The Nihil Rule

"Greater love hath no one than this, that he would lay down His life for his friend" - John 15:13 But the second greatest love is the one a grandma has for her grandson - who left a specific directive in her funeral plans to have an alternative to the traditional ham sandwich "because my grandson Philip doesn't like ham" Love you, Grandma.

https://www.stpaulhw.com/blog/sanctuary-screens This is really good.  A WELS church is backing away from using screens in worship, and for all the right reasons. I was tempted to read and react or highlight a few key points, but the whole thing is gold. Read it!

https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/parishes-preparing-their-people-for-what-exactly "[S]erious talk about serious topics would work against Fr. Cheerful’s commitment to forming “a welcoming community”; trying to prepare people for martyrdom would fail to “meet people where they’re at.” (Does Fr. Cheerful see that as a—or the—sin against the Holy Spirit, i.e., the unforgivable sin?) Worst of all, such grim talk might generate complaints—and in Fr. Cheerful’s book, generating complaints certainly constitutes a sin against the Holy Spirit..."

Lord keep us in thy word and work Restrain the murd'rous pope and turk Who fain would tear from off Thy throne Christ Jesus Thy beloved Son Destroy their counsels, Lord our God And smite them with an iron rod And let them fall into the snare Which for your Christian they prepare So then at last they may perceive That Lord our God, thou still dost live And dost deliver mightily All those who put their trust in Thee

The Lutheran History Podcast On a recent episode of The Lutheran History Project, host Pastor Benjamin Phelps interviews Pastor Joel Otto about changes in worship over the 175 years of the WELS' existence. At the 32-minute mark, the question is posed "Why a new hymnal" and Otto responds "Yeah, I think maybe two things were driving it. There has been an increase in hymn writing which has occurred from the late twentieth century into the first decade of the twenty-first, both by Lutheran sources but also the broader Christian world, and a recognition of trying to produce music that has got a more modern feel but also congregational, congregational singing in nature, I'm thinking of the Keith Getty hymns, Stuart Townsend and those hymns... but also the recognition that not every WELS congregation anymore is just leading worship with an organ... and online resources..." 

( ~1h15m timestamp ) The Sign of Jonah is more than resurrection. ... I mean, we're going to go into deep weeds here if you let me, you know, this is, I'm not filibustering like President Putin did, but, right, you look at the book Jonah in particular: he flees not because he's afraid of the Assyrians, right? Like that's what people think, is like he's scared to go there? No. Like you read the end of the Book of Jonah, and he's arguing with God at the end, and He's saying, I knew that you would show mercy on these people, right? I knew you would the mercy, that's why I didn't want to go, right. He was out with God, like trick God into not being gracious to these Gentiles, because he knows in the law, right, in Deuteronomy, right, one of the signs that Israel is about to be cursed is that he is going to call nations, the Gentiles, nations that do not know him to himself. He's going to go to the Gentiles and away from Israel. And that means judgmen...

  (camera angle was too narrow to capture the hand motions, we'll get it right next time!) Good afternoon.\! This is Philip Hahn. I am the layman behind the Nihil Rule blog. It is nice to meet you face to face. So, those of you that have been following me for a while will remember that last summer we did a blog post on a video by WELS Southerner , who has been quiet recently, my friend. You should speak up more. But at the end of that blog post, I mentioned that if I ever got doxed, I was totally going to go to the comfy chair and talk to the camera mode. So, here's my first stab at it. I want to give you a bit of update on what's going on with the blog now and in the near future. Um so as I mentioned a month ago, I have a Substack with my own name on it. It's at The Other Dr. Phil . And over there I will be focusing more on the synthesis of things. Combining ideas, evaluating external ideas to the wells and trying to kind of build using the mind of Christ, build up a C...

( ~1h10m timestamp ): Christ, the true Israel, lives the history of Israel ... [the Gospel of] Matthew in particular is so cool to me because like you read it and the way it's organized is Jesus is recapitulating the entire history of Israel, right? So, right in the very beginning, he goes out into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, right, just like Israel's in the wilderness for 40 years is tempted by Satan. He comes, right after he is baptized in the Jordan, is like [Israel] crossing the Red Sea, goes into the wilderness, then after that, right he is, he's preaching a sermon on a mountain, expounding the law, which is Moses on Sinai, right? And after this, he is telling parables of the kingdom, like he's David, or like he's Solomon, writing Proverbs, writing Psalms. And then begins all of these excoriations of the high priesthood and the Pharisees and all the leaders of Israel, well, what's that like? It's like the prophets, right? So, he's reli...

Pastor Andrew Isker - author of The Boniface Option , co-host of the Contra Mundum podcast - was interviewed by Tucker Carlson about a month ago (I'm fashionably late, as always - had three weeks of leading a test campaign in Buffalo at a facility that runs 24/7) which had a number of relevant insights. Let's start with the disconnect between the clergy and the laity, which I believe find application in our little Wisconsin synod. First, we have a description ( ~23m timestamp ) of figures like Tim Keller and the idea of "whispered/shouted sins": ... Isker: "And you had figures like Rick Warren or Tim Keller who sort of adapted these things. So Tim Keller is in New York City and he tries to adapt Christianity to your upper middle class, striver people in New York City, or to make it easy for them to come to church. So, he wouldn't ever talk about homosexuality or if he did, it would be, well, that's not so good for human flourishing, but we're not re...