in you the restlessness

That's being sown by the woke Marxists including the woke Marxist leaders at our country's universities is

Antithetical to the gospel. It's not just you know, kind of a quirky alternative or something

It is absolutely opposed to Christ and his word We have a question looks like from a listener.

I want to as we get these questions I might hold on to some but this one I want to ask you now The LC MS has a pastor shortage and it has a university problem, too

Should we expect the LC MS to be on its way out? I mean, that's That's a legitimate. I mean, so I guess that would impact why you wrote the book

Is this for a revival that you're hoping will happen or do you you see that the Lord has already judged the

LC MS Yeah, I'm I'm not competent to make that as in an overall assessment by any means but I Would say let's look at the question this way.

I Don't want to be rude to your questioner. I agree It's a legitimate question, but my concern is not trying to pretend to be a prophet of what's going to happen to my church body

We know on the one hand that Christ's Church his church Cannot fail we have his word on that and and that's a settled thing

But the question is whether for instance The universities in my church body are in line with Christ and his word

That word that will never pass away or not That's the question.

So my my existential sensibilities Would lead me to contribute this the question is not

How do we predict this is going to turn out which gets to look a little bit like being spectators on the whole business?

Our question in the Lutheran Church, for instance needs to be what can we do to right the ship or in the metaphor?

I use in the book. What can we do to restore a healthy atmosphere for the submarine crew and forestall the implosion of the submarine the

Lutheran University Well, you know I can see why someone would ask that question given the title

Because it's pretty I mean it seems pretty serious Implosion means things are are not just leaking like this is seriously awry.

This is so I mean obviously, this is like level 10 red alert and And so you're you're giving a stern warning to the people in your denomination, yes

Based on the conditions So so based on what you could call the culture of the universities, but based on the conditions

There's another reference in the title About 50 years ago.

So let's say that's a generation or two ago in my church body There was a major doctrinal problem at one of our seminaries the one in st.

Louis Which resulted in what was called the Seminex explosion? one of I think one of the professors and pastors that we've had writing over the last decades

Kurt Marquardt wrote a book after that that explosion which he titled anatomy of an explosion and throughout my little book which

Just partakes I think of the wisdom of professor Marquardt really and applies it to our situation in my book

I I take up his insights and apply them to what's going on this time not at our seminary but at our entire

Concordia University system so it is a serious title and I I have said some pretty serious things in the book and I am calling for repentance not

Not for just you know, let's just keep on going and see what happens because the conditions that are necessary our literacy in our

Scripture in God's Word and in the Lutheran confessions Which are being deleted

Suppressed and have been for quite some time at my university. I don't know for sure about the other Concordia's and And so, you know, it's a call for those who have ears to hear

I I fessed up in the book that I I have no illusions about the university board or Administration necessarily listening to me, but I guess

I'll fess up. I still hope that they might I Still hope they might even at this kind of 11th hour

You use the term evil you mean in the book quite a bit which is something that That is it's not done in evangelical popular evangelical books, right?

But you say there can be no accommodation. No appeasement with this evil dogma. You're talking about Marxism. Yes Maybe for those who aren't as familiar

They haven't listened to our other podcasts on this maybe briefly. Could you just walk through?

What did what's going on at Concordia or in the LC MS more broadly that causes you to Make that kind of determination that there's actual evil going on.

I mean, obviously you've you've been Marginalized because of your views, but you know, that's just you is this a broader thing?

And and why is this challenging the confessions or how? sure, so The the foundation of what

I'm offering to folks First of all in the in the Lutheran churches, but as I mentioned,

I believe it will be helpful to folks fighting the good fight in other Christian institutions to The groundwork for what

I'm doing is what you could call philosophy of language so the woke

Marxism is Not simply doing a George Orwell thing

It's not just newspeak or woke speak that's going on. It's a frontal assault on language

I'm going to say Just mention I happen to be the professor who was teaching the philosophy of language course at my university as well

By the way as the only course on Christ and culture so the

Language thing comes comes to the heart of it this way Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the

Word of God God has chosen though. He could do anything Whatever he pleases right?

He has chosen to commune and communicate with human beings through language the language of Scripture the inerrant efficacious right

Word of God we have a a Line a very important line.

I think in our day, especially in our Lutheran confessions. It's in the Apology to the

Augsburg Confession, and I'm just going to throw it out in Latin kind of quickly. It's an article for about justification or God's atonement and forgiveness for all people.

