Matzat Sins By Claiming Allah Is Confessed In The Apostles' Creed

By: Rev. Jack Cascione
Reverend Don Matzat writes about the First Article of the Apostles' Creed,
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth" as
follows:
"It is contrary to teach that those who do not believe the Gospel do not
believe in the true God of the First Article."

Matzat is writing in response to the LCMS controversy over Atlantic District
President, David Benke's participation in a prayer service with Moslem
clergy in Yankee Stadium.

Again Matzat writes: "Because the Jew, the Turk, the Papist...distort the
knowledge of God does not mean that they have false gods."  Here Matzat
mixes Catholics who confess the Trinity with Moslems and Jews who do not
confess the Trinity.

If Benke and Matzat believe that the Moslems worship the true God, they are
teaching heresy.

Why hasn't LCMS Pres. Kieschnick actually carried out the proper
ecclesiastical discipline of Pres. Benke and Rev Matzat for making false
statements about the Gospel?

The First article in the Apostles' Creed is Gospel because it begins, "I
believe."  We can only believe in the Gospel, not the Law.  "And the law is
not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them." (Gal. 3:12)

Can we know and worship the true God from nature and natural law?  The
answer is, "No!"  Doctor Robert Preus writes in "The Theology of
Post-Reformation Lutheranism, Vol. II," ". . . by nature and through nature
man knows nothing of the Gospel, of Christ, of grace or forgiveness." (CPH
1972, Page 29)

Yes, we can know about God's wrath and law from nature, which is to know sin
and guilt.  Chemnitz states, "our natural knowledge of God is only defective
(notitia legalis) which leads to doubt and disrepair rather than to faith."
(Preus, Page 20-21)

"To be sure, Scripture speaks of the fool who says there is no God
(Ps.14:1), but the psalmist here is not speaking of one who does not know
God, but of the fool who maliciously wished there were no God.  In like
manner, when Paul says (1Cor. 1:21) that the world does not know God, he is
not speaking of an absolute ignorance of God (Gal.4:8) but is saying that
the world does not know God as Savior.  In this sense the heathen are called
atheists (Eph. 2:12)." (Preus, Page 26)

". . . it is always the purpose and result of the natural law to render
every man inexcusable before God, to produce horror in man's soul before he
does wrong, and shame after he has committed wrong." (Preus, Page 28)
"But without the revelation of the Gospel, Calov says, one cannot know God
(ignorare Deus) in the personal relationship of faith.  No consideration of
nature can help one to know God as Savior.  Without divine revelation man is
without God (Eph. 2:11-12), not knowing Him (Gal. 4:8; Thess. 2:5) [sic],
and living in blindness and impenitence (Acts 17:30)." (Preus, page 28)

We cannot know the true God from nature, only from the Bible. "The world
comes from another source (aliunded) than itself; it is not the result of
'fortuitous collision of atoms.'  And this is all Heerbrand says about our
knowledge of God from nature; everything else that can be known about God,
everything which pertains to our salvation, is drawn from the book of
Scripture."  (Preus Page 20)

However, nature and natural law do teach that there is a creator, who cannot
be worshipped without faith in Christ.  "Thus it is perfectly in order
(according to the sola scripture principle) that the Lutherans appeal to
Biblical evidence for the natural knowledge of God." (Preus, Page 21)

Biblical proof for the acquired knowledge of God without faith from nature
is found in Rom. 1:17-20, Acts 14:17, Acts 17:17-28, and also in Is. 40, Ps.
19:1, and Job 12:7-25.

The Lutheran theologians "were vehemently outspoken in their condemnation of
the heresy that heathen could be saved by cultivating the natural knowledge
of God." (Preus, page 28)

There is no spiritual light in the unregenerate man at all, but only error
and darkness (Eph. 2:1; 5:8). (Preus, Page 28)

Only judgment and hell await those who possess a mere a natural knowledge of
God. (Preus, page 29)

This doesn't mean that Lutherans see no value in a natural knowledge of God.
On the contrary, nature leads us to the Law, which teaches grief over our
sins in preparation for the Gospel.  The Law plows, the Gospel plants.

"Lutheran Theology never divorced the natural knowledge of God from
repentance.  Rather the very purpose of God's revelation in nature was to
establish to all men their inexcusability before God, to convince them that
they were sinners under God's wrath." (Preus Page 28-29)

"In respect to those who are outside the church the natural knowledge of God
incites them to search after the living God (Acts 17:27), to restrain
themselves from violence, and to live at peace with their neighbors
according to their innate knowledge of right and wrong; and it teaches them
that they are without excuse in not recognizing the true God and glorifying
Him (it is a Law preachment) (Rom. 1:20).  Such a knowledge could serve as a
point of initial contact for the church in preaching Law and Gospel to
unbelievers. (Acts 14:15ff.; 17:22.) (Preus Pages 29-30)

Matzat and Benke misrepresent the Gospel when they teach that Moslems
worship God according to the First Article.  Without faith in Christ, God is
a consuming fire.  A knowledge that God exists is not faith or worship,
otherwise the Devil would be counted a worshiper of God according to the
First Article.  The Moslem and the Jew only know God according to the law,
which is not faith or true worship.

Without faith in Christ, it is impossible to believe in the God of the First
Article.  Matzat and Benke should repent for giving false hope to those who
have no hope of salvation.

July 23 , 2003