Cascione Writes Off Fellow UOJist Scaer as a False Teacher. But Cascione Gets History and Doctrine Wrong

Born forgiven? Cascione adores UOJ dogma,
the wackier, the better.

Doctor David Scaer writes
a sympathetic review of “Martin Stephan: The Other Side of the Story or At Least Part of It” in the October 2008 issue of The Concordia Theological Quarterly. <I embedded the actual link to the Scaer article.

 Scaer may be even more full of himself and his dogmas
than Cascione. We will let God sort that out.

Stephan was the leader of
approximately 700 Lutheran
colonists who migrated from
Dresden, Germany in 1839 to
flee religious persecution and
founded what would eventually
become the Lutheran
Church-Missouri Synod.

GJ – False. Stephan was not being persecuted. He was under house arrest and had no career left after his adulteries and financial misdeeds became known to the court system.

Their leader, the orthodox
Stephan, fell victim to the demonic
teaching that pastors
rule the congregation by divine
right. He taught that his
decisions were God’s decisions.
He used the colonists’
and their assets for his own
lavish life style. When it was
discovered that eight unmarried
women had slept with
Stephan, they threw him out
of the colony.

 Quenstedt seems to be arguing against Rambach the Pietist.
He is certainly refuting UOJ.

 Jay Webber, a Ft. Wayne graduate,
favors Rambach over Martin Chemnitz.

GJ – False. Stephan was a Pietist of the worst sort – dictatorial, abusive, in constant pursuit of young women. Everyone knew it, but Walther still served as his enforcer and sycophant. Stephan taught Walther UOJ, which makes the bishop “orthodox” in the scale-covered eyes of Cascione.

Scaer wants us to look at
Stephan as more of a victim
than a villain. This approach
necessarily paints C. F. W.
Walther, the founder of the
LCMS, as the villain. Scaer
has never agreed with
Walther’s “Church and Ministry”
the consequent result
of Stephan’s removal from
the colony. From Scaer’s perspective,
all LCMS pastors
are victims of Walther’s “voters’
assemblies” who practice
voter’ supremacy, the only official
polity of the LCMS.

GJ – Jacky One-Note’s Chief Doctrine – the Voters’ Assembly is the Master, the Prince, the judge of all articles of the Christian faith – or unfaith in his and Scaer’s twisted opinion.

Scaer writes: “A certain
bias can be expected in a book
written by a descendant of its
subject, but in this case it is a
useful antidote in coming to
terms with a man who, in
spite of his infraction tilled
the ground from which the
LCMS sprang.”

Rather than say that
Stephan was wrong but that
Lutheran theology is correct,
Scaer tries to defend Stephan
while criticizing the very foundation of the LCMS.

GJ – The infallibility of Walther is hard to defend, especially since he wanted the early LCMS history hidden away and forgotten. Today’s LCMS misleaders do not seem to have read the Stephan book or Zion on the Mississippi or Servant of the Word. The Fuerbringer books? Nope. And worst of all, they have never comprehended Luther, Paul, or the work of the Holy Spirit.

Scaer writes: “When Pastor
Georg Loeber shared
Louise Guenther’s confession
with Pastors Keyl, Buerger,
and C. F. W. Walther, they
were embarrassed by their
published defense of their
bishop (May 4, 1839), which
they retracted on May 27.”
“Louise Guenther was unaware
that her private confession
had become the
reason for deposing Stephan
as Bishop.”

GJ – Zion on the Mississippi records the obvious – the confession story was a lie. The Walther gang admitted the lie, and anyone can guess that much about the bishop’s promiscuity. Stephan left Germany with his mistress in a cabin close by, but his wife and children – dying of syphilis – were left behind. Stephan and Louise sail away, sail away, sail away, enjoying an ocean voyage to the Promised Land, and there is something left to confess? Hahahahahahaha.

What Scaer doesn’t point
out is that Stephan was also
the victim of his own Sacerdotalism.
He claimed he was
the “Chief mediator of the
Means of Grace.” He made
everyone in the colony including
all of the clergy, swear an
oath of allegiance to him.

It is almost humorous to
read Scaer’s observation that
Stephan didn’t receive justice,
when it was Stephan
who claimed that he was the
judge of everything and
everyone in the colony including
their assets, by the divine
right of ordination. The misguided
clergy only practiced
the justice that Stephan
taught them.
Scaer writes, “These pastors
served as his accusers and judges in requiring him
to leave the community.”
Well, first, they were not pastors;
they were assistants to
Stephan. Stephan had so
much control over them their
sacraments were not valid
without Stephan’s permission.
After Stephan was deposed,
they realized that
none of them had valid calls.
They debated whether they
should go back to Germany or
invite Swedish Bishops to ordain
them.

GJ – Walther organized the mob that threatened Stephan’s life, kicked him outside his cabin, stripped him of his clothing, robbed him of his gold and land, and then took all his books and personal possessions. Except in the LCMS, that is not the way pastors deal with adultery. No, this was the convenient discovery – Stephan gave his syphilis to the young girls of the colony. He told them he controlled their spiritual lives and their bodies. Everyone went along with until the horrible disease became obvious. That is also why Stephan’s behavior was increasingly more bizarre and illogical.

Scaer’s sympathetic view
of Stephan ignores the fact
that as many as 25% of the
colony died from bad administration,
disease, and exposure
while Stephan insisted
that his house be completed
and including a wine cellar.

GJ – The real crime was teaching them the rationalistic Pietism of UOJ – universal forgiveness without that – that makes adultery so easy to ignore. Stephan killed more souls than people, and Walther carried out this demonic task of teaching against Luther in the name of Luther.