So the line is God Cannot be apprehended Nisi per verbum except through the word

Now in the first place that means Christ the Word of God Think of John chapter 1 in the beginning was the

Logos in The second place it means all of Scripture all of its words all of its books

Think of Jesus in John 5. These are the scriptures that testify of me and In Lutheran thought we have pretty consistently referred to that the scriptures then as the means of grace

So the thing is that in a passage we alluded to before Our Lord reminds us heaven and earth from Matthew's gospel heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away

So we know that God's Word is not going to change now.

I'm going to say that In the third place so that only through the word refers to Jesus as the incarnate

Word it refers to all the words of the God -breathed scriptures all the scriptures

Old and New Testament and It teaches us about language.

So for shorthand, I'm just going to say language is obviously not an Evolutionary accident that that thesis is just tired and threadbare and worthless

It is nothing less than a divine gift of God Aristotle as many of your listeners will know actually says the human being is essentially the

Logos being meaning language So what I what I am saying is

That it is an evil business and I I did not refer to any of the people at my

Concordia's being evil I've consistently said that what they're doing is partaking of an evil ideology, which is serious enough

So what what we have is I think Satan's last perhaps last attack on people in the church now after the

Reformation is He can't destroy the word he can't destroy language either but he certainly can see to it that we lose our confident and trust in language so that we never read the

Bible or Always think that whatever a pastor preaches to us is open to whatever interpretation we want to give it which is of course a postmodern and fitting philosophy of language to describe what the woke

Marxist folks are up to when you change pronouns you are affecting human being you're taking issue with the divine gift of language and I'll go ahead and say it that language of Scripture is

Jesus Speaking so what you're doing is you're going toe -to -toe with Jesus and that sort of stuff

Should never be tolerated in a Lutheran or Christian institution But it's as I said, it's really fentanyl and why why why?

Would a Christian institution that is genuinely Christian? Why would they not as our confessions tell us?

Reject and condemn such false dogma as Marxist ideology Is it really that bad like do you

I know that obviously the woke ism is there But like are people actually using preferred pronouns or I mean, it's that kind of thing happening

Well, um, can I ask so I know you and I have have talked a little bit off -air about Things in evangelicalism or the

Baptist tradition, right, right So what's happening with pronouns and altered words in in your you institutions?

Yeah, I don't know if I want to claim them as my institutions, but yeah sure yeah in Baptist circles,

I would say that It's not Opposed there.

There's been some waffling and like I went to Southeastern which is a Baptist University and There's some prominent

Like JD Greer's a prominent graduate he's very influential there now He's not a professor, but he's very tight with the professors there and he's waffled on this issue

Saying that Christians should use preferred pronouns He actually one of the premier churches SCBTS students go to is his and he said that you know we should use preferred pronouns and then later he kind of backtracked on that when he got some heat and But I'll put it this way there's no strong Stand there's no, you know white paper that they've you know

Used to condemn that kind of thing. It's more I think ignored than anything else So, I don't know. Is that the same kind of thing that you're seeing?

Well, yes, and you know, we could use a litmus test word here, right? justice So that yeah that words been totally yeah eviscerated

And you know, this is this is a biblical term Also the notion of race race is a biblical concept.

It's nothing like what's being taught in Racial justice movements in in allegedly

Christian churches today. Yeah, so what we've got there John I think is

Maybe Those of us who who've been given all of this time and extra education by the

Lord's providence, you know maybe folks really need to take a look at the kind of analysis that people like me can make and I am saying that it's evil to alter pronouns

An attack on language. Maybe this would just be non contentious for your audience

I I don't know but that's an attack on Aristotle's understanding of the human being This is this is where the attack on our human being is.

I've noted that even though for instance our Normative confessions for how to teach and what to teach, you know the minimum requirements in Lutheran education

They use the word nature all the time and the word nature is actually being in effect censored from a lot of conversations as it is for Something that a lot of us have accepted in our professional output, right?

Can't use the word nature It's a euro centric word or something, but so every every bit of giving way to that I'm gonna say it comes back to God Because this is the gift of language and also

Our Lutheran understanding at any rate is that this is an exclusive means of grace

You cannot you cannot know what God says apart from his word

We do know how he feels about us what he thinks what he has done what his disposition toward us is

God so loved the world we know this Only because he has said so in his word if we're going to neglect that We are falling from the faith.

Surely we you do have a section where you this is um

Under the heading what is the case a comparison of the complaint? With what Shoals and Harrison have written which

I know is getting into the weeds on some of this Lutheran stuff 0 .4 Shoals letters and essay not incidentally the

BOR committees posted announcement are unsurprisingly woke in their cavalier altering of texts true to the woke mindset of the presidential shirt search postings

Someone or some committee presumed to alter the pronouns in their posted version of our LC MS bylaws.

