The book is *not* about getting "my" needs met. It's about letting God use me to serve others... for the good of the church and the advancement of God's kingdom.

The confused and anti-Lutheran John L says that Wilkinson's tripe is about "letting God use me to serve others . . . for the advancement of His kingdom."

This expresses why Evangelicalism and Lutheranism are incompatible. No Lutheran conceives of "letting" God do anything. He always does as He will. He "uses" the devil and that despite the devil's determined opposition.

And what is this talk of "advancing" God's kingdom? And that it does this because John L is implementing Wilkinson's magic formula? (And make no mistake about it, this is a quai-incantation meant to manipulate divine forces.)

God's Kingdom needs no "building" or "advancing." It is already present in full power at all places, spaces, and times. Christ inhabits heaven and earth and everywhere under the earth. What the Church is called to do in the Gospel is proclaim the kingdom's presence, to disclose Christ's gracious presence, by means of Word and Sacrament.

No, Wilkinson has managed to sanctify self-interest and turn the love of God from self-sacrifice into a quest for personal fulfillment. He wants us at the top of Maslow's kingdom; God desires we be at the bottom. [My emphasis added.]

Critics of Babette's Feast, both the story and the movie, have remarked on its eucharistic imagery, but have failed to detect its Lutheran overtones. To most modern critics, all believers look alike. The feast is an image of the eucharistic banquet in all its specifics. It is a memorial feast, in which the memory of one who walked on the frozen waters of the fjord is recalled. From the first the feast is not what anyone expected: its real matter is concealed under another form. Lowenhielm, expecting lowly country fare, finds the most astounding of haute cuisine and fine wine. The brethren, expecting sensuality and wickedness, discover the supreme goodness of the created order. The sisters, expecting to be parted from Babette, find that instead she has made their bond permanent.

Everyone's response to the dinner is a form of correspondence to the sacramental grace of the eucharistic feast, with all of its consequences. The brethren are in fact not fully able to appreciate Babette's cooking beyond the most rudimentary level, as she must know. Still, she gives it to them, regardless of their ability to correspond to it, just as God gives grace. The meal's effect on them is threefold: they are drawn together back into the fellowship that they had lost, they forgive each other their sins and are forgiven, and as they draw near to the end of their lives, they recognize the diminishing of death's significance in the face of eternity. Frederic Strauss, summing up the film, calls it "un conte moderne ou le merveilleux n'a d'autre pouvoir sur la vie que de rendre les echecs, les regrets et la mort plus doux."

Because Lowenhielm, in contrast to the brethren, can recognize the quality of Babette's art, he has the most profound conversion of anyone in the film. In his speech on the nature of grace, he finds and realizes the truth of the old religious commonplaces he has been using to his own advantage. He alone recognizes the abundance of Babette's outpouring, both its quality and, when he asks whether there is any more Clos Vougeot and to his bewilderment is given the rest of the bottle, its sheer quantity. Through this abundant pouring out of grace, Lowenhielm is reunited in blessed communion with Martine, and not only are his sins forgiven, but even his old bad choices are made good, transformed by grace. His own strengthening against death resounds in his final phrase to Martine: "I shall be with you every day that is left to me."

If, as Calvinists teach, God does not want everyone to be saved and Christ has not died for all, how can I know for certain that I have saving grace? In his Institutes, Calvin wrote, “we shall follow the best order, if, in seeking the certainty of our election, we cleave to those posterior signs which are sure attestations to it” (Book III, ch 24, 4, 243). In other words, the only way to know for certain that one is saved is by looking at one’s sanctified life that follows conversion. The Christian is to examine their repentance, good works, self-denial, avoidance of the world, moods and inner experiences in order to determine whether they are true Christians are not. This totally robs the Christian of the comforting assurance that God intends. One who bases their certaintly of salvation on their sanctified life will never be certain. For our sanctified life is such that one day we do good works, and the next day we don’t; one day we feel God’s approving presence, and the next day we don’t. Our feelings are erratic and can deceive. And we never do the good works we should. How can I know that I’ve done enough? The Biblical teaching is that our certainty is based on the perfect and finished work of Christ’s atonement on our behalf, and on the universal promise of God’s salvation, given us in Baptism. We are to look outside ourselves to Christ for assurance not inside ourselves at our sanctified life.

We also reject the error of the Semi-Pelagians who teach that man by virtue of his own powers could make a beginning of his conversion but could not complete it without the grace of the Holy Spirit.

"Perhaps, if we go beyond a world-focused piety that rests in the Cross of Christ as Luther enunciated it, the Church faces the danger of assuming a false godliness born of the many theologies of glory that Church history has strewn about. Here Christian piety has often lapsed into pietism, legalism and pharisaism. Pietism creeps into the Church's thinking when it begins to develop a negative attitude about participation in the worldly interests and concerns of this life, when the works of God are tied to a higher calling in this life that demands that we ignore or separate from the affairs of secular life in family, neighborhood and state. When the piety of the Christian is measured by a certain outward code of demonstrably holy acts, even if they are drawn from the Bible, Luther believed that we have launched into a theology of glory. Historically, Pietism was Luther’s theology stood on its head. Luther embraced the notion of an objective presentation of Christ and his gifts as they are mediated by a Spirit-connected external Word and Sacraments. Flowing from these gifts of righteousness and holiness, a subjective personal piety is expressed in a faith that is active in works of loving service to the neighbor. Pietism argued for a subjective mediation of Christ and the Spirit within the heart of the Christian, while expressions of Christian piety are to be objectively delineated and divorced from the tasks of worldly concern." (Emphasis added.)

