What can I say? It was an epic night. Unfortunately the recording is a little plagued with wind, but if you listen close, I think all but a few phrases can be heard clearly.
Here are the .mp3s:
Note also related H&S on Images, Communion, and Baptism.
Make space on your calendar also for Dr. Bombaro’s upcoming lecture on Sanctification at Reformation Lutheran in El Cajon: 846 S. Johnson, Sat Nov 3 at 7pm.
And of course, don’t forget our good friends at Hess Brewing. Watch their calendar for events at the tasting room in Miramar for now, but also keep an eye out for the grand opening of the new facility, currently under construction on Grim Ave in North Park!
Filed under: Hoagies & Stogies, Images, Religion |
Blogorrhea 
The Lutheran interlocutor holds up well his tradition’s reputation for overexcitement, excessive stridency, misrepresentation, and bizarrely over-realised eschatology.
Response to rhology: Please read your response out loud to yourself. Does it sound a bit overexcited, perhaps excessively strident, misrepresenting and bizzarre? I though so, too.
You mean “I thought so, but it’s because I didn’t compare it to the Lutheran guy in the debate.”
Fair enough.
Of course the Reformed believe that Christ fulfilled the Second Commandent! But the fact that he fulfilled it doesn’t give us the liberty to now break it, anymore than his fulfillment of the Sixth Commandment gives the liberty to murder people!
Didn’t think Brown’s scripture references about Faith that is seen is no faith at all had anything to do with the subject at hand. Just because the word sight or seen or unseen is IN the scripture, doesn’t make it topically applicable. Thanks Reuben for making the mp3s available.
In all honesty, I felt that Rev Bombaro was overtly pejorative, dismissive and at times even disrespectful, though that won’t necessarily come through on just the audio. I was also hoping for a positive defense of the Lutheran position instead of an attack of the an imaginary Reformed view out of the gate. Also, his way of answering questions by either referring to a previous point that no one probably remembered or simply disregarding the question altogether in order to continue his argument seemed to both defeat the purpose of providing a Q&A and to give the impression that he wasn’t taking it seriously.
On the other hand, I think that it’s great that you have contrived to provide an avenue for these types of discussion and I do plan on attending again.
Dear Adam, I’m not sure to what debate you are referring. During my 20 minute presentation I made only three one-sentence references to the Reformed tradition. It was all a positive statement on the Lutheran position and it focused on how we understand Christ fulfilling not just the precept of Scripture but the theological storyline. If you listen to the debate again, you will hear that I did not make a single negative reference to the Reformed faith in that first presentation, other than an accurate association with platonism. The first negative remark came from Mike who dismissed my presentation as a “lecture in metaphysics.” If you find it disrespectful that the Reformed have more in common on this topic with the Taliban than the Church catholic then I cannot help that. And here is where your entire position explodes with impossibility: You need to stop preaching the Word because it inescapably and necessarily begets mental images of Christ and each and every mental image you have is abject idolatry. You cannot escape that conclusion – even the Word of God yields a mental idol-factory for you. You are hopelessly and endlessly committed to a paradigm of idolatry. Should you stop thinking about God then? Should you stop proclaiming the mental image of Christ and Him crucified? Of course not. Why? I refer you back to the Reformed hermeneutical tradition which, strangely enough, the Lutherans have followed to its Christ-satisfying conclusion.
I will have to disagree with Adam here—I was only a listener to the debate, and although I disagreed with some of Bombaro’s views (not all), I thought it Brown who was unnecessarily caustic, starting with the timer issue, right out of the gate. Speaking only about outward presentation, I found Bombaro friendly and congenial. It is obvious the 2 sides disagree, but even here, the strain of critique seems harsh.
Well, Ekktar, John, I guess that we shall disagree. Image over word necessarily constrains the word to speculation, ie,. image. But I’m not going to debate over images. John, you’re welcome to your opinion, which you must also admit is not The Sole Lutheran Position. Even a cursory search can find a diversity of opinions among Lutherans, as there are amongst the Reformed. And as most Reformed, notions of incarnational sacramentology baffle me. But anyway, it’s nothing personal John, I just don’t appreciate your method. And your conclusions aren’t inescapable, otherwise we’d all be Lutherans, wouldn’t we. You’re probably a nice guy that I would enjoy hanging out with. I sent my oldest daughter to your preschool, so it’s not like I’m averse to Lutherans.
But I will make this point. As you did in your presentation, you did in your comment above. You simply assume that your statement or presentation is inescapably true and thus my irritation must be because I’m confronted with facts I either don’t wish to entertain or simply had never occurred to me, in which case it must be because my ignorance or error has be found out. The reality, however, is simply that I don’t concur with your characterization or conclusions. My irritation was with conduct, I can handle difference, even things that I feel are unfair characterizations.
But I will grant you this, that our minds are idol making factories. But why compound the flaw by producing arbitrary images, which are simply the products of our ever sinning and flawed minds. And I’m asking honestly, why extend this tendency by creating things with our hands to represent Christ which are not a representation of his incarnation realistically, but instead are reflections of our own ethnic association? And the images that may form in our minds upon hearing or reflecting upon the Word are, by their very nature, of an immediate and inescapable nature whereas the production of images requires intent, conception, and actualization, which are much different.
But anyway, that was much more than I intended to write. And if you have any literature that you could suggest, John, that would further elaborate upon your position I would appreciate it. The debate did make me realize that I have a deficiency in my knowledge of Lutheran theological systems that I need to rectify. My email is iskarjarak(at)gmail.com.
Ruben, what’s going on with H&S? Is there anything I can do to help bring it back?
Hey, thanks for your concern; I have moved (house and church), so I have been too busy to put on a H&S, but will not let it die! I am working with pr. Brian Tallman of New Life PCA La Mesa to transition it to new management. There might be ways to help (thanks!), I will email you offline to discuss.
sounds good.