So you do provide examples in your book Some of these language alterations including pronouns

Right, there's Yeah, that's very important. Excuse me. That's very important. It's also true that I would guess that people are seeing more of this at their universities because this

Administrations and boards have just done whatever they can get away with Even things such as the faculty handbooks

Which say this is what you're obliged to do as a professor at this institution This is the sort of thing that should not be done those those um

You know rules of the road for for teaching and conduct as a professor Generally now include and whatever alterations the board or the administration may make at any time in the case of my administration and board they just went ahead and made whatever use they wanted to of cherry -picked sections of these handbooks and Rules for operation doing weird things that have never done never been done with those documents before So that's a problem.

That's a big problem. But now let's go back to that word justice. How about that? So I think if you're willing to change pronouns, you're probably willing to accept all sorts of ditzy notions about justice

Yeah, yeah, and and in a person, right? Yeah, and in a professor that means that you're not going to be teaching your students to think well and to think biblically so what

I've recommended in one of my chapters is that for us as confessional

Lutherans, we've actually said things like this in our confessions the doctrine of justification is

The here's some German the helped article. Let's call that the the marquee or the organizing article of biblical doctrine

When people talk about social justice or racial justice

The last thing that they are doing is going to their Bibles to find out

What justice means according to God? I would also just add in a

Certainly crabby, but I think justified sense that they are also

Just showing their their deliberate ignorance of all of Western thought Anybody who's ever read or studied in a college class

Plato's Republic which centers around that Socratic question What is justice ought to know better?

Anyhow in Scripture, you know, we've got the righteousness of God that's a

Sadiq in the Old Testament Hebrew and Dikai a sine or parts of the

DK word group in the New Testament that can be translated both righteousness and justice

So what what you're really doing? these social justice warriors

And I'm particularly concerned about those in the Lutheran camp What they're actually doing is saying we are not not content

We're not content to teach that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace we have to concentrate on other stuff and and for For self -identified

Lutherans to do that is to say we just don't agree with anything important that Luther said right, what we're concerned about is diversity inclusion and equity and Let's just go ahead and say that equity business is a replacement for justice so the language matters the language matters

John and what I'm saying is Every time that we give an inch in terms of language.

We are in education. We are contradicting the logos himself

Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more There's a few questions. I want to bring to you and this is from Carrie Baldwin.

Dr. Scholz Does your new book go into the linguistics and philosophy of language?

You've just discussed? Yeah, thanks. Carrie. That's a great question. So Linguistics would not be the right way to talk about it

If you don't mind my just being precise because we've got so little time to to talk about this I would say philosophy of language so What I argue especially in the second chapter of my book is that the philosophy of language now remember

John and I have just been talking about how language is fundamentally a divine gift of God and it the the scriptures have a

Contiguity with what we think of as everyday human language our everyday human language is not inerrant

It's not authored directly by God. The Holy Ghost isn't breathing out my words, right?

But it's still language. Okay, so I do offer Drawing on the terminology of Philip Carey Who's done a lot of writing on Augustine and his view of language.

I do offer two competing philosophies of this one phenomenon this one divine gift of language one of them

I refer to following carry as the External efficacious means of grace philosophy

So if you've been with us for for our time so far To be means of grace is a reference to Scripture and then to the sacraments that Scripture authorizes

But it's it's these are the only ways the only authorized Biblically authorized ways that God works in our lives works on us heart mind soul consciousness everything

The other is the one that is the hallmark of woke Marxism in my argument

And that would be called the expressivist semiotics view So semiotics another perfectly wonderful word, by the way, that's the word say

Maya that's translated miracle or wonder in John's Gospel for the most part But that's been used to say that language is merely a bunch of arbitrary symbols that and here's the expressivist or expressionist part that express an

Individual's inner thoughts or feelings to a greater or lesser clarity this probably comes to a

Comes to a head in Jacques Derrida. So what I'm saying is that woke

Marxism is powered by a deficient destructive view of philosophy of language, which is postmodern

From Derrida so Derrida I Mentioned in the book.