"Luther’s concern to highlight faith separates his understanding of baptism from a medieval one. But faith is never an autonomous act of the believer, but rather the trust engendered by hearing God’s promises."

Baptism supplies us with the Spirit in full measure. There are no divinely appointed rituals by which "more" of the Spirit, that is, *in addition to the measure of the Spirit granted in baptism,* is imparted. I will below adduce some words from Chemnitz's very fine and succinct treatment of confirmation that show this to be the confession of the matter consistent with the Gospel.

That there developed a sacramental elaboration within the church early on concerning "confirmation" is not disputed. Though Chemnitz suspends judgment regarding the authenticity of the then newly published "Catecheses" by Cyril of Jerusalem, he grants that if genuine the confirmation doctrine in them either a.) may be interpreted with evangelical sympathies and understood consistent with the sufficiency of baptism as the divinely appointed means of the Spirit, and b.) must always be tested by Scripture.

The counter argument that an appeal to Scripture begs the question since it is the very meaning of Scripture one is arguing and that therefore the opinion and practice of the fathers is necessary and decisive is to implicitly deny the sufficiency of Scripture. One then asks who tests the fathers. This hermeneutic is disastrous, of course, and ultimately leads away from Scripture as the norma normata, or at least away from its exclusive and unique authority (and practically undermines faith in its words as the "pure fount of Israel" and the "light of lights").

Any prayer or so-called epiclesis subsequent to baptism for the Spirit is made in reference to baptism. It is to ask for what God in baptism has supplied and to believe and appropriate the grace given therein. The sacramental embellishments and ritual accretions found however early in the Church's history, that do not have Scriptural warrant, are not to be regarded as anything that *by themselves*, as separate institutions, offer anything whatsoever to the Christian. The reason that arguments from Roman and Eastern authorities believe they do is because of a basic difference between them and us in the conception of the Church's spiritual powers.

This is why a "scriptural" case need not be made for these things, and, in fact, cannot be made, and why they disdain and reject the critique of their theology and practice on the basis of sola scriptura. Their claim of divine sanction for these rites as sacred institutions arises from the belief that a.) the Church, as the (re)-incarnate body of Christ, possesses the plenary authority of its head, and b.) the so-called "mysteries" constitute a divine tradition alongside of and equal to that of Scripture. Luther and all the Reformers knew this well and categorically rejected such false beliefs.

This is why when we speak of invocations of the Spirit, chrisms and the imposition of hands as Lutherans, we do so with a distinct understanding that no supplements of grace are sought, as though the Gospel had not by its ordinary ministerial means already included this in the treasury of grace bestowed at baptism. But rather, as gifts already in our possession but being particularly called for in service and edification (this is the case in ordination). Ministers are made stewards of means that themselves contain and communicate God's grace and Spirit. Their power and authority is derived from the means and therefore both dependent upon and circumscribed by them. Because Rome and the EO have an exaggerated ecclsio-centric and institutionalistic conception of salvation, they naturally move in a direction that allows such innovations and supererogations.

The Easter and Roman Churches insist that confirmation is a divine institution and a necessary one. No one argues whether or not by means of the Word of God grace is not continually furnished, or that the prayer for grace is unheard by God. What a Lutheran would maintain is that all such fresh supplies are drawn from the storehouse of grace made ours in baptism. On this basis, we does God continue His work and do we supplicate Him for gifts.

The Reformation corrected this error, Andrew. What Rome and the EO teach is wrong and unevangelical.

Here now is Chemnitz: "But Cyril himself asserts from Scripture that Baptism bettors not only the washing away of sins but also the adoption of sons and the gift of the Holy Spirit. And because the baptized have put on Christ, he asserts that through Baptism they have become partakers and comrades of Christ. How, then, does this Cyril suddenly attribute to the chrism those things which he himself, with Scripture as witness, asserts belong to Baptism, namely, the purging of sins, sanctification of the Spirit, and becoming a partaker of Christ? I simply interpret in such a way, that he understands the chrism to be a symbol, signifying and reminding what is the power and efficacy of Baptism, not that he either wants to take away this power from Baptism or to divide it, giving a part to Baptism and a part to chrism. If the papalists are unwilling to accept this explanation, they will bring Cyril into a head-on clash with Scripture. For we are made, and are, Christians not by being anointed on the outside with some fat substance but by Christ our Lord, whom we put on in Baptism, whom we apprehend in the Word, that He may dwell in our hearts by faith. Neither were Christians first called by this name [Chemnitz is here pointing to the fact that "Christian" means "little Christs (anointed ones)] at Antioch from the fact that they had been smeared and anointed with some external fatness of oil. If therefore the authority of this Cyril is urged apart from and contrary to Scripture, we answer with the words of Augustine, Epistle 19, that a thing is not to be considered true just because the fathers thought thus, but only if they are able to persuade through the canonical authors that the things is not at variance with the truth. Therefore we ought to judge the writings of all others on the basis of the canonical writings, and whatever in them does not agree with the divine Scriptures we can, begging their pardon and preserving the honor which is due those men, disapprove and reject, even though we ourselves are incomparably inferior to the fathers" (Examen, 2.203, 204).