Scaer states that four
ships arrived but he doesn’t
mention that five had set sail
for America. They also
booked a cheap ship, the
Amelia, to save money and
125 of the colonists drowned
on the way to America. One of
those terrible attorneys Scaer
refers to as Stephan’s accuser, lost five children to disease,
following Stephan into
the wilderness.

GJ – The attorneys defended Stephan in court in Germany, but no one seems to remember that fact. They all knew what Louise and the other girls were to Stephan. 

Scaer writes: “At first
Stephan refused what he considered
an illegally constituted
tribunal, but in seeing
a mob armed with whips outside
his cabin, he acquiesced
and was deprived of his possessions.”
Scaer ignores the fact that
if these colonists had not
been Christians they most
certainly would have lynched
Stephan, and we doubt that
St. Louis authorities would
have done anything about it.

GJ – There he goes again. Walther’s merciful hand kept the murderous mob from mauling the bishop he helped install upon landing in America. But who organized the mob and left the pro-bishop people behind in St. Louis? Walther did. Hmm.

Scaer laments that the private
confession of Louise
Guenther should have been
privileged information and
facts of Stephan’s fornication
should have been kept secret.
Of course all of these young
girls were convinced that
they were honored by God to
have sex with, their
Bishop/cult leader.

GJ – Fake news from the 19th century. The private confession was invented to excuse the mob. Walther wanted the bishop’s job, the bishop’s land, and the bishop’s gold, and the bishop’s chalice. 

Scaer writes: “First, a confession
made privately to a
pastor is privileged information.”
In most cases I would
agree, but not when it places
the lives of the members and
the existence of the congregation
in jeopardy. Scaer uses
false ethics to protect the
clergy at peril of the church.

GJ – I long to study ethics under these two gasbags.

Scaer writes: “Though current
LCMS guidelines disallow
making confessions public, the deposal of
Stephan might be a warning
for some to withhold potentially
disastrous sins from
their pastor. What was then
considered a sacrament is
looked on with suspicions
now.” Just think of all the
honorable people who kept
quiet about Jim Jones.

Let the layman beware.
Even if the life and safety of
members and/or the congregation
are at risk, the LCMS
believes clergy indiscretions
about fornication, adultery,
and misappropriation of
funds should be kept confidential
because that’s the
way God wants it.

Fortunately, this was not
practiced by Walther and the
people who deposed Stephan
or else there wouldn’t be an
LCMS. When people can’t
trust their pastors the church
and Synod must die.

GJ – The dictatorial Cascione appeals to the laity, one of the ironies of this age of posing, primping, and pimping. What rescued the LCMS was a strong Luther element that evidenced itself in the outstanding German Luther edition – a work of art in printing. German Lutherans could and did read the original documents. Now the LCMS is devoted to Fuller, Willow Creek, and Kent Hunter clones of the same.

Scaer’s defense of successive
generations of the
Stephan family is completely
justified. We don’t practice
visiting the sins of the fathers
on the children.

Scaer calls the Lutheran
colony an experiment in communal
living and compares it
to Quakers in New Harmony,
Indiana, and Mormons in
Nauvoo, Illinois. What about
correct doctrine? Doesn’t that
count for anything?

GJ – Since you asked, Jack. How is Stephan’s dogma different from Walther’s, his disciple who covered for him until the time to replace Stephan came along?

I’ve been to New Harmony.
They practiced celibacy as
they waited for the end of the
world. Their false doctrine actually
led to the end of them,
not the end of the world.
What about Joseph Smith
who was shot and hung as a
horse thief in Illinois. He
wasn’t as fortunate as Martin
Stephan. Of course, Smith
practiced open polygamy
while Stephan kept things
quiet.

Now we get to the quote
that led Herman Otten to ask
me to take a look at Scaer’s
article. Scaer writes: “This is
the dilemma of any church
which sees itself as the true,
visible church on earth.”

GJ – The real issue is – when will the LCMS give back the chalice that Walther stole from Stephan and used in his church in St. Louis? The Stephan family would like it back, since it was a personal gift.

No, Scaer’s hatred of congregational
polity and affection
for Sacerdotalism, along
with the majority of the
Fort Wayne Faculty, is the
death knell of the LCMS.

GJ – Jack and Otten and Scaer did their best to kill the LCMS with UOJ and Church Growth. But the Gospel will survive the fools that attack Justification by Faith.

How much of a contributing
factor is a lack of trust in
the LCMS clergy to a consistent
loss of 25,000 to 35,000
baptized members a year?

GJ – It is not a loss to get away from abusive tyrants who teach against the Chief Article and call themselves “orthodox.”

The LCMS forefathers
would have had no trouble
sending Scaer, his cronies,
and the COP across the river
with Stephan for presenting
the warm and fuzzy side of
Martin Stephan. Just think
how talented and misunderstood
Pope Leo X, Benedict
Arnold, Napoleon, and Mussolini
really were.

GJ – Whoa, Jack. Go easy on the airplane glue. Open a window for a while and rethink this tirade. Walther and his mob made Stephan get even sicker, sleeping outside for the night, then forced him at gunpoint across the river (probably on a steamer). They gave him almost nothing and refused to help him at all afterwards. But they gleefully accused him of keeping a gold coin or two from what they stole. Even Servant of the Word, which promoted Walther for sainthood, had to admit the “stolen coins” story was another fib.

 Walther’s mob reaped great rewards when they
kidnapped Stephan and robbed him.
But as, Cascione reminds us, it could have been worse.
They could have given CFW a life-time subscription to Reclaim News.