You don't really want to read his books. He is so opaque He's somebody who's absolutely committed to the meaninglessness or the endless interpretation of language and he writes like that You need more than a bottle of Excedrin to get through chapters in his books, but you want to catch him in his interviews

Well, he's got to make more sense and has to speak to the point for a little longer I offer some of those citations in that chapter two

So there we hear Derrida saying things like this You know,

I'm gonna paraphrase a lot. I have nothing against Moses and the prophets I think they're just like other writings from Plato or whomever that I can interpret in any way

I want and I think there's an unexpressed statement there that the

Marxists are making use of and I think Derrida did too and Therefore no one's entitled to tell me

I'm wrong. I Justice means whatever

I want it to mean And then that's there so it would be chapter 2 in anatomy of an implosion and I think that since John mentioned my teaching platform

Lutheran philosopher, it'll be okay to say that There I have some other of my published essays and so forth on that topic that would be available to excellent excellent

Some other questions to now you might not want to answer this one, but Von Brian von

Breyhoff go hard. I don't know. Okay, that's the name I'm curious about what your opinion on dr.

Jordan Cooper is. I don't know if you want to say anything about you Know who dr. Jordan Cooper is barely.

Okay, so I'm gonna plead ignorance here. I I should should

Mention to our friend who sent that question in that I do have one or two books about Cooper at the bottom of my to read list

Because when I was over Actually helping some Christian groups think about how to combat

Marxism in in their colleges in South Africa last summer One of the professors recommended

I really needed to look at Cooper. I still haven't done it But the books there and that leaves me with no answer, but at least not sounding utterly ignorant

Incognito Luther says do you believe we are entering another Seminex situation with the

Concordia's? Which I think that was like kind of a Concordia in exile situation in the 80s, right? 70s more or less.

Yeah, that's right We're at a 50th anniversary for that just passed last week.

I think so if a person were interested You could look for a little bit of searching about Seminex and you'd find some current reflections on it the answer is my

Analysis of what's going on at my Concordia and perhaps the other Concordia's as well

Is based on Marquardt's analysis of the Seminex situation? There are a couple key phrases in there some that I used and probably overused a bit in the book because I think they deserve to Be passed on they're very necessary Marquardt says this so the

Seminex kerfuffle Was about a new hermeneutic. Let me avoid the terminology.

I just wanted to show you I know it But the biblical interpretation principles and practice, right?

The the one biblical hermeneutic by the way is that thing from John 5 these scriptures testify of me

Jesus says but anyhow Some professors have brought in the notion that you had to know a certain kind of linguistics

I'm going to say that linguistics is a social science area You need to learn a certain kind of linguistics as a pastor

Before you were fit to do your study of God's Word for preaching and ministering to people

Anytime you hear somebody say you have to do something before you can read

God's Word That is a flair and and a whole avenue of red flags going up right there.

You want to go just to the word And only after that you can go back and evaluate these hermeneutic

Schools of thought or anything, but you don't want to let anybody hold you back from the word That's what was going on. These past young future pastors were being taught this and Marquardt said of this

He pointed out that the problem with this is that this is not a way of reading Scripture That's drawn from the reading of Scripture letting

God be the teacher But this is actually imposing science over Scripture in Lutheran thought

I doubt that we've got we've cornered the market on this We say watch out for magisterial

Approaches to Scripture and take a ministerial approach Magisterial is from the

Latin word for teacher. Don't presume to be a teacher of God and the

Bible writers rather submit yourself as a minister and a servant to that work. Well, anyhow

Marquardt said this He said the problem is that The science is

I'm going to interpose the social sciences like linguistics Have no room for authority or sacrosanct texts

Now if you think about that That actually is what woke

Marxism is about. It's anarchic It's opposed

Not just to order generally though. That's the case, too But it's opposed to any

Normative authoritative or sacrosanct would be the technical word texts. That's why

The woke Marxists plaguing our country right now Will not talk about the

Declaration of Independence or really the Constitution unless they have to pretend to be following something

Especially you'll notice that they never quote and if they have to quote it They just fumble all over that founding proposition of the

United States We hold these truths to be self -evident That all men are created equal

That's a sacrosanct text I would say in part because it partakes of the biblical truth that God the

Creator is the ultimate authority But at the same time in a lesser sense, you could call it an authoritative text for our country and so then my my concern is

That this philosophy of language which I identified as the expressivist semiotic view

Takes people away from the scriptures among everything else The symptoms are there that all the great texts of the

West have been censored or taken very lightly by many many professors and many many universities but the outcome of that is this breakdown of our immunological system to these horrible anarchic upsetting

Socially constructed notions of woke Marxism and this has no place no place at all in the university

If if it were the case that two or three years ago My university leadership didn't know what they're talking about and they just thought this was a good

PR idea or something I would say shame on them. I would also point out. That's why you want actual professors to be hauled into administrative positions not career administrators

But certainly enough of us have been Documenting this and and now, you know in this book.

