I’ve also updated the article with a link to an HTML version of the article that Paula has made available. I’ve left the PDF link there in the hopes that it will be resurrected at some point…

Hi Mike, the original seems to have disappeared, but here is Google’s cached version of it, found by my friend Paula Coyle:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3AzNffH6ZGnkoJ%3Awww.crosstieslutheran.org%2Fpurposeparks.asp

Thank you, Michael :-)

Hi Daniel,
You are welcome to email me at any time: later or sooner, which ever fits your schedule. In a few months I will be literally snowed-under, but those are usually the days it is best to stay inside with a warm cup of tea and read or chat theology.
In Christian love,
Michael Sullivan

Hi Michael, I’d love to take you up on your generous offer to chat, thank you! I am rather snowed-under with work right now, so perhaps I can email you when things have slackened-off a little?

Peace and grace,
Daniel

Hi Daniel,
You wrote: “As I currently understand it, the Lutheran position is really rather nuanced. I hope that one day I shall have some face-to-face time with some Confessional Lutherans and they can help me understand the subtleties of the arguments a little better. There are still some things I know I am not getting.”
Well, if you are serious about it, I would be willing to Skype with you. I know it is not as good as a personal meeting, but I living in the middle of the Canadian prairies so I think a personal meeting would be difficult at best. :-) I would be willing to answer any questions you may have (as best I can) about the confessional Lutheran view of Baptism. From my limited knowledge of Calvinism, it is interesting to note how the Calvinist may see Lutheran teaching of Baptism as a minor difference, whereas a Lutheran seems it as a major difference. Just send me an email if you want to talk over Skype some day.
In christian love,
Michael Sullivan

Oh, and I agree with you absolutely with regard to Eph. 2:10.

Thank you, Mike. And like you, I consider my Confessional Lutheran friends to be be true and dear brothers and sisters in the Lord. The debt I owe them for the clarity they have brought to me concerning the Law and Gospel is one that I shall never be able to repay. I am so grateful to the Lord for them.

May He grant that we all walk worthy of the calling with which we were called, to the glory of His name.

On the other hand, what Rick Warren has come up is just a bunch of man-made works of man-driven sanctification or man-centered sanctification. Our sanctification is God working in us as we cooperate with Him through it by walking in repentance. R.W.’s plan is ridiculous. He isn’t God.

In Christ

Mike Ratliff

Oh yea, while I’m at it. He mentions that Rick gets it right but doesn’t explain it:

“While Warren repeats various traditional formulas (by grace, through faith, etc.25) he never expounds upon the meaning of such phrases (something a book attempting to spell out the meaning of life should definitely be concerned with) and readers are simply left to fill in the soteriological gaps on their own.”

… wow, didn’t know ‘by grace though faith’ was a “various traditional formula” thought it was Ephesians 2:8 ” For by grace you have been saved through faith.

That type of argument (the ‘well you said it and believe it but you didn’t say it like I want you to’) distracts from an otherwise thoughtful critique.

BC

It wasn’t difficult, and your points were nevertheless well made :-)

Hi Bobby, let’s not go as far as heresy on the infant Baptism thing – a difference of Biblical interpretation, certainly.

As I currently understand it, the Lutheran position is really rather nuanced. I hope that one day I shall have some face-to-face time with some Confessional Lutherans and they can help me understand the subtleties of the arguments a little better. There are still some things I know I am not getting.

With regard to RW, no, he’s certainly not my favourite target (I actually don’t like having targets at all, believe it or not!). It is most definitely a case of ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ on the doctrinal underpinnings here – my background was thoroughly semi-Pelagian Arminianism, although I nevertheless heard the Gospel of Christ crucified for my sins clearly proclaimed while I was growing up.

I hesitated even to make this blog post, as I’ve written about RW far too much already. But, as you said, there was great soteriology in the review, and I thought it was worth sharing for its clarity there, as well as for the whole 164 point thing.

Still, your observation is taken, and I shall therefore try very hard to lay off RW for a bit :-) And wouldn’t it be great if one day RW were to start proclaiming an adorned Gospel? I dare to hope and pray for such a thing.

I really was profoundly well, embarrassed and kinda wow’d by the 164 paragraph He didn’t need to make the point. It made itself. I’m glad I read it all. I hope Rick reads it. He’s a godly man who does not intend to lead men astray. I believe he would receive it with joy.

Thx for the comment. I trust for you that Rick is an icon of a slippery slope that we the church are on and that I have been on also. I hope he is not just your favorite target or that you truly love him as I do. If you do, you wold be very helpful to him as you have been to me.

BC