I've Provided the analysis for my own University. There's no excuse for not knowing what's going on I think

John could probably point this out nor has anybody wanted to argue the point with me I'm I'm available to be criticized if I'm not being

Faithful biblically and I'm certain I've certainly made myself available in that book For people who want to take issue with the points of my or better Marquardt's Analysis of our sorry situation in our universities right now

Yeah, that's a common problem. In fact, I'm thinking of dr. Russell fuller right now from a

Southern Baptist University is very similar story yours and He would debate anyone

I'll debate anyone on this no, yeah, no one will debate him they'll condemn him, you know They'll ruin his reputation behind closed doors

They'll go, you know send their send people after him and said they won't ever actually have a real discussion, which is somewhat discouraging

There's there's one question. I think let's make this the last one Michael asks, how does one convince those who remember the glory days and refuse to see the clear evidence of apostasy?

So in the LCMS, I'm assuming Yeah, I'm I think I'm going to take that if I may

John I'm gonna take that as a broader question I think for any of us in let's say Christian educational

Institutions whether it's our grade schools, you know from our churches or whatever or Right on up to our colleges universities and seminaries or graduate schools

Apostasy is the right word to use there so Stepping away from or stepping away from in the face of what you should be confessing and doing the way to address it is

If I can put a couple of my earlier answers together the first thing is to provide a clear diagnosis on the basis of authoritative scripture and Then I know this is different from our for our different denominations, but then there would be the authoritative creeds

Which probably all of us have in common You know the Apostles Nicene Athanasian and then our particular historical confessions

Especially about the scriptures and about the person and work of Christ so that that is what is being a pasta seed away from and As I've suggested or said my argument is that the the heart of the matter is this attack on The students perhaps the faculties philosophy of language not to recognize its external efficacious means of grace stuff

I Don't I Don't know if there are ears to hear on this

I think I'll be forgiven for being an older pastor If I just say I I have been teaching for a while that I think we are

Have seen the the last days of Western civilization and you should be able to tell that Not the social sciences have nothing to say on this of course because they just describe things in great detail and with a lot of Metrics, but if you go normative as Roger Scruton in his books does

Then you see that Western culture Was moral judgments

Handed down from one generation to the next that were done according to Greek forms of thinking and with biblical content so when we're no longer teaching the

Bible and then no longer teaching the canonical Western texts

I would just point out the means by which we could recover or the means by which you can do faithful good educating

Without those means No, no recovery is going to happen. So my concern is with the diminution the disrespect the manhandling of Scripture the means of grace first, but then in a slightly lesser way the authoritative doctrinal writings of the church.

I Know I said that was our last question Dr. Schill's, but someone wrote in for for a dollar 99

Tim Miller said woke is a meaningless and nebulous term Definition and I think what they're getting at is

I don't know if it's the most well -constructed sentence there but I this is my guess is that He's appealing to you as a philosopher of language and saying isn't the term woke

Kind of a meaningless term as well. Like we're we want to specific this, you know, you understand what

I'm saying. I do it Yeah, thanks Tim. No, it's great question And you know if this is our last one first act of the mind right first obligation

We owe each other is to define the terms that are at issue Only then can we go on to state the statements the propositions?

Judge whether they're true or false and then we can have our discussion or argument So that's just a brilliant question to be asking right about here

You'll notice in the subtitle for the book and in the way I've been talking. I haven't been saying woke

I've been saying woke Marxism. So I am endeavoring to define things clearly

I believe I do that in the book But Tim you have a look and you know, send me a line if you don't think so maybe I can defend myself a little bit, but Woke is a term that can be defined just like the term

Enlightenment can be defined So the Enlightenment age right was doing the stuff that set the stage now for woke

I would just say the the woke movement if it's even right to talk about that Seems to gather together all sorts of people who are not nearly as as bright and educated

Or concerned about or concerned about truth in conversation even

Then the Enlightenment folks were I mean at least you got to respect Emanuel Kant, though. He did this horrible thing of Censoring Christ and the word out of his ethics.

He was a Lutheran too, by the way grew up Lutheran Lutheran pietist

That that's an absolutely horrible move But at the same time at least the man wrote some books and made some sense

About what he was trying to argue for and so we can go to work on that and see where he messed up You know, so woke

Marxism is I think the right way to do this So what I've what I have been doing Tim is

I've not been going gaga over reading things, though I I am a scholar so I do some reading but I've been listening very carefully and The woke people are generally folks who don't want to do first act of the mind any more than they want to do arguing

They don't want to define their terms. They want to redefine our terms. I think this is a quote from hmm, maybe

GK Chesterton that said, you know, we've come to the point where all all our opponents have is their catchphrases and no philosophy whatsoever

I think that may be the case here But by identifying the two together and then

Tim, please have a look at the book if you're at all interested sounds like you are See if I do a decent job of that.

Those those are what I would call mutually reinforcing terms Technically, it would be neo -marxism and technically you could probably say something like woke ism and just get away with it

But I actually I'm working to define that more precisely as best we can do with all of this Stuff in flux from a bunch of people who think language is meaningless

How much sense are you gonna expect out of them? Yeah, it's so convenient because you can just change what you say and you know

Rewrite history if you want, but we we probably need to land a plane I was really kind of hoping that I could figure out that you would tell us a little bit about the

Roman soldier But if it's short, would you mind so you reference that earlier and because there's a soldier on the back of your book

What is why was the soldier there? Yeah, so I'll I'll Do the very short version and I will shamelessly mention

John I'd be glad to come back and talk about that and more of things anytime you'd like to I really value the conversation so this has to do with what our

Roman Catholic neighbors call subsidiarity I Think you'll find folks are interested can find some of this online and some pretty interesting books

That's the basic principle that decisions for an institution should be made at the lowest level possible

I did some some digging around and thinking and I've got more than a little

Latin my background So I I found out that that actually came from the Aki a striplex the three -line

Defense offense tactics that the Roman soldiers felt so goes really quickly like this

The first two lines are the lines that normally did most of the fighting so there are three lines of soldiers when the first line became weary, you know just tired out or Wounded and tired out there was a clockwork maneuver that the the

Roman centurions oversaw where the front line would become the second line and the second line would become the front line without skipping a beat and Then the second line would take over You know all refreshed and and give the other guys a chance to bandage up or repair their shields or something

And they just keep that up but now the question is so what happens if if the battle is just too tough or If the the people in those front two rows just don't have the heart for it as things go on Then the third line the subsidiarity line would step up.

These would be from my reading. Anyhow, these would be Veteran Roman soldiers the kind of guys who served in the legions

They get their citizenship as Romans because of the military service. They will not give up They know how to do war and they are never ever ever going to surrender

So I say the front two lines have failed

They are on the verge of surrendering if they haven't already surrendered the leadership It is up to those of us in the third line now

The people to whom much has been given as laypeople or just plain professors and pastors and stuff

It is up to us to step out there what shape that may take I don't know the question.

I think I don't shouldn't presume to speak for your universities, but I will a little bit I think that our

Christian universities in United States owe it to the rest of us To explain why they should continue

With all of the surrendering and all the caving in and all the secularizing. Why do they deserve to?

Continue like TS Eliot asked of the Westerners at the start of World War two all of this appeasement and so forth

Why do we deserve got a lot of people angry with him go ahead and get angry, but then answer the question

Is there is there a reason why our religious institutions?

deserve to continue Well with that we have more questions coming in, but I would just encourage people they can find you through your website, right?

Dr. Scholz. Yes. Okay. So if you go to I just showed it earlier

Lutheran philosopher comm you can contact. Dr. Scholz. You can ask him all the questions you want questions coming in now about whether you're a nominalist and So I will leave that to people to contact you directly you can get the book of course on Amazon anatomy of an implosion and Thank you.

Dr. Scholz. Appreciate you giving us some of your time and I guess the last question

I'll just ask in closing is how can people support you and pray for you? Oh Thanks, so I Would welcome the prayers

John. I also think If it's okay to put it this way. I think the good that we can do after a conversation like this is to Insist on and foster conversations

That's the antidote to this anti -language approach from the woke Marxists and I think we should insist on those conversations for some of us

It will be with co -workers for others of us classmates for some of us as professors or pastors in our teaching and preaching and for some of you blessed folks who are

Connecting us all together online like this. It's with more conversations like this

Don't forget. I'm more than ready to come back if I can can help with the topics All right.

Well, thank you for that. Wonderful podcast. God bless you. Dr. Scholz and Thank you everyone else for praying for me, and I'm glad I got through it with my cold

You can see I press the cough button. I think I missed it once And I saw the expression on your face.

I was like, oh no, I'm gonna be the implosion, you know, but um Anyway, god bless you.